Great info from Coop America!
Q: If my recycling gets picked up in the same truck as trash, is it really being recycled?
A: Probably. In some municipalities, trucks have been retrofitted to collect trash on one side and recycling on the other in separate compartments. In others, the city sends around two different trucks, on the same day or different days. If you’re in doubt, contact your local solid waste authority and ask what happens to your recycling once it’s picked up.
Q: How do I know if my city is really recycling my plastic, glass, aluminum, and paper?
A: Call and ask. Look up your solid waste authority on the EPA’s map, and ask them where your recycling is taken. If it’s taken to a Materials Recovery Facility (MRF) for sorting, call and ask the MRF operators what percentages of the materials that they receive are sold to recyclers, and what percentage they reject as “residuals.” Also ask how much of their recyclables are being shipped to Asia or other developing countries, where your garbage’s fate is more dubious than if it’s being recycled domestically.
Q: Some places I’ve visited accept a long list of materials for recycling, but my city has very specific guidelines. Why are the rules so different from place to place?
A: While the materials that are technically capable of being recycled don’t vary from place to place, the market for recycled materials fluctuates over time and varies locally in response to demand. In addition, there are also a range of tactics that municipalities use to maximize citizen participation in recycling. For example, some municipalities that do not recycle any plastics #3–7 nonetheless advise citizens to put all plastics #1–7 into their recycling bins, out of the belief that more people will participate if they don’t have too many complicated rules to follow. Then the MRF fishes out whatever they cannot recycle and sends it to a landfill or incinerator.
Q: My city only recycles plastics numbered 1 and 2. Is there a way I can recycle those numbered 3-7?
A: Probably not. “It’s safe to say that plastics with the resin code 3-7 are not recyclable and should be avoided by consumers,” says Mark Murray, executive director of Californians Against Waste. No plastics are truly recyclable back into the same type of container they were before, due to the chemical properties of plastics. Plastics #1 and some #2 are “downcyclable” into second-order products, like plastic “lumber” for picnic tables and decks. With the exception of a few model programs like that of Stonyfield Farms and Recycline—which turns used #5 yogurt cups into Recycline toothbrushes and razors—there is almost no domestic market for plastics #3–7. When municipalities do accept the higher numbered plastics, it’s often because they are under pressure from the public to take them. In most cases, higher numbered plastics are bundled together and shipped overseas to developing countries—where they may be burned as boiler fuel (which generates toxic air pollution), or simply dumped into unregulated landfills.
Q: My grocery store accepts plastic bags for recycling. Can they really be recycled, or is the store greenwashing?
A: Some may be sold to actual recyclers—Safeway, in particular, has an arrangement with a domestic recycler to downcycle these plastic bags into compressed “lumber” for decks, fencing, and picnic tables. But the majority of the plastic bags collected by these receptacles are baled and shipped to Asia. What is done with them there? Even the man responsible for overseeing California’s mandatory plastic bag recycling law for supermarkets hasn’t been able to find out: “I’d love to know what happens to [baled plastic bags] overseas,” says Neal Johnson, a research analyst for the California Environmental Protection Agency. “There are a lot of anecdotal comments about whether it gets burned as boiler fuel [a toxic use of plastic that’s illegal in the US], or reprocessed as some sort of filler. We don’t quite know what happens there.” Your best bet: bring your own reusable shopping bags and produce bags with you to the supermarket.
Q: If I put the wrong number plastic in my bin, will it mess up the whole batch? Will it magically get recycled anyway?
A: Every recycler does some mechanical and optical sorting to ensure the correct materials end up in the recycling stream, and large Materials Recovery Facilities are factory-sized sorting operations that make sure each recycler receives the right sort of materials. So while it’s helpful to workers at these facilities if you follow your municipality’s guidelines, you’re probably not going to ruin a whole batch of recycling if you periodically make a mistake. Chances are the non-recyclable item will get fished out down the line and thrown away, though it won’t get “magically recycled.” That said, polyvinyl chloride, also known as PVC #3 plastic —is rarely recyclable and has a fantastic capacity to mess up the downcycling of a whole batch of plastics #1 or #2; so try to be particularly mindful of keeping #3 out of your recycling bin. PVC is also unsafe, and several campaigns are afoot to end the use of the “poison plastic” in consumer products and construction materials. For more information, visit www.pvcfree.org, www.myhouseisyourhouse.org.
