June 26th, 2009
Truth About Glass Recycling
Stumble it!
Written by Trey Granger, courtesy of Earth911.com
Before you deposit the next beer or wine bottle into your blue bin, here are a few things to know about recycling your favorite sand-based product:
- It has the quickest turnaround of any curbside product, back on store shelves in as little as 30 days
- There’s a strong market for recycled glass, and the demand is not currently met
- A good portion of glass that you place in your recycling bin is not actually recycled.
What is Downcycling?
According to O-I Global, the leading glass manufacturer in North America, about 1.6 million tons of glass are downcycled, translating to almost 40 percent of the 4.2 million tons collected annually for recycling. Furthermore, this 4.2 million tons represents only 25 percent of total glass manufactured, as shown in the chart below.
Let’s start by explaining what happens to all this glass that isn’t reprocessed into new containers. To do this, we need to understand the concept of downcycling.
Downcycling is the process by which materials are recycled into a product of lesser-quality. An example for glass containers would be fiberglass or using it as an additive in concrete or ceramic tiles. The decision to downcycle glass is usually based on the quality of material, but who makes that call?
“This is most often the decision of the Material Recovery Facility (MRF),” says Paul Smith, O-I’s Global Sourcing Manager of Cullet. “Aggregate use of glass is important but limited in application. The recycling rate through MRFs could improve.”
One of the issues is the popularity of single-stream recycling, where all materials are collected in one bin. The materials are then separated at the MRF using a system of magnets, eddy currents and other machines, with glass being separated based on its weight.
During this process, glass tends to be crushed, which lowers the quality and increases the chances it will be downcycled. Smith says crushing can be a negative because large sizes are preferred when it comes to reprocessing glass into new containers.
Read the rest of this article here.
Popularity: 7% [?]
June 22nd, 2009
Kansas City Prefab Home: A Green Gem in the Heartland
As a native of Kansas City you can imagine how thrilled I was to learn about the new green prefab achievement in my home town. I learned about it from one of my favorite publications, Natural Home. They did a wonderful feature on the house, which you can read in its entirety here.
The 1,200 square feet house is a two-bedroom, one-bath home (remember in the eco-sphere small is good!) and is perched on stilts atop a hill. It has a wonderful view of downtown. It was designed by architecture students from the University of Kansas (KU), who are part of a program that focuses on sustainable and affordable design. It’s an excellent example of affordable, green design.
The home was built in six modular units in nearby Lawrence, Kansas. Then they trucked 40 miles to Kansas City and assembled. The house was designed and built over five months by the KU students. The owners paid around $150,000 for the house.
Natural Home also produced a nice video on the house – check it out.
Popularity: 11% [?]
June 19th, 2009
Upgrade to a Greener Car AND Get Cash for Your Old Car
So as far as I can tell there are now THREE great reasons why this is the time to get rid of your old hunk o’ junk and upgrade to a cleaner, greener car.
1) It is the right thing to do for the environment. Remember your car is one of the biggest ways you personally contribute to global warming.
2) There are ridiculous deals on cars right now. Dealers are suffering and you can negotiate with abandon.
3) Congress has just passed the “Cash for Clunkers” legislation that will allow consumers to get up to $4,500 for turning in an inefficient vehicle and buying a new, more efficient one.
So hop to it people!
The new bill would even allow consumers to buy a wide range of vehicles — including large pickup trucks — with the government money when they scrap an older, less-efficient model. The cars that are offered for trade-in must get 18 MPG or less, be built in 1984 or later, and be in operating condition. The new car purchased must be at least 22 MPG for a car, 18 MPG for a light truck or 15 MPG for a heavy-duty truck. To learn more about the requirements for the new cars click here.
The proposed program would subsidize the purchase of 600,000 to one million vehicles,
Popularity: 7% [?]
June 17th, 2009
Cool Green Shopping Tools
If you’re like me, then you know that feeling of confusion and disappointment you sometimes feel after going shopping for a new green product. You’ve done your research to find the right item and you’ve checked online versions of a store to see that they have it, but when you get there that specific lightbulb, organic cotton t-shirt, or MSC-certified halibut on sale is nowhere to be found. In its place are ten other options that might or might not offer the same benefits you were looking for.
Fortunately, there are some great tools/services/websites that can help you sort through options as you’re standing there in the store. Some are text messaging-based services, others are simple websites easily navigable on a cell phone, and still others that use the latest iPhone apps and related technologies to make shopping decisions easy and nearly real-time. Here’s a rundown on some we’ve found to be most helpful.
