CRRA: They know how to do a conference!

As I mentioned, I had the privilege of presenting the Take Back The Filter campaign as part of a panel on zero waste grassroots activism at the conference of the California Resource Recovery Association this past Wednesday. I'll tell you more about the presentation itself in a second. But first, I need to gush a bit about how the waste was handled at this conference, vs. the Blogher conference I attended a few weeks ago, and how easily other organizations could adopt this model for their gatherings.

Granted, CRRA is all about zero waste. It's the whole point of the organization, after all. But so what? Just because other organizations might not cite waste reduction as their purpose for being in existence doesn't mean they can't make it one of their values and strive for zero waste at their gatherings. So, that said, here are a few things I saw that made me smile:

The requisite recycle/compost/trash stations throughout the hotel:



Water stations in every meeting room with actual glasses and no bottled water in sight. There were (unfortunately) bowls of plastic-wrapped hard candies. I wonder how many people actually took them.



Amazingly, there were even compost bins in the bathrooms for paper towels!



At the front registration desk was a box for returning the plastic nametag holders to be reused, as well as a white board tallying how much recycling, composting, or trash the conference has generated over it's 4 days and the total diversion rate, which by Wednesday was an impressive 94.9%.



And by the way, the lunch was served on durable tableware with cloth napkins. There was not a disposable anything in sight. I was told there were 800 registrants at this conference. (Blogher had 1,000.) So, it is possible to feed a large number of people sustainably without resorting to disposable boxes, whether those boxes are compostable or not.

Our presentation itself went really well! Here's the description from the conference brochure:

Working Together Toward Zero -- Grassroot Outreach Efforts/Coalitions With National Impact

In Carbonopoly, whatever card you select, collaboration is the key. To pass Go and to collect a functional future, coalitions, grassroots efforts and the new media — social networking websites like YouTube, Myspace, Facebook, as well as email and even cell phones — are some of the best ways to implement change in your community.

* Sierra Club National Zero Waste Committee, Ann Schneider,
* Clorox/Brita - Take Back The Filter, Beth Terry
* Zero Waste, the "New Media" and The Success Of The Story Of Stuff, Portia Sinnott, LITE Initiatives/Waste Reduction Project
* Zero Waste Los Angeles, Reina Pereira, City of Los Angeles
* Moderator: Stephanie Barger, Earth Resource Foundation

Each of us had about 15 minutes to present the work that we have been doing with a question/answer period at the end. I wish I could tell you more about it, but I was so nervous -- about presenting and also about my kitty -- that once it was over I promptly forgot the whole thing. Kinda like my wedding day. Fun and exciting and I wanted to throw up. Can't wait to do it again! (Present the campaign, that is, not get married.)

Plastic tallies for last week and this week coming up Sunday night, barring anymore unforeseen disasters. My sister and her husband are coming from Maryland to visit, so I may not post a lot next week either. But I do have at least one guest poster coming up, so stay tuned. And if anyone else wants to fill in with a guest post, let me know. I'd be happy to take a little break.

Clif? Are you listening?
 

 

Take Back The Climate

I've been asked to present the Take Back The Filter campaign (urging Clorox to take back and reuse/recycle used Brita water filter cartridges) as part of a panel at the California Resource Recovery Association's (CRRA) annual conference next week. I am excited to have the opportunity to share the campaign with this audience, and when initially asked, wasn't at all nervous about speaking: I've been talking about not much else for the past 3 months!

Not nervous, that is, until I found out that the theme of the conference is CARBONOPOLY: Climate Change Is Not A Game We Can Lose.

Oh dear. I know about zero waste. I know about the problems of plastic. I know why I don't want Brita filter cartridges to continue to be landfilled or incinerated. But I hadn't related the issue to climate change. In fact, I actually knew very little about global warming except that we're all supposed to use less energy, buy fewer things that need to be shipped, and purchase locally to avoid fuel costs. I've been on the Low Carbon Diet with some friends for several weeks now. But still, I hadn't ever thought about the connection between recycling and global warming. What the heck was I going to say to this group of industry professional?

Thanks to Ann Schneider of Sierra Club's Zero Waste Group for referring me to a fantastic report called, "Stop Trashing The Climate," a joint effort among the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, Eco-Cycle, and Global Anti-Incinerator Alliance, which was published in June of this year. This report describes the multiple ways that waste affects our climate, some obvious, and some that may not immediately come to mind.

First, of course, there are the gases produced by landfills and incinerators. These gases are the direct effect of dumping or burning our waste. According to the report, "Landfills are the largest source of anthropogenic methane emissions in the U.S., and the impact of landfill emissions in the short term is grossly underestimated -- methane is 72 times more potent than CO2 over a 20-year time frame." But what about methane captured for energy? At the Hay Road landfill that I visited with Janice Sitton last January, we were told that the methane from the landfill is captured. But according to the findings of the Stop Trashing The Climate report, "The portion of methane captured over a landfill's lifetime may be as low as 20% of total methane emitted."

