Shocking Photos: Bird Bodies Full of Plastic

Lighters, bottle caps, plastic bags and milk jugs. Fishing net, fishing line, zip ties, remnants of food containers. All of this and more floats in a massive vortex of trash in the Pacific Ocean – and in the stomachs of the birds who search for food amid the debris.

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is twice the size of Texas, and many of the particles of plastic contained within it are so small they can’t be scooped out of the water. But other pieces – colorful pieces that look like they might be food – get swallowed by albatross and other birds.

Photographer Chris Jordan traveled to the Midway Islands, near the center of the garbage patch, to photograph the bodies of albatross chicks that have been inadvertently killed when their confused parents fed them plastic. Jordan didn’t move a single piece of plastic – he photographed the carcasses exactly as he found them.

The photos are a disturbing reminder of just how much of an effect our throwaway society is having upon our fellow inhabitants of this planet. Head over to Planet Green to view the whole set of 30 photographs.

Link [Planet Green]

For Shame: UGA Tailgaters Leave Behind Trash, Sewage

Jerkass fans of the University of Georgia football team descended upon the Athens, Georgia campus last weekend and left a wake of trash, abandoned grills, urine and feces behind when they left. And this is far from the first time it has happened.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports that tailgaters left the lawn covered with 70 tons of trash. They peed in doorways and shat in various places that are definitely not toilets. UGA President Michael Adams said he was “appalled” and is asking for help from fans before the next home game to make sure it doesn’t happen again.

From AJC:

“There were tons and tons of trash and lots of inappropriate behavior that most of our fans don’t like or tolerate,” he said.  “It’s not pervasive. I don’t know if it’s 15 or 20 percent, but it is a substantial enough group. But if you’re going to haul all this stuff in for pregame, why not add a recyclable bag or two and either take it with you or put it on the side of the street where the appropriate people can take it away?”

“What happened last week is typical,” said George Stafford, UGA’s associate vice president for auxiliary and administrative services. “It takes 200 to 300 people on Sunday morning to pick up and bag up all the trash, throw it on a truck and haul it out to the landfill. A typical day game produces 35 to 40 tons of trash. A night SEC game like this we have 70 or more tons.”

Stafford said last year’s “Blackout Game” against Alabama produced a record 75 tons of trash on campus.

Are these people Neanderthals or what? Seriously, aren’t college sports fans supposed to have some pride in their schools? Sure, sports crowds can get unruly anywhere in the world, but to walk away at the end of the night and leave this much destruction is just shameful.

Wake up, people: there are these things called trash bags and toilets that keep us from having to live in filth. Party foul x 1000.

Link [AJC]
Photo credit: Tom Ritch

Marine Scientists Studying Great Pacific Garbage Patch

The gigantic swirling mass of trash in the middle of the Pacific Ocean will finally get some much-deserved scientific attention as 30 researchers, technicians and crew members embark on a 3-week journey to study how much debris is collecting in the ‘Great Pacific Garbage Patch’.

The California marine scientists left the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, based at the University of California at San Diego, Sunday on a 170-foot ship called ‘New Horizon’.

From the Matter Network:

The focus of the study will be on plankton, other microorganisms, small fish and birds.

“The concern is what kind of impact those plastic bits are having on the small critters on the low end of the ocean food chain,” Bob Knox, deputy director of research at Scripps, said on Monday after the ship had spent its first full day at sea.

The 170-foot vessel New Horizon is equipped with a laboratory for on-board research, but scientists also will bring back samples for further study.

Besides the potential harm to sea life caused by ingesting bits of plastic, the expedition team will look at whether the particles could carry other pollutants, such as pesticides, far out to sea, and whether tiny organisms attached to the debris could be transported to distant regions and thus become invasive species.

The garbage patch is located about 1,000 miles off the coast of California and is estimated to be the size of Texas. Scientists believe it’s largely caused by trash that washes down storm drains and rivers from places like San Francisco and Japan, which is pulled together into one mass by ocean currents.

Also setting sail for the garbage patch is Project Kaisei, a nonprofit team that will be examining the largest area of the vortex with the intent of collecting and studying plastic and other debris. The Kaisei ship left San Francisco yesterday. Keep tabs on their progress at ProjectKaisei.org.

Link [Matter Network] + [Project Kaisei]
Photo credit: Hope for Gaia

UK Getting its Toxic Waste Back from Brazil

Last week, it was discovered that British companies had been dumping toxic waste in Brazil and Ghana, polluting poor communities and endangering the health of the people who live there. The waste included syringes, condoms and bags of blood along with other hazardous substances. Brazil, for one, isn’t going to take it any more – the country is demanding that the UK take it all back.

