A landfill gas-to-energy plant in Conestoga, Pennsylvania.

When it comes to corporations fighting climate change, landfill owners don’t necessarily leap to mind. But in Michigan, the landfill industry is working to repeal a 19-year-old ban on the disposal of grass clippings and tree trimmings in dumps — on the grounds that the yard waste, mixed with typical garbage when buried, makes a perfect brew for what it terms renewable methane production.

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

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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.

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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.

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San Jose, CA - 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.

The bio-gas facility, planned to be constructed and operated by Zanker Road Biogas, will be based on a 40-acre site near the San Jose/Santa Clara Water Pollution Control Plan. The proposed facility would also be bound on either side by two solid waste recovery and recycling facilities owned and operated by Zanker Road Resource Management, Ltd.

The MOU, which was authorized today, will set forth the guidelines and work-plan for the potential lease terms of the bio-gas project. Pending successful negotiations for the MOU, San Jose will issue a lease to Zero Waste Energy Development Company, Inc., a partnership between GreenWaste Recovery and their sister company, Zanker Road Resource Management.

This project would also see the cooperation of GreenWaste and Harvest Power, Inc., a company that provides leading technology and project development capabilities for harnessing the renewable energy in organic waste.

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San Francisco, CA - 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.

Mayor Newsom’s ordinance, co-sponsored by Supervisors Ross Mirkarimi and Chris Daly, which passed on its first reading with a vote of 9-2, requires residential and commercial business owners to sign up for recycling and composting services. The ordinance will require all residences and businesses to participate in the city’s recycling and composting services, making San Francisco the first city to require collection of compostable materials.

“San Francisco has the best recycling and composting programs in the nation, and we’ve already attained an impressive, and first in the nation, 72 percent recycling rate because of them,” said Mayor Newsom. “I am pleased with the leadership the Board of Supervisors has demonstrated on this important legislation. By collaborating with all of our stakeholders, businesses, colleagues, and citizens, we can build on our success and continue to lead the nation in recycling.”

The primary goal of the ordinance, according to Newsom, is to get recycling and composting happening in buildings that are not currently using the city’s recycling and composting services. “Many tenants want to recycle and compost,” said Newsom, “but the building does not offer the service. We’re going to change that.”

Newsom estimates that if all recyclable and compostable materials, which currently slip through the city’s fingers, ending up in a landfill, were caught by the programs, San Francisco’s rate would soar from 70 percent to 90 percent.

The ordinance specifies no fines. Newsom commented that cities with mandatory recycling and fines rarely assess such fines. The primary function of fines is to heighten public awareness and encourage compliance.

The ordinance itself will be recycled again next week as it returns to the Board of Supervisors for a second reading and final vote.

Photo Credit: Shawna Scott via flickr under Creative Commons License

That “Green Vision,” which is responsible for San Jose’s success in being a leader on the green frontier, includes goals of receiving 100 percent of the city’s electrical power from clean renewable sources, diverting 100 percent of its waste from landfills and converting waste to energy.

The facility surely would help San Jose meet zero waste and energy goals. Capable of taking in 150,000 tons of organic waste per year to process and produce energy will no doubt help clear up land fills. It is likely that the energy produced would be used to power the San Jose/Santa Clara Water Pollution Control Plant. Excess energy could be sold to the regional electric grid.

The Zanker Road Biogas project would be developed in three phases, each phase designed to increase capacity by 50,000 tons per year of organic materials—a combination of primarily food waste and the organic portion of the municipal solid waste stream—and produce two products: a renewable bio-gas containing methane and high-quality compost.

Paul Sellew, CEO of Harvest Power commented, “We applaud the City of San Jose for its proactive effort in making renewable energy from organic waste a reality. Our organic waste project will be a major step in moving the City to 100% renewable energy while at the same time enriching local soils with our high quality compost product.”

During development and construction, the facility could employ 30 to 40 workers and it is anticipated that it will employ 50 to 60 jobs during full operation. “Creating green jobs that can’t be outsourced overseas is essential to rebuilding our local and state economy. Through projects like this, San Jose is becoming the world center for clean tech innovation. The proposed Zanker Road Biogas facility can be a model for other municipalities, showing how this technology can help solve their energy challenges,” Reed said.

With the completion of the proposed facility, San Jose would become the first city in the states with such capabilities. And we can only hope that other cities across the nation will adopt such facilities in the near future.

More: Who else is making bio-gas?

Photo Credit: bbchin via flickr under Creative Commons License

Photo2 Credit: PSA Farming

Editor’s Note: See Mayor Gavin Newsom’s post on this announcement at CleanTechnica.com.

San Francisco is well on its way to reaching the lofty goal of a 75% recycling rate by 2010. Today Mayor Gavin Newsom’s office announced that the city has attained the title of US recycling king by keeping 72% of ALL recyclable material out of landfills.

>>See also San Francisco OK’s California’s Largest Municipal Solar Plant

And we’re not talking simply cans and bottles here either; in 2006 Mayor Newsom instituted a Mandatory Construction and Demolition Debris Recovery Ordinance, which means that 72% number includes all waste generated on construction sites too.

