Electronic Waste and Recycling

When we went to Oskar Winski and were educated on their fairly new Electronic Waste and Recycling program I was intrigued. Electronics are made from hazardous wastes and materials that never go away, on the bright side though electronics are not going away. This being said, electronic recycling is a big business opportunity and environmental initiative. My thought is why not just reuse materials from old electronics to make new electronics.

"This is money."

Attached below are a few companies and initiatives in other states and around the country that focus on Electronic waste and recycling.


http://recyclingnewyork.com/


http://www.marvell.com/environment/recycling.jsp


http://aspenpitkin.com/Living-in-the-Valley/Green-Initiatives/Recycling/

Must See Documentary: TRASHED

Trashed an environmental documentary produced by Jeremy Irons portrays the everlasting problem of global waste. Executive producer and actor Jeremy Irons digs deep into the societies and populations most affected by the issue. He comes to find out and simply portray the lives of third world country citizens and the lives of beautiful animals. The people affected by global waste first hand are those in third world countries. They are mostly poor and native to the lands where countries such as the United States dumps their every day trash. What people do not understand is that not only does it affect them but us as well. And not only us but every living organism in the world. When we bury plastics and materials that are not compostable then we harm the environment. This documentary explores all of these different ideas. Scholars and well known people around the world on the subject of global waste comment on the idea.

Above is the trailer. Enjoy.

The Most Eco-Friendly Home in America

I've always been interested in how to save money and help the environment through changes in your home.  We spend alot of money on energy and other things to keep our home going, and this creates alot of waste and negative environmental impact.  I think there is a large amount of potential for Americans to save money and reduce their environmental impact if they make minor changes to their home.  This video shows a family that built an extremely efficient home that is sustainable.  I'm skeptical that the innovations didn't affect the price, but either way, the home is very cool and shows how we can improve the sustainability of our homes.

Climate Change?

Expanding Waste Management

After visiting Covanta this past week, I became interested in their progression in the field of waste management. I was very impressed with their facilities structure and order throughout each area and was curious as to if they were looking to expand--and if so where.

I found an article that details their reasoning behind the new partnership in which they have created with the corporation Clean Energy Fuels. These two companies are looking towards the opening of yet another facility like Covanta, to "compliment" the original. This new building will be built with minimal impacts on the surrounding environment. But their mission doesn't stop there, both companies are still searching for additional locations, throughout the United States to continue on in their quest for nationwide waste management.

I believe that the addition of another "Covanta like" facility would be greatly beneficial to any community. I hope to look into this expansion in the near future to see some form of progression because I now see the benefits that a company like Covanta can provide. 

http://www.truckinginfo.com/news/news-detail.asp?news_id=78934

Recycling: Not just paper, bottles and cans

The article I read was about the importance of water recycling.  You may have heard about the need to conserve water and be careful with how we're using it, but recycling it is probably a new idea. Most people think recycling is simply for different types of metals, glass, plastic, and paper, however water is now being added to that list.  One way water is being recycled is through "gray water." Gray water is reusable wastewater from residential, commercial and industrial bathroom sinks, bath tub shower drains, and clothes washing equipment drains.  Gray water is reused onsite, typically for landscape irrigation. Also, water recycling refers to the technological ways of speeding up nature's natural recycling process.  So what are the benefits of recycling water? Well, there are many.  First, it is extremely useful for irrigation, in places like golf courses, public parks, and other landscapes.  It can also cool water for power plants and oil refineries.  Recycling water also has many environmental benefits, such as decreasing pollution and increasing demand for an additional source of water, which would help diverge demand from precious and sensitive ecosystems.  As you can see, water recycling is becoming an influential part of our transition into a healthier world, and has many benefits.

http://www.epa.gov/region9/water/recycling/

Biofuels: The Future of Waste Management

A new method of waste management is on the horizon and its name is biofuel. The has been a recent breakthrough in biofuel technology that allows agricultural waste to be converted in to alternative fuels. Over the past few years biofuel production has been limited to only a handful of small pilot production plants. However recently two companies have come together to create the first large scale biofuel production plant on the planet. The process will consist of collecting wood garbage from farms and paper waste from papers as well as residential households. The fuels created will create only a mere one-sixth of the carbon dioxide to an equivalent amount of petroleum.