And incinerators emit not only CO2 but also nitrous oxide (N2O), a greenhouse gas that is 300 times more potent than CO2 at trapping heat in the atmosphere. In fact, the authors of the report recommend that "Existing incinerators should be retired, and no new incinerators or landfills should be constructed." But what about filters on incinerators that trap the gases and other pollutants?

Here's where we come to the main point of the report, the indirect results of landfilling and incineration that trapping the gases and other discharges from landfills and incinerators doesn't address: "Wasting directly impacts climate change because it is directly linked to resource extraction, transportation, processing, and manufacturing."

The more materials we send to the landfill or incinerator, the more materials must be extracted in order to replace them. And transported. And processed. And every step along the way uses more energy and produces more greenhouse gases than reusing or recycling the materials we already have.

In the case of Brita filters, that means more drilling for oil to make plastic and all the problems associated with that process. It also means transporting the oil, usually from places that are very far from where the oil will be used. And then processing the oil into new plastic pellets. And then shipping the new plastic. Then creating the new plastic filters. And then shipping the filters.

If Brita filters were designed to be reused instead of trashed, many, many greenhouse gas-generating steps in the process could be avoided. And even if, due to regulatory impediments related to the purity of plastic that comes into contact with drinking water, the filters themselves can't be reused, Clorox's development of a way to recycle the materials would still slow the need for more oil and creation of new plastics for other products.

It becomes clear to me that folks who criticize this campaign, or any other extended producer responsibility campaign, on the grounds that it takes energy to ship the used products back the manufacturer are not taking into consideration the environmental costs of creating brand new products to replace those that are trashed.

Of course, there are other major environmental costs to creating new plastic which I haven't addressed in this post, since the focus here is on global warming. I discussed some of them (including harm to the marine environment) in my post, "Plastic is made from oil." But the new (to me) information from the Stop Trashing The Climate report both heartens and saddens me. The link between waste and global warming re-energizes my commitment to source reduction and recycling and gives me an additional argument in support of the Take Back The Filter campaign. But the information also grieves me to think of one more way that we are trashing our world.
 

 

Schwag & Twitter at Blogher '08

The Blogher Conference was kinda overwhelming. I feel like I've returned from another planet and need to be quarantined and debriefed. It was refreshing to go out to dinner last night with Michael and his sister and cousin and find out that they had never heard of Twitter. Have you? Because I had heard of it, and even signed up for it months ago, and then never "tweeted" because I didn't understand why I should. But OMG, everyone at Blogher08 was tweeting up a storm. So, never one to resist peer pressure, I started tweeting too. Wanna follow me?

It was fun to hang out with some real live green gals whom I'd only so far met through cyberspace. From left to right: Jenn from The Smart Mama, me, Michelle from Green Bean Dreams and Jenn from Tiny Choices. Mamabird from Surely You Nest preferred to take the picture rather than be in it.


We also met Green L.A. Girl Siel, Have Fun * Do Good's Britt Bravo, and Big Green Purse's Diane MacEachern, as well as several other green and socially conscious bloggers. I'm sorry to have missed Aurora from Foxy Art Studio and Vanessa from Random Ramblings. Next time, we have to make a better plan for meeting up. (Like, we need to make a plan. Period.)

Heading for lunch after the meetup, we saw this...

...and the five of us (Jenn, Jenn, Green Bean, MamaBird, and I) decided to find plastic-free food elsewhere. Great conversation was enjoyed with okay food from the Emporio Rulli il Caffe on Union Square, served up on durable tableware, except for the plastic-packaged breadsticks and salad dressing that I returned to the server.

Later, we found out that the Blogher lunch was actually packaged in compostable PLA containers, not regular plastic, and will be composted in San Francisco's commercial composting facility. Even still, the following day, Jenn, Jenn and I passed up the free lunch and took a stroll to the San Francisco Ferry Building for a nearly waste-free lunch at Mejita Cocina. If only I could remember to bring my own cloth napkin, I'd never have any trash at all!

PLA lunch offering notwithstanding, there was quite a bit of plastic at the Blogher Conference, as GreenBean demonstrates here in her best Vanna White impression. Hmm... we have the glasses. Why fill them with bottled water when I'm pretty sure the hotel has running water available? When I asked a bellhop for the water fountain on that floor, he looked quizzical and said he didn't think there was one. So I filled up with lukewarm water from the bathroom sink, since it had one of those automatic fixtures without hot and cold knobs.