“By requiring builders to recycle debris from construction projects, we were able to divert tens of thousands of new tons of material away from the landfill,” said Mayor Gavin Newsom. “Clearly, mandatory recycling measures pay off; if we’re going to reach a recycling rate of 75 percent in 2010 and zero waste by 2020, we need to make sure that residents and businesses are taking full advantage of our composting and recycling programs.”

The San Francisco Department of the Environment said that in 2007 the city generated 2,100,943 tons of waste, of which only 617,833 tons went to landfills. This represents the city’s lowest tonnage sent to landfills in over 30 years.

Although 72% is an impressive number, the city sees an opportunity to go even higher.

“If we captured everything going to landfill that could have been recycled or composted, we’d have a 90% recycling rate” said San Franciso Department of the Environment Director Jared Blumenfeld. “The Board of Supervisors will soon be considering an ordinance that will require residents and businesses to sign up and use the recycling and composting programs, which we need to make our goals.”

Image Credit: Rick’s Flickr photostream under a Creative Commons License.

That “Green Vision,” which is responsible for San Jose’s success in being a leader on the green frontier, includes goals of receiving 100 percent of the city’s electrical power from clean renewable sources, diverting 100 percent of its waste from landfills and converting waste to energy.

The facility surely would help San Jose meet zero waste and energy goals. Capable of taking in 150,000 tons of organic waste per year to process and produce energy will no doubt help clear up land fills. It is likely that the energy produced would be used to power the San Jose/Santa Clara Water Pollution Control Plant. Excess energy could be sold to the regional electric grid.

The Zanker Road Biogas project would be developed in three phases, each phase designed to increase capacity by 50,000 tons per year of organic materials—a combination of primarily food waste and the organic portion of the municipal solid waste stream—and produce two products: a renewable bio-gas containing methane and high-quality compost.

Paul Sellew, CEO of Harvest Power commented, “We applaud the City of San Jose for its proactive effort in making renewable energy from organic waste a reality. Our organic waste project will be a major step in moving the City to 100% renewable energy while at the same time enriching local soils with our high quality compost product.”

During development and construction, the facility could employ 30 to 40 workers and it is anticipated that it will employ 50 to 60 jobs during full operation. “Creating green jobs that can’t be outsourced overseas is essential to rebuilding our local and state economy. Through projects like this, San Jose is becoming the world center for clean tech innovation. The proposed Zanker Road Biogas facility can be a model for other municipalities, showing how this technology can help solve their energy challenges,” Reed said.

With the completion of the proposed facility, San Jose would become the first city in the states with such capabilities. And we can only hope that other cities across the nation will adopt such facilities in the near future.

More: Who else is making bio-gas?

Photo Credit: bbchin via flickr under Creative Commons License

Photo2 Credit: PSA Farming

The Environmental Protection Agency has launched the National Cell Phone Recycling Week as part of the month-long Earth Day festivities. In 2007, the EPA estimates that only 10 percent of all unused cell phones were recycled, and if all 100 million unwanted phones were recycled now it would save enough energy to power 18,500 homes for one full year.

The week-long recycling event, running from April 6 through April 12, is the result of a collaboration between the EPA’s Plug-In to eCycling program and a number of phone manufacturers. Cell phones, as well as many other household electronics items, can contain lead, mercury, arsenic, cadmium and other materials. These metals, if dumped in a landfill, do not break down easily and can pollute soil and groundwater. The metals can often be reused if the phones are recycled properly.

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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…

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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.

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Along with the plastic bag bans and growing concern over their lack of decomposition, grocery and all-purpose stores like Wal-Mart have offered shoppers a new choice: eco-friendly bags that can be used over and over again. The bags are usually symbolically green and can be seen around the entrances of most major stores. You can also probably find even more eco bags in the accessories sections of stores, sporting earth-friendly phrases. I have one myself, from my mom, telling everyone to “give green a chance.”

This does imply that shoppers are switching over to the reusable bags (though I rarely do see anyone here in the United States refusing plastic in check-out lines or bringing his own).

But how I see it is that there is absolutely no need for the cheap green bags to replace plastic bags.

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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.

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The fact that the $77 million green campus that consists of three 85,000-square-foot buildings diverted more than 20 percent of the building materials from the nasty old landfills. Much of those materials included concrete and cork and rubber flooring. Not only did the architect HOK and Milpitas-based Devon Construction reduce waste by using recycled building materials, but State Fund diverted a whopping 75 percent of construction waste away from landfills to recycling vendors.

This campus which expects to receive LEED Silver certification early next year, hit a big on the energy savings front with solar panel system, energy-efficient light fixtures, lamps, heating and cooling systems and other electrical equipment; and in the high-tech world they added “server virtualization” technology that reduces the number of servers needed to support the facility. The Green IT people must love that.

We (and probably most of the 750 workers) applaud the use of various low-emitting materials such as adhesives, paints and carpets. They also significantly reduced the building’s water footprint by incorporating low-flow toilets, waterless urinals, and an irrigation system using non-potable water.

