Swagtastic BlogHer Conference Disappoints Green Bloggers

Americans are addicted to free stuff. That’s a given. Wherever there is free swag handed out, there will be throngs of eager people mindlessly pushing each other and holding out their greedy little paws, regardless of whether they really even want the product itself. Sometimes, getting swag is a great chance to try out something new. But all too often, it ends up unused and thrown away.

At this year’s BlogHer conference in Chicago, some participants felt that not only was the swag totally out of control, with tons of cheap plastic junk unloaded on attendees, but it got in the way of what BlogHer is supposed to be about in the first place: community, camaraderie and empowerment.

A number of green bloggers, from Beth at Fake Plastic Fish to Diane at Big Green Purse, were really excited to attend the conference. It was a chance to meet their fellow bloggers in real life, build deeper connections, learn how to develop their blogging skills, share tips and have a lot of fun. Some had misgivings about the amount of waste that the conference would generate (there were 1400 attendees), but were pleased when BlogHer organizers asked them to participate in a ‘Green Team’ tasked with helping to make the conference as eco-friendly as possible.

And, BlogHer ’09 did have its green qualities as a result. Paperless conference guides, a recycling suite, carbon offsetting, water cisterns and free BPA-free reusable water bottles, and real dinnerware complete with cloth napkins were just a few of the commendable ways in which the conference sought to have a smaller impact on the earth.

Too bad all the swag and corporate sponsorship eclipsed these efforts. Green bloggers got to BlogHer only to find that ‘stuff’ had seemingly become more important than fostering connections between a diverse community of (mostly) female bloggers.

CV Harquail of Authentic Organizations noted some of the swag-related problems she saw at BlogHer:

• Efforts to acquire swag changed the participation patterns of many attendees. People went to exhibits instead of community keynotes to get the Walmart cookies or the Disney Ice Creams (which were, btw, very tasty).
• People went to and stayed at parties only until the swag bags were handed out.
• The minute it was announced that the swag was being distributed, the whole physical shape of the room would change, from clusters of women talking to a line of women waiting.
• The energy dynamic shifted from meeting & greeting other bloggers to getting & vetting the swag.

No kidding. One attendee, blogger Chef’s Widow, almost left just 6 hours into the conference because of the swag-crazed atmosphere.

I noticed a herd of women squeezing together so tight it looked like they were in an imaginary corral.  Jill and I were standing at the outskirts when we noticed the bags of swag on a table in front of corralled women.  It was hot and smelly.  Women were pushing and I immediately lost Jill in the madness.  I left the debauchery.  On my way out I ran into some chicks by the bar and we chatted about the insanity & greed of the women in front of us.  It was so odd.  All of these women were here for the conference however they were acting as though the $12 dildo in the swag bag would grant them eternal life.

Chef’s Widow was far from alone. Coming home from a conference where women practically bum-rushed each other to grab free crap, where corporate sponsors made them sit through 15-minute spiels before they could discuss what they went there to discuss, many environmental bloggers wrote about their disappointment.

From Lynn at Organic Mania:

The notion of feting women bloggers, of celebrating their achievements, and of giving gifts to women who may not treat themselves to much in life (especially the Moms) – was heartwarming. But with so many extravagant parties and suites, the evening scene at BlogHer turned into a combination of Halloween trick-or-treating and Mardi Gras. And with so many sponsored bloggers  interrupting others conversations to give a product pitch, heck, at times BlogHer seemed like a crazy reality TV show that was interrupted by sponsored programming!  Don’t get me wrong…a lot of it was fun. Who doesn’t like parties? But somewhere, somehow, things seemed to become a bit…excessive.

From Beth at Fake Plastic Fish:

As bloggers, we have incredible power! We have a voice that people listen to. We have a platform. And the fact that so many big companies are willing to sponsor an event like BlogHer and court bloggers at such an event proves it. So why are we willing to give up this tremendous power that we have — power to help create a better world — to sell out for a few trinkets?

Why aren’t we using the power that we have to demand BETTER products for ourselves and our children? Why do we accept the PR pitches at face value? Why aren’t we questioning every single promotion we receive and challenging the status quo?

From Diane at Big Green Purse:

As a member of the team BlogHer put together to help green the conference, I felt a bit cheated. The Green Team worked hard to collaborate with conference organizers and develop a list of items that would have low eco-impact but still satisfy attendees and conference sponsors alike.

