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]

Processing Plants That Turn Waste Into Oil

What kind of processing plant can turn a rotting, slimy, disgusting-smelling pile of turkey slaughterhouse waste into $12,600 worth of fuel oil? How about municipal sewage, old tires and mixed plastics? Discover Magazine highlighted Changing World Technologies, the company that owns this plant, back in 2006.  It’s exciting technology, and Changing World Technologies is hardly the only company working on it.  The Dutch have harvested enough power from chicken manure to power 90,000 homes.

From Discover Magazine:

The smell is a mélange of midsummer corpse with fried-liver overtones and a distinct fecal note. It comes from the worst stuff in the world—turkey slaughterhouse waste. Rotting heads, gnarled feet, slimy intestines, and lungs swollen with putrid gases have been trucked here from a local Butterball packager and dumped into an 80-foot-long hopper with a sickening glorp. In about 20 minutes, the awful mess disappears into the workings of the thermal conversion process plant in Carthage, Missouri.

Three tanker trucks arrive here on peak production days, loading up with 500 barrels of oil made from 270 tons of turkey guts and 20 tons of pig fat. Most of what cannot be converted into fuel oil becomes high-grade fertilizer; the rest is water clean enough to discharge into a municipal wastewater system.

Despite these breakthroughs, Changing World Technologies has struggled over the years.  The highly complex process is expensive, and government subsidies were hard to come by. People who live near the plant complain about its odor incessantly.  Changing World Technologies recently applied for a $100M IPO, hoping it will help them get off the ground.

Other companies have had more luck.  Inhabitat reports that the Dutch have built the world’s largest biomass power plant to run entirely on poultry manure.

Situated in Moerdijk, the 150 million euro plant was constructed by the Dutch multi-utility company Delta. It will convert roughly 440,000 tons of chicken manure into energy annually, generating more than 270 million kilowatt hours of electricity per year. The plant also addresses a key environmental problem in the Netherlands: “managing the vast excess stream of chicken manure, which, until today, had to be processed at a high cost”.

Delta’s biomass plant has even been described as being carbon neutral, since it will prevent the manure from sitting in fields and seething greenhouse gases into the air. Once methane from the poultry waste has been extracted and ignited, the left over ash will be used to make fertilizers and other agricultural products.

This is exciting stuff.  Imagine if we could use this technology to its full advantage – fuel from waste! It’s the ultimate in Cradle to Cradle.

Link [Discover Magazine] + [Inhabitat]

Beijing: ‘Sorry the Garbage Plant Stinks’

It’s rare that Chinese officials actually apologize for anything.  Somehow, one way or another, it’s either someone else’s fault or it didn’t happen at all. But apparently, Beijing citizens were so riled up about the stench coming from a garbage plant in the city, officials decided to do something about it.  No, they didn’t put all of the protestors in jail, surprisingly.

From Reuters:

Several hundred people clashed with security forces in Beijing’s eastern Chaoyang district last week, complaining that noxious fumes from Gao’antun Garbage Landfill Plant were affecting their health, a Hong Kong-based rights group reported.

The local government promised residents the smell would disappear within 20 days, and that 91 million yuan ($13 million) would be spent to clean up the plant, whose fumes had kept nearby residents awake at night, the Beijing Youth Daily said.

“The smell from the Gao’antun Garbage Landfill Plant has affected the normal lives of surrounding residents. I apologize on behalf of the Chaoyang District government,” the paper quoted spokesman Yin Xiufeng as saying.

It seems that China has been growing so fast, new communities are popping up at never-before-seen rates – and the local governments aren’t communicating very well with each other.  That has spurred so many clashes between government and private citizens, who feel as if they’re being stepped on, that officials in some cases have no choice but to actually… address the problem.  Shocking.

So, they’re willing to apologize for a smelly garbage plant, but not for the insane pollution that’s killing their citizens at this very moment?