We say that that is $77 million dollars well spent.

Photo credit: Steve Proehl

That “Green Vision,” which is responsible for San Jose’s success in being a leader on the green frontier, includes goals of receiving 100 percent of the city’s electrical power from clean renewable sources, diverting 100 percent of its waste from landfills and converting waste to energy.

The facility surely would help San Jose meet zero waste and energy goals. Capable of taking in 150,000 tons of organic waste per year to process and produce energy will no doubt help clear up land fills. It is likely that the energy produced would be used to power the San Jose/Santa Clara Water Pollution Control Plant. Excess energy could be sold to the regional electric grid.

The Zanker Road Biogas project would be developed in three phases, each phase designed to increase capacity by 50,000 tons per year of organic materials—a combination of primarily food waste and the organic portion of the municipal solid waste stream—and produce two products: a renewable bio-gas containing methane and high-quality compost.

Paul Sellew, CEO of Harvest Power commented, “We applaud the City of San Jose for its proactive effort in making renewable energy from organic waste a reality. Our organic waste project will be a major step in moving the City to 100% renewable energy while at the same time enriching local soils with our high quality compost product.”

During development and construction, the facility could employ 30 to 40 workers and it is anticipated that it will employ 50 to 60 jobs during full operation. “Creating green jobs that can’t be outsourced overseas is essential to rebuilding our local and state economy. Through projects like this, San Jose is becoming the world center for clean tech innovation. The proposed Zanker Road Biogas facility can be a model for other municipalities, showing how this technology can help solve their energy challenges,” Reed said.

With the completion of the proposed facility, San Jose would become the first city in the states with such capabilities. And we can only hope that other cities across the nation will adopt such facilities in the near future.

More: Who else is making bio-gas?

Photo Credit: bbchin via flickr under Creative Commons License

Photo2 Credit: PSA Farming

This finding is shocking!  Government ministers couldn’t believe it either and actually buried the report, because they were embarrassed by the findings. According to the Times Online:

The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) has instructed civil servants not to publicise the conclusions of the £50,000 nappy research project and to adopt a “defensive” stance towards its conclusions.

The report found that using washable nappies, hailed by councils throughout Britain as a key way of saving the planet, have a higher carbon footprint than their disposable equivalents unless parents adopt an extreme approach to laundering them.

To reduce the impact of cloth nappies on climate change parents would have to hang wet nappies out to dry all year round, keep them for years for use on younger children, and make sure the water in their washing machines does not exceed 60C.

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A developer, Waste Recycling Group, hopes to construct two 18-foot-deep lagoons near landfills to produce fertilizer from the leachate that oozes from the trash piles. The substance will be pumped from the dump into the lagoons where bacteria will eat away at the contaminants. The developer then hopes to use the fertilizer to grow willow coppices at the landfill for use as biofuel.

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Developed by the Washington, D.C.-based Environmental Defense Fund, the Carbon Offset Project List is being billed as a “first-of-its-kind online resource that will help businesses and consumers identify and purchase carbon offsets that represent real reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.”

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If you’ve ever seen the movie Idiocracy, you may have a vague fear of giant landfills toppling over and spilling into the streets. Fortunately, that fear may never become a reality now that the Powermaster ReCyclone is available.

The ReCyclone works by grinding trash into small pieces, thereby reducing landfill space up to 97 percent.

Trash compacted by the ReCyclone can be used to create energy or compost material—organic waste becomes diesel fuel, and plastic becomes oil. The machine can grind up any piece of waste ranging from 20 microns to 12 inches.

For some perspective, the ReCyclone can get more gold out of electronic devices than from a gold mine (one metric ton of circuit boards contains between 80 and 1,500 grams of gold, which is 40 to 800 times the concentration of gold available in gold ore mined in the United States) and 1 kilogram of plastic recycled in the machine can yield 95 percent of 1 liter of diesel.

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Here is good news for offices taking steps towards going green - a blossoming company in California makes eco-friendly coffee mugs featuring your logo and employee name. There’s no minimum order required, so even the smallest startups can take advantage of Ecomugs handy dual purpose - the mugs are valuable promotional tools that also serve as a highly effective way to let your customers know that you are doing your part for the environment.

Styrofoam - Alarming Statistics

Did you know that over 25,000,000 styrofoam cups go into landfills every year? Styrofoam makes up 25% of our landfill space and is not recyclable, so any cup you use today will still be around 500 years from now. Incinerating styrofoam is not an acceptable alternative to burying the impervious material, as it gives off over 90 different hazardous chemicals, including styrene vapors and dioxin.

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How can a mahogany desk, made of slow-growing hard wood plundered from the Amazon, be eco-friendly?

When it’s re-used.

Often, the greenest consumer route is not buying new products made with Earth-friendly methods but rather scoring used products made with traditional, possibly heinous methods. Reduce, reuse, then recycle.

This rule of thumb certainly applies to office furniture. Unlike energy-consuming products such as appliances, furniture is somewhat innocuous to the environment during that period between factory and landfill known as “in use.” The impacts on indoor air quality, however, are like Britney: Not that innocent.

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