Posts tagged ‘recycling’
Reduce: Cotton Tips
What can I do to reduce the number of cotton tips (q-tips) we go through? Although the ends are made of cotton (biodegradable), the stems are plastic, I think, so you couldn’t compost them.
I used to at least buy them in cardboard boxes, but these days I can only find them in plastic containers… and I don’t think it’s the right kind of plastic to recycle either. I tried keeping the containers to reuse, but I just don’t really have anything to use them for. Maybe I’ll try Freecycling them.
These are the cotton tips I bought most recently from Coles.
I can’t think of a replacement for the thing we use them for the most – nothing else cleans your ears quite the right way! Even Yankee Elv, who has the cleanest ears ever, uses them to itch the ear her hearing aid goes in.
Ideas? Anyone? Beuller?
EDIT: Jun, aka Beuller, commented below that in Asia people use reusable metal ‘ear diggers‘ (nice name) to clean their ears. Thanks Jun!
Reuse: Rechargable Batteries
We’ve been going through batteries quite rapidly (for us) around the Elv house – we don’t mean to, but there are lots of things that use them, you know? Yankee Elv has been saving them to take to one of the schools she used to teach at, which has a battery recycling program. We just bought a recharger and rechargable batteries so we can reduce the amount we go through too.
Wouldn’t these be even cooler, though? It’s Knut Karlsen’s homemade solar-rechargeable batteries, called SolarCat (cos they lay out on your windowsill in the sun, like a cat).
Knut Karlsen's SolarCat batteries
You can recharge these batteries in the sun… anywhere! Convenient, especially when you don’t have access to a power point or don’t want to cart your recharger around. (Road trip! Road trip! In a smart car! In a smart… wait. Those things won’t fit all three of us plus the dog. Hmm. Maybe not.)
I also like the idea of kinetic (hand-crank) power, for things like torches and radios. We’re going camping later this year and they would be really handy – and we do need some more light so Yankee Elv can communicate at night. She needs to see to lip read and sign and the mini-lanterns and Dolphin torch we used last time didn’t really cut it. Something like this lantern would be pretty cool – I wonder how long a minute of cranking gets you? This one charges your mobile phone, too.
Does anyone know of other kinetically-powered items you can get? I’m keen to take responsibility for the power I use, and that’s an easy, cheap and eco-friendly way to do it.
Spotlight: Digital Dumping Grounds
I knew developing countries were, to a degree, the rubbish dumps for electronic waste (e-waste) shipped in from developed nations, but I didn’t know how bad it was. I watched this episode of Frontline World this morning that really made it hit home for me. Here’s the promo:
You can access the full 20 minute segment about Ghana here. Sorry Deafies, there are no captions (which annoys the shit out of me – c’mon PBS!), but underneath the video there is a transcript of the segment (if it’s not exact, it’s pretty close). You can also see some photos with captions here on Jane Hahn‘s site.
It’s not just Ghana either – Vietnam, Pakistan, Malaysia, China and lots of other third-world nations are being taken advantage of. In fact, the segment discussed how the average computer-owner (and dumper) is also being taken advantage of, by companies who say they’re dumping responsibly, but who ship out unusable computers for reuse. Clearly, since they’re unusuable, they’re only going to become scrap, but labelling them ‘for reuse’ enables their export courtesy of a legal loophole.
I have a bunch of e-waste here at my place that I was looking to dispose of responsibly, but now I’m unsure how I can do that if I can’t even trust the recycling companies. Plus, I want to make sure no-one has access to my data (that image of the FBI guy smashing the hard drive with the hammer also make an impression on me). Is it really best for the environment for me to be smashing stuff up, regardless of how cathartic that may be? However, is it best for me to not smash it? Ghana is one of the world’s leading areas of cyber crime, after all – there’s has to be link between that and the dumping of e-waste, it’s too convenient a co-incidence.
