Trash pickers save the environment

"Scorned trash pickers become global environmental force"

Here's a great story about how countries around the world are recycling at extremely high rates, not thanks to government policy but to "trash pickers" in impoverished urban centers. Here's the story, thanks to the Huffington Post:

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/staff/jack_chang/story/31468.html

Recycling: Office Paper

In 2003, only 48.3% of office paper was recovered for recycling.

From "15 Facts about the Paper Industry, Global Warming and the Environment" at The Daily Green.

Recycling Rates of Different Materials

52 percent of all paper, 31 percent of all plastic soft drink bottles, 45 percent of all aluminum beer and soft drink cans, 63 percent of all steel packaging, and 67 percent of all major appliances are now recycled.

From the EPA.

Recycling Factoids: Curbside Programs

By 2006, about 8,660 curbside collection programs served roughly half of the American population.

From the EPA.

That's up from only one program twenty years ago, which is very impressive, but what about the half of the population without access to curbside recycling?

The Growth of Recycling Programs

Recycling, including composting, diverted 82 million tons of material away from landfills and incinerators in 2006, up from 34 million tons in 1990.

From the EPA.

Recycling Factoids: Recycled Paper

Making paper from recycled paper reduces air pollution by 95%.

National Recycling Coalition

Recycling Factoids: Glass

This post kicks off our March focus on recycling.

From Earth 911:

Recycled glass saves 50% energy vs. virgin glass (Center for Ecological Technology)

Recycling of one glass container saves enough energy to light a 100-watt bulb for 4 hours (EPA)

Recycled glass generates 20% less air pollution and 50% less water pollution (NASA)

1 ton of glass made from 50% recycled materials saves 250 lbs. of mining waste (EPA)

Glass can be reused an infinite number of times; over 41 billion glass containers are made each year (EPA)

What we throw away and what we recycle

Source: EPA

Recycling and Global Warming

In 2000, recycling of solid waste prevented the release of 32.9 million metric tons of carbon equivalent (MMTCE, the unit of measure for greenhouse gases) into the air.

National Recycling Coalition

Paper Factoids: NYC Recycles?

Each year in New York City we throw away 400,000 tons of recyclable paper.

Paper Factoids: Recycling in NYC

Recyclable paper makes up about 15% of New York City’s refuse—materials put out for regular garbage collection instead of recycling.

Paper Factoids: Recycled Vs. Virgin

Compared to using virgin wood, paper made with 100% recycled content uses 44% less energy, produces 38% less greenhouse gas emissions, 41% less particulate emissions, 50% less wastewater, 49% less solid waste and -- of course --uses 100% less wood.

From "15 Facts about the Paper Industry, Global Warming and the Environment" at The Daily Green.

Paper Factoids: Recycled Content of Different Types of Paper

Recovered paper accounts for 37% of the U.S. pulp supply. Printing and writing papers use the least amount of recycled content -- just 6%. Tissues use the most, at 45%, and newsprint is not far behind, at 32%.

From "15 Facts about the Paper Industry, Global Warming and the Environment" at The Daily Green.

1000 New Pets: Worm Composting

Our family has taken up vermiculture, or worm composting, the primary composting method that can work in an apartment.

Basically, it consists of a plastic bin, some shredded, damp newspaper, a supply of red worms, and our fruit and vegetable waste. We obtained our bin and worms from Flowerfield Enterprises, the company founded by the late Mary Appelhof, aka the "worm woman," and author of "Worms Eat My Garbage," which came with our bin. I recommend them highly.

Worm composting can work indoors because it is aerobic, rather than anaerobic, and thus does not produce the offensive odors we usually associate with rotting food. We started our bin about 10 days ago. Since then we have added such yummy articles as mushy carrots, soggy lettuce, old basil, roasted pepper skins, moldy fruit, tomato cores, corn husks, and watermelon rinds. Unlike our garbage can, which in the summer heat smells horrendous after one day, the worm bin smells almost poetically pleasant: phrases such as "a forest after the rain" come to mind.