But I can’t help but wonder if the environmental gains we secured through Green Team negotiations were neutralized by all the free bags of Fritos, throwaway plastic pouches of applesauce, and other disposables that were dispensed over the course of the event.

No one forced attendees to take the junk being handed out there. And BlogHer evidently had no control over independent parties held in private suites to attract select conference goers.

However, I do take issue with the argument that because BlogHer09 was not a “green” conference, the conference sponsors did not have to adhere to principles of sustainability in what they offered to attendees.

“Green” is not a niche. It’s not even a lifestyle choice. It’s a matter of survival. We need to start treating it that way, including at events like BlogHer09.

There’s no question that sponsors are necessary to make BlogHer affordable for both the organizers and the attendees. But it seems that perhaps they’ve taken it a bit too far, over-commercializing a function that is supposed to be about human connection.

As Harquail eloquently summarized on her blog, “Sponsorship, and thus swag, makes the conference run. But too much swag perverts the conference purpose.”

And it makes for an awful lot of trash.

Link [Authentic Organizations] + [Fake Plastic Fish] + [Big Green Purse]
Photo credit: Flickr user Average Jane

Mother Nature’s Meth Mouth

When a methamphetamine laboratory is busted, DEA agents don hazmat suits and oxygen masks, protecting themselves against a host of extremely toxic substances with a thick barrier of tough plastic. But unwitting future occupants of these homes, hotel rooms and apartment complexes aren’t so lucky, and neither are the rest of us when the chemicals leak from equipment discarded in landfills around the country.

Meth is known as one of the world’s most destructive drugs. Its effects on the users’ bodies are so dramatic, so startling, that before-and-after photos are the main tool used to keep the public from ever trying it in the first place. A website called Faces of Meth shows one stomach-turning transformation after another, documenting extreme weight loss, skin sores and dental deterioration. What it doesn’t show are the psychological effects, which can include psychotic behavior, hallucinations, insomnia, confusion, delusion and paranoia.

However they came to be meth users, at least these people were volunteers. The same can’t be said for other victims, including property owners and residents who only learn of their homes’ secret pasts as meth labs once they’ve noticed a serious deterioration in their own health and that of their families.

Ether, paint thinner, freon and acetone. Ammonia, battery acid and brake cleaner. Explosives, heavy metals, iodine crystals and phosphorous… all of these common ingredients used to make methamphetamine permeate drywall, carpets, insulation, countertops and air ducts, causing health problems long after the labs have been dismantled. Cooking meth just one time contaminates a building enough to cause health problems.

The New York Times recently delved into the horrors faced by people who move into meth-contaminated homes. Newlyweds Jason and Rhonda Holt, who started their family in a Tennessee home they purchased soon after getting married, couldn’t understand why their children were so weak and pale, with breathing problems that required respirators and frequent trips to the emergency room. And it wasn’t just the kids. Rhonda, a nurse, started experiencing crippling migraines and her husband, a factory worker, developed kidney problems.

For five years they lived in that house without knowing that the previous occupant, who had been dragged from the attic by police, had used the home as a meth lab. With that discovery came another big shock: it was up to them to clean it up, to the tune of at least $30,000. Some would call the Holt family lucky, considering that cleanup can cost up to $100,000 and sometimes, contamination is so bad that the entire structure must be demolished.

Another occupant of a former meth lab, Francisca Rodriquez, had her home tested after her dog began having seizures and her son developed respiratory problems. The home was so contaminated that it couldn’t be cleaned, and the Rodriquez family had to let it go into foreclosure. The former owner had checked ‘no’ on a disclosure form asking whether the house had ever been in a meth lab, but the family had no recourse because he’s already in prison for meth-related offenses.

“It makes you crazy,” Rodriguez told The New York Times. “Our credit is ruined, we won’t be able to buy another house, somebody exposed my kids to meth, and my dog died.”

Almost all states with laws requiring meth contamination cleanup hold the property owners financially responsible once contamination is discovered, and only one – Colorado – helps innocent property owners with the costs. Though the EPA was ordered to publish national cleanup standards by the end of 2008, the agency is still reviewing a draft version.

Once known as “poor man’s cocaine”, meth use was once mostly relegated to the West Coast and Southern states, but has now spread across the country like wildfire. More than 12 million Americans have tried it and 1.5 million are regular users according to 2005 federal estimates.