The one ‘positive’ thing to come out of the whole thing isn’t even very good. I wrote a while ago about the impact of metal mining on the environment (here and here). Trawling through the e-waste for scraps of copper and other precious metals does at least eliminate the need for so much mining… but at what cost? The toxic fumes produced by the burning needed to scavenge this metal is detrimental to both the environment and the unsuspecting people who participate, not to mention every man and his dog who lives nearby.
Aside from making pretty earrings, and giving away old items on Freecycle, what can we do with this stuff? Does anyone know of a recycler who actually recycles stuff responsibly without exporting it?
Recycle: Glass vs Plastic
Question. Is it better to buy a smaller glass container or a larger plastic container?
Answer? I don’t bloody know! I can’t decide. Help!
We buy Bertolli olive oil (extra virgin, fruity taste) and we go through it quite quickly. The Elves like a good EVOO, yes we do. Bertolli sells it in either a 1 litre glass bottle, or a 2 litre plastic bottle. So far we’ve been buying the glass one, but which one is more environmentally friendly?
We are currently buying the 1 litre glass bottle of Bertolli EVOO.
Glass is better for the environment, I think – it’s made of sand, silica and limestone and while it doesn’t biodegrade easily, it can be recycled over and over again, forever. I’ve also seen pieces of glass at the beach, all smooth and no longer resembling whatever they originally were. It takes way less energy to produce (especially if it’s recycled) and if it gets dumped, you know it’s not going to leach toxins or hurt an animal (unless it’s broken and they get cut). The eco-downside is that because it’s heavier, it takes more energy to ship, and it can break more easily during shipping, causing greater waste. Apparently it takes more energy to recycle than plastic too, but I think maybe that’s not considering fancy glass recycling plants like the Visy plant in Melbourne.
Plastic is made from petrochemicals and doesn’t biodegrade. It’s made of all kinds of nasty toxic stuff and hangs around killing animals for ages. Production almost always includes nurdles as a by-product, and let’s not even talk about the floating plastic continent of doom. It’s lighter and more durable and consumes less energy when shipping though.
I’m inclined to go for glass, but if we buy glass, it comes in a smaller package, which means more packaging to get the same amount of oil. I think they sell it in a 5 litre tin too, but our tiny house is not made for storing significant bulk food purchases, as much as I like the idea, so that won’t work for us.
Which one should we buy?
Recycle: Cleaning your Recyclables
I’m trying to get back into the swing or writing regular posts after an unplanned almost week off. Work is still ugh, but today I escalated some stuff that has been a concern for a while, and it does feel good to get it off my chest and also no longer be potentially accountable for any wrongdoing. That is really good. Today I even had time to empty the work recycling bin. Yay!
Recycle - even the dirty stuff!
On the topic of recycling, I found out last week that you don’t have to have perfectly clean recyclables. This is a good thing, because the people at work cannot rinse the milk bottles out to save themselves. It’s also good for me at home though, because even though I rinse my soy milk cartons, this means I don’t have to spend ages and waste water scraping peanut butter from inside the jar (although Loodle the hungry puppy often helps me with that anyway).
So yeah – rinse, but don’t do so to the point where it really wastes water. The recycling gods are not going to reject your items cos they’re a bit nasty.
Recycle: Bin Types
The talk of the eco-interwebz this week is a study by Sean Duffy and Michelle Verger, who work in psychology at Rutgers University. After noticing a pattern in the number of items recycled properly and the type of bin used, they completed a study; a series of experiments. Apparently, if a recycling bin has a hole in it to put the recyclable rubbish through, it is 34% more effective than a bin that looks like a regular rubbish bin. That is, the recyclables go into the right bin (not the general waste bin), but also that the general waste doesn’t go into the recycling bin.
Um. Weird. More organisational psychology craziness!
Seriously though, this seems legit. So I wonder why this is? I can see why people would have trouble recycling properly, if you get bins like the ones shown below, and described at Treehugger. They’re just so poorly signed.
