Another great info graphic from WELL HOME.
Posts Tagged ‘trash’
E-Waste…
Tuesday, August 2nd, 2011Recycling!
Tuesday, July 26th, 2011Great infographic from reeuse this bag .com…
What’s going on, on Lake Erie
Friday, May 20th, 2011
We are so luck to have such a wonderful natural resource so close to us. The Great Lakes are one of the largest natural sources of fresh water in the world. While so many countries have little or no access to fresh water, it amazes me how much we take this treasure for granted. Even here at home, in the good old USA, we are limited in our access to fresh water. We dam rivers to divert water to build orange groves and cities in the middle of the desert. We have placed such a strain on our natural water supply, that the future for some states in in danger. Nevada and California even got the shape of their state because territory was added to give access to the Colorado river. Now we are drawing more water from this dammed river than nature can replenish, and reservoirs are being depleted.
So how do we celebrate the fantastic natural resource that we have and raise awareness about issues surrounding the Great Lakes?
One great event is the Edgewater Beach Clean Up. The local water advocacy group Drink Local, Drink Tap meets monthly and walks the beach of Edgewater Park and collects garbage that washes up on shore. They partner with other national organizations sometimes to help promote and extend their efforts. The next one is coming up on June 4th and will feature free pancakes at the lower pavilion followed by a walk on the beach to clean up trash. They provide the bags and gloves, you just have to pick up a little trash. Contact Babette Oestreicher, DLDT Beach Cleanup Manager and RSVP if you can to help them plan the amount of supplies. Otherwise, just show up. Pancakes at 9 am, clean up from 10-12, the rest of your day to yourself and you can know that you helped out in this great effort. Bring the kids and make a day of it!
Another event is the annual Lake Erie Boat Float. This is their third year of having this event, and it is picking up steam. They seem to be adding prize categories every year. So here is the low down:
Plastic (and other) garbage is a big issue when it comes to waterways. In order to raise awareness about plastics and their impact on the environment, an annual event is held at Edgewater Beach. This year it is Saturday, September 10, 2011 at the Boat Launch at 10 am Lower Edgewater State Park Beach. Sponsored by Cleveland Metroparks and Cleveland Museum of Natural History, this annual event features a race of boats made from recycled plastics. There is no limit to the creativity, but the water crafts have to be made from post consumer materials. Prizes are awarded for speed, style, best use of materials, and even a kid’s category. It will be a lot of fun and you have plenty of time to start now and build a really great boat. Winners get a trophy made from recycled plastic, bragging rights, and the joy of knowing their boat will be recycled by Poly-Flow. Find all the details and registration forms here.
The Road to Zero…
Tuesday, May 17th, 2011Friday is garbage day in my neighborhood. Ever since we moved to Cleveland, I have been amazed at the amount of trash that residents of Cleveland throw away. I am sure that I have written about this before, but In Portland, we paid a monthly fee for garbage service and it was tiered by the amount of cans you had. It was not cheap either. For $35 a month, you got a single large garbage can-and this was in the late 90′s. But this way of dealing with trash had interesting results.
First, curbside recycling was king. In order to get your trash to fit in a single can, you had to recycle. Secondly, less was disposed of. Usable goods were creatively reused or refurbished. If you had to find a truck and haul your old couch to the dump, where you paid to dispose of it, you were much more likely to call Salvation Army, find a friend or list sell it for cheap sale. This meant that a lot of stuff was reused that in this part of the country is taken to landfill. Thirdly, this high recycling rates means a plethora of recyclable materials. This makes it easier and cheaper to incorporate goods with recycled materials into your business and personal life.