All fifty states have had meth lab busts, with the highest number found in Missouri – though it’s unclear whether the state has more labs and users, or more enforcement. A number of cities have been called “the meth capital of America”, from Sarah Palin’s hometown of Wasilla, Alaska to Tulsa, Oklahoma, but statistics don’t show a clear winner of that dubious title.

It’s the sophisticated “superlabs”, mostly located in California, which have the biggest environmental impact. Smaller labs located in homes, apartment complexes, hotels, businesses and even vehicles have a smaller impact, but dumping is still a concern. The three meth ingredients that cause the most damage are ether, acetone and white gasoline.

Topsoil and groundwater, including drinking water wells, are often contaminated when the chemicals are dumped down drains or onto the ground outside homes. There are five pounds of waste for every pound of meth produced, and meth cookers sometimes go to extremes to get rid of it – like dumping it in public places including parks and waterways. Meth cookers moving from one site to another don’t exactly go through the same clean-up process as certified meth lab cleanup crews: they just toss everything in the trash.

And when a meth lab is identified, authorities have no choice but to throw everything last item in the home away. Clothing, wallpaper, photographs, alarm clocks, kitchen appliances – every single possession in the home is tossed into a padlocked bin so residents can’t get to them before they’re taken to the dump.

Some hazardous waste facilities don’t even want to take trash labeled as meth waste because it’s so dangerous. What happens to the waste in these cases isn’t always clear. Local officials are responsible for proper disposal, but when there are no clear national guidelines to adhere to, some of it is bound to end up in places it doesn’t belong.

Unfortunately, law enforcement authorities aren’t able to devote the kind of energy and manpower needed for a successful fight against meth – in large part, because of the fact that they’re too busy busting non-violent marijuana users.

Marijuana has been under siege since President Roosevelt signed the first federal anti-marijuana law 70 years ago, and the Bush administration made it the focus of its ‘war on drugs’, spending billions of dollars on catching and jailing pot smokers and dealers while more dangerous drugs like meth proliferated.

In fact, the argument that methamphetamine should be given priority over marijuana when it comes to law enforcement has an unlikely ally: Republican Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa, chairman of the Senate Caucus on International Narcotics Control. Meth has hit his state hard, and he wrote to the Bush administration in 2005 to request a shift in resources from pot to meth.

“While we agree that any drug use is harmful to users and those around them, the problems associated with marijuana are not comparable to methamphetamine in terms of cost to society. We know that different drugs have different rates of use. Marijuana is a much more popular drug in terms of the number of people who use it,” Grassley wrote. “However, methamphetamine causes much more destruction in a much shorter period of time than marijuana.”

“We believe that reducing drug use is not just about reducing the number of users of a drug, but reducing the overall harm to society caused by the drug.”

Luckily, meth use seems to be declining among at least one large segment of the population – teenagers. The Partnership for a Drug-Free America found in February of 2009 that teen meth use was down 25% from 2005 levels.

That doesn’t mean that meth isn’t still an extremely worrisome problem, both for human health and the environment. However, there’s a glimmer of hope in drug policy changes being made by the Obama Administration. By scaling back the war against legitimate medical marijuana in states like California and Nevada, the DEA may end up with more funds to focus on more important things.

Photos: Faces of Meth, NowPublic, maveric2003

EPA to Investigate Waste Dumping in Poor U.S. Communities

With the news about Britain getting caught dumping toxic waste in Brazil and Ghana, the injustice of hazardous dumping in third-world countries is getting some much-deserved press and analysis. But what about poor communities right here in the U.S. that are experiencing the same thing? Industry polluters abuse low-income and minority communities across the country, something that activists like Robert Bullard and Irma Muñoz often refer to as ‘environmental racism’.

According to the L.A. Times, this practice will finally be getting some attention from the federal government. The EPA has announced its intention to look into the impact of hazardous waste recycling plants in poor communities.

From the L.A. Times:

The move hearkens back to a Clinton-era executive order that required federal agencies to consider the impact of their policies on disadvantaged communities. Although the Bush administration largely ignored the mandate, Obama-appointed EPA administrator Lisa P. Jackson has promised to analyze those impacts.