Poor signage - picture from Steven de Sousa on Treehugger
But what if the bin is signed properly? Is it really the childlike delight at poking something through a hole that makes that type of recycling bin so much more effective, as suggested by Duffy? His study found that signage had nothing to do with it.
Our work recycling bin, the one my Environment Team colleagues and I organised, has a flip top lid. It is appropriately signed and the lid is green though. Perhaps it’s the colouring that is making these bins a success? Regardless, people are using them… even without a hole to poke the rubbish through.
Guess I don’t need to get out my stanley knife and cut a hole in the lid just yet.
Recycle: Ethical Metals
I like to wear silver jewellery. I don’t really mind much what it’s made of – but it needs to be silver-coloured. Some people prefer gold. I’m just a silver person. Of course, silver-coloured jewellery is made of metal. Yeah, you can get the plastic silver-coloured, but um… yeah. Really no.
Metal is natural, so that’s great! Go eco, go! Right?
Wouldn't it be great if they were made from recycled metal?
The process required to extract that metal from the earth is incredibly damaging to the environment. This is slowly becoming more and more well known. A few years ago, the ‘no dirty gold‘ campaign was introduced, encouraging people to buy only sustainably mined gold. The campaign was just the tip of the iceberg though, as not just gold but lots of other metals are mined unsustainably around the world. Don’t think the metals are just used in jewellery though. Metals are used in lots of things – gold thread in beautiful dresses, remote controls, mobile phones and other similar devices. And those are just the highest impact metals.People and companies are increasingly offering advice and alternatives which enable you to avoid metal mined in environmentally damaging ways. Almost all of them include recycling the metals we’ve already mined.
- You can recycle your mobile phone, as discussed in last week’s Recycle post.
- You can buy jewellery made with recycled metal.
- You can recycle lead from old car batteries. Service stations and car battery retail outlets will generally accept car batteries for trade-in. Be careful though – don’t empty out battery acid before taking the batteries for recycling.
- Scrap metal recyclers can take copper pipes, hot water systems, car bodies, metal appliances and other metals to be recycled.
- Remember kerbside recycling – putting cans into your regular recycling bin means the metal can be reused to create other cans, fridges and all sorts of other things.
To learn more about how metal mining damages the environment, check out this site or this one.
Note: The image of the rings is from Love and Pride.
Recycle: Mobile Phones
Mr Teeny-bop is starting high school next week. He’s going to be catching the bus (the regular city council bus, not a school bus) by himself back and forth. His school isn’t far away, but it’s pretty central, on busy streets, lots of people. So Yankee Elv and I decided it was time for him to get a mobile phone, so he can contact us, or vice versa – just in case. He’s been wanting a phone for ages, so he is very happy!
Aside from the fact that new phones are expensive, for environmental reasons, we wanted to get a second-hand phone – so we have one on it’s way to our house right now (go ebay!). It’s all about the reuse.
Yankee Elv has been wanting a new phone herself for a while now too – one with a strong vibration, since she’s Deaf and can’t hear text messages or alarms. Since we were already on the phone hunt, we’re looking on ebay for her too. What should we do with her current phone though? We can’t just throw it away (ok, technically we can, but we won’t).
So we’re going to recycle the phone. Why? Well, let’s look at what happens when you recycle mobile phones.
- Some companies refurbish and reuse the phones if they are in good enough condition
- The batteries are taken apart and the nickel, cadmium, coltan, zinc, copper and cobalt is extracted and used in new batteries and other products
- Circuit boards have the gold, silver, copper and lead extracted and reused
- Any other heavy metals, like mercury, beryllium and arsenic are smelted and disposed of appropriately
- Plastic from handset casings is used to make fence posts and pallets
- Paper packaging is sent to standard recycling stations
- Other parts (including plastic packaging as well as pure and impure metals) are either recycled or go into landfill.
Yeah, I hear you. Why is it good that these items are recycled or reused?