Biofuels are created by taking biomass such as algae, plants, wood, or agricultural waste and stripping all of the available oxygen from it. The remaining element are hydrogen and carbon and together they create compounds called hydrocarbons. These hydrocarbons contain stored chemical energy from photochemical reactions during photosynthesis while the biomass was alive. The biofuel that is created from this process is called Celluosic ethanol. This process created renewable energy while not diverting food away from animals and humans


For more information on biofuels visit
http://environment.nationalgeographic.com/environment/global-warming/biofuel-profile/

We Can Use Plastic As A Raw Material

          After doing a little research of my own, I stumbled upon a video from TEDTalks of an idea given by Mike Biddle. In the video he give states that less that 10% of plastic trash is recycled in comparison to the 90% of metals. The reason behind this is because the two different raw materials have different and complicated ways of sorting the material. Metals are little bit easier because of the variation in density and magnitude, though plastics when all said and done, come from oil and the similar materials.

          I am interested in the topic of recycling plastics because they do not go away like we think they might. Most plastics end up in landfills or polluting the atmosphere because of the toxic gases released while burning them. It is also known that plastics end up in third world country landfills. Mike Biddle addresses this issue as its own. In my opinion no first world country such as the United States should be damaging a third world country such as parts of Mexico and central America. Though I do not have pictures, I witnessed this issue first hand in Tijuana, Mexico on a mission trip. We found my 5yr old brother at the time playing with the other kids on the side of a mountain. Which come to find out was mound of trash built up over the years.

          In the video, Mike Biddle shows his audience how he himself along with other acquaintances have developed a cheap and incredibly efficient plant that cam recycle any kind of plastic. His plant is named MBA Polymers, at least according to google. In 1992 Mike Biddle known as a plastic engineer, set up a lab in his garage in Pittsburg, California. From here he began experimenting with complex-plastics recycling, borrowing ideas from such industries as mining and grain processing. Biddle has developed a patented 30-step plastics recycling system that includes magnetically extracting metals, shredding the plastics, sorting them by polymer type and producing graded pellets to be reused in industry. This process that takes less than a tenth of the energy required to dispose of plastics and waste, makes virgin plastic that is put back into our toys, electronics and every day appliances.



He says: "I consider myself an environmentalist. I hate to see plastics wasted. I hate to see any natural resource – even human time – wasted.”

Listed below are websites about Mike Biddle, his company and his talk.

http://www.mbapolymers.com/home/our-company

http://www.ted.com/talks/mike_biddle.html

Listed below is an idea where we take plastic and convert it into building blocks.

http://inhabitat.com/plastic-concrete-repurposes-landfill-waste-into-building-bricks/

Who Says Electric Cars Cant be Cool?

Tons of people think that electric cars will not be able to hold a major appealing factor in a world of gas powered super cars. Well, to all those people who think electric cars cannot be cool, they should look into the "Inizio electric super car." After all of our class talk about recycling and helping out the environment, i was curious in finding an automobile that would actually catch the eye of any individual who were to see it out on the street. The result was this electric super car. If the world wants to start doing better in the automobile industry by reducing their emissions, they should look into the technology put into the Inizio. I found this really interesting because i have always been a big fan of cars (specifically muscle and super cars) since a very young age. This car could be a start to a type of "car taste" that could spark a new public interest in these types of cars. What would be better than an electric car that could beat the rest, not only on the quarter mile or race track, but beat all other cars in terms of helping the environment?  

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R65PEIDA_4s

Great Pacific Garbage Patch

After thinking about how much stuff ends up in landfills and as litter on the sides of roads etc., I was curious about how much trash ends up in the ocean. Upon further reading, I learned about the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. It is an area of litter found between Hawaii and California in middle of the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre.

Indiana's E-Waste Recycling Law

Our selected reading from The Story of Stuff over the possible risks of producing electronic items such as laptops and cell phones greatly sparked my interest.  Modern America has become immensely consumed by the use of cell phones, laptop computers, televisions, and other electronic products.  Annie Leonard highlights the issue at hand: the increase in demand for electronic products directly correlates with an increase in hazardous compounds released during production poisoning workers and surrounding communities in the process.  When I began doing more research on this topic online I discovered that while production of electronics presents significant environmental risks that have yet to be fully resolved, there is an even more serious issue at hand.

With new versions of electronic products being released more and more frequently, consumers have the enticing temptation of ditching their old product and upgrading to the newer version.  The question becomes, what happens to these electronic products that are no longer wanted? The answer is that these products become e-waste.  Controlling e-waste has become a key focus of state legislatures in recent years as electronics continue to become more widely used and discarded.  In May of 2009, Indiana became the nineteenth state to pass a law that creates a statewide e-waste recycling program.