Link [Reuters]
Photo credit: Flickr user Boris van Hoytema

Electronics Industry Greening up as a Whole, Offering Recycling Programs

There’s a big difference between merely greening up your company and greening up your entire industry, and a great example is what’s happening right now with televisions and other electronics. Companies like LG, Sony, Panasonic, Sharp and Toshiba have begun major recycling programs that are free and easy for consumers. These programs embrace the idea of producer responsibility, which is the notion that whoever makes the product should be ultimately responsible for its recycling or safe disposal once its usefulness is complete.

That doesn’t mean that all of these companies willingly stepped up to the plate, of course – it’s the result of a lot of hard work by organizations to have regulations passed in 15 states (so far). The Electronics TakeBack Coalition has put the pressure on states, and a coalition of nonprofits has been pushing individual companies to offer free recycling.

From Green Biz:

The coalition’s next target is Samsung, another Korean firm which is running an Olympic-themed online scavenger hunt called “hunt for the gold.” The coalition respons thatolder TVs include toxic chemicals lead, mercury and cadmium as well as gold, and that many are collected for recycling and then “sent to developing countries like China by unscrupulous recyclers, where they are literally bashed open and melted down with few if any safeguards against toxic releases.”

You can be fairly confident that once industry leaders like Sony and LG offer free recycling, their competitors will have to go along. It’s probably not much of a burden to their business, either–rising commodity prices mean that the value of old electronics, formerly known as garbage, is also increasing.

Imagine what would happen if more industries began running on the ‘producer responsibility’ concept. There’d be virtually no waste. That’s the direction we need to go in – and this is a hopeful sign that through pressure from organizations and consumers, we can get entire industries to green up and stop trashing the planet.

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

An Artist’s Log of Three Years of Street Trash

From May 5th, 2002 to May 4th, 2005, artist Nico Van Hoorn took a daily 30-minute walk looking for the perfect piece of trash in the street.  It could be paper, plastic or metal but it had to be smaller than 10×15cm and as flat as possible.  The trash was scanned daily, and what results is a series of portraits of trash that really make you think, was this little item – whatever it was, whatever it was used for – worth littering the streets for?

Check out more of the photos at Trashlog.com

Link [TRASHLOG]

The Impossible Task of Cutting Plastic Out of Your Life

Image via Algalita Marine Research Foundation

Plastic is a cancer on the environment and yet we just can’t get enough of it. Just try to get through one day without plastic – it’s impossible. Your shampoo is in a plastic bottle. Your car has plastic all over the interior. Open your fridge door – plastic. Turn on a light – plastic. Brush your teeth, have safe sex, wear a Hawaiian shirt – plastic, plastic and more plastic.

Though I was always aware of plastic being problematic for the environment, I never considered trying to dramatically reduce my use of it until I had a wake-up call a few months back. After discovering that I had several health problems related to high levels of estrogen, a female hormone, I started doing some research and learned about the connection between hormones like estrogen and compounds found in plastic, such as Bisphenol A (BPA). Tests have shown BPA to be an endocrine disrupter, and it’s linked to health issues like breast cancer, prostate cancer, infertility, early onset of puberty and insulin resistance. BPA is found in plastic water bottles, reusable food containers, baby bottles and canned food liners, among many other items.

That led me to examine how much plastic I’ve really been using on a daily basis. Once you start thinking about how much plastic is in your life, it can be overwhelming. It’s everywhere, and health effects are far from the only dangers of the petroleum-based material. From the raw materials used to create it to where it ends up when we no longer want it, plastic has an incredibly large, negative footprint on the earth. Cradle to Cradle it’s not.

Plastic begins its life as petroleum, which is drilled and transported to refineries. Then the crude oil and natural gas is refined into ethane, propane and thousands of other petrochemical products. Ethane and propane are “cracked” into ethylene and propylene using high-temperature furnaces, and then a catalyst is combined with them in a reactor, resulting in what’s called ‘fluff’ – powdered polymers. The fluff is combined with additives in a blender, fed into an extruder where it’s melted, allowed to cool and then fed to a pelletizer that cuts it into small pellets. The pellets are shipped to manufacturers who then process it into various products (Source: ReachOutMichigan.org).