- Many of the heavy metals used in mobile phones can negatively affect your health and the environment if they enter landfill or are not disposed of carefully
- The demand for precious metals to use in mobile phones and other similar devices (like remote controls) has led to war over the rights to the metal, mostly in the Congo and surrounding African nations
- Thanks to strip mining, the sourcing of a tiny amount of metal involves the displacement of tonnes of land
- Plastic doesn’t really biodegrade, so reducing and reusing is the best we can do (no need to contribute to the Pacific plastic soup)
- Recycling paper has a far smaller impact on the environment than creating paper from scratch.
Here’s a video, if you want more information:
I must say – it was only within the last year that I found out the impact of not just releasing but sourcing precious metals. I knew about blood diamonds of course – but never imagined that the phones, remote controls or jewellery I was buying were impacting the lives of all these people, caught in the fight for resources. I resolved then and there to minimise my use of new metal. That involved buying second-hand, recycled or sustainably sourced metal, and recycling whatever metal possible.
So why not try it? Don’t become a statistic, hoarding your phone in the back of a drawer. Hand in your old phone when you upgrade.
Besides, recycling makes you feel good. Promise.
Recycle: Get out of the kitchen!
Where’s your recycling bin? Not the big one that gets emptied by the garbage person (non-gender specific!). The little one in your house that you fill to the brim, then take down to the big bin. Where is it?
Mine is in the kitchen, in the cupboard under the sink. Most of the stuff that goes into it is kitchen recycling. It’s usually full of things like squished cereal boxes, flattened soy milk cartons, tin cans and the free local newspaper that gets dropped off every week, rain or shine. We never read it.
Sometimes I feel good about myself for recycling so much, keeping junk out of landfill. Other times I feel bad – shouldn’t I be trying to re-use some more?
But beyond both of those points is another – am I junking things unnecessarily? Is there stuff that should be in the recycling bin… but isn’t?
Oh yeah. There sure is. I just gotta get out of the kitchen.
The bathroom, for example, has lots of stuff to recycle, like:
- Toothpaste boxes
- Shampoo bottles
- Soap boxes
- Toilet rolls
- Moisturiser and toner bottles
- Conditioner bottles
- Tissue boxes.
I am making a concerted effort to remember these things. I’m trying to be innovative, so I’m emulating the most lateral-thinking person I know of. I think… what would MacGyver do?
Remember to think: what would MacGyver do?
So when I stretched my brain and tried to think like MacGyver on the Mastercard ad with the sock and the pen and the paperclip, I thought of some other less obvious recyclable stuff you might find around the place too:
- Shopping receipts
- Junk mail, if you still get it
- Dog shampoo bottles
- Notebooks
- Printer paper
- Moving boxes
- Lightbulbs (environmentally friendly fluro bulbs should be taken to a collection agency)
- Medicine boxes and bottles (take off your labels)
- School newsletters
- Paint tins
- Mobile phones (most phone shops collect them)
- Magazines
- Laundry detergent bottles
- Plastic bags (grocery stores have collection boxes)
- Envelopes
- Old posters
- Old photos (shred the photos – by machine or the eco-friendly way – by hand)
- Bus tickets (although I go paperless these days).
As great as recycling is, it won’t make a significant impact unless everyone jumps on the bandwagon, and starts committing to the endeavour. But it really won’t make a difference unless everyone remembers to recycle everything they can.
So who is the most MacGyver of all? What weird stuff do you recycle?
Note: The What Would MacGyver Do? image came from Threadless t-shirts.
Recycle: Corporate Recycling
I’m part of my Environmental team at work.
It’s one of the advantages to working for a multi-national – they’ve got the money to invest in seemingly altruistic endeavours. Really, they’re into it at the moment because clients and prospective clients are becoming increasingly conscious of the environmental impact of doing business. Many clients are insisting that the companies they do business with have ISO 14001 certification, or are working towards it. So country by country, office by office, my company is doing just that.
Not in Brisbane though. We’re not big enough. So we started our team to tackle the environmental issues we face at work.