When we bought our first house, I was determined not to have to pay for this service. We went 3 years without any home garbage service. This meant that we had to be creative. We began to really be discerning about the packaging that came with the things we bought, as this was the largest amount of our waste stream. We recycled everything we could. We began to compost. All organic materials went into the compost bin. We found that what was left was mostly some plastic wrap and packing materials. This process left us with a great new attitude toward waste. We started looking at all the packaging that things came with. How much packaging was there? Was it recyclable? How easily? (Let’s face it, who wants to spend half an hour taking the metal off of a cardboard tube of peanuts?) Was there a better alternative? We found ourselves buying more in bulk. Reusing plastic bags. Buying less that we didn’t need, and thinking about life cycles of the things we did buy. For Portland, we fit right it… So, moving to Cleveland was a culture shock. A family of four might have a half dozen garbage cans on the curb every week. It fit right in with the furniture, building materials, and lawn waste that sits there every week.
I.t is not a huge surprise that I got involved with the zero waste core group of E4S. Along with a growing base of companies, Great Lakes Design Collaborative has declared a Zero Waste BHAG (Big Hairy Audacious Goal) for 2019. Our goal? To be a zero waste company by 2019. We are not alone. We are in good company with businesses like Great Lakes Brewing and Trinity Cathedral. We all want to make our locations zero waste producers. But it is more than just a feel good thing. Reducing waste can significantly affect the bottom line. Big locations like Trinity Cathedral, which operates Trinity Commons, can generate large amounts of trash. The more they reduce, the fewer the pick ups they need to schedule for their dumpster. This can mean thousands of dollars in savings every year. As the cost of transporting and disposing of waste only continues to rise, this savings will continue to increase.
One thing that the Zero Waste group is doing is hosting a series of workshops on getting your company to zero waste. The latest one featured teams from NASA and Fairmount minerals. They set their zero waste goal and they learned about how to start to achieve this goal. After the workshop, the groups will conduct a dumpster dive. This will give them a real and true idea of just what they are throwing away. I spoke with others who have done this and they are always surprised to find that much of what they throw away every day is easy to divert from landfill. Then comes the next step: setting goals. Part 2 of their workshop will look at the data from their dive and figure out what they can easily start recycling. Then we will look at the next few steps and how we can help them reduce in other ways. Some things might be simple, switching from one product with a non recyclable package to a similar one that does recycle. Others may end up being something that has to be tackled later in the process. The key to this workshop is that it is tailored to those enrolled, and every company has different needs.
Have you thought about how your company can reduce its waste, and the dollars it takes to dispose of that waste? Why not ask your boss or administrator to have your company sign up for a zero waste workshop? The next date will be Akron in August. If you are a Clevelander, do not fear as there will be another in the September in Cleveland.
Find out more about Zero Waste and how you can be a part of this great movement. Want to know more about a workshop? Feel free to contact me and I will make sure to follow up with you personally.
Jeni’s at the Film Festival
Friday, April 8th, 2011So as you likely know, I have spent the last couple of weeks preparing for and working at the Cleveland International Film Festival. Once again, this year, we are composting and recycling up at the Hospitality Headquarters. With record attendance and a huge increase in passholder sales, it has meant a big increase in folks up at the re purposed Bice restaurant space. About a month before the festival, I decided to see if I could reach out to Jeni’s Ice Cream in Columbus.
If you have read this blog for a while, then you know how much I love Jeni’s Ice Cream. I have written about them a number of times.These folks are so focused on quality and local ingredients, they practically know the cows that produce their milk. Focused on local and high quality ingredients, these guys make the best ice cream ever. I would be hard pressed to find an ice cream maker that tickles my fancy as much. So I was thrilled to hear that they were willing to come up to Cleveland to scoop ice cream for the last of the festival and to promote their upcoming location in Chagrin Falls.
They came and brought their own stuff, and scooped good sized scoops of tasty ice cream while mixing with the crowd. They were so well received that people were late to movies to get their tasty scoop-sorry theater guys. When they were offering the deepest Dark Chocolate that could still be called ice cream, I am not surprised. Of course they served up their signature Salty Caramel, which always seems a little more like brown butter it is so rich and tasty…. They brought the Goat Cheese and Figs as their “way out there” flavor, which is tame by comparison to some of their other offerings. Still, for the faint of heart it was a bit edgy. Even so, it got lots of oohs and aaahs from the staff and patrons.
