Greening your office March 26, 2008

Apparently even those who are dedicated environmentalists at home tend to be slackers in the office.   Is it the lack of ownership of the situation that makes people less dedicated, or maybe the anonymity?  At the risk of appearing to be a vigilante, I’ve started to do the following:

• I try not to print.  This has two benefits.  Aside from saving paper, it helps keep my desk neater.  There are some times that I have to print. When making copy edits I still prefer to have a hard copy.  When I can, I print double-sided, or if it’s a PowerPoint presentation, I print 2 slides on a page if not too many numbers or graphs are included.  One important step, from Dan Costa’s article at PC Magazine, is to use Print Preview (in the File dropdown menu in Word, or via the icon with paper and a magnifying glass).  Make sure your document isn’t just one line too long (if so choose Shrink to Fit) or that your spreadsheet isn’t spilling over into unnecessary pages.
• I turn out lights when I leave a conference room, and have been known to duck into unused rooms to turn lights off.
• I bring home my discarded papers to recycle.  Even though we all have blue recycling bins, the paper goes into the same garbage as everything else, so I keep a pile of recycling under my desk and bring it home every so often.  This has also encouraged me to print less.
• I have a china cup and often make my own coffee or tea.  Aside from decreasing the amount of garbage I generate in a day, it also saves money.  I must admit, however, that I often go to the cafe to buy coffee in the morning with my colleagues because I don’t want to miss the social aspect.

This leads me to one of the things I think is most important for us all to remember.  We don’t have to be perfect.   Whether it’s recycling or budgeting or dieting, we can’t expect to live up to impossible standards.  The point is that if we all try a little, we can make a difference.

Can you compost in the city? March 18, 2008

This is the little copper pail that sits on my counter so that it’s easy for me to drop my organic waste into it. I like its warm look, and I also like the fact that by using it I have reduced the amount of garbage I have to put out for pickup considerably. I have a big bin at the side of my house where I dump the scraps, old leaves, newspaper and dirt and wait for it to turn into rich black compost. I’ve been doing this for a couple of years, and it isn’t difficult. But, as I spend more time in the city, I wonder how it would be if I lived in an urban area. The collecting part would be easy. In the Bay area , some residents are provided with a small green bucket for their food scrap recycling.

They’re lucky enough to have curbside pickup of the food scraps and yard waste, which are then composted.

In NYC, it seems that it would be almost impossible to compost, but as it turns out, the Department of Sanitation established the New York Compost Project in 1993 to promote composting to NYC homes and businesses. They run composting workshops, including Indoor Composting with a Wormbin (participants receive a plastic wormbin, 1 pound of red wriggler worms, and a free copy of Worms Eat My Garbage) and Composting in the City or Backyard Composting, which offers a full overview of the production and use of compost. Those who are really dedicated can enroll in the Master Composter Certificate Program, which in addition to 18-23 hours of classroom instruction, 2 field trips, and 15 hours of supervised training also encompasses a 15-hour community service project.

NYC residents can take advantage of free compost givebacks coming up this spring, and can purchase large compost bins for only $20 instead of the usually $70.

“Plastic Loose Fill”, otherwise known as packing peanuts March 17, 2008

One of my favorite parts of writing this blog is using the tag surfer. By reading other blogs, not only have I been encouraged by the number of people taking an active role in promoting the care of our environment, but I’ve also learned so much about solutions that are addressing some of the issues that used to seem very troublesome. One of these issues is the problem of what to do with what we commonly call packing peanuts, or peanuts, but what the industry calls Plastic Loose Fill.

Believe it or not, there actually is a Plastic Loose Fill Council, whose mission is to develop, promote and implement the original use and subsequent recovery, reuse and recycling of polystyrene loose fill, or peanuts. The PLFC offers a Peanut Hotline on the website, where you can search for one of the 1500 peanut collection sites in the US.