Q: Is a biodegradable product better than a conventional product if they both end up in a landfill?
A: Maybe a little, but not much. If biodegradable products are just headed for the regular trash, they are still part of the general waste stream. If they end up in a landfill, they’re unlikely to degrade aerobically when buried under tons of trash away from light, oxygen, or moisture. Instead, they’ll more slowly degrade with the help of anaerobic bacteria, a process that generates greenhouse gases: methane and carbon dioxide. That said, a product made out of a renewable resource such as bamboo probably has a better ecological footprint than one made from petroleum. And, using the new biodegradable plastics helps keep harmful PVC #3 plastic out of the waste stream—it’s the burning of PVC and other toxic plastics that cause some of the worst pollution from incinerators. However, the best choice is to use reusable items whenever you can. The second best is to use compostable products and then actually compost them. Find a community composting facility near you at www.findacomposter.com.
Q: Can you compost if you live in an apartment?
A: Yes! You can create a worm composting bin using Real Money’s step-by-step guide, or explore one of the motorized apartment composters on the market, such as NatureMill. Another option is to save your compost in a container in the freezer (to prevent smells) and give it periodically to a homeowner friend who composts.
Q: How can I start a recycling program in my city?
A: Read our article, featuring Tayler McGillis, a 12-year-old who started a community-wide aluminum recycling program in Toluca, IL.
Monday, January 14, 2008
Friday, January 11, 2008
Beware Electronics “Recyclers” that Don’t Recycle
Consumers Warned of e-Waste Recyclers that Ship Old TVs or Computers toDeveloping Countries — Urged to Use “e-Stewards”
Seattle, San Francisco. 7 January 2008. In the wake of the Christmas electronic gadget buying season, with many of us buying new flat screen TVs, cell phones and computers now faced with disposing of the old ones, the Basel Action Network (BAN) and the Electronics TakeBack Coalition (ETBC) today cautioned consumers not to be fooled by the majority of businesses nationwide calling themselves electronics recyclers who in fact don’t do any recycling at all, but instead ship your old equipment to developing countries.
The Recycling Lie
“We may think we’re doing the right thing by giving our old electronics to a ‘recycler’ or a free collection event,” said Sarah Westervelt, BAN’s e-Stewardship Program Director. “But most of those businesses calling themselves recyclers are little more than international waste distributors. They take your old equipment for free, or pocket your recycling fee, and then simply load it into a sea-going container, and ship it to China, India or Nigeria.”
Once on foreign shores your old computer or TV becomes part of a cyber-age horror story. In China, woman and children breathe in the toxic solder vapors as they cook circuit boards, dioxins are produced when wires are burned, and micro-chips are washed in strong acid baths and flushed into the rivers as primitive metals extraction techniques take their toll on the local environment and the health of thousands of migrant farmers. In Nigeria the imported techno-trash that is not repairable is dumped and burned in swamps.
BAN revealed these sad truths as early as 2002 in their film and report “Exporting Harm: The High Tech Trashing of Asia” and again in another report and film entitled “The Digital Dump: Exporting Re-use and Abuse to Africa,” in 2005.
Unfortunately, according to BAN and ETBC, this ugly waste trade continues unabated from the United States because the government refuses to ratify the Basel Convention and the Basel Ban Amendment – international accords prohibiting trade in hazardous waste to developing countries, and has otherwise expressed little interest in controlling its toxic waste exports as long as they are claimed to be destined for recycling or re-use. As such, US e-waste exports are in contravention of international law, but not US law, and thus US “recyclers” are able to claim they abide by all environmental laws and are even “EPA approved”.
Doing the Right Thing: The e-Stewards Initiative
To help distinguish between these unscrupulous exporters and the responsible recyclers and refurbishers, BAN and ETBC created the e-Stewards Initiative – a program identifying North America’s most responsible e-Waste recyclers that have agreed to adhere to strict criteria created by the non-profit environmental groups. The criteria require that no hazardous electronics equipment or parts (as defined internationally) will be exported to developing countries or be processed by captive prison labor, and that none of it will end up in landfills or incinerators. These responsible recyclers can be found at: www.ban.org/pledge1.html or www.computertakeback.com/responsible_recycling/index.cfm. Consumers are urged to avoid recyclers not on this list including free e-waste collection events that do not state that they only use e-Stewards recyclers.
