Archive for Recycling
Green Gazette (Issue 38) Planes, Trains and Automobiles
Posted by: | CommentsHello again, regular readers might be familiar with the Green Gazette and perhaps thought your author had retired or exhausted his supply of eco-tales of innovation and improvement. The truth is I was otherwise engaged but now I’m back - if that all feel a little bit Leno vs Conan please don’t cast me in the role of Jay. I do however have a few stories to share if you can stay a while.
It has been a horrible few months for Toyota, it seems that you can’t watch the news without learning more about safety and design issues that are impacting the giant (world’s largest) auto manufacturer. Correctly using the word irony is not always my biggest talent but it seems that the top brass at Toyota are now admitting that the root cause for many of the errors was success, that they grew too rapidly for their infrastructure to properly assess design faults and correct issues as they arose. 2010 will be a telling year for the company as they need accomplish three 
things really rapidly - explain how these things got through the cracks, make appropriate repairs to all vehicles on the road and improve their internal processes so that it doesn’t happen again. I think that they need to hit home runs on all three to remain on the top of the world auto buyers shopping list. In light of that it’s remarkable that the Prius has just won Consumer Reports award for best eco-friendly car. The Prius is a testament to the innovation at the company and the results were compiled after the current dark clouds settled over Toyota. Here’s hoping they resolve these critical issues and continue to lead the industry in making eco-friendly vehicles that benefit us all.
Would you believe that the combined amount of waste created by airlines in the US is in excess of 880 millions pounds of waste per year? More importantly they could (emphasis mine) be recycling some 75% of that total. The sad reality is that only about 20% of the waste created by our airlines is actually being recycled, that is not even a decent effort in my opinion. Perhaps we need to know more to hold airlines more accountable and a report that has just been published empowers you with exactly that information. The entire report is very alarming but I wanted to bring your attention to the following:
While airlines acknowledge the importance of recycling waste, no airline recycles all the major recyclables: aluminum cans, glass, plastic, and paper. No airline has a comprehensive program for minimizing or composting food waste or waste from snack packages, provides good public information about their recycling program, or reports out on progress in relation to any stated goals.
The good news I guess is that a lot can be done, I would highly recommend taking some time to look at the overall report it might just make you change your preferred airlines. The waste is borderline insulting to anyone who is committed to recycling I’ll just share some numbers if I may. Annually the airlines simply throw away:
- 9,000 tons of plastic
- Sufficient aluminum cans to build 58 Boeing 747 jets
- Sufficient newspaper and magazines to cover a football field 230 meters deep
Shouldn’t the airlines be interested in trying to offset some of the 600 million tons of carbon dioxide per year pumped into the atmosphere by commercial jets alone? The full report is available here, and if you want to take part in the ongoing survey the link is right here.
We have planes and automobiles in the post so I wanted to share something recent about trains. Not much out there to be honest, but as part of the Green stimulus in the US the plans for expanding/beginning high speed rail links look to be on track to a certain extent. I hope sooner rather than later as the thought of avoiding airports for journeys of up to 500 miles would have huge appeal to many in my opinion. If a train went from Phoenix to Los Angeles in 2.5 hours versus the 1 hour flight and all the hassles that go with flying were on offer I know I’d prefer the train. Not to mention that it is a radically greener way to transport people or freight.
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Waste Paper? Meet your destiny….”White Goat”
Posted by: | CommentsThis has to be seen to be believed and fortunately I have a video to include so that you know it’s not just a fanciful idea. I used to work at an 
office where over 600 employees occupied 3 buildings on a corporate campus, regrettably (and as recently as 2006) it was an environment that created an obscene amount of waste paper. We used to have training classes with 60 page staff manuals on paper, I’d attend meetings where in addition to the powerpoint presentation 15 or 20 of us might be watching we would each be handed a twenty page ‘deck’ so we could follow through the presentation from paper on our laps simultaneously! Sadly there were a high number of employees who were very ‘old school’ and emails containing policy or updates just didn’t exist to them unless the clicked their print button, hiked over to the printer and grabbed a paper copy to hide within a draw at their desk. It’s not real unless I can touch it seemed to the mentality.
Within the office they gradually moved to a situation where every 50 feet or so a giant blue paper recycling bin for paper would stand sentinel hoping that a small percentage of the forests destroyed in the name of profit might find their way back to paper mill for reproduction. To be fair some people even asked what these five foot tall plastic receptacles were for, as the months rolled on some people even started adding paper into them. Unfortunately just as many people filled their desk side trash cans on a daily basis with scraps and memos that never needed to be printed in the first place.