Under the Bush administration, hazardous waste recycling plants had a free pass to process more than 1 million pounds of toxic material without federal oversight. In Los Angeles and other areas, such plants are disproportionately located in low-income communities and communities largely populated by non-whites, maps created by Earthjustice show.

For example, coal ash from a spill in east Tennessee last December has been relocated to areas largely populated by black people in Alabama and Georgia, noted Robert Bullard of the Environmental Justice Resource Center at Clark Atlanta University.

That last bit is pretty shocking. The TVA already ruined the lives of hundreds of people in Harriman, Tennessee when the coal ash spill occurred last December and their idea of cleaning it up is to move it to poor Southern communities? It’s an outrage.

The EPA needs to tackle the problem at the source  – making life hell for the companies that carry out these injustices in the first place. A little karma would do them some good.

Link [LA Times]
Photo credit: WeAct.org

LCD Display Screens Recycled into Medicine

It’ll barely make a dent, but e-waste dumping sites may soon have one less item in their midst. A chemical found in LCD display screens can be recycled into surprising new items including medicine and bandages.

From EurekAlert, via Earth911:

The chemical compound polyvinyl-alcohol (PVA) is widely used in industry and is a key element of television sets with liquid crystal display (LCD) technology. When these sets are thrown away, the LCD panels are usually incinerated or buried in landfill sites.

Researchers have now found a way of recovering PVA from television screens and transforming it into a substance suitable for use in tissue scaffolds which help parts of the body regenerate. It can also be used in pills and dressings that are designed to deliver drugs to particular parts of the body.

Professor James Clark, director of the York Green Chemistry Centre of Excellence and one of the author’s of the research, said: “With 2.5 billion liquid crystal displays already reaching the end of their life, and LCD televisions proving hugely popular with consumers, that is a huge amount of potential waste to manage.

Pretty interesting stuff. Any time we can transform a waste product into a usable product – especially when it’s being upcycled – is a triumph for sustainability.

Link [Earth911]
Photo credit: Flickr user mcbarnicle

Britain Gets Caught Dumping Toxic Waste

It’s been going on for decades, and nobody has ever called them out on it. Perhaps that’s what gave British companies the balls to continue dumping toxic hazardous waste in countries like Brazil and Ghana for all these years, despite the fact that it’s clearly harmful to the environment and human health. But two companies have finally been formally accused of dumping, which may help call attention to the problem.

Not that Britain is alone – companies in the United States and other Western countries do it too, and government has looked the other way. Our toxic waste has long been somebody else’s problem – namely, poor people who have no way to protect themselves from the onslaught of chemicals.

From Times Online:

Hilary Benn, the Environment Secretary, ordered an investigation into two British companies linked to 90 shipping containers containing 1,400 tonnes of waste. They included syringes, condoms and nappies. The companies that received the waste — sent from Felixstowe to three Brazilian ports — said that they had been expecting recyclable plastic.

In a separate case, the Ministry of Defence was unable to explain how one of its computers was found by The Times on a notorious dump on the outskirts of Accra, Ghana. Children as young as 5 extract scrap metal from electrical items there and are exposed to potentially lethal chemicals.

Inspectors from Brazil’s environment agency, Ibama, found hospital waste in several containers, reportedly including bags of blood. Another container was full of dirty toys with a note in Portuguese saying they should be washed before being given to “poor Brazilian children”.

Ingrid Oberg, an Ibama official, who opened containers found in the port of Santos on national television news, said: “Whoever put this rubbish into the containers in the UK knew what they were doing and knew where they were going, so it is a criminal act. England needs to assume responsibility.”

Worldwide Biorecyclables Ltd and UK Multiplas Recycling Ltd are the companies being investigated. They’re hardly the only ones that do it, but forcing these companies to take responsibility for their actions may make others think twice before continuing the despicable practice.

Unfortunately, they’ll probably just find sneakier ways to do it. The European Union tightened toxic shipment rules in 2007 and dumping still happens all the time.

PBS Frontline has been conducting an investigation into e-waste dumping in Ghana – check out the video in our recent post, ‘Ghana, an E-Waste Graveyard’.

Link [Times Online]
Photo credit: BBC News

Cruise Ship Features Gigantic Green Roof, but it Still Ain’t Eco-Friendly

Cruise ships are pretty much the antithesis of green. They’re gigantic floating pollution factories, spewing CO2 and dumping waste like bilge water, graywater, sewage and trash. So, it’s pretty much impossible for these floating cities to ever really earn the ‘green’ label – but, that’s not stopping some cruise lines from trying.

