reuse

Eliminating Capitalism?

jkraft — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 08:16:42 -0400

Archaeologists from the future might think that the most valuable product from contemporary society is our garbage. The Egyptians and Incans horded gold in royal tombs, and we horde our plastic refuse in giant landfills! But what if we could literally turn our garbage into gold? What if we could create products, services and energy from the stuff we discard? 16 billion tons of annual waste in America could be put to work for us and for the earth.

Terracycle makes products out of garbage. Everything you can imagine—from old fax machines to soda bottles to moldy orange peels are re-blended, re-fashioned and made into home, garden and office goods.

Their first, and flagship product is Terracycle Plant Food™-- . a nutritious fertilizer. It’s made entirely from organic waste materials fed to worms. When the worms chow down, their, for lack of a better term, poo is then boiled, bubbled and treated to make a rich plant super-fuel. It’s packaged in soda bottles taken from schools and offices around the country—a perfect re-use. Instead of melting down and recycling the plastic bottles, they simply adapted their filling machines to accommodate multiple sized bottles. Terracycle is the only company in the US to do this, but they won’t be the last. Re-using old containers makes economic sense and extends the life of the original plastic. Since its inception in 2001, the company has been profitable, probably because they have cut out an entire side of the typical business balance sheet—no raw materials expense.

Along with plant pots made of the plastic from old electronics, school backpacks made of used juice-paks and trash cans made from crushed computers, Terracycle co-founders Co-founders Tom Szaky and Jon Beyer are developing a fire log made from 100% waste byproduct. In the production of bio-diesel, a lot of unutilized glycerin is collected, and it’s a fantastically combustible material that doesn’t produce particulate matter or other pollutants when it burns. Combined with wood chips and shredded milk cartons, and wrapped in old newspapers—this garbage will light up the night, producing 2-3 times more heat than traditional firewood.

Trash Crisis Brings Out the Garbage Police

scleaver — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 09:33:22 -0400

In the city of Whitehaven in northern England (almost at the Scotland border), Britons are balking at a government crackdown on trash. Earlier this year, for example, local bus driver Gareth Corkhill was fined $215 when he couldn't fully close the lid on his overflowing garbage can. His neighbors rallied behind him, protesting the fine, but they’re not the only city facing increasing scrutiny on trash day.

New garbage rules are spreading across Europe. Britain, especially, is in trash crisis with a poor recycling record, and ever-shrinking landfill space, according to a New York Times article. Now, governments in England and on the continent are enforcing strict rules to get residents to reduce, reuse, and recycle. Two ideas that governments are trying to enforce that you can adopt:

1. Put out garbage every other week: Many countries are collecting trash every other week, instead of every week, forcing people to limit their trash output.

2. Put less in landfills: Landfill space is running out, which is why Britain and Europe have been ordered to reduce landfill waste to 50% of the 1995 levels by 2015, or incur EU fines.

Those policies are being enforced today, but on the horizon are policies that make Britons pay according to the amount of garbage they produce, using a weight sensor inside every garbage bin to calculate each household’s bill. With what they see as the Big Brother of garbage looming, Britons are up in arms. What do you think? Should the government enforce trash policies? And which do you think will work?

Photo from Green Living Online.

REUSE REUSE REUSE RECYCLE! The NEW 4 R's!

edahmen — Mon, 26 May 2008 00:00:00 -0400

We all understand the importance of recycling, but there's an extra little step we can take with our recyclable materials on the way to the recycling bin to help reduce our waste even more! To master this new technique we must ask ourselves this question, “How can I use this item again before I recycle it?” The answer will have you reducing waste and getting organized at the same time!

Here are a few fun examples to help you get started!

Tea-boxes as drawer organizers?
I enjoy a yummy Yogi Tea every now and again. The boxes are recyclable, but I’ve discovered that by cutting off the top of the lid they fit snugly in my kitchen drawer and I can use them for organizing twisty ties and rubber bands. If they start to look old you break them down and put them in the recycle bin and replace it with a newer box.

Glass jars for my cleaning pastes?
You may not be used to green cleaning, but a lot of green cleaning methods involve making a paste out of baking soda and water, or oxygenated bleach cleanser and water. I find that reusing glass peanut butter or jam jars are great for this purpose.