The only problem I was concerned about when I knew they were coming was logistics. Up in the hospitality suite, we were doing so well at diverting huge amounts of trash from landfill. For the hundreds of patrons that came up there between each film, we still managed to do less than half a garbage bag a day. That garbage bag, ironically, was usually filled with the plastic sleeves that surrounded the biodegradable paper cups and plates that we brought in. In order to accomplish this, the staff and volunteers (all of us masochists, I am sure) would pick up and separate each persons trash for them. When you bring in an outside vendor, then you have to separate their stuff, make sure the plastics get recycled, the paper is compostable, etc. That is why I was so thrilled when Jeni’s started scooping and I saw they were using compostable goods. The tasting cups were made from recycled content and the spoons made from potato starch. Both went directly into our compost bins and will be dirt by the end of summer. I knew that Jeni’s was committed to local foods-they buy all their strawberries for the year, because quality strawberries are only in season in Ohio for a short while-but I was so pleasantly surprised to see that they also were worrying about their trash. Many of their ice cream containers were purchased to be reusable and when they left, they left nothing behind. It just warmed my heart to see them being so environmentally responsible, while also producing such great products and being successful enough to expand.
If you know me, you know that there are few companies that I like enough to want to work for them. So you put Jeni’s and the CIFF together, and I am in heaven. Could I do this every day?
Zero Landfill gives educators a boost!
Thursday, October 14th, 2010If you have been following this blog, then you know that I am a huge fan of Zero Landfill and their goals of diverting materials from the waste stream. The place where they make the biggest impact is in the design world. As designers, we know first hand how many sample swatches, chips, carpet tiles, and the like come to an office. Zero Landfill gives folks like us a place to drop off these items instead of them hitting the trash. Then art educators, artists, artisans, and the like come down to their location and find great stuff for their next projects. To make this service even more effective, Zero Landfill has begun a new program aimed directly at educators. They are teaching educators how to use some of their most common drop off items, how to think outside the box by using unconventional materials, and how to fire the artists within their classes by using things that are readily available. With school budgets on tighter budgets, this is the perfect time to make use of things that would normally head for the dump. Kudos to them for making an impact on the minds of our next generation! Check them out for a workshop near you!
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Clyde gets gassy…
Saturday, August 28th, 2010Cleveland is not the only city in Ohio that is turning to greener technologies to make a difference in their communities. Clyde, a small town near Sandusky, is looking at joining the ranks of other towns in northwest Ohio to create cleaner and greener energy. This time, however, they are not turning to solar power like so many of their neighbors. They are looking at turning trash into energy. From the News-Messenger website:
The idea is to build a traditional recycling center and an industrial-sized pyrolyzer. The pyrolyzer will take trash and heat it in the absence of oxygen to create pyro-gas, which is similar to natural gas. The pyro-gas will be used to run engines that power turbines to create electricity…
Some advantages of pyrolysis include eliminating future landfill methane by diverting waste and controlling ground and surface water pollution. It also has a closed loop design, which means the gases burn completely during electricity generation. It also discourages pathogens and rodents that would be in a landfill, the company said.
This is similar to the model that is being planned for the Cleveland area. I am not a fan of landfills, so anything to turn trash into something else makes me happy. Besides, the facility would increase recycling and turn the current hand sort method into an automated plant. This builds capacity and makes recycling across the region easier to maintain and support. It would lower local energy costs for local residents as well.
You go Clyde!
Keep Hazardous Materials out of your local dump!
Friday, August 13th, 2010If you are a resident of Cuyahoga County then September is the time to clean out that basement or garage. Mark your calendars for September 25 from 9am to 4 pm, as that is when you can take your hazardous household materials to the county fairgrounds in Berea and have them disposed of properly. This is for homes, not businesses, and yes, they will check your ID. So box up the old cans of paint, those tubes of roofing sealant, and those old florescent light bulbs and keep them out of the landfill!
Repair or replace-the $64 question.
