Green Options

[Creative Commons photo by House of Sims]

Starting October 1st, North Carolinans will no longer be able to dispose of motor oil filters, wooden pallets and plastic bottles in landfills.

The stresses in our early twenty-first century civilization take many forms—social, economic, environmental, and political. One distinctly unhealthy and visible illustration of all four is the swelling flow of garbage associated with a throwaway economy. As noted in my book Plan B 3.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization, throwaway products were first conceived following World War II as a convenience and as a way of creating jobs and sustaining economic growth. The more goods produced and discarded, the reasoning went, the more jobs there would be.

What sold throwaways was their convenience. For example, rather than washing cloth towels or napkins, consumers welcomed disposable paper versions. Thus we have substituted facial tissues for handkerchiefs, disposable paper towels for hand towels, disposable table napkins for cloth ones, and throwaway beverage containers for refillable ones. Even the shopping bags we use to carry home throwaway products become part of the garbage flow.

Researchers at the University of York have recently come up with a method of recycling that seems like it fell from the pages of a science fiction novel. They want to turn discarded television screens into components for biomedicine.

Achieving a goal of 100 percent energy independence is a little closer for San Jose thanks to a momentous move by the City Council today. The City Council authorized the City Manager to negotiate and execute a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to develop potential lease terms and guidelines for developing an organics-to energy bio-gas facility.

Refuse collection has been mandatory in San Francisco since the 1930s, so perhaps it came as no surprise when the nation’s leader in recycling passed a mandatory recycling and compost ordinance on June 9, but San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom still commended the Board of Supervisors for its passage of the ordinance.

Last year the amount of waste that San Francisco sent landfills was the same as it did in 1977 and a mandatory recycling plan for construction sites played a large part.

The Environmental Protection Agency has launched the National Cell Phone Recycling Week as part of the month-long Earth Day festivities. If all 100 million unwanted phones were recycled now it would save enough energy to power 18,500 homes for one full year.

I was struck by the trash talk spotlight on Green is Sexy this month with Verus Energy Ltd. Co-Founders Tim Jervis and David Diracles because they truly understand that the global energy generation infrastructure is requiring colossal changes to sustain the planet.

Verus Energy is a new form of development company that focuses on building renewable power plants that use waste as the feedstock: “In the same way that a property developer might develop a new residential or commercial property, Verus develops a power plant. Between the core team at Verus and our strategic partners, we can design, build, construct, and operate power plants that use waste rather than fossil fuels as the source of energy.” Jervis and Diracles explain.

Verus states on their website that they are out to change the way power plants work. Their mission is to help the UK (and soon the US) address waste and energy challenges by developing clean and efficient energy from waste plants.  Energy from waste encompasses many processes where trash is converted into electricity, heat, or transport fuel.  On top of providing a clean and secure source of energy, the process provides an environmentally friendly alternative to dumping waste in landfill.

Instead of polluting the air with the (traditional power generating) burning of waste for fuel, they are creating much cleaner trash power with anaerobic digestion and pyrolysis…

gDiapers fans are no doubt excited to see that they have some new and adorable options for flushable diapers. Their web site is now boasting several new prints for their “little g” pants including Ga, Ga Pink, Goo Goo Blue, Good Vibe Girl and Good Vibe Stripe, which are pretty snazzy if I do say so myself. It has no doubt been hard to compete with the cuteness of cloth diapers but they are certainly making strides.

The little g pants are the outer shell of the gDiaper system or the diaper cover that holds the flushable inserts.  The inserts are the disposable and absorbent inner liners that you toss (flush, throw away or compost). You reuse the gDiaper pants again and again. For about 40 years there have been only two basic choices in diapering. Cloth or disposable. gDiapers offers consumers a third option….a hybrid cloth diaper with a disposable element.

China. The UK. Ireland. Germany. Australia. San Francisco. Malibu. The list of countries and cities eliminating or considering banning plastic bags continues to grow. Some prohibit them all together, while others charge a fee to carry away groceries in that plastic that often finds its way to landfills.

Notorious for producing the greenhouse gas, methane, and then having to flare it off to avoid the potential danger of explosions, landfills are now converting this gas to electricity that can be fed to the grid.

This September, the Denver Arapahoe Disposal Site, known as DADS, brought its waste-to-energy capabilities online, powering four V-16 Caterpillar engines that generate and sell electricity to utilities company, Xcel Energy.