As I mentioned in a previous pre-Blogher post, the conference organizers had the brilliant idea of setting up a recycling room for all the unwanted plastic and other swag attendees didn't want to take home. At the end of the day on Saturday, the Zwaggle recycling room had collected over 900 pounds of the stuff! The Zwaggle crew said they hoped most of it would be picked up by the vendors to reuse. I hope these vendors will also use the information they gain from picking up all their crap and come up with some truly useful schwag (or swag... there are disagreements all over the Net about the correct term) next time. Who really needs a Michelin Man key chain?

(Diane MacEachern returns her unwanted schwag.)

Oh, and see that bottled water? It was included in our Blogher organic cotton tote bags. It's actually Primo water in a bottle made from Ingeo, a corn-based compostable material. I left mine on the recycling table. Why? Because I don't think we need to be drinking any kind of bottled water, compostable or not, when perfectly good tap water is available, and San Francisco has some of the best. See my post, Think Outside The Biota Bottle, for more on this topic.

So, what the heck is Zwaggle? It's actually not a conference schwag recycler at all, although based on the success at Blogher, they may do more schwag recycling. I had a nice conversation with Zwaggle founder Adam Levy, who explained that Zwaggle is on online resource for parents to swap used children's items (clothes, furniture, equipment, toys, etc.) to reduce the need to buy more stuff. Zwaggle is different from Freecycle in that it is nationwide and based on a point system. Members list the items they want to give away on the site and assign a "price" based on points rather than dollars. Other members "buy" items using their points, and only pay for applicable shipping.

How does one get point? Each member gets 50 points for joining and additional points for referring friends and giving away items. Adam plans to add a system for purchasing points with dollars at some point, as well as a gift registry. Imagine asking friends to give used gifts for birthdays and baby showers rather than new. Adam says he got the idea for Zwaggle because, while he himself is not a parent, nearly all of his friends are, and he's seen the massive amounts of new stuff they've purchased when children are born. I think Zwaggle is a great idea that could put Babies R Us out of business if it catches on.

So, while there was certainly a major effort to green the conference (Michelin paying the cost of carbon offsetting for every attendee; GM providing hybrid vehicles for carpooling bloggers; Blogher providing organic cotton totes; the hotel providing lunch in compostable boxes and breakfast on durable tableware; Zwaggle providing schwag recycling) and probably a lot less waste than at most conferences, I wanted more. More!

I wanted more emphasis on environmental issues and environmental blogging during the sessions. But as Green LA Girl Siel said in a comment on her blog, "Beth and other enviros at BlogHer — Part of this is our fault for not volunteering to get more involved in the planning process. We must change that next year –" To which I responded, "Siel, you’re right! One more thing to add to my “To Do” list."

What do you say green bloggers? Should we get more involved in Blogher greening or create our own green bloggers conference?
 

 

Two very different Hawaii trips

This weekend, Anna C. of the blog BYOTalk and I will both be in Hawaii. I'll be in Waikiki kicking back for a few days visiting my parents and getting my blowdryer fixed. No big deal. I'll continue to blog while I'm away, and I'll be back on Tuesday.

Anna, on the other hand, will be joining the crew of the Alguita oceanographic research vessel in Hilo for a month-long trip to the North Pacific Gyre to study marine debris concentrations. This is the area of the "Pacific Garbage Patch," which I'm sure most of you have heard about by now. (If not, please read the article, Plastic Ocean.)

This will be the 8th voyage for the Alguita, and this time the crew plans to "venture further west than ever before, investigating possible concentrations North of Hawaii, and just East of the International Date Line. It may be that the areas of the North Pacific Gyre with the highest concentrations of marine debris have yet to be seen or studied."

That quote was taken from the expedition's blog, http://orvalguita.blogspot.com, which will be updated with posts and images during the coming month. I've posted a link to it on my sidebar, and I encourage those who are interested to track the progress of this voyage to find out just what plastic is doing to our oceans.

I have to admit, I'm really envious of Anna and the crew. I'd love to be going out there to see for myself. But in a phone conversation a few days ago, Anna told me that the seas are predicted to be very rough and the trip challenging. I'll look forward to experiencing the journey vicariously through the blog, and I hope you will too.
 

 

I think we all do that sometimes

Beth is away at a three-and-a-half day meditation retreat. She goes on these about twice a year, at a convent in Marin County called Santa Sabina, and they're very good for her, if only because she spends a large part of the time she's supposed to be meditating sleeping, and she desperately needs some sleep after staying up till dawn most days writing this blog.

In her absence, I'll be writing today's post. Who am I? Her husband, Michael. If you've been reading this blog regularly, you'll have seen mention of me. I also comment fairly frequently under the name "terrible person", which is a name I used to use on a local BBS back in the 90's. This was actually where Beth and I first encountered each other and attracted each other's interest. You've got to hand it to a woman who would be interested in a guy who calls himself "terrible person". But then, you should have seen the things *she* was writing. But I digress. All the time, in fact. Anyway, this feels a little like one of those "Family Circus" comic strips in which cartoonist Bil Keane purports to have let his eternally three-year-old son Billy fill in and draw.