Since I have been known to bring home boxes of peanuts from my office in order to save them from the landfill, this caught my eye. However, aside from the information about collection sites, something else on the site caught my eye. Keeping in mind that this site was created by major manufacturers of polystyrene loose fill, it was still interesting to read the following “facts”:

• Plastic loose fill can be reused.
• Over 30% of all EPS* loose fill is reused.
• The minimum recycled content in EPS loose fill is 25%.
• Post-consumer recycled-content EPS loose fill is sold throughout the United States.
• There are hundreds of collection sites for EPS loose fill in the US.
• Collection centers report that, on average, 50% of their loose fill needs are met with reusable loose fill donated by consumers.
• EPS loose fill is non-toxic, inert and made without chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs).
• EPS loose fill is less than 1/4 of 1% of landfill volume.
• EPS loose fill is over 99.6% air.
• It takes 40% to 50% less energy to make EPS loose fill than to make a comparable amount of paper packaging.
• Atmospheric emissions from the production of polystyrene are only 1/2 to 1/3 of those from the production of a comparable amount of paper.
• Waste water volume from polystyrene production is 1/3 of that resulting from producing a comparable amount of paper.

*EPS= expanded polystyrene

It’s been a long time since I took a science class, and this all sounds almost too good to be true. In any case, I’d still not rather put them in a landfill, so whatever I can’t use for my own packaging needs can go to one of the collection centers for reuse. The UPS Store is one of the main supporters of this recycling program.

These peanuts are light as a feather, so there’s no excuse for not recycling them!

Salvage! March 17, 2008

When I started this blog I had planned to write about things I found discarded in my neighborhood. However, I’ve been surprised to find that many of the things I’ve found lying around have been at my own house.

my old door — and a toilet seen on the street

 

I’ve just learned that in some parts of the country, there are “thrift stores” for building and remodeling materials. One example is The Rebuilding Center, located in Portland, OR and in other locations in the US. They accept many types of reusable building or remodeling materials and will provide you with a receipt for a tax-deduction. Their website includes a list of items they will accept, or you can call them to ask about an item that’s not listed.

 

The items are sold to the public for prices that are from 50-90% below list. Some items are relatively modern and are just good deals, but others might be vintage materials or cast-offs from old houses being updated.

 

The non-profit Rebuilding Center diverts 4.5 million pounds of reusable building materials from landfills each year. There are currently over 500 successful centers repurposing building materials throughout the US and Canada. Unfortunately, the list doesn’t include any in New York. Sounds like a great opportunity for someone with a bit of building experience!

Pots, pots, pots March 16, 2008

According to the Missouri Botanical Garden, in the horticultural industry alone, about 350 million pounds of plastic is produced each year. Above is a small example of my own contribution to the problem. It seems ironic that gardeners, who are connected to the earth and who are trying to make a positive impact by improving its appearance, are inadvertent accomplices to the landfill debacle. Happily though, the tide is now turning, and there are some good options becoming available.

If you live near the Missouri Botanical Garden, you’re in luck. If not, there’s still a chance that a similar program will come to a town near you when town officials learn that since 1998, the Garden’s Plastic Pot Recycling Program has saved over 300 tons of plastic from ending up in a landfill. It’s the largest program of its kind, recycling both plastic pots and polystyrene cell packs and trays. The program has garnered great support from the gardeners in the St. Louis area.

The initiative has been so successful that the Garden eventually purchased three recycling trailers, which were placed at area garden centers where they were filled by customers on a weekly basis.

For 2008, the fleet of trailers will be expanded, and additional collection sites around the city will be established.

The garden pots and trays are recycled into landscape timbers, useful for building retaining walls and landscape borders. Timbers can be cut with a circular saw and drilled similar to wood.

Even better than a recycling program, Ball Horticultural Company has introduced Circle of Life™ Biodegradable Pots in partnership with Summit Plastics Company. The pots, available in several sizes, are made from rice hulls and when empty can just be crushed and added to a compost pile, where they will decompose in approximately six months. It may be some time before either of these options is readily available nationwide, but I’m happy to see that progress is being made in this area.

Single-stream recycling on the rise March 15, 2008

It seems that most people aren’t opposed to the idea of recycling. What makes them hesitate is the sorting. Depending on where you live, you might have to separate glass from cans, glossy paper from newsprint, and if you’re lucky enough to live in an area where there’s cardboard recycling, corrugated from plain cardboard. Then there are the plastic bags and deposit bottles to take back to the store.

Single-stream publicity for Philadelphia

In some communities, life has become simpler as a result of “single-stream recycling”. And best of all, it appears that in communities where single-stream recycling has been introduced, recycling rates have risen dramatically. From May 2005 when single-stream was introduced in Denver, to January 2006, one recycling company, Waste Management, found that the amount of unsorted recyclables they processed at their facility in northeast Denver increased from 2,000 tons to 8,000 tons per month. Denver Recycles, which manages the recycling program for the city of Denver, saw an 18 percent increase in recyclables collected overall during the same time period. Nationwide, from 2002 to 2006, the volume of material processed in Waste Management’s single-stream recycling facilities nearly tripled, from about 722,000 tons in 2002 to more than 2 million tons in 2006.