Maryland-based Green Roof Service LLC just got done installing a massive 15,000-sq-ft green roof on the cruise ship Celebrity Solstice at Meyer Werft (Ship Yard), in Germany, the first of its kind. However, it’s more like a giant resource-intensive lawn than a real green roof.

Treehugger disputes its supposed eco-friendliness:

But beyond the literal greenness of this thing, I wonder about its ecological impact. After all, photos and press releases suggest this is about maintaining pristine turf for putting, croquet and picnics – which means this is hardly likely to be a wildlife haven for passing bees (?!). Not to mention irrigation needs, and the requirement for “easy replacement of turf”. There will, undoubtedly, be some benefit in avoiding oil and other toxic runoff from the deck, but overall this doesn’t get the TreeHugger in me overly thrilled. (Somebody with more knowledge of green roofs may be able to tell me if I am overly cynical.)

At least this ‘green roof’ isn’t the only way the Celebrity Solstice ship is trying to go green. Its other efforts are far more laudable. From the press release:

• Entire ship with mostly LED lightning technology saves over 20% of power.
• Four Hybrid (Common Rail Diesel-Electro) engines.
• All roofs have photovoltaics (including glass roofs).
• Advanced biological waste water treatment facility.
• Recycling and separation of trash and waste.
• Fresh water production with reused heat and reverse osmosis and low chlorine.
• Reuse and refining of oil on board.
• Run-off collection tank only for green roof.
• Corporate leadership with “Save The Waves” program.

Bottom line: cruise ships aren’t green, and putting a big green lawn on the top of one isn’t going to change that. However, real efforts to at least cut back some of the waste & pollution are a step in the right direction.

Link [Treehugger] + [Green Roofs]

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.

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]

Barbara Hashimoto Makes Art Out of Junkmail

We all get inundated with seemingly never-ending streams of junk mail in our mailboxes, but Barbara Hashimoto is waist-deep in it. The New Jersey-born artist has been collecting it since 2007 for an installation called ‘Reverse Trash Streams: The Junk Mail Project’, and it’s truly amazing to see how much wasteful junk mail one woman was able to gather and shred. She has filled room upon room with it, creating ethereal seas of paper. Perhaps the most poignant moment of this project was the night Hashimoto piled armload after armload of it onto a piano while musician Edward Torrez played, creating a mountain of junk mail that threatened to engulf him.

The project was inspired by stomach-turning statistics about the wastefulness of junk mail, including these ones: Americans receive 77 billion pieces of junk mail annually, and the average American will spend an 8 months of his or her life handling junk mail. Amazing.

Check out this video by EarthFirst’s own Dorothee Royal-Hedinger for Fresh Cut:

Hashimoto’s sculptures, installations and performances have been presented from Chicago to Los Angeles, and you can still see the installations through the 45-foot floor-to-ceiling storefront windows at the 2003 South Halsted Street complex of the Chicago Arts District until December 31st.

Link [Barbara Hashimoto]

Recyclables Heading to Landfills as their Value Decreases

Yet another sad and unexpected effect of the current economic conditions: recyclables losing their value. Cardboard, plastic, newspaper and metals are piling up across the country as recycling contractors fail to find buyers who will purchase the materials at a fair price. This slump in the scrap market means that many of those recyclables will end up in the landfill instead of getting new life as car parts, book covers and boxes.

From The New York Times:

“It’s awful,” said Briana Sternberg, education and outreach coordinator for Sedona Recycles, a nonprofit group in Arizona that recently stopped taking certain types of cardboard, like old cereal, rice and pasta boxes. There is no market for these, and the organization’s quarter-acre yard is already packed fence to fence.

“Either it goes to landfill or it begins to cost us money,” Ms. Sternberg said.

In West Virginia, an official of Kanawha County, which includes Charleston, the state capital, has called on residents to stockpile their own plastic and metals, which the county mostly stopped taking on Friday. In eastern Pennsylvania, the small town of Frackville recently suspended its recycling program when it became cheaper to dump than to recycle. In Montana, a recycler near Yellowstone National Park no longer takes anything but cardboard.

There are no signs yet of a nationwide abandonment of recycling programs. But industry executives say that after years of growth, the whole system is facing an abrupt slowdown.