People sometimes ask me, and ask Beth, "What is it like for Michael? How does he feel about your efforts to make people aware of the pervasiveness and dangers of plastic, and to reduce, reuse, and recycle around the house that you share?"

Well, it's not always easy. But I think it's worth it. First of all, Beth spends an extraordinary amount of time on this blog. I hope you all appreciate how hard she works on it, all while working three and a half days a week as a bookkeeper. It would be so great if she did not have to work, or could make this her job, so that she could devote herself to this full-time. Of course, part of the reason Beth stays up all night working on this blog is that she simply likes staying up all night. She's nocturnal. Some people are. (Me, I like to get up before six a.m. and go running or swimming. And I zonk out around eleven.) And Beth tends to immerse herself totally in one activity at a time, for a few months to a year. This involves reading everything she can on the subject, buying all the equipment needed for it, keeping accurate statistics (arranged in spreadsheets, or reported on a blog) of her progress with it, etc., most of this done late at night. Before plastic, it was running. Before running, it was knitting, or watching movies. So it's not as if I saw that much more before she started FPF, so I can't really blame it. Besides, it's important. To her, but also to the world.

I keep thinking that eventually, Beth will get tired of blogging about plastic, and move on to something else. I mean, we're getting two kittens soon! Who would want to blog when there are kittens to play with? But this time, I think it might be different. I think Beth will stick with the plastics project for a while. A big reason for that is the feedback she receives from you. Having consistent readers, who really care what she has to say, really means a lot to her and encourages her.

Besides the time she spends researching and writing about plastic, and sorting it out at home, there's the other issue. Beth has set herself very firm rules about the use of products made from plastic or packaged in it (as well as the use of many other commercial products, such as household cleaners.) Beth constantly asserts that her rules are only for herself. But it can be hard to live with someone observing such rules without being affected by them.

Let me say, though, that I have never been a huge user of plastic. I don't buy a lot of take-out food, or packaged food: I tend to eat a lot of fresh fruits and vegetables. I'm not a typical American consumer. I've never owned a car; I use my bicycle, my feet, or public transportation. (Well, I get a free ride to work in the "casual carpool" -- but that's just too convenient to pass up.) But I have my own reasons for many of these behaviors. I can't stand waste. I can't stand to see usable stuff thrown out: food, clothing, petroleum. Time, for that matter. Especially when there is an advantage in conserving, such as saving money. I pick up plastic bottles on the street, because every few months, I bring a big bag of them to the recycling center and get a few bucks back in redemption money. Redemption! I used to drink out of polycarbonate bottles, until I learned about leaching and outgassing. So in general, I see Beth's efforts to reduce plastic use in our house as something very positive, that will improve my health, and I'm glad for it.

Sometimes, though, plastic is just so convenient. I like to eat cottage cheese - it's all in plastic tubs. They're recyclable, but recycling is a poor alternative to avoiding use in the first place. And when I've broken down and bought something plastic, and I come home with it, and Beth seems so disappointed and disapproving, as if I've brought pork into a Kosher home, and tells me, in case I bought it to share, that she will not be partaking, it can be very frustrating, and guilt-inducing. But then, I think how it must be for her. She's trying so hard to reduce plastic use. And here is *her husband*, who of all people should be supporting her, bringing plastic into the house, ruining her attempts to bring her consumption to zero, totally throwing off her statistics -- but more than that, doing something that is bad for the environment, and bad for me.

The reason I can understand this is that I experience it myself. I work at a large law firm, as a librarian. The attorneys work very hard, and make a lot of money. The staff, especially the secretaries, also work very hard, and don't make anywhere near what the lawyers make. The firm provides all sorts of refreshments to keep us going, hard at work: coffee, soda, granola bars (individually wrapped), packets of instant oatmeal, etc. Attorney meetings are typically held over lunch, which is ordered from local caterers, in individual plastic containers or big plastic trays. The bottom floor of our high-rise building, and the surrounding downtown San Francisco neighborhood, is full of takeout restaurants, from which people are always ordering, often in styrofoam boxes, because they don't have time to make their own food. We have water coolers that dispense wonderful filtered, chilled tap water (not from big polycarbonate bottles), but most people drink the individual bottles the firm also provides. What this means is that there is a huge amount of waste being generated in our offices. And this drives me nuts.