Britain’s Head of Waste, Liz Parks, says taking back the waste – which has been found in about 90 shipping containers – could take weeks. Two British companies have been identified as the culprits.

From BBC News:

She also warned the British courts took the dumping of hazardous waste very seriously.

“We do prosecute people. We’ve had a number of successful prosecutions in recent years.

“And in fact in the crown court, people can be fined unlimited amounts and prison sentences are imposed.”

Roberto Messias, president of the Brazilian environment agency, Ibama, declared that Brazil was “not a big rubbish dump of the world”.

The agency also said the arrival of the toxic cargo had violated the Basel Convention on the movement of hazardous waste, of which both the UK and Brazil are signatories, which came into force in 1992.

Even worse than the fact that Western countries think it’s cool to unload their toxic waste on other countries is the fact that the guy that owns the two companies is Brazilian himself. The director of one of the companies claims that the containers should have contained only plastics for recycling and that any other contents were the responsibility of their suppliers – but there’s no way they didn’t know that their shipping containers were full of rotting, maggot-infested medical waste.

We’ve got to find better ways to deal with all of the waste we’re producing as we multiply across the face of this planet. Things are getting out of hand.

Link [BBC News]
Photo credit: Flickr user Totoro!

7 (More!) Environmental Problems That Are Worse Than We Thought

How have humans managed to royally screw up the world? Let us count the ways. We already covered mammal extinction, the ocean dead zones, collapsing fish stock, destruction of the rainforest, polar sea ice loss, rising CO2 levels and the fact that there’s way too many of us in the first place. But those certainly aren’t the only pressing environmental problems facing the earth – here are seven more. And yes, most of them are our own damn fault.

Chemical Contamination

(image via: China.org.cn)

Heavy metals. Radioactive waste. Pesticides. Hormones. Pharmaceuticals. Industrial chemicals. The list goes on and on.

These substances – many of them toxic and carcinogenic – are present in our water, our food, our air and our bodies. They come from factories, improperly discarded electronics, ships, hospitals, vehicles and even human waste. They’re causing disease and deformities, creating antibiotic-resistant superbugs and causing fish to spontaneously switch genders. They’re killing animals and forever altering the ecology of the earth.

All of these years of progress are catching up to us. When these substances first came into use, few people questioned whether they might have adverse effects on human health or the environment. But decades later, federal health officials acknowledge that environmental carcinogens account for 55 to 60 percent of all U.S. cancer cases annually.

Despite the fact that scientists are now speaking out about the dangers of accumulating these substances in our bodies over a lifetime, the industries responsible for the contamination have largely gotten off scot-free thanks in large part to extremely persistent lobbying of federal agencies like the EPA.

Air Pollution

(image via: Flickr user Simone Ramella)

In some places, air pollution makes its presence known, billowing from power plants and vehicles and hovering above cities in giant, hazy brown clouds. In others, it’s an unseen enemy, damaging the ozone layer and building up in our lungs with every breath we take.

Some of the major pollutants in the air that are caused by human activity include sulfur oxides from industrial processes, nitrogen oxides from high temperature combustion, carbon monoxide from car exhaust and burning fuel, particulate matter, organic volatile compounds, toxic metals, chlorofluorocarbons, ammonia and radioactive pollutants. Many of these pollutants contribute to global warming and threaten the health of trees, lakes, crops, and animals.

In cities where air pollution is particularly excessive, such as New Delhi, India, there is a low birth rate and high possibility of children developing asthma, pneumonia and other respiratory infections. According to the World Health Organization, 2.4 million people die annually from causes that can be directly attributed to air pollution. In the Los Angeles Basin and San Joaquin Valley of Southern California alone, 3800 people die prematurely each year from exposure to high air pollution levels.

A recent study found that even minor improvements in air quality can tack up to 5 months onto the average person’s life expectancy.

Habitat Loss

(image via: MongaBay)

As our population has expanded, we’ve spread into the countryside, cutting down forests and driving out wildlife at an alarming pace. We’ve built cities, suburbs, highways, power plants, and farms and in the process, we have destroyed over half of the world’s forests. Even now, they’re being removed at a rate of ten times higher than any possible level of regrowth.

As a result, thousands of species have become extinct or endangered. Habitat loss is a main threat to 85% of all species on the IUCN ‘Red List’.