It started nearly six months ago, when a Brisbane-based woman from another section of the company gave a presentation on how the company is getting or has received ISO certification in several offices. There was an awesome video, showing offices with sensor lights in Bangalore, water reduction in London, recycling in Madrid. I was inspired.
I was also hoping for promotion, and thinking I needed to do something that made me look brilliant and caring, since apparently doing great at my work wasn’t getting me anywhere. (You can see I’m as altruistic as my company). Having resigned myself to organising team bonding events or something equally thrilling, it suddenly occurred to me; maybe I could do something that would make me look good and make me feel good. There mightn’t be an environmental action team for Brisbane yet, but there could be. The woman presenting was a place to start.
So to cut a long story short, I contacted her, other folks contacted her, and now we have a volunteer team of four concerned citizens. Things have been moving slowly – we only meet once a month, as work is very fast-paced and keeps us all busy, but we’re getting there. Our main focus right now is setting up some recycling. (You were wondering when I’d get to the point, weren’t you?)
We already had paper recycling, but now we’ve set up a series of regular recycling bins in the Brisbane offices. They take plastic, glass, aluminium, tin, paper, cardboard, paper cups and so on. We’re having a little trouble with getting the big central bin set up, though. Currently it’s hiding in a storage room cos the basement security guard won’t let us put it with the the other bins in the caged off area downstairs. We’re contacting the building owner to find out if it’s policy, if we have to rent bin space, or if it’s just the the basement guy playing God. So far it seems to be working well – the recycling bin is full everyday, and the regular bin seems to have less rubbish in it. My job recently has been to create some posters to encourage people to recycle. We already have some to ensure people recycle correctly.
Apparently the recycling company can provide statistics of how much we send them, so that, coupled with how much stuff we order (how many bottles of milk, how many paper cups and so on) should enable us to provide results to our colleagues to reinforce the message that recycling rocks!
I was mentioning in the meeting today though that I think after we’ve gotten through the recycling bit, we should talk about reusing. Cos while recycling is good, reusing is better. I know, it’s my catch-cry right now. Don’t think I’m not into recycling though, I am. Our recycling bin always has more in it than our regular bin.
In fact, here are a few (a few!?) reasons I like recycling:
- Twenty aluminium cans can be recycled with the same energy required to produce one new can from raw materials.
- Recycling one aluminium can saves enough energy to run a television for three hours. Is TV what we want to use the energy for though?
- In 2002, Australia recycled over 31,000 tonnes of aluminium drink cans – that’s 63% of the cans used that year, or around 2 billion individual cans.
- Making plastic from recycled materials uses only 30% of the energy required to make plastic products from fossil fuels.
- Roughly 117,000 tonnes of recyclables are contaminated in Australia each year (as of 2006), and end up as landfill.
- In 2006, methane from landfill accounted for 13.5% of Australia’s total emissions, with an estimated 710,000 tonnes of methane being released into the atmosphere annually. One tonne of methane has the same effect on global warming as 24.5 tonnes of carbon dioxide.
- Making recycled glass uses less energy and makes less than making new glass because crushed recycled glass melts at a lower temperature than the virgin components of glass (essentially, sand).
- The energy we save when we recycle one glass bottle is enough to light a light bulb for four hours.
- Well-run recycling programs cost less to operate than waste collection, landfilling, and incineration. The more people recycle, the cheaper it gets.
- Recycling creates four jobs for every one job created in the waste management and disposal industries.
- Every ton of paper that is recycled saves 17 trees.
- Brutal wars over natural resources, including timber and minerals, have killed or displaced more than 20 million people and are raising at least $12 billion a year for rebels, warlords, and repressive governments. Recycling eases the demand for the resources.
- Recycling prevents habitat destruction, loss of biodiversity, and soil erosion associated with logging and mining.
So do the right thing. Put it in the bin. The recycling bin. 
Sources:
- Recycling Reality
- Australian Bureau of Statistics – Waste
- Why do we recycle?
- Waste and Recycling
- Recycling Benefits.
Recent Comments