Salad boxes for organizing outdoor party supplies?
Many organic salad mixes come in PETE plastic #6 boxes made from corn, like these from Earthbound Farm. While these can be recycled (though many cities won’t take #6’s) they work amazing as containers for organizing outdoor party supplies. I like to separate plastic utensils (that we will re-use, not dispose of!) into these boxes. It makes it easy for guests to find the utensil they need and it allows me to store them clean and separated during the winter. These boxes are lightweight and surprisingly durable, you can also use them for organizing anything from colored pencils to batteries.

Wine bottles in my toilet tank?
Ok, this one does sound funny! But a lot of people are getting wise to the fact that their toilet tanks use way more water than necessary. However, we can offset the water in our tank by putting an object inside that is dense enough to displace the water. Filling a wine bottle with water, sand or pebbles and placing in your toilet tank is a great way to re-purpose a recyclable wine bottle. You can also use recyclable plastic bottles for this as well. For more info on how to do this, click here!

Plastic bags in my purse?
The greener you are, the more you probably HATE the ubiquitous plastic bag. You try to BYO-bag as often as possible, but they just keep multiplying under the sink, don’t they? A little known fact is that plastic bags (when left alone) will breed, especially if left in dark areas. Be that as it may, it is impossible to deny the gazillion uses you can put them to before you recycle them. Here are a few of my favorites.

First, fold them into little triangles so they don’t take up more space than necessary. Instructions on how to do that are here.

For wet umbrellas, keep a triangle in your purse so that when you come into work/ a store/ the car from being out in the rain you can bag it and not worry about making a puddle. This won’t work for long handled umbrellas, but why you’d want to carry around a long handled umbrella is beyond me.

For packing cushion, wad them up and use them instead of bubble wrap or peanuts.

For travel, use them to separate socks and underwear or to store groups of soft items. Once items are in a bag, squeeze all the air out and it will save you space in your luggage. They will also keep your clothes clean in case something from that darn bath bag you had to check leaks!

For when you forget to BYO-bag. Keep a triangle in the bottom of every purse or bag you have. That way when you forget a reusable bag (or) just need an extra one you don’t have to take a new one from the store.

And that’s just the tip of the ice…bag!

Reduce, Reuse... FREECYCLE

jplatt — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 00:00:00 -0400

Let's say you have a bike you don't need. Or a pile of extra magazines sitting in your house. Or some clothes your children have outgrown. You could throw them out. You could recyle them. Or you could find someone else in your community who could put them to good use.

Enter Freecycle.org. This free, non-profit web service connects people who have extra stuff with others in their community who need that very same stuff.

More than 4 million people in 4,300 communities worldwide are already signed up to use Freecycle. Each participant subscribes to a an email list for their community. Users can post a description of an item they would like to recycle, or request an item someone else in the community might have.

I signed up for Freecyle a few weeks ago, and love reading the emails as they come in. Most of the posts in my part of Maine have been from individuals looking for or giving away clothes, home-improvement items, lawn tools and the like, but a few businesses have also been giving away their extra office supplies. (When I think about how much the companies I used to work for threw out on a daily basis, I wish I had known about Freecyle when it started four years ago.)

A simple email group might not seem like the most technologically advanced method to connect peoples' wants and needs, but it works, and the service keeps all kinds of perfectly useful goods from ending up in landfills. Give it a whirl. You might be able to help a neighbor in need, and you'll be helping the environment in the process.

Want to find out more about recycling?

Recycling Tips: Did You Know You Cannot Recycle Messy Pizza Boxes?

The Benefits of Recycling: Let’s Talk Trash

Recycling the Looking Glass: When Garbage and Art Collide

Top 10 Recycling Resources

Recycled Record Snack Tray

The Benefits of Recycling Cardboard

The Art of Garbage

Recycle Those Electronics!

Back to Basics—RRR

Picking Up Garbage TVs and Recycling as Art

Students Recycle and Reduce Garbage: Take It Or Leave It

Knight Rider Recycled—Reborn With Green Twist!

Recycling Your Garbage: Where Does it All Go?

Five Ways to Use eBay for Your Green Wedding

ckane — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 07:00:00 -0400

1. Your dress. eBay can be used to find not just your dress, but your bridesmaids' dresses, your flower girl's dress, the groom's suit, shoes, and accessories. And often, they are CHEAP! You can go vintage or modern here.

2. Vintage touches. Why buy new save-the-date postcards or magnets when you can find vintage postcards in lots on eBay? Look for them in batches themed to your wedding-- As I write this, I'm the lead bidder on a lot of 29 vintage postcards for Lake Tahoe, where our wedding will take place. (Auction ends today! Fingers crossed!) Or you could pick up a vintage cake topper, old vases for your floral centerpieces, etc.