“We strongly urge all consumers to avoid all but those recyclers that have qualified as e-Stewards. If your local recycler has not qualified for the program, ask them to do so. Otherwise while trying to do the right thing with recycling, you can unwittingly become a player in a global digital dumping game, and end up poisoning those in developing countries,” said Barbara Kyle, National Coordinator of ETBC.
Seattle, San Francisco. 7 January 2008. In the wake of the Christmas electronic gadget buying season, with many of us buying new flat screen TVs, cell phones and computers now faced with disposing of the old ones, the Basel Action Network (BAN) and the Electronics TakeBack Coalition (ETBC) today cautioned consumers not to be fooled by the majority of businesses nationwide calling themselves electronics recyclers who in fact don’t do any recycling at all, but instead ship your old equipment to developing countries.
The Recycling Lie
“We may think we’re doing the right thing by giving our old electronics to a ‘recycler’ or a free collection event,” said Sarah Westervelt, BAN’s e-Stewardship Program Director. “But most of those businesses calling themselves recyclers are little more than international waste distributors. They take your old equipment for free, or pocket your recycling fee, and then simply load it into a sea-going container, and ship it to China, India or Nigeria.”
Once on foreign shores your old computer or TV becomes part of a cyber-age horror story. In China, woman and children breathe in the toxic solder vapors as they cook circuit boards, dioxins are produced when wires are burned, and micro-chips are washed in strong acid baths and flushed into the rivers as primitive metals extraction techniques take their toll on the local environment and the health of thousands of migrant farmers. In Nigeria the imported techno-trash that is not repairable is dumped and burned in swamps.
BAN revealed these sad truths as early as 2002 in their film and report “Exporting Harm: The High Tech Trashing of Asia” and again in another report and film entitled “The Digital Dump: Exporting Re-use and Abuse to Africa,” in 2005.
Unfortunately, according to BAN and ETBC, this ugly waste trade continues unabated from the United States because the government refuses to ratify the Basel Convention and the Basel Ban Amendment – international accords prohibiting trade in hazardous waste to developing countries, and has otherwise expressed little interest in controlling its toxic waste exports as long as they are claimed to be destined for recycling or re-use. As such, US e-waste exports are in contravention of international law, but not US law, and thus US “recyclers” are able to claim they abide by all environmental laws and are even “EPA approved”.
Doing the Right Thing: The e-Stewards Initiative
To help distinguish between these unscrupulous exporters and the responsible recyclers and refurbishers, BAN and ETBC created the e-Stewards Initiative – a program identifying North America’s most responsible e-Waste recyclers that have agreed to adhere to strict criteria created by the non-profit environmental groups. The criteria require that no hazardous electronics equipment or parts (as defined internationally) will be exported to developing countries or be processed by captive prison labor, and that none of it will end up in landfills or incinerators. These responsible recyclers can be found at: www.ban.org/pledge1.html or www.computertakeback.com/responsible_recycling/index.cfm. Consumers are urged to avoid recyclers not on this list including free e-waste collection events that do not state that they only use e-Stewards recyclers.
“We strongly urge all consumers to avoid all but those recyclers that have qualified as e-Stewards. If your local recycler has not qualified for the program, ask them to do so. Otherwise while trying to do the right thing with recycling, you can unwittingly become a player in a global digital dumping game, and end up poisoning those in developing countries,” said Barbara Kyle, National Coordinator of ETBC.
Thursday, January 10, 2008
Christmas Light Recycling Program
From now until January 31, 2008, HolidayLEDs.com will accept incandescent Christmas lights for recycling. All lights submitted for recycling must be mailed to HolidayLEDs.com, postage paid, and post-marked no later than January 31, 2008.
The first 100 participants (which shall be determined by the date the packaged is post-marked) will receive one free set of LED Christmas lights. The second 100 participants (which shall be determined by the date the packaged is post-marked) will receive a 10% coupon for any purchase at HolidayLEDs.com.
The first 100 participants shall receive their free set of lights via UPS or first class mail no later than February 15, 2008. The second 100 participants shall receive their 10% coupon via electronic mail no later than February 15, 2007
All participants should include a note along with their package including: 1) Name; 2) Mailing address; 3) Phone number and 4) Email address.
All packages should be sent to:
HolidayLEDs.com
Attn: Recycling Program
120 W. Michigan Ave., Suite 1403
Jackson, MI 49201
Upon conclusion of the recycling program, HolidayLEDs.com will recycle all components of the lights which can be recycled. We will be using one or more local recycling companies including OmniSource.