In 1992, “some 1,700 of the world’s leading scientists, including the majority of the Nobel laureates in the sciences”, put forth this dire warning:

Human beings and the natural world are on a collision course. Human activities inflict harsh and often irreversible damage on the environment and on critical resources. If not checked, many of our current practices put at serious risk the future that we wish for human society and the plant and animal kingdoms, and may so alter the living world that it will be unable to sustain life in the manner that we know. Fundamental changes are urgent if we are to avoid the collision our present course will bring about…. WARNING we the undersigned, senior members of the world’s scientific community, hereby warn all humanity of what lies ahead. A great change in our stewardship of the earth and the life on it, is required, if vast human misery is to be avoided and our global home on this planet is not to be irretrievably mutilated.

Things have only gotten much, much worse since then.

One quarter of all mammals, one third of amphibians and one eighth or birds are considered threatened or endangered. Recent news stories have noted the dire effects of habitat loss on creatures like butterflies, frogs, songbirds, apes and a variety of plants.

As each species dies, the earth suffers a loss to its rich biodiversity, which is needed for continued ecosystem survival. The complex and delicate tapestry of life within a given ecosystem contributes to nutrients and water cycling, soil formation and retention, pollination of plants, resistance against invasive species, regulation of climate and pest and pollution control. When some links in the chain go missing, the entire ecosystem is drastically affected.

Water Crisis

(image via: Wikimedia Commons)

Water: it’s essential for all life forms, and when there’s not enough of it, the suffering is acute. Crops fail. People die, both of thirst and of the violence that breaks out when there’s not enough to go around. Water wars are already happening in places like India, where people have been killed just trying to secure enough water to survive. It’s a worldwide problem, but it’s worse in third world countries and it’s going to escalate further with climate change.

Less than 1% of the world’s fresh water is readily accessible for human consumption. It’s a commodity, and one that is increasingly overconsumed in rich countries while the rest of the world goes without. A large contributing factor is the disproportionate pollution of drinking water supplies in third world countries where cleanup is too expensive to attempt. But even here in America, we’re slowly learning the value of an element that we’ve long taken for granted as populations in the arid Southwest live the reality of severe drought.

Approximately one in eight people in the world lack access to safe water supplies and at any given time, and 4,500 children die as a result every single day. Half of the world’s hospital beds are occupied by patients suffering from a water-related disease like malaria and dysentery.

The rapidly increasing human population will put an even bigger strain on water supplies, forcing us to stretch a finite resource between 40% – 50% more people.

Desertification

(image via: Walrus Magazine)

As we’ve expanded into areas of the world that can barely support a human population, we’ve stretched the land’s ability to provide for us to the breaking point. We have exhausted the soil through overcultivation and shortsighted agricultural methods. We have removed far too many trees, causing severe soil erosion and landslides. We have raised too many livestock animals and allowed them to overgraze on formerly green land that is now stripped and brown.

All of these things cause desertification, which, like many other environmental problems, is exacerbated by climate change. This destruction of the topsoil that we rely on to feed us causes staggering economic losses of more than $40 billion per year, and the starvation of millions of people.

Once arable land is converted to desert, conditions that intensify wildfires are created.  Dust from these dry lands are blown across the world – from Africa to as far away as the United States – causing health problems and boosting death rates. And once desertification occurs, the change is permanent on a human time scale – as far as we’re concerned, that land will never support the same vegetation that it did in the past.

Ocean Acidification

(image via: Inventor Spot)

All around the world, from the depths of the Pacific Ocean to the shallow waters of the Caribbean, something is happening to sea water that’s causing large-scale coral casualties and dramatically altering ocean ecology: acidification.

The world’s oceans absorb massive amounts of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, making the water more acidic as the gas dissolves to create carbonic acid. The more CO2 is present in the atmosphere, the more acidic the oceans get. As a result, ocean chemistry is changing 100 times more rapidly than in the 650,000 years that preceded the modern industrial era.

So what exactly does that mean for sea life? Science Daily explains:

This increased acidity can hamper the ability of a wide variety of marine organisms ranging from coral to abalone to form calcium carbonate shells and skeletonal structures. Researchers believe that at crucial stages in the larval and juvenile stages in the lives of many marine invertebrates, ocean acidification inhibits calcification, and also appears to affect reproduction and growth in some organisms.

Scientists are still studying the impacts that acidification is having on ocean ecosystems, but some of the negative effects are already clear. Acidification has made some areas of the ocean unfriendly to many types of fish, but jellyfish still flourish – thus, the huge overpopulation of jellyfish in places like the Sea of Japan. It’s also eroding coral reefs at a disturbingly rapid pace.