3. Fabric. Don't buy new fabric for dresses, sashes, bridesmaid wraps, or for making/dressing up your wedding favors when eBay has plenty of remnant material, unused dead stock, or plain old fabric stashes that some old lady had packed away.

4. Gifts for the wedding party. Again, why buy new when you can give a cool vintage flask, jewelry, or whatever gifts specially suit your favorite guys and girls?

5. Ceremony and reception decor. Do a search under Wedding & Party Supplies for "used" or "like new" and you'll find garlands, cake plates, chair covers (if you care about such things; I don't think anyone will complain if you do without chair covers), and much more.

And that's just the beginning. Whatever it is you're looking for, you can set up saved searches on eBay, and you'll get automatic email notifications whenever your desired object is put up for auction. Now log on, do a search for wedding, bridal, organic, or whatever and get ready for the hours to melt away.

Image: '70s cake topper from eBay

Can You Make Overconsumption Look Good?

akronheim — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 01:00:00 -0400

I got an email with the subject line: "What does a pile of 426,000 cell phones (the number retired in the US everyday) look like?" I clicked on the link and was mesmerized by artist Chris Jordan. On his series "Running the Numbers: An American Self-Portrait" he wrote "Each image portrays a specific quantity of something: fifteen million sheets of office paper (five minutes of paper use); 106,000 aluminum cans (thirty seconds of can consumption) and so on. My hope is that images representing these quantities might have a different effect than the raw numbers alone, such as we find daily in articles and books. Statistics can feel abstract and anesthetizing, making it difficult to connect with and make meaning of 3.6 million SUV sales in one year, for example, or 2.3 million Americans in prison, or 410,000 paper cups used every fifteen minutes." From far away, the huge 5'x6' (or bigger) photographs don't look like anything except flat color, stone, landscape, or a model, but when you move closer, the pile of waste is shown. It's like an allegory of how disconnected we are from the problem of overconsumption (as discussed on the Living Ethically and Sustainably Web page) and we have to step closer to see how to fix it.

I sent the link to my friends around campus and they said that our very own Ithaca College Handwerker Gallery has the exhibit! I was so excited to spread the word! On the reaction wall at the exhibit some comments have been: "...cell phones from a distance seem like stone...they look natural from far away and then we pummel it with trash," "USA is home to 5% (or less) of world's population, but consumes 30% (or more) of the world's resources," "What hope or solution does this exhibit offer? How can we become less of a consumerist society?"

Just to start us off on the track to becoming a more sustainable society:

1. Reduce what you buy and use on a daily basis
2. Reuse - "Paper or Plastic?" How about Neither? (an organic bag that says "neither" to paper or plastic)
3. Recycle - recycle everything your town recycling plant can handle
4. Compost your food left overs
4. Redistribute - Donate to a thrift store near you, so someone else can use them and you can get a tax write-off!

There's many other things you can do, and most blogs on Riverwired.com can help you out. Chris Jordan just shoves it in our faces that we really need to make these changes ASAP because the waste is piling up faster and faster. I cannot imagine what I would do if I was personally in front of 410,000 paper cups. We should work on these lifestyle changes together to make Chris Jordan's art a little smaller and our planet a little cleaner.

Getting the Goods on Green Medicine

kbutler — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 00:00:00 -0400

Did you ever know a kid who counted seasons by super-awesome holidays? In other words, Easter baskets (Spring!); fireworks (Summer!); candy (Fall!); presents (Winter!). Yeah, well, that was so not me. I was incessant hay fever (Spring!); blistering sunburns (Summer!); dangerous ragweed season (Fall!)….you get the picture. I was your basic varietal allergen magnet running around in dungarees (yes, dungarees) and ribbon barrettes.

Basically, being a sneezy kid made me, shall we say, a tad thoughtful when it comes to medicine. And I’ve recently begun to wonder – is it possible to incorporate a green philosophy when choosing a doctor? What is green medicine, exactly? Doctors and hospitals use tons of energy and disinfectant chemicals (BAD). But since these practices also save lives, (GOOD), what is the happy medium? Can we really be eco-friendly when picking our treatments?