Unfortunately, the argument that I use on myself to conserve, saving money, doesn't work at a place where the attorneys bill six hundred or more dollars an hour to put together multimillion dollar deals. Reduction, reuse, and recycling are very low priorities. Part of it is apathy: people just don't care enough to use real dishes and metal cutlery instead of paper bowls and plastic forks, or to actually think for a moment, before tossing their waste, whether it goes in the recycling bin or the trash, or actually to read the signs placed on the waste bins indicating what should go in each. Someone else will clean it up. But perhaps even worse is the other part, ignorance. People just don't know. They don't understand that food-soiled paper can't be recycled, or that most plastic can't be either, so they toss it in with the recycling, contaminating it and likely rendering it unsellable, all the while congratulating themselves on having done their part. And I sometimes get really angry at this. But then I remember, these people work very hard all day. They have long commutes; they have children, parents, themselves to take care of. Sometimes, you just can't think about what you're doing. I know this, because I don't always. *I* get tired, *I* find myself in a hurry, *I* just want to be able to have my food or my drink and not have to get up and go to the kitchen and clean my mug or my bowl and fill it up ... And I'm like this when I'm shopping for home, too, or when I'm there.

Back in 1987, when I was in college, I worked as a bike messenger in Boston. One of my fellow messengers was a guy, a kid really, probably not even eighteen, named Matt Cook, and he was completely nuts. He rode broken-down three-speeds, each lasting a few weeks before it collapsed or he crashed it, faster than I could go on my new mountain bike. In social situations, his contributions to conversations took the form of one comment, an unchanging rejoinder to any utterance by anyone else: "I think we *all* do that sometimes." No matter what anyone said, that would be his response, relevant or not. The funny thing was, sometimes it would be incredibly relevant. It would be exactly what needed to be said. And then it was so nice to be able to count on him to say it.

The point is, we're all on a continuum. I use far less plastic than the people with whom I work, than most Americans. Beth uses far less plastic than I do. But even she slips occasionally, for instance, if I buy Haig's hummus. Or this continuum has many dimensions. Beth may use less plastic than I, but I never rent cars. Whatever. The important thing to remember is that, as Matt Cook would say ... well, you know. It's not a competition. And none of us will be perfect. It's just important for each of us to do as much as he or she can. The more a person does, the better it will be for him- or herself and the world. Beth understands that I'm trying. I understand that *she's* trying.

I had hoped to discuss some other issues, and to include some photos in this post, and polish up the writing a bit more, but it's getting late and I need to get to bed so I can get up and swim a mile and a half tomorrow morning and then go to work and organize my colleagues to put on a performance at the firm's annual holiday party. So I'll be signing off, hoping this was coherent and senseful. But I want you all to know how much I appreciate your support of Beth, and how much *she* appreciates it. I wish you all good luck, and an enjoyable late fall/early winter, and I'll look forward to reading your comments.

 

Recycling part 5: Only in San Francisco

Continuing my visits to SF bay area waste facilities, I took a tour yesterday of the San Francisco MRF (material recovery facility, aka recycling center) and San Francisco "dump." What I saw looked pretty much the same as at Davis Street and CWS, so I won't bore you with more photos of sorting machines and baled materials. Instead, I'll sum up the experience with this little video I put together showing both operations, the clean and the stinky. This video is more detailed than the one I made of the CWS operation:


What you don't see in this video, what San Francisco has that other recycling and garbage facilities lack (besides being a whole lot bigger) is an artist in residence! Yep, you heard me. San Francisco Dump has an Artist in Residence program. Artists get space at the dump and access to whatever materials they want to use for three-month periods.

Friday night, Michael and I attended a presentation of the SF Dump artists at the Herbst Theatre. The first half of the show included videos created by the garbage artists. And the second half was an amazing performance of the Junkestra Symphony, a musical piece composed and played on pieces of junk, unaltered. None of the "instruments" were cut or changed in any way from how they'd been found at the dump. It sounded great!

Here are photos from Friday night's performance as well as art displayed in the theater lobby and at the San Francisco dump yesterday. First, photos of the Junkestra after the show. Click on any image to see larger.








These plastic bag dresses were displayed in the lobby during intermission, when wine was served which had come from vineyards using compost from SF's commercial compost facility.



Yes, this dress is made from woven plastic bags!



Here is the artist in residence, Philip Bonner, at home in the studio yesterday, as well as artwork displayed in the lobby of the SF Dump Education Center:






For more information about the SF Dump Artist in Residence Program and to find out about visiting, go to: http://www.sunsetscavenger.com/AIR/index.htm.
 

 

Recycling Part 3: Further Lessons from Davis Street Transfer Center

My tour of Davis Street Transfer Center continued with a trip to the garbage transfer pit. This is where all of Oakland's non-recycled garbage is dumped before being transferred in huge trucks to the Altamont Landfill. Just look at it all. You may not be able to tell from the photo how much recyclable material is mixed in with the garbage, but I can assure you that it's a lot.