As you can see, the production of plastic is yet another way in which we’re dependent on foreign oil, and oil drilling is hard on the environment. Plastic also clogs our landfills. It can take 200 to 400 years to degrade, and only 3% of plastic waste is currently recycled, partially due to the fact that facilities to recycle most types of plastic simply don’t exist in most cities (Source: Learner.org). Consumers have little choice but to throw their plastic waste in the trash.

Ocean Gyres: The Pacific Gyre is top center. Image via Wikimedia Commons

As if that weren’t bad enough, then there’s the plastic that ends up in our oceans. The swirling vortex of plastic trash in the Pacific Ocean, known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, is a prime example of how our love affair with plastic is damaging the environment. The trash gyre takes up an astonishingly large area of the Pacific Ocean – twice the surface area of the continental United States. It’s essentially the world’s largest garbage dump, and it’s held in place by swirling underwater currents. It stretches from about 500 nautical miles off the coast of California, across the northern Pacific nearly as far as Japan. Researchers have called it ‘plastic soup’, and includes everything from footballs and kayaks to children’s toys and shopping bags.

Plastic is believed to account for 90% of the trash in oceans, and it’s been known to kill marine life. The UN Environment Program estimates that plastic debris causes the death of more than 1 million seabirds each year, along with 100,000 marine mammals. Entanglement or ingestion of plastics have been known to cause death or suffering to at least 267 different species including turtles, seabirds, seals, sea lions, whales and fish.

Motivated by all of this knowledge, I set out to reduce the amount of plastic that I used in my daily life as much as possible. It didn’t take long to discover that cutting plastic out of your life in this day and age is virtually impossible. You’d have to totally change practically every facet of your life in order to avoid it. I began my quest to reduce my plastic use mainly concerned with plastics that come into contact with my food and drinks, as well as the products I apply directly to my skin, like lotion. It wasn’t too hard to replace my food containers and cups with all glass and ceramic, but then I started thinking about all of the plastic that surrounds me every day and how hard it would be to totally avoid it.

One thing I realized early on is that attempting to avoid plastic can either be really cheap or really expensive. If you go the cheap route, you’re bound to be living a pretty primitive existence, because finding alternatives to plastic for everyday items isn’t always possible. If you try to replace everything you own that’s made with plastic, you’re going to get frustrated fast because often, alternatives just aren’t out there.

You can get wooden or cloth kids toys instead of plastic, replace your toothbrush with a wooden one, buy staples in bulk (and use glass containers to house the items), only wear natural fabrics and replace cheap fixtures around your house with vintage glass or ceramic. But, you’ll have to forgo sunglasses, electronics and those little plastic pumps on your liquid hand soap. Forget medical or dental work – plastic abounds. Want to paint your house? The paint cans are plastic. Switching to tap water instead of bottled? You’ll have to drink it straight from the faucet, because filters are encased in plastic. Better switch to an entirely whole foods diet, because one stroll through the grocery store will show you that most items are encased in plastic bottles, bags, wrap or mesh.

Christine Jeavans with some of her plastic purchases – Image via BBC News

One woman in the UK is attempting to go without plastic for the entire month of August, and will be documenting her journey on the BBC News website. Christine Jeavans has resolved not to purchase anything that contains plastic or is packaged in plastic, and in preparation for this, she has kept all of the plastic she used in the previous month – totaling 603 items. Included in that total were 67 food packaging bags and films, 13 yogurt cups, 10 milk bottles and 120 disposable diapers. Once faced with all of this plastic, Chris was more resolved than ever to change her lifestyle. She’ll be updating her blog with her progress throughout the month.