There remains no national law in place to regulate e-waste; and until this changes, Indiana hopes to remain a leader in this movement of safe disposal of electronic waste. While Indiana's E-Waste Program is one of the better proposals among states that have enacted similar movements, e-waste will continue to present serious environmental and health hazards until more strict regulations are established at the national level.  Proper e-waste disposal and recycling is a very serious concern and should be treated this way.   Our government needs address this issue sooner rather than later before serious irreversible damage is done to our ecosystem by the hazardous toxins which could be released by these discarded electronic items.  

We Waste More Than We Should......

 Out of the many elements that gets thrown out on a daily basis, the one form of trash that should not be wasted, as much as it has been in recent years, is food waste. I have always been taught growing up to never waste any food during a meal, but apparently the same does not go for consumers in many societies around the world. In most cases, we don't even realize the major impact a half of a sandwich, our dinner leftovers, etc. can cause when an individual just throws it out. Especially here at DePauw, i have seen people throw food out and say things like, "oh its not big deal, I'm full but don't want to carry it back to my dorm." Other things people would say are, "I'm not going to worry about it, i have plenty of food back in my room if i get hungry later on." The fact is that many people, even here on DePauw's campus need to better their habits when it comes to food and reusing/ saving their food that they consume on a daily basis.   

Worlds Largest Landfill

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch

As I was browsing the web about the World's Largest Landfills, I came upon numerous results stating that the largest landfill is located in the Pacific Ocean called the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. With the world producing over 200 billion pounds of trash per year, 10 percent of that ends up in the ocean. This statistic really caught my eye, obviously affecting the marine life in the oceans. Some areas in the worlds oceans are taken up by a 6 to 1 ratio plastic to plankton life. Some parts of our ocean system contains 46 thousand pieces of floating plastic per square mile. Seventy percent of the plastic floats to the bottom of the ocean floor, which will affect the plant and marine life in the ocean. About eighty percent of the plastic in the oceans comes from land. So that means that humans are freely letting the plastic get into the ocean ecosystem. If the trash is not coming from land, most of the other sources would be from private or commercial ships, fishing equipment, oil platforms and spilled shipping containers.

These statistics make me cringe, knowing that every day trash is adding up more and more. I think the way to change this problem is to let the public know. I think the media sometimes tries to hide these scary statistics from the public. If the world knew, I think it would better improve our society as a whole. People would take into consideration where and how to dispose trash.

Why do some recycling facilities accept certain materials, while others don't?

Now that we have been to 4 different facilities that deal with waste, I started noticing how each place was a little different about their rules for what they do and do not accept.  While I do understand they vary because of market demand and fluctuating prices, I find it hard to keep track of who takes what and why.  I got curious, and looked up what Indiana's policy was on what they accept to be recycled, and I was pretty shocked.  Their list is fairly lengthy and contains some items that some of the facilities we visited would not have wanted.

Here is a link to the article: http://www.in.gov/idem/recycle/2345.htm

They accept basically every type of glass to be recycled, when the local plant owners tended to agree that breaking down glass to recycle creates a sand film that shut will shut down the machine.  They also accept saw dust, but when we visited our first facility that collected recyclables from the community said that they have no idea what to do with sawdust, and just end of land filling it.

Improving Your Home Efficiency

One of the easiest ways to reduce your impact on the environment is by improving the efficiency of your home.  This would decrease your carbon emissions, and even save you money on your electricity bill.  There is an endless amount of information available online, and endless amounts of home improvements as well.  When I googled it, hundreds of helpful websites popped up.  Here is a list of simple upgrades that can help you improve the efficiency of your home.

1.  Make sure your walls and attic are well insulated.
2.  Upgrade or replace windows.
3.  Plant shade trees and shrubs around your house.
4.  Replace an older furnace with a high efficiency system.
5.  Improve the efficiency of your hot water system.
6.  Replace incandescent lightbulbs with compact fluorescent lamps.
7.  If you buy a new refrigerator, don’t leave the old one plugged in.
8.  Take advantage of new tax incentives to improve your home.
9.  Schedule an energy audit for more expert advice on your home as a whole.

This list was taken from http://greenhomeguide.com/know-how/article/9-ways-to-make-your-home-more-energy-efficient and the website goes into further detail if your interested in learning more about how to improve the efficiency of your home.  Obviously this list is short, and there are many other things you can do to reduce your impact on the environment.