Many recyclers are hoping the market will rebound in the next six months to a year, so they’re still stockpiling tons of material. In the meantime, they’re hurting. Prices have bottomed out – on the West Coast, for example, paper materials that sold for $105 a ton is down to $20 to $25.

This news is disappointing, to say the least. We can’t afford to lose public support for recycling. The good news is, most cities have no plans to cease recycling operations, but some are already limiting the types of materials they’ll take. If only more manufacturers would commit to using recycled materials for everything they possible could, we could keep the stream of recyclables moving until the economy rebounds.

Link [The New York Times]
Photo credit: Jody Hilton for The New York Times

Japan Uses Recycled Leftovers as Animal Feed

Japan has gotten resourceful with their animal feed: they’re putting the country’s huge amounts of food waste to work. The country disposes of approximately 20,000 tons of food every year, which decomposed in landfills, filling the air with the greenhouse gas methane. In 2001, the Japanese government put laws into effect that led to a new kind of recycling industry – one where those food scraps are either turned into animal feed and fertilizer, or allowed to decompose in special facilities that harness the methane to power industrial plants.

From Reuters:

Food recyclers often use leftovers from convenience stores and restaurants where strict health laws mean unsold items must be thrown out at the end of the day.

“They don’t take disposed food from households as they are not in good conditions,” said Miwa.

Japan imports about 75 percent of its feedstocks from abroad. It is the world’s biggest corn importer to feed animals.

But recent price hikes due to high corn and soy meal prices, the main ingredients in animal feed, has made recycled feed more popular. Although it still accounts for only 1 percent of feedstocks in Japan, or about 150,000 tonnes in 2006, double the volume of 2003. In Japan, companies such as food manufacturers, retailers and restaurants produce some 11 million tonnes of food waste a year. They are responsible for disposing the waste, often paying hefty fees to have it carted away and dumped.

It sounds as if the animals are being carefully monitored to avoid any health issues that may result from this process, and the recyclers are careful to remove inedible items from the food waste before it’s recycled.

Getting smart about waste, trash, food and greenhouse gases: we need to see a lot more of this sort of thing going forward.

Link [Reuters]
Photo credit: REUTERS/Yuriko Nakao

How to Throw Away a Car

Wait, that’s not how you do it?

Link [Bits & Pieces]

Eating Pigeons as Part of a Local Food Diet

Here in America especially, people have pretty narrow ideas of what is acceptable to eat. We’ve cut back our produce variety to a very small percentage of what’s actually out there, and there are only a handful of animals that are considered standard fare. So, it’s not surprising that people might balk at the idea of eating pigeons – those little waste-scavenging creatures commonly known as ‘rats with wings’.

From Wired:

You see, city pigeons are the feral descendants of birds that were domesticated by humans thousands of years ago so that we could eat them and use their guano as fertilizer, we read in Der Spiegel. They’re still doing their part, i.e. eating and breeding, but we humans have stopped doing ours, i.e. eating them.

Numbering in the hundreds of millions, they could be a new source of guilt-free protein for locavores in urban centers. Instead, we’re still trying to kill off our species’ former pet birds, which (as any city-dweller can attest) doesn’t work.

“Killing makes no sense at all,” Daniel Haag-Wackernagel, a biologist at the University of Basel, told Der Spiegel. “The birds have an enormous reproduction capacity and they’ll just come back. There is a linear relationship between the bird population and the amount of food available.”

Our own wasteful practices are what has encouraged these birds to be fruitful and multiply. Our culture has gotten so prosperous, we routinely throw insane amounts of food away. Wired declares that eating pigeons is ‘green tech at its finest’, given that the birds live off our trash – we don’t have to spend money to feed them. The author of this piece attempted to get information about the safety of eating pigeons, but wasn’t successful. Still, he says he’s ‘65% not kidding’.

Would you be open to eating things not commonly considered appropriate as food? Pigeons? Squirrels?

Link [Wired]
Photo credit: Flickr user weaponofchoice

Schwaggin Wagon Collecting Donations on the Road This Summer

If you’ve ever been to a convention, you probably have some of this junk sitting around your office or home: mugs, hats, pens, calendars and other items emblazoned with corporate logos.  You may use some of them for a little while but chances are, before long they’ll end up in the trash.  The brains behind The Schwaggin’ Wagon, Michael Liskin and David Preciado, realized how wasteful that really is one evening over some Thai food, and decided to do something about it.  The Schwaggin’ Wagon, which runs on sponsorships, travels to conventions and takes all that schwag that no one wants and donates it to charity.