I won’t name the company for fear of causing outrage, let’s just say it’s a large and well known company who really should have enforced stricter recycling policy. By the time I left the company, when used to worked later in the evening I would see the cleaning crew come in and empty those recycling bins and would be pleased to see that ‘participation’ rates were beginning to improve. I wish that this product existed 5 years ago as I would have written to our executive board insisting it was considered for our office as well as the dozens of other equally large facilities throughout the world. It’s called White Goat and is named very appropriately.
In short it is a paper shredder designed specifically for large offices that create a significant amount of waste paper. That with water will pulp all waste paper and remarkably turn it into toilet paper. All of this from the same unit! It only takes 40 sheets of A4 paper to make one roll of toilet paper. The manufacturer estimates that ‘running costs’ will equate to about $0.10 per roll of paper. I believe that the company are only accepting pre-orders presently as the product was only recently unveiled at a Japanese ‘eco-trade’ fair late last year.
Watch out for staples!!!
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Best Green Videos (part one)
Posted by: | CommentsIf a picture is worth a thousand words then what value would you place on a well made video? One of the most exciting things about the internet (or redundant if you tire of seeing puppies doing cute tricks) is the very viral nature of the medium. When it comes to green campaigns the playing field of awareness has been leveled in many respects due to the growth of online video. A smaller marketing video with a television budget for just a small market TV region can reach all of North America or indeed the world. The impact of video via humour, creativity or emotive facts can create a buzz online relatively quickly and underneath the laughs or the fury a film can cause is the message. Eco-awareness is a mission of education and a call to action, naturally a 90 second video can convey a message that will create a greater impact than a 1,200 word essay dependent on your audience.
I’ve spent a good deal of time looking at videos that have created an impact but more importantly stop to make you think about the message so in an effort to bring you a few smiles and share some great eco-videos I wanted to launch into the first four for you to vote on.
1. Clean coal air freshener, a subtle dig at the absurdity of clean coal
2. Harrison Ford’s message about the rain forests
3. Mr. Wind, a favourite of mine since the first day I saw it
4. So obvious and simultaneously innovative, Worm Poop!
If the videos above stirred some interest from you I also wanted to provide a little more information about each:
- ‘Clean Coal’ was directed by the famed Coen Brothers as a direct message about the concerns with clean coal and was produced for This is reality.org.
- Harrison Ford’s appearance was on behalf of Prince Charles’ rainforest initiative The Prince’s Rainforest Project.
- Mr Wind was created by German alternate energy leader Epuron.
- Worm poop is the key ingredient behind products being manufactured by Terracycle a small New Jersey based manufacturer of 100% recycled plant food products. It’s really quite fascinating as this longer video shows.
So now we need your help. Please vote for one video and one video only for the inaugural winner of our first ‘Best Green Video’ election! We’ll try and do this more often. Polls close Feb 3.
Please select the best Green video
- Mr. Wind (82%, 9 Votes)
- Harrison Ford's waxing (18%, 2 Votes)
- Clean coal air freshener (0%, 0 Votes)
- Worm Poop (0%, 0 Votes)
Total Voters: 11
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Green MacGyver Eco-friendly Crafts – Recycled Gift Tags and Place Cards
Posted by: | CommentsHave you noticed holiday cards have gotten a lot fancier lately? They are foil lined envelopes, hand crafted cards and even musical cards that sing a complete Christmas carol. So, now that the holidays are over what do you do with these high quality cards? Should you just pack them away into a shoebox? Nope, that will just guarantee that you will be on a future episode of Hoarders. Throwing them away is wrong and wasteful. What does that leave you with?
With eco-friendly crafts, you can repurpose those cards into gift tags for next year or seating cards for Christmas dinner parties. These eco-friendly crafts are fun and practical as everyone needs gift tags to reuse holiday bags or attach to wrapped presents. It is nice to put a great tag on a gift that is wrapped with newspaper as the tag makes it more appropriate for the holidays.
How to make Gift Tags
Materials:
- Scissors
- Single hole punch
- Holiday cards
Instructions:
- Check to make sure nothing is written on the inside cover of the card before you start as you are not using the part of the card that was written on. That part can be recycled.
- Cut the cover off of the card.
- There are a few different ways to make tags: if there is large image card like an ornament or tree you can simply cut it out, and then with a hole punch make a hole where the ribbon will go. Also, if there are a number of large to medium size images you like Santa, a rocking hoarse and a tree you could cut out each image. This is a very chic looking tag as they are an interesting shape and size. You will use a ribbon to fasten it to the bag or to tie it to a wrapped gift. You simply write your to and from message on the under side.
- Read More→
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