LESSON 9: Your hands are the very last human hands that will touch these items before anthropologists dig the stuff up in hundreds of years. That's pretty much a direct quote from Rebecca Jewell. Contrary to what some people believe, items placed in Oakland garbage bins are never sorted. They are never even touched by human hands once they leave your curb.

Our residential bins are lifted and dumped mechanically into the garbage truck; the truck dumps its load at the transfer station; bulldozers ride over the garbage, compressing it to allow as little air into the mix as possible and pushing it forward towards an opening in the floor, under which a huge truck waits to be filled from above; another heavy machine adjusts the materials in the truck to balance the load; and finally, this larger truck carries the garbage to the Altamont Landfill, where the goal is not biodegradation but "mummification." Imagine what future generations will think of us when they dig up these "mummies."

Anyway, the point is that if you put a recyclable item in the garbage, no one is going to rescue it for you. So while it's very important to keep the wrong things out of the recycle bin, it's just as important to put the right things in.




Opposite the platform where Rebecca and I were standing was a huge pile of restaurant waste: mounds of food in plastic bags and a lot of valuable cardboard. This is where the scavenging birds were hanging out.


LESSON 10: As careful as you are with your waste at home, by dining out you could be contributing to a lot more waste than you know. Seeing this pile of mostly compostable and recyclable garbage makes me really consider which restaurants I want to patronize and also what questions I can ask beforehand.

In fact, that same afternoon after the tour, I had lunch at Oliveto, a local Oakland restaurant, and made a point of asking about its recycling and composting practices. My server assured me that the restaurant does both. Afterwards, I went next door to Peaberry's Coffee & Tea and asked what they do with their used coffee grounds. "We just dump them," was the response. I ended up carrying home a warm bag of coffee grounds for my compost bin as well as the plastic bag they'd been "dumped" in to reuse.

It's not easy asking these questions. You never know when people will look at you like you're from outer space. But looks are just looks. And the more you get in the habit of asking questions about the products you buy, the easier it becomes to speak up. And you become a more savvy consumer.

But I've leapt ahead, and it's time to get back to Davis Street, where the tour continued. On our way out of the transfer pit, we spied a few of the other workers at the facility.



A mama cat and three little kittens eyed us warily as we attempted to interview them about their jobs. No luck. They scurried through a hole in the wall. I asked Rebecca why kitties would want to live in such a loud, scary place with big trucks constantly thundering through. Of course, it's because there are so many rodents for them to eat. The cats do more than look cute for visitors. They help with essential pest control.

I didn't have time to view the other areas of the transfer center, but Davis Street collects a lot more than residential garbage and recycling. For example, they accept the food and yard waste from our green bins that are then shipped to Grover Landscaping in Modesto to be composted.


I asked Rebecca about composting the new biodegradable plastics that are made from corn, sugar, and potato starch. Her answer was not the most encouraging.

LESSON 11: Compostable plastic you put into your city's compost bin (as opposed to your own backyard composter) may not actually be composted. Currently, compostable plastics are being developed before infrastructures exist to deal with them. According to Rebecca Jewell, compostable plastics take much longer to break down (27-32 weeks) than other organic matter. Therefore, a compost facility like Grover Landscape Services, which typically "cooks" its compost for a much shorter time, cannot process bio-plastics completely, and any such plastics they receive may end up being filtered out at the end of the compost process and discarded if they have not fully broken down.

I plan to do a whole lot more research on the subject of the different types of bio-plastics and issues surrounding them. And I hope to take more tours, of other recycling facilities, our landfill, and especially compost operations if I'm allowed.

Other services that Davis Street offers include: Construction debris processing, motor oil recycling, large appliance recycling, wood waste processing, latex paint recycling, old tire recycling, mattress recycling, and e-waste processing. Of course, none of these items are recycled through the curb-side recycling program and shouldn't be put in the bin. They have to be brought to the facility separately.

And finally,

LESSON 12: The more you learn about recycling and waste disposal, the more you realize that the issues are complex, the system isn't perfect, and there's always a lot more to learn. Dealing with waste is a lot more than a set of simple rules that everyone can follow about which items go in which bin. And the complexity of the issue can lead us to question the concept of waste itself.

Why do we have so much waste to deal with in the first place? And what can we do to reduce it? While it's been very instructive for me to learn all about recycling and garbage disposal, I remain convinced that those should be our very last options for living in an ecologically responsible manner. And I'll continue to focus first and foremost on reducing the amount of "stuff" that I acquire and finding alternatives to the most problematic material: plastic.
 

 

First Flush

It's raining tonight. I know I was going to write more about my trip to the transfer center, but it's raining tonight. Finally. The water is coming down in sheets and our poor thirsty plants are in shock, as are we. I was going to write about something else, but all I can think about is the rain.