“Ocean acidification is happening today and it’s happening on top of global warming, so we are in double trouble,” says Jelle Bijma, chair of the EuroCLIMATE programme Scientific Committee and a biogeochemist at the Alfred-Wegener-Institute Bremerhaven.

In February of 2009, more than 150 leading marine scientists from 26 countries called for immediate legislative action to reduce C02 emissions so that we could prevent this problem from getting even worse. Unfortunately, efforts to come to an international agreement about lowering greenhouse gas emissions – including the recent G8 summit in Rome – have thus far been unsuccessful.

Disposable Culture

(image via: Idiocracy/20th Century Fox)

The concept of a one-use item reportedly started back in 1892 when William Painter, founder of the Baltimore Bottle Seal Company, patented the disposable bottle cap. At the time, people thought the idea was strange: you take it off the bottle and throw it in the trash? Really? Surely there’s another use for it.

How times have changed. Now, entire store aisles are devoted to one-use items and even large goods like furniture, vehicles and electronics aren’t made to last. Just try to get your toaster fixed when it goes on the fritz and you’ll find that repair is more expensive and inconvenient than simply buying a new one. Manufacturers like it that way: it means we keep their assembly lines running and their pockets stuffed with cash. Why should they make products that will last a lifetime and beyond if they can give it a three-year lifespan and get paid for it again and again?

Of course, all of those broken and unwanted items are put to the curb never to be seen again, at least by their former owners. And the amount of stuff that we send to landfills every year is staggering. The average American discards seven and a half pounds of trash every day, for a collective total of over 255 million tons of household waste each and every year. Since 1980, total waste generation in the U.S. has more than doubled.

It’s not like this stuff ever goes away. We’re not dumping it into a black hole. We’re piling it up on land that could be used for a far better purpose, or merely throwing it into the ocean. At this rate, it wouldn’t be surprising if we covered the entire planet in trash within a century or two. For some reason, this doesn’t seem to bother most people – they’re content to let other people deal with it, like the poor communities that get saddled with all of our carcinogenic electronic waste, or our great-grandchildren.

And, despite the fact that 80% of what Americans throw away is recyclable, our actual recycling rate is only about 33%. Not that recycling is the answer to our problems. We’re producing way too much stuff to even be able to use all of it once it was turned into something else, and the process of recycling can be very energy-intensive.

The answer is in changing our mindset. We’ve been duped into selling the health of the planet for a moment’s convenience, convinced that doing things the old fashioned way is archaic and unnecessary. But what’s really unnecessary – and tragic – is our addiction to waste, and the consequences that are yet to come.

Car Tires Made from Orange Peel Oil

The problem with tires isn’t just that they’re a huge waste material, collecting by the thousands in huge piles all over the world. It’s also that they’re made from petroleum. A new tire by Yokohama solves at least half of that problem, producing a car tire made with orange oil as the primary ingredient to make vulcanized rubber.

From Earth 911:

The new tire is called the Super E-spec™ and has already received the Popular Mechanics Editor’s Choice Award in 2008. Yokohama will initially market the tire for hybrid car models such as the Toyota Prius.

“The eco-focused dB Super E-spec mixes sustainable orange oil and natural rubber to drastically cut the use of petroleum, without compromising performance,” Yokohama vice president of sales Dan King said. “It also helps consumers save money at the gas pump by improving fuel efficiency via a 20-percent reduction in rolling resistance.”

Orange oil is considered sustainable because it is produced from a renewable resource. The same philosophy of reducing petroleum use is utilized in producing plastics from corn starch or vegetable oil.

Check out the video:

Yokohama hasn’t stated whether orange oil will biodegrade over time, or if it would burn in quite the same way as petroleum, which can smolder for months and be difficult to extinguish.

We’ve been told for so long that we need petroleum, that there are so many things we can’t make or do without it. Isn’t it nice to find that that isn’t true at all?

Link [Earth911]

Real Life Wall-E: Scientists Develop Robot Trash Collector

The shiny green robot with wide plastic eyes looks like it sprung out of the fictional world of Wall-E, and its friendly look helps people accept its presence in their lives. But people in the Italian town of Peccioli likely would have accepted it no matter what it looked like, given its purpose: cleaning up trash. Peccioli is home to one of the most advanced dumping sites in Italy, and trash is big business here.