Single-stream recycling continues to be rolled out to more and more cities. One of the most recent, in January of this year, is Baltimore and surrounding cities such as Canton, Maryland. Instructions by their Department of Public Works take the “reduce” component of the 3 R’s (Reduce, Reuse, Recycle) a step further by not even requiring residents to put their cast-offs in a plastic bin. They can use a cardboard box or any other container that is clearly marked as “Recycling”.

Does your community offer single-stream recycling? Has it encouraged you to recycle more? Or, if you don’t have it, do you think it would motivate you? Are there any drawbacks?

So far it sounds good. What I’d like to see now is consistency from town to town in what can be recycled!

Follow-up: hangars March 14, 2008

I was happy to see that there is a company addressing the issue of hangars. According to the Ditto Hangars web site, every year an estimated 8-10 billion unrecyclable plastic/wire hangers end up clogging our municipal landfills, requiring over 1,000 years to break down. That’s 4.6 Empire State Buildings full of plastic hangers–every year. An estimated 3.5 million wire hangers end up in landfills and can take over 100 years to decompose.

They have designed 100% recyclable Ditto Paper Hangars, and 100% Pet Plastic Hangars made of 100% polyethylene terephthalate (PET), the easily recyclable plastic commonly used to produce water bottles.

This certainly is something worth keeping an eye on.

Seen near Cooper Square March 13, 2008

The piles of trash in NYC are huge. I recently passed the following two of many mounds of trash, much of it in black plastic bags, which are made from petroleum.

The good news is that in NYC, there are plenty of people who are interested in reusing things that they find in the street. As you see in the photo on the left, two men are already seeing what they can make use of in the pile of refuse on 9th Street. When I first passed the large pile of trash on the right, it seemed that no one was interested in what really looked like rubbish, including large pieces of broken glass. However, when I walked down the street after class, a man was trying with much determination to secure a couple of the long boards on his bicycle, although he had no rope or bungee cords.

There is no easy way that I know of in my town or in Manhattan to offer unused items to others. Here in Nassau County as in some other parts of the country, we do have freecycle.org, which is run like a newsgroup, where interested parties can post messages about things they want to give away. It’s not exactly difficult, but it does take some effort. There’s also craigslist, where you can list item that are free or post a Curb Alert (see an example). Apparently some regions have a free pile right at their recycling center, which makes a lot of sense. Carocoknits has a blog entry about her latest finds: Why are you frugal?

This morning was trash day in the next town and I was very happy to see someone with a pickup truck scrounging for useful or salable items. The bed of the truck was full. I was torn between being pleased that someone else had the opinion that we shouldn’t be throwing things that could be used into the trash, and yet on the other hand being a bit taken aback at the sight of someone going through garbage right on our suburban streets. It’s not something I’m used to seeing, and I almost wondered if some people might think it illegal or consider it a quality of life crime. I for one, wanted to pull over and talk to the person, find out why he’s doing it, and tell him to keep up the good work!

What does the future hold for large appliances? March 2, 2008

This week I passed this sad-looking stove that had been replaced and was waiting for the next day’s pick-up by the sanitation truck.

The thought of it just going to a landfill makes me cringe. On the other hand, I can’t fault the former owner, because there is no process in place to deal with durable goods recycling. Other countries and actually some parts of the U.S. have made progress in this area:

There’s an article in today’s New York Times that discusses the point that in order to us to make progress in durable goods recycling, changes have to be made at the design phase. Driven by recent and potential legislation, a few companies are now considering not only the early days of their products, but also what will happen to them when they have outlived their usefulness. BMW tried this on a small scale in 1988 when they introduced a limited edition of a roadster partially constructed with plastic panels that unfastened easily and could be recycled.

There are a few hurdles to be overcome. Often the variety of the different types of plastics used together in one product make recovery and recycling complex, as does a combination of both plastic and metal. However, more and more manufacturers, whether because of the carrot or the stick, are looking for ways to ensure that their products don’t end up at the bottom of a landfill.