After my head exploded, I decided to look for answers by consulting acupuncturist Michael Yang, L.Ac., founder of the Los Angeles-based Pacific Medical Group. (And to all Angelinos who have questions about alternative medicine – this is the guy who will give you the answers.) Mike quickly informed me that there are two approaches to green medicine. One is that facilities themselves must take the initiative to be as green as possible – recycle, reuse, and keep waste to a minimum. But Mike took it a step farther by pointing out that the cornerstones of health are nutrition, exercise and mental health. These concepts, when properly practiced, are green by definition. “Healthy nutrition is organic, seasonal and local - that's green. Exercise is best outdoors and people need to be physically active beyond exercise hour. No need to buy fancy equipment and build more (carbon-foot printing) gyms. When patients are encouraged to think globally, that promotes a healthy feeling of community which in turn generates green activities.” And that, my friends, is green medicine.

But how does western medicine green up? Luckily, it seems that the idea of eco-friendly hospitals is catching on. Duke Medicine recently upped their commitment to becoming as green as possible. As their web site promotes, “In recent years, Duke has taken steps to green its operations, in everything from large-scale construction projects to everyday housekeeping services, bucking the conventional wisdom that being green means sacrificing quality or cost-efficiency.”

It seems like green medicine is on the road to evolving into a real force. Naturally! After all, Ralph Waldo Emerson says “Nature suffers nothing to remain in her kingdoms that cannot help itself.” Oops, sorry, my head just exploded again.

Back To Basics - RRR

GreenTraveler — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 14:51:41 -0500

Back to Basics

RRR, Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. The 3 R's have been around since I was a kid but they're still around because what they stand for is powerful. I think it's important to talk more about this essential alliteration because not everyone realizes the full impact. Sticking to the 3 R's keeps our landfills from overloading and helps to curb the production of unnecessary disposables and materials. In a nutshell, minimizing waste means lower carbon emissions and cleaner air for everyone. Often times when traveling even the greenest of greenies can seem to forget about these steps, but please try to keep them in mind no matter where you may be. For those of you green curious folks, you can start greening up your life by incorporating any one of these steps…and you'll soon find out that they all tie together.

Reduce. All of us are surely guilty of having bought at least one thing that we've never even used. The first of the 3 R's is probably the most important, and it goes farther than just reducing the amount of stuff we throw away. If we could all reduce the amount of things we bought to begin with, it would cut back on both the amount of junk being dumped into the landfills and the production of unnecessary goods…plus we'd all have some extra cash lying around to travel. Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to tell you to stop shopping all together, just think about what you're buying. The easiest way to start is to try something really simple- like cutting down on the disposables that you use. Bring your own mug to the office instead of using the styrofoam cups. Skip the disposable plates at home. Don't buy products wrapped in ridiculous amounts of packaging and buy things that are recyclable. Let others know why you're doing it and why it's important. Reducing what you buy will naturally reduce what you throw away.

Reuse. It seems like everything is disposable these days. If something breaks, we don't fix it. We throw away everything from our old computers to razors to water bottles but it's so simple to reuse these things and keep them far from the landfills. Investing in something more permanent may cost more up front but you're more likely to save money in the end. Buy a digital camera as opposed to multiple disposables, buy a razor that you only need to replace the blades, buy Tupperware instead of baggies, and get a reusable water bottle. When you do decide to replace something whether it's your old TV or your wardrobe, donate the old item(s) to a charity like Goodwill. Even if it's old or broken, most items can be fixed or cleaned up and given to a family in need. And finally, even if you do use disposables like plastic cups, plates, utensils, you can wash and reuse them -- most of them last a long time.

Recycle. According to the EPA, 75 percent of the garbage Americans throw away is recyclable but only 25 of that is actually recycled. Curbside recycling programs exist across the US and where it does exist 1 out of 2 homes actually participate and recycle. That's a good start but we can do better. What's holding people back? Is it the fact that they need something next to the garbage can to store the recyclables in, to remind them? Charlie found a great solution to this problem at Gaiam, click here. I know a lot of apartment dwellers complain that their complex doesn't have a recycling program, but there is a great website called http://www.earth911.org that can help you find a drop off center anywhere in the US. Earth911 is a great resource for when you're traveling in the US too.

Another huge step you can take that incorporates all 3 of the R's is buying recycled products. The production of anything creates pollution and uses resources but when you buy recycled you are reducing both. As always, you don't have to change your entire lifestyle to help the environment, every little bit does count!

What's your favorite recycled product?

See Ya At The Hub!

Melissa