Global Post has all the details on how the ‘DustCart’ was received and how exactly it works:

During a recent test-run at Peccioli’s main terrace, the future of garbage collection zoomed in on two wheels, rounded and shiny, devoid of arms, and with two big round inspiring eyes.

“We are about to begin,” said a researcher over a microphone.

The scientists had transformed the terrace into an outdoor laboratory, laying wires on the cobblestone, installing webcams at street corners, and setting up a control room to monitor DustCart’s every move.

“Our colleague will now simulate a user’s call,” said the researcher.

Like a taxi answering a call, DustCart rode across the terrace to meet the caller.

Once the robot arrived, it asked for a personal ID number that both identifies the user and tracks the garbage. It also asked for the kind of trash being dumped — organic, recyclable or waste. DustCart then opened its belly bin, collected the trash and took it to a fake dumping site.

Check out the whole story over at Global Post.

While many of us are a bit wary of the idea of living with robots, the DustCart is pretty cool. It’s pretty clear that we need a major overhaul of our waste management systems, and while a fleet of robots isn’t going to solve our problems, it’s an interesting way to approach them.

Link [Global Post]

Bono Helps Tokyo Turn Landfill into a Forest

Tokyo is in the process of turning a former garbage-covered artificial island into a vast new “Sea Forest”, an 88,000-square-meter park connected to the city center by a road tunnel. Architect Tadao Ando devised the project as a way to aid in Tokyo’s bid to host the 2016 Olympics. The transformation has been underway since 2007 and is expected to be ongoing until 2016.

Rock-star-slash-activist Bono is among those who have planted trees at the site, along with Nobel laureates and a Japanese astronaut.

From AFP, via Google:

The mega city of Tokyo, the world’s largest with 36 million people, long ago ran out of space for the mountains of rubbish it was producing and had used millions of tonnes since the 1970s as landfill to create the artificial island.

Looking down at the 88-hectare (217-acre) wasteland of garbage and dirt, fenced in and criss-crossed by bulldozer tracks, Ando instead imagined an oasis of natural beauty on the edge of the Japanese capital.

“I wanted to convert the landfill space into a forest,” the renowned architect told AFP. “Japan in the past was covered in forests. But because we have burnt so much, these forests have started to diminish.”

Ando said he wants to send a strong environmental message with the “Umi-no-Mori,” or “Sea Forest”, landfill project — for a return to nature and to boost efforts to counter global warming.

See, Bono’s not so full of crap after all. Yeah yeah yeah!

Link [Google AFP]

College Students Still Dumping Junk Curbside

Try as colleges and universities may to cut down on the amount of stuff that college students dump at the curb at the end of every semester, mountains of furniture, clothes and other items still end up piled high, destined for the landfill. This is especially true for students who live off campus.

Matt Embrey at GreenUpgrader took some photos of dumpsters in his college town of Durham, New Hampshire at the end of the semester. University of New Hampshire students, like those at virtually every university across the country, left the curbs littered with stuff – much of which is still in decent condition.

From GreenUpgrader:

After thinking about this for a short time this morning I came up with a potential solution… a giant swap shop.  The Town of Durhm has a “Swap shop” at the town dump.  It’s a place to deposit the things that you don’t want anymore (but aren’t trash)  for other people to take and put to use.  It is a small two bay garage so the amount of furniture they house is limited.  The university could run a much larger scale swap shop.  Basically, they would drive around at the end of the year and pick up all the old furniture that is still usable and bring it down to a large warehouse to store for the summer months.  At the beginning of the new school year they open the doors and have a big yard sale where they charge a nominal amount for each piece to cover the cost of operations.  Most college kids use used furniture anyway, and having a university sponsored furniture depostiory would allow for this furniture to be used over and over rather than retired early to the landfill.

Considering the University of New Hampshire’s commitment to sustainability, this could really work. Hopefully university officials are listening and can take Matt’s idea, make the necessary refinements and put it into action – it would be a great example for other schools across America, as well.

Link [GreenUpgrader]

Umbra Explains Where to Recycle Batteries

Battery waste is a big problem – there are tons of them in landfills, and that number increases by 18,000 more tons every year. Those batteries then leak heavy metals into the soil and water. So, a good greenie never tosses batteries into the trash – but what do you do with them once you’ve accumulated a bunch?

Grist’s green guru Umbra gives us the details:

Check out more video tips from Umbra at Grist.org!

Link [Grist]

Mr. Trash Can Is Overworked!

While carbon emissions may be the current cause of the environmental movement, let’s not forget the more tangible waste products we are unleashing upon the earth. Annually, households and businesses throw out 251 million tons of trash. And while, not shockingly, the major offenders are industries such as mining, everyday American consumers are responsible for five pounds of trash a day.