Worms are extremely low maintenance--for example, you can easily go on vacation for a week or two without worrying about feeding them. You must make sure that the conditions in the bin are okay--not too wet or too dry and adequately aerated. Every few months, you must harvest your worm compost, either by dumping out your worms and separating them from the compost, or by putting new bedding and food on one side of the bin, allowing the worms to migrate, and then removing now mostly-worm free compost.

here is a short list of some of the environmental benefits of worm-composting:
1. it reduces amount of garbage sent to landfills, (including fuel needed to take waste to the dump)

2. it eliminates the methane produced when organic matter decomposes in anaerobic conditions: methane is one of the most potent greenhouse gases with more than 20 times the heat-trapping capacity of CO2; a principal source of methane emissions is dumps

3. worms produce compost which increases the organic matter (and stored carbon) in soil, matter that in many parts of the world is being rapidly depleted through soil erosion

4. worm castings are a form of organic fertilizer that can reduce or eliminate the need for traditional fertilizer, which is energy-intensive to produce and causes serious environmental problems from run-off

Earth 911 has an excellent article about the benefits of compost for your plants.


While these benefits are real enough, the environmental effects of a single family's composting efforts are pretty modest. In the scheme of things, it is probably more important--in the sense of directly beneficial to the planet--for people to cut their electricity and gasoline use than for them to compost 500 pounds of vegetable scrapings each year.

Actually, I think the more significant benefits may be mental, but I think these also need to be articulated and defended.

Our worm bin is an ongoing biological experiment that is (to say the least) educational for the children and adults in our house--there is a good reason these bins are popular in schools. It helps educate my children about waste, ecology, "bugs," and the life cycle, among other things.

Even a few short days of composting has made us all newly conscious of what is going in our garbage can and how much we toss out every week; this awareness is a necessary first step to reducing our waste.

Most importantly for me, composting has enabled our whole family to recognize that our vegetable scrapings are not worthless--they do not have to be garbage. They can be put to use. As a society, we treat many things as garbage that actually have value: we just don't bother to discover and acknowledge that value. Rainwater is another example of this--in NYC we literally mix it with our sewage.

We need a new way to think about waste: one meaning of waste is "by-product," whatever is left over from a process--in this case carrot peels from dinner and worm castings from our bin. But another form of waste--the one that injures our minds in the deepest sense--is the destruction of potential.

These kinds of mental shift are absolutely key if we are going to adapt as a society to confront the challenges ahead of us.

Aluminum Factoids #2

From Earth 911 and the Aluminum Association:

* Over 50% of the aluminum cans produced are recycled.
* A used aluminum can is recycled and back on the grocery shelf as a new can, in as little as 60 days. That’s closed loop recycling at its finest!
* Aluminum is a durable and sustainable metal: 2/3 of the aluminum ever produced is in use today.
* Every minute of everyday, an average of 113,204 aluminum cans are recycled.
* Making new aluminum cans from used cans takes 95 percent less energy and 20 recycled cans can be made with the energy needed to produce one can using virgin ore.
* Recycling one aluminum can saves enough energy to keep a 100-watt bulb burning for almost four hours or run your television for three hours.
* Last year 54 billion cans were recycled saving energy equivalent to 15 million barrels of crude oil - America’s entire gas consumption for one day.
* Tossing away an aluminum can wastes as much energy as pouring out half of that can’s volume of gasoline.
* In 1972, 24,000 metric tons of aluminum used beverage containers (UBCs) were recycled. In 1998, the amount increased to over 879,000 metric tons.
* In 1972, it took about 22 empty, aluminum cans to weigh one pound. Due to advanced technology to use less material and increase durability of aluminum cans, in 2002 it takes about 34 empty aluminum cans to weigh one pound.
* The average employee consumes 2.5 beverages a day while at work.
* The empty aluminum can is worth about 1 cent.


Comment: We use over 80,000,000,000 aluminum soda cans every year, half of which we currently recycle.

Recycling in NYC

Here are some waste Factoids from the Council on the Environment of New York City:

NYC residents produce 12,000 tons of waste every day.

Non-recyclable waste generated in New York City is packed on long-haul trucks and driven to landfills in states like Pennsylvania, Ohio and Virginia.