Our first big rain of the season is called "first-flush" because the water washes all the debris and pollutants from the land down the storm drains and into the Bay and finally the sea. I don't know if tonight is our official first-flush, but walking home I saw rivers of water rushing along the curbs and falling into the drains. And there I was in the dark trying to untangle plastic from the grates before it was swept down.

This is the night of reckoning. During the dry days, plastic bottle caps and lighters and straws and plastic bags are merely theoretical threats to marine life. On a night like this, they become real. Tomorrow our streets will look sparkling new. We won't see the brown water flowing beneath them or the damage we've caused by our carelessness. Unless we choose to look.
 

 

Recycling Part 2: Lessons from the Davis Street Transfer Center

As I mentioned in my first post on the subject of recycling, "Wait! Are you sure that's recyclable?" I'd scheduled a trip to the Davis Street Transfer Center today, the place where all of Oakland's garbage and compost and much of its recycling is taken before moving on to its next use or final resting place. My tour guide today was Rebecca Jewell, Davis Street's recycling program manager. And our first stop was the brand new $9 million MRF (Materials Recovery Facility) which processes up to 400 tons of recyclables per day for 12 difference Bay Area jurisdictions.

Unfortunately, I was not aware before I came that while Davis Street accepts my household garbage and compost, a different recycling company, California Waste Solutions, picks up and processes the recycling for my area of Oakland. According to Rebecca, it's a smaller facility and may not be able to handle as many different materials as the Davis Street MRF can. So I'll try to schedule a tour of that one so I can compare. Nevertheless, touring the Davis Street facility was extremely educational. As you'll see, I took a lot of photos. You can click on any image to see a larger version.


First, all the single-stream recycling is dumped in the entry of the MRF, where it's then moved onto the sorting machine. Unfortunately, the sorting machine was completely stopped when I entered the MRF and had been for about a half an hour. Why? Plastic bags and other unrecyclable materials jamming the machine!

LESSON 1: Do not put loose plastic bags or any other kind of plastic sheeting in your recycling bin! I said it in my previous post, and it's worth repeating here. Likewise, no blankets, hoses, ropes or other strapping materials. Think of your vacuum cleaner. You know how it jams up if you suck up a piece of string or cord and then you have to spend a while unwinding it? A sorting machine gets jammed in the same way, only on a much bigger scale. See for yourself:





Here is a list of other materials that can wrap around the machine and cause it to jam: chains, Christmas lights, clothing, copper tubing, cords from electronic devices, extension cords, tarps and other plastic film, metal hangers, sheets, string, wading pools (yep, it's on the list!), wires. Do not put these items in your recycling bin.

LESSON 2: Certain heavy items will damage the equipment and should not be placed in the recycle bin. A lot of these will be obvious, but I'm pulling them from a list that Rebecca Jewell created based on actual items that people have placed in the bin. They include: bowling balls, bricks, concrete, engine parts, rock, tires, toilet seats, and other building materials.

In addition to heavy items, one of the biggest hazards in the recycling stream, believe it or not, are mini propane tanks. Yes, people try to recycle them. And yes, they explode in the machine and are a hazard for workers. Just inside the entrance to the facility was a whole bin full of tanks that had been pulled from the stream:


Normally, the belt is moving and a team of pre-sorters grabs out anything that might jam the machine before it's too late. But sometimes there is just too much material and they can't remove it in time. When that happens, everyone else has to wait while a few people unjam the machine.


Besides items which might clog the machine, the pre-sorters are looking for other non-recyclable items. Anything tied up in a plastic bag will be removed.

LESSON 3: Never put your recyclable items in a plastic bag. Especially if it's tied shut, that entire bag and it's contents will be removed and discarded with the garbage. The workers don't have time to open up the bag and see what's in it. And they wouldn't want to anyway. There could be nice cans and bottles inside, but there could just as easily be dog or cat waste.

Even with the machine stopped, I was able to get a good idea of the process. As the materials go over the sorter, blown by large fans, the lighter material, like paper (or fiber, as it's referred to) is lifted up and goes one way while heavier materials like containers fall down and go another.


As you can imagine, with those fans blowing, shredded paper is a nightmare.

LESSON 4: Unless your recycling company instructs otherwise, do not put shredded paper in your recycling bin. First of all, according to Rebecca Jewell, the fibers of shredded paper are too short to recycle in the first place. So it just ends up blowing around and getting mixed in with the glass. Her feeling is that shredding is over-rated; the workers are way too busy to read any of the masses of paper that come through.

Nevertheless, I did see an unshredded personal check lying on the floor. In fact, I stepped on it. Maybe the workers are too busy, but what about other tourists like me? Well, the good news is that shredded paper can be composted. Here in Oakland, we can put it in our green compost bin. You could also put it in a home bin. And perhaps knowing that shredded paper isn't recycled will make us more selective of the items we do choose to shred.