I’m still sorting through my own attempts to reduce the amount of plastic I use, with mixed results – but hoping to do better going forward. While I can’t yet replace all of the plastic items in my home with longer-lasting, safer alternatives, I will definitely be far more conscious of what I purchase in the future. I’m already avoiding food with unnecessary packaging and thinking about where each item I purchase will end up when I’m done with it.

Luckily, the world at large is beginning to wake up from our decades-long plastic nightmare. Many new companies are offering plant-based packaging that breaks down when composted. Biodegradable packaging can be seen on everything from take-out containers to personal care products, and biodegradable options are available for items like trash bags and packaging tape.

There’s no doubt that plastic has revolutionized the way we live, and greatly sped up the advancement of modern civilization. But, times are once again a-changin’ – and we’ve got to find a better way. We’re a long way away from completely cutting plastic out of our lives – and it may never happen. But with the green revolution fueling sustainable technology like never before, we’re sure to see more ways that we can cut back.

Perhaps more companies will soon discover the merits of the Cradle to Cradle design philosophy, and we’ll soon have a wealth of materials that are even better than plastic that don’t harm the earth. And perhaps we can all be a little more conscious about the life cycle of every item we purchase – especially plastic – for our health and for the earth.

Galactic Green Cred: The Environmentalism of Star Wars

Not to make sweeping generalizations, but it’s probably safe to say that if you’re reading this blog you’re more than just a little familiar with Star Wars (and by Star Wars we mean the first three Lucas made). Maybe you can quote the movies at will. Maybe you still have your Return of the Jedi bedsheets. Maybe you read the fan fiction (hell, maybe you write the fan fiction). But, if you, like us, are nerdy little fanboys at heart, well, buckle up, because you’re about to love George Lucas’ space opera even more. It turns out that there’s actually a fair bit o’ green to be found in Star Wars.

1. Clean Energy For The Droids?

We see C-3PO and R2-D2 shut down occasionally, but we never do see them do anything to power themselves. Solar? Really big batteries that last through the film? The Mr. Fusion from Back To The Future? We don’t know. But we don’t see them suck in anything remotely resembling a fossil fuel, nor do we see them plug in. [Read more]

Germany Collecting Italy’s Mountains of Trash

The city of Naples, Italy has long had a trash problem. Crazy as it sounds, many in the region blame the mafia, who are said to have filled up local dumps with trash from other countries that they were paid to get rid of. How it got to be so bad in the first place is no longer all that important as the problem has now gotten so extreme, Germany has stepped in to help. The two countries cut a deal allowing Italy to get rid of 160,000 tons of trash by shipping it to Germany for incineration. Most of the waste comes from the Campania region, which includes Naples, the Amalfi Coast and Pompeii. The trash in Naples, especially, has gotten to be a major health hazard, not helped by the fact that residents are starting to burn the trash in the streets, releasing toxic chemicals like dioxin into the air.

From ABC News:

The deal brokered by the two countries means that over the next three months three to four trains per week will arrive at the northern German town of Hamburg after a 45-hour ride all the way from southern Europe, each train bearing some 700 tons of refuse.

Up to 60,000 tons of trash will be collected from the streets of Naples alone, and another 100,000 tons will be made up of household waste from around the Campania area.
Other German cities, like Bremerhaven and Düsseldorf, are partners in the deal. They are sharing the trash in order to put their state-of-the art incinerators to work, but Hamburg can easily handle up to 3,000 tons per week in addition to managing its own trash.

The Italians are reportedly paying approximately $235 per ton, and paying for the transport as well. Hamburg officials admit that the city makes good money helping the Italians.

Germany is warning Italy that this is only a temporary solution, and that they must find other ways to get rid of their trash.

Gee, it’s too bad that there’s no way to cut down on the amount of trash that society throws away. Ironically, Germany had a similar problem years ago and tackled it in a sustainable way – Italy could learn a lesson from them. Germany’s waste management program is so successful, they have saved some 46 million tons of carbon per year since it was put into place in 2005.

Link [ABC News]
Photo credit: Time Magazine / Chris Warde-Jones / Bloomberg

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