Much of Manhattan’s waste is incinerated across the Hudson in Newark, NJ.

Paper waste that is properly separated from regular garbage is recycled locally or is processed for further recycling overseas. Glass, metal and plastics collected at the curbside are sent to New Jersey, where they are processed and sent to various recycling markets.

Waste in New York City

• New York City residents currently recycle only about 17% of their total waste—half of what is possible to recycle under the current program.
• 7.5% of our waste stream consists of plastic film such as bags from the grocery store
• Clothing and textiles make up 5.7% of our garbage.

Does Recycling Work?

• Paper recycling makes money for NYC, netting $7.5 million after the costs of collection, though almost 15% of our paper is still thrown in the garbage.
• Exporting municipal waste for disposal in other communities will cost New York City taxpayers $290 million in 2007.

Food Recycling?

• 39% of NYC’s waste is organic material, like food scraps and yard waste. Instead of burying this waste in a landfill, it can be composted. Compost is a nutrient-rich, soil-like material made from broken down (i.e. “recycled”) organic material and is a cost-effective, better-quality alternative to chemical fertilizers.
• Each year, the world mines 139 million tons of phosphate and 20 million tons of potash to replace the nutrients that crops remove from the soil.
• When New York City collects trees and yard waste for composting, we offset the cost of collection by saving money in landscaping--the program pays for itself!
  

Waste Less, Breathe More

• Diesel trucks carry Manhattan’s garbage 7.8 million miles every year. That’s the equivalent of driving more than 312 times around the earth!
• Landfills are responsible for 36% of all methane emissions in the US, one of the most potent causes of global warming.

Close the Loop – Buy Recycled

• More than 90 percent of printing and writing paper still comes from virgin tree fiber

Comment: our family has officially started "vermiculture," or worm composting of fruits and vegetable waste. We can also compost non-recyclable paper like napkins and paper towels. Look for more information in upcoming posts.

Recycled Toilet Paper

Seventh Generation sure does love its factoids:

If every household in the U.S. replaced just one 4-pack of 260 sheet virgin fiber bathroom tissue with 100% recycled ones, we could save:

* 988,200 trees
* 2.5 million cubic feet of landfill space, equal to 3,700 full garbage trucks
* 356 million gallons of water, a year’s supply for 2,800 families of four
* and avoid 60,600 pounds of pollution!

Seventh Generation

Product Review: We have been trying out their recycled paper toilet paper (I can barely bring myself to write, let alone say, the phrase "bathroom tissue") which is made from an impressive 80% post-consumer paper. It’s a pretty decent product: the phrase “fluffy as a cloud” does not exactly leap to mind, Charmin style, but neither does “sand paper.” Their paper is nice and sturdy and comes in hefty double rolls that last much longer than some of the earlier types of recycled TP. My only problem is that it is not cheap.

Aluminum: Factoid #1

It takes 19 times more energy to manufacture an aluminum can from raw materials than from recycled aluminum.

The average aluminum can goes from store shelf, to scrap heap, and back to the shelf in 42 days.

Ben Jervey, The Big Green Apple.

Recycled Paper Towels

If every American household replaced 1 regular roll with 1 roll of recycled paper towels, we could save:
933,000 trees
2.4 million cubic feet of landfill space=to 3700 garbage trucks
350 Million gallons of water
59,600 tons of greenhouse emissions
From Seventh Generation

Product Review:
We made the switch. We are not heavy users of paper towels, relying more on dish cloths, but the recyled ones work fine. In a completely unscientific comparison, I wiped down all of my kitchen counters with a dampened Seventh Generation paper towel and a regular one from the proverbial "leading brand." They both handled the counters, stove, microwave, and even some scrubbing of a mysterious dried-on substance; even after I ripped them apart, they both continued to clean without deteriorating into those horrible frayed-paper balls. Also, I find the paper-pulp brown color of the recycled towels to be oddly soothing. I doubt that the recycled ones are as absorbent, but assuming you don't own a new puppy, I think you will find the recycled towels more than adequate.