Check out this cute animated video from GOOD about an over-worked American trash can. It serves as inspiration to reduce our own output of trash as well as industrial waste.

This Valentine’s Day, Plastic is Forever

Diamonds may be forever but this Valentine’s Day, remember that plastic is too.

A plastic fork takes over a 1000 years to decompose – yet we only use it once. So much unnecessary waste is created across the country when we order take out. We know that America produces 25 percent of the worlds garbage but how much of that is unnecessary food packaging?

A program called Eco-To-Go has now launched at participating restaurants in New York City so that when you order takeout, you can advise the restaurant that you want your order to be Eco-To-Go.

Restaurants will respond by delivering the food, with no extras, such as unnecessary napkins and plastic utensils, as you have all you need at home. The program also hopes to encourage restaurants to use greener packaging.

Mexico City Will Green its Garbage Dumps

Mexico City has a trash problem – a big one. Just 6 percent of the city’s waste is recycled, with the rest filling vast landfills that officials say are getting out of control. So, the new Waste Commission decided to set some lofty goals in an attempt to transform one of the world’s biggest and messiest waste management systems into a green system that would rival those in San Francisco or the Netherlands.

From MSNBC:

A newly formed Waste Commission is working to build four state-of-the-art processing centers in the next four years to recycle, compost or burn for energy 85 percent of Mexico City’s trash — compared with about 6 percent recycled today.

“The whole concept of recycling is very new in Latin America,” said Atiliano Savino, president of the International Solid Waste Association.

While many places are good at recycling one thing, such as aluminum, Savino said, he’s never seen a city revamp its recycling program on this scale in so little time. U.S. and European cities that now have recycling rates over 50 percent began decades ago.

But Mexico City has no choice. The federal government proposed to close the city’s main landfill this month, saying the 50 million-ton dump has become too full and leaches contamination. Scientists dispute that, and the closing has been delayed by a city appeal in federal court for an extension. Yet waste management officials know that soon much of Latin America’s largest metro area will be forced into expensive, temporary alternatives for dumping trash.

New processing centers will recycle 20% of Mexico City’s trash, compost 20% and burn another 45% for energy by 2012, according to the Waste Commission. The government will also harvest methane gas from Bordo Poniente, the city’s largest landfill, and use it to power the subway and light homes.

Considering that Bordo Poniente receives 700 truckloads of trash each and every day, such a program would make a huge difference. It will be a challenge for sure – especially getting the people of Mexico City to start sorting their trash, and to get the garbage worker’s union to collect separated waste. However they manage to do it, this will be a huge step forward for Latin America, providing a great example for many other cities with similar, if not as pressing, waste problems.

Link [MSNBC]
Photo credit: Flickr user maurortega

One LA Guy’s Almost-Zero-Waste Year

Dave Chameides of Los Angeles set out to create as little trash as possible in 2008, but he wasn’t about to stop drinking beer or eating potato chips. Since the waste from those items would undoubtedly add up, he found ways around the problem so he could still enjoy those items without having a lot of trash piling up. Chameides saved his trash for all of 2008 and his final total was less than the average American family throws away in a week.sav

From Green LA Girl, via ENN:

“I didn’t want to change the way that I was living my life,” Dave says. “If I wanted to drink beer, I wasn’t going to say, well, I can’t find a way to drink beer without creating packaging, so therefore I’m not going to. Instead, what I’m going to do is look at the packaging in beer and pick the most ‘eco-friendly’ way to do it.”

The idea behind Dave’s project was to focus on things people could do without drastically changing their entire lifestyle. “There are definitely people out there who have done similar things where they’ve cut everything out of their life,” Dave says. “A lot of people who are really really hardcore have emailed me and said, “You know, you can just not eat potato chips.’ Well, yeah, but I wanna eat potato chips!”

So Dave opted for bigger bags of chips versus the more wasteful one-serving bags — and cut out packaging wherever he could. Buying used items on Craigslist, composting food and paper scraps in his worm bin, and shopping at the farmers’ market — where he could even take back his egg cartons to a farmer for reuse — helped downsize Dave’s trash pile.

Dave’s total non-recyclable trash accumulation was just 30.5 pounds – and he kept his recyclables for a year, too, to prove that “recycling isn’t the answer”. Dave points out that the recycling process uses energy and resources, so it’s not a great way out of our trash dilemma.

You can read all about Dave’s journey at his website, Sustainable Dave.