Wednesday, August 11th, 2010It has been an interesting summer at home and at the office. We have had a fair share of mechanical breakdown. Among the biggies have been my laptop and our washing machine. First came the laptop. While I could have sent it out, I found out that it was likely the motherboard that fried and would likely cost me up to $500 to repair. At the same time, I managed to buy a newer machine, with much more power and memory for just under $450. Granted it was a floor model, but who cares about that anyhow? Smartly, I have been backing up my old laptop on a regular basis, so it worked out fine on the data side. But here I sit with an old laptop. It is need of repair, but how can I justify the expense, when it becomes more obsolete with every passing day. I have these fantasies of building a creative art piece suing it and other LED screens from other tech stuff of mine that has died, but let’s face it, it will likely never happen.
With the rise in our business around social media marketing and web design, I had been in need of a new phone. I bought a great phone that I am in love with, but this kind of consumption generates a lot of e waste. I generally update every couple of years, so this time I bought a brand new release in the hopes that I would not have to upgrade again in 2 years. But most consumers are on a regular 1-2 year upgrade cycle, and that is a lot of phones ending up in the waste stream. They can be recycled, but many are not. And e-waste is becoming a big issue, as many of the components of computers and cell phones are precious or semi precious metals that are not a renewable resource. Moreover, the heavy metals in some of these parts will leach into the groundwater when placed in some landfills-where it can contaminate groundwater and make its way to streams, oceans, etc. Technology has a price tag that we rarely think about-disposal.
I bought a front loading washer a few years ago. Our old one came with the house, but was likely purchased in the 70′s or early 80′s. It held up well and worked until it died completely from massive systems failure. Since the dryer was on its last legs as well, I bought a new set-Energy Star compliant and watched a huge reduction in water consumption and energy use of the following couple of years. Now it is acting up. I am in a similar position as the computer, in that I bought a new, but retired model, scratch and dent set for a song. It has worked well, but repair costs are so high that it will likely end up costing more to repair than the machine did itself. My first attempt at self repair (thanks to Google searches and forums) was unsuccessful. I will make another attempt, but hate the idea of spending a fortune to repair a machine for what I would spend for a new model that might be even more efficient than mine. Still, it is a lot of metal, a lot of rubber, a lot of labor that went into making this machine, and I feel like it has not lived its full life potential.
Throwing out anything that has not lived up to its potential seems somehow like eating veal or buying eggs that are not cage free. Everything that we buy has an embodied energy that cannot be replaced. It takes energy to harvest material, whether it is mined metals or the grown cotton of your shirt. It takes energy to turn those raw materials into parts or spin that cotton into threads. It takes energy to transport the raw goods to the factories where more energy is spent to turn it into the final product. That final product uses more energy to be transported to a store, where a retailer spend energy to display and sell it. By the time it gets into your home, it may have made it enough miles to circle the globe and used uncounted amounts of coal fired electricity and petroleum products. Everything you buy should be used and last, or it can just be counted as one more way we are wasting energy.
We live in a VERY disposable society. It is cheaper to replace than to repair in many instances. We build things not to last, but to be cheap-a move that allows more people to throw away more stuff and produce more trash. At least most companies are now on board with recycling or refurbishing your old appliances. Or there are plenty of places that can make use of things that need to be repaired. We produce machines so rapidly and so cheaply, that it becomes nearly impossible to make a living repairing machines and make a living wage. I repaired a television once and it cost me $200. When it broke down again, I had to give up-it was 10 years old and a new television of a similar size was less than $300. You can do the math.
It used to be that you bought an appliance and it was yours for life. Televisions and stereos were supposed to be owned so long, they were designed to be pieces of furniture. Though filled with toxic chemicals and coolants that sometimes had to be refilled, refrigerators made in the fifties often still work today-albeit inefficiently. Same with cars-a well maintained car from the 50′s and 60′s could run for several hundred thousand miles. It would be repaired and dents pulled, and metal painted and re chromed. Many of todays cars have replaced large amounts of metal with fiberglass and plastics. One accident and a car could easily be totaled. When I was a teen, several of my friends owned cars that had been totaled and brought back to life-not likely to be seen in many modern models.