Green Household Products. Good Guide is a relatively new company that aspires to provide information on the health, environmental and social impacts of common products that we use in our home. They cover over 70,000 products so far in food, personal care, toy and household products category. The best part is that these ratings and reviews are available via an iPhone app and also via SMS / text messaging. You can get information on products by searching on product categories, product names, and also on the bar code (the numbers that appear right beneath it). To use it, simply send a text message to “41411″ and then include “gguide” and whatever you’re searching on in the message body.
Example: You’re in a store comparing two green cleaning products (let’s say Seventh Generation Shower Cleaner and Tilex Fresh Shower Cleaner). Text “gguide seventh generation shower” to 41411, and you get a report back showing Seventh Gen’s Shower Cleaner overall score of 8.5 and Health, Environmental and Social scores of 8.0, 9.2 and 8.4 respectively. Text “gguide tilex shower” and you soon get an overall score of 5.4 (8.0 Health, 3.5 Environmental and 4.9 Social). The website provides much more information about what’s behind these rankings. Fast, easy and helpful!
Seafood. Seafood is a veritable minefield of sustainability choices. The global seafood industry is very poorly controlled, meaning that you can find fish in your local grocery store that should instead be on the endangered species list. Fish can also pose health risks due to the accumulation of mercury and other toxins in fish at the top of the food chain. How it’s grown can make a huge difference — the same seafood farm-raised might cause environmental problems, while the wild-caught version might be fine. And it’s highly seasonal/local, so you’re never quite sure what you’ll find in the store.
This handy one-page guide from Neil Banas (brought to my attention by Grist) lays it all out on one easy sheet, clearly showing pitfalls such as choosing between Alaskan wild salmon (nearly the best) and Atlantic farmed salmon (nearly the worst). If you don’t have room in your wallet for that, though, try out the Blue Ocean Institute’s FishPhone text messaging service. Text a message starting with “fish” followed by the name of the fish you are looking for to 30644 and receive a short report on the merits of that particular option in a few seconds. The same content is available at the URL http://fishphone.org, which is specially formatted for viewing on mobile phones.
As an example, texting “fish bluefish” (a relatively common East Coast predatory fish) to 30644 and you get the following message: “YELLOW: some environmental concerns: HEALTH ADVISORY: High mercury, PCB and pesticide contamination. “Fish salmon” returns several different messages depending on the point of origin and whether it was wild caught or farm raised.
Other Categories. We’ll post updates on other helpful services as we find them. Please feel free to bring any of your favorites to our attention!
Popularity: 7% [?]
June 16th, 2009
Celebrate Father’s Day the Green Way
Father’s Day is this Sunday– but then I’m sure you already knew that. (Don’t worry– I can’t see your look of panic.) Why not make this the year that you fete your father the green way. No more silly neck ties, dumb polo shirts, or $4 greeting cards. We’ve got some great ideas for you, naturally.
Give the gift of your time. What does your dad really want more than anything else? To know that you love him and want to spend time with him. So take him out for brunch, or on a hike, or out to see a comedy show. Spend time just the two of you. No plastic packaging required!
Give another experiential gift. Does your dad secretly want to be a rock star? Get him some guitar lessons. Does he bang the tennis ball around? Get him a session with a tennis pro. Do you live near the ocean? Get him a surfing lesson. Remember that learning new skills keeps us all young at heart.
Make dad a love collage. Make like you’re 12-years-old again and cut up photos from magazines and paste them on a big sheet of paper. Show dad how you feel about him through visual images and text clippings. It will make him feel young again and it will be a very personal gift. And you’re recycling!
If stuff is not more your style, we have some good ideas too. How about a comfy hammock for pops to laze away in the summer breeze? Or how about a solar charger for your dad’s phone and iPod? Or some comfy organic cotton pajamas or a robe (both on super sale now). One of our favorite green merchants, Gaiam, has all of these and much more on sale (you get $20 off orders of $100). Just click here to visit Gaiam and use code AFGRN6 to get your savings. Must order by June 30.
When all else fails, resort to power tools. What guy doesn’t love a drill or a chain saw? It’s weird, but true. CPO is a company that reconditions power tools– that’s right, recycled tools. They have great brands like Makita, Bosch, Ryobi and much more. You’ll save money too.
Popularity: 2% [?]