Once the materials are initially sorted, a belt passes the cans, bottles, and containers under a huge magnet which pulls out tin and steel cans. The rest of the materials travel along an assembly line of workers who are assigned to select certain types of items and toss them into separate huge bins. On the other side of the MRF, workers separate the paper into bins of newspaper, cardboard, and mixed papers.



LESSON 5: NEVER put needles in your recycling bin. This should be obvious, but apparently, it's not. The workers wear protective clothing and gloves. Nevertheless, every few months, someone gets stuck.

Once a bin is full, the door opens and all of that one type of material falls onto the belt below, which carries it through another machine where it is compacted and extruded into large square bales. There are bales of newspaper, mixed paper, cardboard, plastic bottles, cans, and other types of plastics. I didn't actually see what happens to the glass, but I read in my materials afterwards that it's broken and shipped to Davis Street's glass-processing partner.





LESSON 6: Bottle caps should be removed or at least loosened. Even with the caps on, the bottles will still be recycled. But a tight cap traps air in the bottle, which makes it harder to compress. It may also trap liquid.


While a maximum 10% contamination rate is allowed, it's very important for the recycling facility to keep contamination at a minimum in order to receive top dollar for the materials. Here is a list of items that contaminate the waste stream at Davis Street. It's possible that the rules where you live might be different:

GLASS: Only bottles and jars are recyclable. Other materials such as ceramic, china plates or cups, dishes, mirrors, laboratory glassware, light bulbs, pyrex, porcelain, and window glass have a different melting point and chemical composition and will create weak points in new glass containers.

PAPER: These types of paper should not be included: candy wrappers, carbon paper, charcoal bags (because the dust makes the air unhealthy for workers), food-contaminated paper, hardcover books, napkins, paper plates & cups, paper towels, pizza boxes, shredded paper, tissues, waxed cardboard.

PLASTIC: These types of plastic should not be included: disposable diapers, foam peanuts, unrinsed food-contaminated containers, grocery bags (unless your recycler specifically accepts bags within bags), plastic cups, Styrofoam.

OTHER: Here are more items which cannot be placed into the single-stream recycling bin: Animal waste, batteries of any kind, footwear of any kind, electronic appliances, electronic toys, engine oils, fluorescent tubes and bulbs (they contain mercury), golf balls, green waste, household hazardous waste, liquids, soccer balls, stuffed animals, tennis balls, & wigs. Additionally, even though the city might accept them, Davis Street is not able to recycle Tetra Paks.

Once the materials are baled, they are ready to be sold to recyclers locally and abroad. A lot of metal is sold locally. In fact, on the way in to the facility, I saw quite a few metal recycling companies right on Davis Street. Paper may be sold domestically or abroad. According to Rebecca, the market for recycled paper in this country has been shrinking. #1 and #2 plastics can often be sold domestically, but other types of plastics are generally shipped to China. Here's a row of containers outside the MRF waiting to be loaded with materials to be sent to China:


LESSON 7: If we want to keep our materials here at home rather than shipping them overseas, we've got to support our markets for recycled goods. If we want recycled paper to be made in the U.S., we've got to buy it! If we want U.S. companies to make goods from recycled plastics rather than new, we've got to purchase those items. A one-way recycling system doesn't work. If there is no market for the recycled items, no one will produce them.

Rebecca told me another interesting thing about the Chinese market. Unlike other countries, China pays top dollar for recyclable materials and also has very strict standards for what it will accept. If a bale is more than 10% contaminated, China will send the entire container back and bar that company from shipping materials to them again for 90 days. That's a huge amount of time for a plant like Davis Street that is processing up to 400 tons of materials per day. So this is another reason it's very, very important for us to make sure we're recycling the correct materials and that they are clean.

And finally,

LESSON 8: It's better to recycle grocery bags at the store where you purchased them, if possible, than in your bin even if your city accepts bundled grocery bags in the bin. Different grocery bags are made using different "recipes." Just because they all have a #2 or #4 on them doesn't mean they are exactly alike. The plastics will have different melting points. Mixing them together can create a mess, like this block of mixed plastic that Rebecca keeps on display in her office:

Mixed bags are not worth very much. But the bags from a grocery store like Safeway or Albertson's, for example, are more valuable to recyclers because they tend to be nearly all the same type of bag. Yes, people do bring bags from other stores to the Safeway bin, but for the most part, the Safeway bin contains Safeway bags. And since Safeway knows the "recipe" for those bags, it can let recyclers know exactly what they are getting. If we want our bags, at the end of their useful lives, to actually be recycled, it's best to return them to the place from which they came.

So, those are some of the things I learned at the Davis Street MRF today. But that wasn't the end of my tour! I also got to see the garbage dump (aka transfer pit) and I learned about other services that Davis Street offers. I'll tell you about these things tomorrow.