The first 100 participants (which shall be determined by the date the packaged is post-marked) will receive one free set of LED Christmas lights. The second 100 participants (which shall be determined by the date the packaged is post-marked) will receive a 10% coupon for any purchase at HolidayLEDs.com.
The first 100 participants shall receive their free set of lights via UPS or first class mail no later than February 15, 2008. The second 100 participants shall receive their 10% coupon via electronic mail no later than February 15, 2007
All participants should include a note along with their package including: 1) Name; 2) Mailing address; 3) Phone number and 4) Email address.
All packages should be sent to:
HolidayLEDs.com
Attn: Recycling Program
120 W. Michigan Ave., Suite 1403
Jackson, MI 49201
Upon conclusion of the recycling program, HolidayLEDs.com will recycle all components of the lights which can be recycled. We will be using one or more local recycling companies including OmniSource.
Monday, January 7, 2008
Super Bowl to Plant Trees and Make Other Greenish Efforts
From Grist: The National Football League has announced that it will plant trees and take other measures to offset some of the environmental impacts of the most hyped sporting event of the year.
As part of the greening effort, the organizers have said they're planting 9,000 trees in the state, though only 3,500 of them are actually expected to survive. The Super Bowl stadium and the adjacent NFL theme park will be powered with clean energy on the big day and an expected 65,000 pounds of leftover food from bowl-affiliated events during the week will be donated to area food banks, shelters, and soup kitchens.
Not offset, however, are any of the emissions of anyone flying to the event, energy used by the media center and hotels, and energy from probably 98 percent of the country's plasma televisions that will be tuned in to the game.
"We're trying to determine where the line is drawn between the organization managing the event and the individual when it comes to offsetting their emissions," said Jack Groh, director of the NFL Environmental Program. "We're trying to figure out at what point does this become someone else's responsibility?"
As part of the greening effort, the organizers have said they're planting 9,000 trees in the state, though only 3,500 of them are actually expected to survive. The Super Bowl stadium and the adjacent NFL theme park will be powered with clean energy on the big day and an expected 65,000 pounds of leftover food from bowl-affiliated events during the week will be donated to area food banks, shelters, and soup kitchens.
Not offset, however, are any of the emissions of anyone flying to the event, energy used by the media center and hotels, and energy from probably 98 percent of the country's plasma televisions that will be tuned in to the game.
"We're trying to determine where the line is drawn between the organization managing the event and the individual when it comes to offsetting their emissions," said Jack Groh, director of the NFL Environmental Program. "We're trying to figure out at what point does this become someone else's responsibility?"
Friday, January 4, 2008
Huckabee and Obama: The Green Angle
Mike Huckabee won the Iowa GOP caucuses last night, a decisive victory that puts him at the front of the pack in the Republican presidential race -- that is, until the New Hampshire primary next week. Huckabee is one of just two GOP candidates who support a cap-and-trade system to fight climate change (McCain is the other), although Huckabee hasn't come out in support of any specific emission targets. In an interview with Grist earlier this year, Huckabee stressed the connection between his Christian faith and his drive to protect the environment.
On the Democratic side, Barack Obama was the night's winner. Like all of the other Democratic candidates, he's got an ambitious plan to tackle climate and energy issues, which he described in an interview with Grist this past summer.
For a thorough look at the victors' green stances, check out Grist's fact sheets on Huckabee and Obama -- and compare all of the Republican and Democratic candidates with our handy chart.
On the Democratic side, Barack Obama was the night's winner. Like all of the other Democratic candidates, he's got an ambitious plan to tackle climate and energy issues, which he described in an interview with Grist this past summer.
For a thorough look at the victors' green stances, check out Grist's fact sheets on Huckabee and Obama -- and compare all of the Republican and Democratic candidates with our handy chart.
Thursday, January 3, 2008
Righteous Resolutions: Have an Eco-'08
Just ran across this article on environmentally friendly ways to approach beauty and fashion this year. Good stuff.
Wednesday, January 2, 2008
GREAT Ways to Reuse
Check out the World Environmental Organization's Reuse Database. Fun and neat ideas for ways to reuse many items that can't be recycled.
Also cool: a list of the top 100 recycling Web sites.
Also cool: a list of the top 100 recycling Web sites.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