Link [ENN] + [Green LA Girl] + [Sustainable Dave]

The Digital Conversion Will Send Thousands of Useless TVs to Landfills

As the February 17th deadline for the digital TV conversion looms, more people are starting to wonder what can be done with all of the televisions that will become obsolete. State and local governments have been concerned about old TVs piling up in landfills since the switch was first announced, and some have developed special recycling programs to handle the problem.

Some states are charging for the privilege to recycle your old TV, however, making it an unpopular option – and many are seeing increases in illegal TV dumping. It’s illegal in 11 states to dispose of televisions in landfills due to hazardous substances contained within them as well as their heavy weight.

The government is offering coupons worth $40 toward the cost of a DTV conversion box that will keep old analog televisions working after the switch, but they’re starting to run out. There are also some reported problems with the conversion boxes, since various broadcasters present programs in different aspect ratios and some programs appear double-letterboxed, cropped into a 13” picture on a 17” television. All of this makes it likely that many people will choose to upgrade their televisions rather than use the conversion box.

Chicago’s The Week Behind explains the problem:

Bart Forbes, a spokesman for the U.S. Commerce Department, admits the DTV conversion kit is a stopgap measure, and he points out the coupons are not a magic bullet. The coupons were aimed at preventing poor, rural and older citizens from losing their TV signals entirely. They were not intended to let viewers replicate the HDTV experience.

As it stands now, only 18% of discarded TVs ever reach a recycler. The vast majority of these (about 80%) wind up being shipped overseas to Asia, South America and other developing countries for resale or materials recovery.

Inside the United States, the EPA estimates only two percent (that’s less than 100,000 TVs) are broken down in “glass to glass” recycling plants while another 16 percent go to smelters for lead recovery or recycling companies that cull out the plastic and metal parts.

Since we’ve learned that we can’t necessarily rely on recycling programs to actually dispose of electronic waste safely and ethically, many people with analog televisions are unsure of what to do.

You can find out what your state’s laws are and whether recycling programs are available locally at MyGreenElectronics.com, a site run by the environmental affairs division of the Consumer Electronics Association. If you can’t find recycling options, hang on to your television until new laws and government oversight ensure that it can be safely recycled.

Link [The Week Behind]
Photo credit: Flickr user luisvilla

Businesses Turn to Dumpster Diving to Save Money

Dumpster diving isn’t just for freegans and gutter punks anymore. Businesses are starting to see the benefits of assessing what they’re throwing away and whether they could save money by changing their ways – and that involves taking a stinky tour of their own dumpsters.

Burt’s Bees is one notable example of a company that “found money in a dumpster”. Employees donned hazmat suits and sloshed through two weeks’ worth of trash to find recycling opportunities that could cut expenses. What they found saved them $25,000.

From GreenBiz.com:

With many corporations setting sustainability goals of curbing trash and improving recycling, the dumpster dive is an instructive way of guiding them to hit those targets.

Businesses are also finding new revenue streams in their garbage by taking items that were hauled away to the landfill in the past and instead selling them to someone else for cash — a boon is a slow economy. In addition, many companies seeking LEED certification are sifting through their trash as part of waste stream audits to earn credits toward that seal of approval from the U.S. Green Building Council.

While there may be a certain “yuck” factor to picking through your company’s garbage, experts insist the exercise makes a strong impression on employees that can inspire behavior change with far greater impact than any written report or e-mail alert, Norman says.

Burt’s Bees has a goal of sending zero waste to landfills by 2020, and they managed to get their 40 tons of waste per month down to 10 within 18 months. Then they got stuck, hence the dumpster diving. They saved their trash for two weeks and sorted through it to find items that should have been recycled and items that could be recycled if they could find the proper facilities. The company views the effort as a way to teach their 300-plus employees to be more careful about what they’re throwing away.

GreenBiz.com has several more examples of how companies managed to save lots of money and meet sustainability goals at the same time. It’s inspiring stuff, and business owners should definitely give it a read. It’s important for people to realize that being more mindful of the waste we produce can not only keep millions of tons of trash from sitting in a landfill indefinitely, it can save us money, too.

Link [GreenBiz.com]
Photo credit: Flickr user Lunauna

Times Square New Year’s Eve Bash Resulted in 40 Tons of Trash

Now that it’s 2009 and New Year celebrations are over, what remains – in Times Square, at least – is tons and tons of trash. About 40 tons of confetti, cups, napkins, hats and other garbage accumulated in the streets during the New Year’s Eve bash and now the city Department of Sanitation gets to take on the job of cleaning it all up.