The Schwaggin’ Wagon will be at Twiistup4 and the Mashable Summer Tour collecting items and cash donations to benefit Operation Gratitude, a charity that sends care packages to U.S. troops abroad.  The troops love stuff like flash drives, hats and t-shirts, and they share the novelty items with local children in the communities they patrol as a means of promoting goodwill.

Both Twiistup4 and the Mashable Summer Tour are going to be hot events with edgy Web 2.0 companies, influential bloggers and other digerati in attendance.  Mashable’s 2008 Summer Tour will cover 7 cities in less than 1 month, with 500 to 900 attendees per event and will include networking, formal introductions to sponsors, music and appetizers.  Twiistup events connect people from technology, media and entertainment, featuring several startups chosen to show off their products and services to influential bloggers, techies, investors and the media.

Both events are sold out, but you can still contact Schwaggin’ Wagon about sponsorships to help them do what they do best – educate the public about conservation and sustainability, specifically in the recycling and re-purposing of branded schwag.

We love that the Schwaggin’ Wagon is not just making sure that all that junk doesn’t clog the landfills – they’re giving it to people in need.  What an awesome concept.  What we love even more is how they’ve chosen to get their message out – they promote eco-conscious behaviors and party like rock starts at the same time.

Link [Schwaggin’ Wagon] + [Operation Gratitude] + [Twiistup4] + [Mashable Summer Tour]

Jennifer Lopez’s Twin Babies Never Wear Same Outfit Twice

As if you needed another reason to hate Jennifer Lopez, they just keep on coming. This is the lady who orders that stores be shut down for hours on end so she can drop hundreds of thousands of dollars on status-symbol items, and who has some crazy diva demands on her backstage rider. Apparently, she is also incredibly picky about her children’s clothing, ensuring that her very young babies never wear the same outfit twice.

From Popcrunch:

The apples don’t fall too far from the diva. Jennifer Lopez is rarely seen in the same outfit twice-and neither are her four month old twins, Max and Emme. The Bronx-born entertainer reportedly spends thousands of dollars a week on new wardrobes for the tykes while giving previously worn items to charity.

“Aside from the onesies they sleep in, Jennifer dresses her babies in designer outfits whenever they leave the house,” a source tells Star.

At least she gives the previously worn items to charity. Can you imagine getting her twins’ leftovers? Talk about hitting the used baby clothing jackpot. Though most of it is probably hideous. I’m picturing giant designer logos, lace, bows, sequins – choking hazards galore. And there’s nothing like making your baby a billboard for a fashion brand.

Link [Popcrunch]
Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons

Waste Management Inc.’s ‘Greenopolis’ Social Network: One Big Greenwashed Ad?

Is ‘Greenopolis’, the new green social networking site, a cool place for like-minded people to discuss their efforts to lower their carbon footprints and help the environment, or simply a multi-billion-dollar corporation’s effort to greenwash its reputation?

Greenopolis is meant to give people an easy way to communicate about green practices, providing environmental resources and facts. There’s also a ‘green merit badge’ system, that while meant to motivate and reward people for making incremental steps toward being more green, reminds me of the sort of my-shit-don’t-stink elitism that turns the general public off of the green movement (Smug Alert!).

TechCrunch, for one, thinks that Greenopolis is basically just an advertisement, and not a very well-thought-out one at that:

Frankly this should just be an application on Facebook and MySpace, it would get better traction. But that’s not what the consultants told Waste Management (a $20 billion company that, well, manages waste), I’m guessing, since today they’ve launched Greenopolis, a social network for greenies.

They’re committed, they say, to connecting people and businesses on green issues, and teach people about ways to be more environmentally sound. Like other social networks, members can create profiles and add friends. Users also rack up Green Points and have a Green Profile, which shows just how much they care about the environment.

Greenopolis, I suspect, is designed to show that Waste Management cares about the environment more than anything else. So in a way, it’s like an advertisement. See ZeroFootprint, a Canadian company we’ve covered that also creates local social networks around carbon offsetting in partnership with cities.