Before you are so eager to buy that new appliance, or techno gadget, remember to consider how much use you can still get out of it.
Reduce, reduce, reduce 10 steps toward zero.
Thursday, May 27th, 2010In case you didn’t know, GLDC has expanding its branding and online social media services. This week has added a series of new clients, and we have been busy around the office trying to get some of the work cleared out before the holiday weekend. St the same time, I have been having multiple discussions surrounding reducing one’s waste. It seemed like a great time to offer up a “classic” blog post that I published a while ago.
Zero waste. It sounds impossible. One problem that we encountered when addressing setting up the new office, was trash pickup. We found that as a commercial site, we couldn’t get Cleveland trash pickup. We didn’t really want a giant ugly dumpster on the property that would end up being much more than we needed. The solution: a zero waste office. It remains to be seen if it can really be done or not. We are already working on it for our home. Today is trash day, and for the second week in a row, we don’t have a bag of garbage to put out. But can that sort of curb on trash be translated to an office setting? That remains to be seen. In the meantime, here are 10 steps that everyone can try to work toward a zero waste life.
1. Cook at home. Home cooking means that you know what goes into your food. You can control portions and deal with the waste. Additionally, take out food comes in containers that are often hard to recycle and often end up in the trash; and even recyclers don’t want that pizza box.
2. Reduce. Buy products that have little or no packaging. Yes, it freaks out the cashier when you set a handful of tomatoes on the blet with no little plastic bag, but they will get over it. If you can, buy in bulk. If large packages don’t fit your lifestyle (how long will it take me to use 25 lbs of sugar?), you can visit bulk departments at the supermarket. Take along your own containers, and you effectively eliminate packaging all together. And don’t forget to bring along your reusable shopping tote and avoid the plastic bags!
3. Recycle. While recycling may not be available curbside, there are plenty of drop off spots. I have heard that you can even drop off Styrofoam at Heinan’s. When you make the effort to go zero waste, you start to see just what can be recycled, and what can’t. This will eventually impact your buying choices-a good thing.
4. Reuse. Why buy Tupperware when those margarine containers are perfectly reusable? I even started washing ziplock backs and reusing them. Yes, my partner laughs at me, but who cares? Before replacing that broken appliance, see if it can be repaired rather than thrown out.
5. Compost. Organic materials compost and make great food for your plants. The garden will be better off, and so will the planet.
6. Take your own cup for coffee. If you buy coffee on the go, add it up. Every coffee or latte usually has a cup, a lid, and often a gripper. Where does it go when you finish? Bring your own mug and reduce all that waste.
7. Skip bottled water. Plastic bottles are bad for the environment. Why recyclable, most are destined for the landfill, so skip them. There is plenty of new research out that says they leach chemicals into the water and lots of bottled water companies are just packaging tap water anyway. Invest in a good steel water bottle if you drink a lot.
8. Buy better stuff. Why many goods may be cheaper, buy products that are sure to last. If you don’t need them anymore, they can be donated. Antiques are around, because we used to value craftsmanship and quality. Buy goods that will last longer than you need them to and donate, reuse or give them away when you no longer need them.
9. Have a garage sale. They say that one man’s trash is another man’s treasure. You will be hugely surprised just how true that is if you have a garage sale. Put a price on something and people want it. You will find that even the stuff that charity shops don’t really want, you can sell at a garage sale for a couple of bucks.
10.Adopt the one in one out rule. We have a strict policy of not adding to our household. For every new item that comes into our home, another goes out. This system is perfect for us. We no longer amass things that we don’t need. If we get a new item of clothing or new coffee mug, then another has to go out. This keeps us getting rid of items while they are still usable and can be donated or shared, instead of waiting for 10 years when those jeans are so out of style that no one will get any more use out of them.
What can you do to reduce your waste?
