Frankly Green

Trash Inc.: The Secret Life of Garbage

CNBC’s documentary, "Trash Inc: The Secret Life of Garbage," premiers on Wednesday, September 29th at 9pm ET/PT.  Reported by CNBC’s Carl Quintanilla, "Trash Inc: The Secret Life of Garbage," takes an inside look at what happens to our garbage after we throw it out – where it goes, who touches it, and who makes money.  Beyond the bags piled at the curb, viewers will see the intricate logistical ballet performed every day by armies of sanitation workers, engineers, and even entrepreneurs, to get rid of – and sometimes get rich from – our trash.  Viewers will also get a stunning and surprising look, once we throw something away, at where “away” can be – just part of the exploding worldwide environmental challenge posed by garbage.

 

Business Delivers Christmas Trees for Rent

View full article via www.nytimes.com

By Jennifer Steinhauer

It is a nibble weird that a guy who describes his relationship to Christmas as “hostile” runs around greater Los Angeles in a floppy red Santa hat and answers his iPhone, “Merry Christmas, this is Scotty Claus!”

But bummed as false merriment and gift obligations render him, Scott Martin — landscape architect and tree hugger in a literal sense — was unnerved by the sight of post-Christmas trees lying about like so much discarded sausage casing.

What people really ought to do, he reasoned, was rent a Christmas tree, and return it, alive, to the nursery after the season.

Tracking a Trail of Trash in the Pacific Northwest

By Patrick Oppmann, CNN

Link to Article

Trash study tracks how pieces of garbage may travel hundreds of miles

MIT researchers hope study will help people better understand impact of garbage they produce

"Can we create a situation of minimum waste?" researcher says

Seattle, Washington (CNN) -- The plastic Ziploc bag thrown in the trash in Seattle, Washington, spent a week traveling 300 miles to an Oregon landfill. The old Apple iBook that was recycled is a month into its journey. And a pair of worn Asics running shoes is still logging miles even after being dropped in a bin for used shoes.

Those are just some of the trails of trash exposed in a high-tech trash study.

Pacific Garbage Patch Expitition Finds Plastic, Plastic Everywhere

Thanks to Eleanor P. for this article!

By Paul Rogers, San Jose Mercury News
Link to Article

Scientists who returned to the Bay Area this week after an expedition to the "Great Pacific Garbage Patch" brought piles of plastic debris they pulled out of the ocean — soda bottles, cracked patio chairs, Styrofoam chunks, old toys, discarded fishing floats and tangled nets.

But what alarmed them most, they said Tuesday, was the nearly inconceivable amount of tiny, confetti like pieces of broken plastic. They took hundreds of water samples between the Farallon Islands near San Francisco and the notorious garbage patch 1,000 miles west of California, and every one had tiny bits of plastic floating in it. And the closer they sailed to the garbage patch, which some researchers have estimated to be twice the size of Texas, the more plastic pieces per gallon they found.

Casco Bay Islanders Embrace Bottle Return Program

Thanks to my friend Bill H., who helped start the CLYNK program, for sending this. Word is that CLYNK is looking to expand to Massachusetts, New York, and Oregon!

Portland, ME - A returnable bottle program called CLYNK is making it easier for islanders to recycle. Many people on Casco Bay islands who might have wanted to recycle bottles and cans often tossed them in the trash instead. But the Casco Bay Ferry crews now pick up the special green plastic bags filled with returnables. CLYNK is in nearly two dozen Hannaford Supermarkets in Maine. People sign up for an account, buy the special bags, fill them up, drop them off at the stores and get their deposit refunds from their account. Island residents leave the bags at the end of their driveways and they are collected with the trash on Monday mornings. By making it easier for islanders to recycle it's expected that the waste stream on the islands will be reduced by at least 15 percent.

Link to Article

We're Ready!

San Francisco to Sydney on a Plastic Boat

National Geographic Explorer David de Rothschild is setting sail from San Francisco to Sydney on a Plastic Bottle Boat in April. Plastiki is the 60 foot catamaran made out of 12,000 two liter plastic bottles that will make the voyage. The purpose of this trip is two fold-to investigate plastic litter, the most common ocean pollution, and to highlight the many ways plastic can be re-purposed.

Only one of the 15 billion pounds of plastic produced in the United States each year is recycled and much of the leftovers float their way to the Great Eastern Pacific Garbage Patch. Also, don't forget March 22 is National Water Day, and most people aren't aware that the Great Eastern Pacific Garbage Patch has grown to more than twice the size of Texas!

National Geographic hopes this voyage will showcase the many uses for smart materials so when Plastiki's voyage is over, the boat will be broken down and turned into emergency shelters, shipping pellets, clothes, and even more bottles.

Check out the photos and video of Plastiki and her gutsy captain, David de Rothschild, at National Geographic Online.

Video: From Dump to Dump

One man believes he has found a way to become more energy self-sufficient.

Marine Life Faces "Acid Threat"

By Julian Siddle
Science Reporter, BBC News

Thanks to Elicia V. for this article!

Link to Article

Man-made pollution is raising ocean acidity at least 10 times faster than previously thought, a study says.

Researchers say carbon dioxide levels are having a marked effect on the health of shellfish such as mussels. They sampled coastal waters off the north-west Pacific coast of the US every half-hour for eight years. The results, published in the journal PNAS, suggest that earlier climate change models may have underestimated the rate of ocean acidification.

Recycling is Good But Precycling is Better

Waste not, want not
Recyling is good, but precycling - cutting out packaging in the first place and buying only what you need - is better. Tanis Taylor tried it for a month

The Guardian - Link to Article

Thanks to Elicia V. for this article!

Every Tuesday, as a house, we put out two big green boxes of recycling. I say green because a) they literally are and b) the presumption is that by using them, so are we. But wouldn't it be greener not to put out the recycling - to generate so little waste that, come Tuesday, there is nothing to put in the green box? It is an idealistic notion, but is it practical? I decided to try it for a month to find out. And in doing so, I inadvertently discovered that I'd joined a movement.