Cradle to Cradle, the real ideal model

One of the most important concepts with which we culminated the class the other day was the concept of waste equals food or in other words the cradle to cradle mentality. From my point  of view in order to finish or achieve a perfect cycle of matter instead of the linear one that stops at the landfills or incinerators, we need not only to recycle more, but also to design a new operating system that revolves around the natural world. We need to aim towards green engineering for the mere reason that any of the models that we have currently are considered a long-term waste disposal system: the incinerators (if we take into consideration that toxic emissions are unsustainable too in the long-run), and the landfills are represented as an infinite waste accumulation. Our current system is based from the fundamentals of the Industrial Revolution, and back then they didn’t really stop to think about the long-term consequences of production in the future, since the only thing that mattered then was producing in large quantities, creating new stuff and newer inventions without restrictions, in order to progress. Now however, to make real progress we should start designing and envision a system that doesn’t lead towards an entropic world, but  towards the sustainable cycle that we talked about at the beginning of the month.

Sustainablity: The Cradle-to-Cradle Perspective


The Cradle-to-Cradle Framework does not reach for sustainability as it is typically defined. Discussed at length in various papers, books and other venues, environmental sustainability in the industrial sector is popularly understood as a strategy of "doing more with less" or "reducing the human footprint" to minimize troubling symptoms of environmental decline. From an engineering perspective, conventional sustainability too often suggests retrofitting the machines of industry with cleaner, more efficient "engines" to secure ongoing economic growth. But this is not an adequate long-term goal. While being eco-efficient may indeed reduce resource consumption and pollution in the short-term, it does not address the deep design flaws of contemporary industry. Rather, it addresses problems without addressing their source, setting goals and employing practices that sustain a fundamentally flawed system.

The Cradle-to-Cradle Framework, on the other hand, posits a new way of designing human systems that ultimately can solve rather than alleviate the human-created conflicts between economic growth and environmental health that result from poor design and market structure. Within this principled framework, which is based on the manifested rules of nature and re-defines the problem at hand, eco-efficient strategies can serve a larger purpose.

http://www.mcdonough.com/cradle_to_cradle.htm

http://www.mcdonough.com/writings/c2c_design.htm

"Roses are red, lipsticks have lead"

After doing my presentation in class on the production of waste, I was drawn to a quote Annie Leonard included in her book: "Roses are red, lipstick has lead". The idea that lipstick, a product most women use daily, contained any sort of harmful materials astounded me. So I researched into this issue more only to find a report made by the FDA that found of 20 lipsticked tested--in an experiment-- all 20 contained some form of lead. The report then goes on to say how the testing was expanded to 400 lipsticks sold in the Untied States, and the results concluded that the "lead concentration" was averaged at 1.11 ppm. But the FDA concludes that this level of lead in lipsticks, is not any sort of safety concern. The information and conclusion that this report gives leaves me uneasy, because although the FDA states that the current levels of lead in lipsticks are not harmful I worry for a future where they are.

http://www.fda.gov/cosmetics/productandingredientsafety/productinformation/ucm137224.htm#q5

Final Field Trip

Today we went on our last field trip to Republic's recycling plant. I thought this plant was very interesting. The tour that Mike gave us was awesome. We were able to go right up next to the assembly line and see the work at hand. I learned a lot of interesting stuff about the plant as well. With the economy being as down as it is, Republic was given 3 million dollars to build their recycling plant and to "do the best they could with what they had". With the amount of money that they were given the plant has exceeded all expectations. With the plants success, Republic has gone back to the drawing board to hopefully put more money into the plant in the near future.

How other countries deal with household garbage?

After two weeks of class, most of us have got an image of how we deal with our trash and where our trash goes. Though America has already got a good system dealing with trash, we can still look at how other countries deal with trash and learn from them.

Blog 2: UpCycling a Term Coined in 1994 is...

Upcycling is a hip term for taking waste materials and turning them into new, useful, quality items. Items that most of us would have never considered as worthwhile to keep around can actually be turned to new products. Websites like pinterest have been inspiring Internet users since 2009. Before you throw away that fruit punch carton, that old map or your T.V. get in touch with your crafty side and come up with a way to reuse that item or if you need help there is always the world wide web at your fingertips loaded with inspiration. Websites like Esty is filled with users that upcycle items and even make a profit because people, green at heart or not, find these items inventive and sentimental. Upcycled items are keeping trash from the municipal waste stream, so less waste means less energy used for waste pick up and less waste going to incinerators and landfills where overall less toxins are emitted into the environment.