From USA Today:

Cleanup crews hit the streets shortly after midnight Thursday following the 2009 ball drop. Sanitation spokesman Keith Mellis said 163 people worked until 8 a.m. to sweep up the party trash, and a new shift started at 11 a.m. to tidy the area.

Because of the wind — nearly 25 mph gusts throughout the city — the department wasn’t quite sure how much trash was strewn about, but Mellis expected a little more than last year’s 40 tons. The Times Square Alliance, which puts on the event, said about 1 million people attended.

40 tons. That’s a lot of trash, and with the wind blowing, you wonder whether they managed to get it all. What a waste – literally. It’s amazing how many pieces of plastic or paper we use just once and then throw into a landfill. I guess this sort of takes away from the coolness of the new eco-friendly Times Square ball. Maybe next year New York City will make some kind of effort to cut back on the amount of trash that’s produced – that would really be getting somewhere.

Link [USA Today]

Contents of Foreclosed Homes Going to the Dump. Where are the Green Entrepreneurs?

‘Foreclosure Alley’: that’s the nickname of one area in Southern California that’s been so hard-hit by the mortgage crisis, there’s barely a home in the neighborhood that’s still occupied.  The beautiful valley filled with spacious homes with formerly sparkling pools and manicured lawns is now decaying.  So many homes have been foreclosed, the banks can’t clean them out fast enough.  So, they’re resorting to the cheapest way to empty the homes of their contents: hiring companies to haul it all away to the dump.

Check out this video from KCET SoCal Connected:

Shocking, isn’t it? Surely there’s a better way. Especially once you consider the fact that the vast majority of this stuff is perfectly good – better than the quality that most charities receive as donations for people in need.  It’s sickening to see giant trash bins full of clothing, bedding, televisions, brand new computers, cookware, toys, baby supplies and other valuable items being poured into a dump truck.  The company featured in the video ‘trashes out’ an average of 15 foreclosed homes a day.  That’s a lot of trash.  Apparently, they’ve tried to donate this ‘trash’ to charities, but the charities aren’t well-organized enough to get the stuff fast enough to please banks that are eager to keep things fast and cheap.

Max Gladwell speaks for a lot of us when he asks, “Where are the green entrepreneurs?”  This is a prime opportunity to step in and not only make a big profit, but get items to people in need AND prevent all of this stuff from crowding landfills.  It’s a win-win.

From Max Gladwell:

We envision an operation that rents cheap warehouse space in strategic locations near current and pending foreclosure areas. One would partner with the trash-out companies and hire teams of low-cost labor to work with them to identify and recover the most valuable items in a highly strategic manner. Much of it can be sold through eBay and Craig’s List. Other items can be Freecycled. As the operation scales and diversifies, one could take over for the trash-out companies and offer banks a green alternative. As the company gains momentum and scale, it could operate more cost-effectively than the non-green competitors because revenue would be generated at both ends, while also saving on the landfill fees.

Somebody jump on it!

Link [Max Gladwell]

The Secrets of Trash on Nuclear Aircraft Carriers

What’s life like on a nuclear aircraft carrier?  That’s what 10-part PBS series ‘Carrier’ aims to find out.  Filmed aboard the USS Nimitz, Carrier follows a core group of personnel living and working on the carrier.  The average age of the crewmen is 19, and many of the jobs are far from glamorous.  One segment that caught our eye focused on the trash processing department.  For anyone not already familiar with the practice of dumping at sea, it’s shocking.  Check it out starting at 10:40 below.

In the clip, Captain Ted Branch says, “The Navy has always been a very good steward of our environment. You’ll find that when compared to the civilian cruise liner industry, we are far more environmentally friendly than those types of ships.”  Another unidentified sailor says, “We don’t dump anything that, like, could contaminate the water or anything, everything we dump is like regular cans or food that we don’t eat.”

That doesn’t make it any easier to watch as the bags of trash slide down the chute and out into the open water, adding to the already serious problem of pollution in our oceans.  Everything but plastic gets thrown over the side of the ship.

Even better, another sailor talks about seeing protesters from Greenpeace and how absurd he thinks it is.  “There’s absolutely no merit to what they have to say.  To me, it’s almost like the KKK – they’re real fired up about something that makes no damn sense at all.”  Amazing.

Continue watching for some interesting tidbits abut the nuclear reactor and the people who work in it, who are described by one woman as “the trenchcoat people, the weird ones.”

Link [Hulu]

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