It’s a good point – is there really even a need for a stand-alone green social network? How many social networks can one person participate in? Are Greenopolis’ features enough to draw people away from Myspace and Facebook? Probably not, except for those people who are already committed to environmental advocacy. They’re not likely to get a huge influx of advertisers’ favorite targets: social-network-savvy teens and young adults with impressionable minds and lots of discretionary income.

One thing I noticed while browsing the member directory is that there are an awful lot of marketing professionals and companies pushing ‘green’ products (along with a whole lot of Waste Management employees). Greenopolis has the potential to become a greenwashed marketing free-for-all. Hopefully Greenopolis members approach product marketing on the site with a healthy dose of skepticism.

There’s also the fact that this is coming from Waste Management Inc., a $20 billion dollar company that rebranded themselves as ‘green’ after several toxic spills and illegal dumping allegations in the 80s and an accounting scandal in 1998. Their own ads certainly border on greenwashing – boasting, for example, that the waste they’ve collected has powered over 1 million homes, when recycling waste saves far more energy than burning it could create – plus, trash incinerators are the leading source of dioxins, super-toxic carcinogenic chemicals. Signs on their trucks say ‘Last year we recycled enough paper to save over 41 million trees’, yet they recycle less than 5% of the trash they collect.

Is Waste Management, Inc. using Greenopolis as a way to improve their image? Joe Vaillancourt, managing director of Waste Management’s organic growth group had this to say in a press release put out by the company: “We believe that by promoting and creating a dialogue about things such as conservation, recycling, and renewable energy that awareness about our environmental operations and our business offerings will increase.”

Is Waste Management America’s largest recycler? Yes – no other company has been able to get their foot in the door. But are they doing enough to legitimately call themselves green? No. You can’t trust when companies put out ads claiming to be stewards of the environment – even monster polluter Monsanto claims to be green. Since Waste Management Inc. has a virtual stranglehold on the trash industry in the U.S., they’ll continue to profit regardless of whether they make advances in green waste management practices. And as long as the public is convinced that they’re a green company, they can take their sweet time getting around to environmentally friendly practices that are expensive or inconvenient for them.

It’s difficult to categorically call ‘greenwashing’ on Waste Management Inc.’s ‘Greenopolis’, since the company has made some strides toward being greener – but not as many as they’d like the public to think (just look at their catchphrase – ‘Think Green. Think Waste Management’.) I’d like to see them take cues from Germany, where no biodegradable waste or recyclable materials go to landfills. Naturally, combating the waste problem here in the U.S. will have to be a joint effort between the corporations who package products, the consumers who buy them and waste management companies, so they can’t do it all on their own – but they can do more.

Efforts like creating a ‘green’ social network shouldn’t distract the public from the actual practices of Waste Management, Inc. The company has set themselves up for intense scrutiny through their green rebranding, so they’d better be prepared to put their money where their mouth is, so to speak. Just being the greenest waste management company in the country isn’t enough when other companies are barely making an effort at all. To truly be green, Waste Management Inc. needs to really step up their environmental initiatives.

Greenopolis may hold some value for people who lack any other forum to connect on green issues, though die-hard environmentalists aren’t likely to get much out of it other than possibly networking and/or educating others. As long as members are aware of the potential for greenwashing – and don’t participate as an alternative to actually being active in their own communities – Greenopolis could act as a portal to get green newbies interested and educated in environmental issues.

Link [TechCrunch] + [Greenopolis]

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

How to Stop Wasteful Phone Book Deliveries

Every year, at least once, you open your front door to find one – or possibly even two or three – phone books piled in a heap on your doorstep, driveway or lawn. Competing phone book companies put out various versions of their tomes, giving you yellow books, white books, county books and city books. And, when’s the last time you even used a phone book? Aren’t we all just looking things up on the internet by now?

If you’re sick of wasteful phone book deliveries, you can put them to a stop. Here’s how, from Simply Thrifty:

If you want to stop receiving phone books call:

* ATT/ Yellow Pages: 1-800-479-2977
* Verizon: 800-555-4833, press 4, then 5, then 2
* DEX: 1-877-243-8339, press 2
* Yellow Book: 1-800-929-3556, press 2

You can also opt out of phone book deliveries at www.yellowpagesgoesgreen.org.

Link [Simply Thrifty]
Photo credit: Flickr user merfam

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