Recycling Your Christmas Tree

  • (Photo courtesy of the Architect of the Capitol)

Most cities discourage you
from throwing your Christmas tree
away. Rebecca Williams takes a look
at what you can do with your tree:

Transcript

Most cities discourage you
from throwing your Christmas tree
away. Rebecca Williams takes a look
at what you can do with your tree:

In a lot of cities you can drop your tree off, or a city truck will come and
pick it up. Then they’ll run it through a big chipper and make mulch. Cities
use the mulch for parks or zoos. And sometimes you can buy some of that
mulch for your own yard.

Bryan Weinert is a solid waste coordinator in Ann Arbor, Michigan. He
says you’ve got to make sure you take all the ornaments and tinsel off the
tree before you put it at the curb.

“You know that compromises the quality of our finished product and in
some cases can actually damage our grinding equipment.”

Other places use the trees to create fish habitat. And this year, when the
Vatican is done with its 108 foot tall Christmas tree, it’ll use it to make
wooden toys.

For The Environment Report, I’m Rebecca Williams.

Related Links

Fda Says “Eat More Fish”

  • A catfish farmer in Mississippi (Photo by Stephen Ausmus, courtesy of the USDA)

The Food and Drug Administration
has once again opened the debate about
how much fish pregnant women can safely
eat. Lester Graham reports the FDA might
abandon guidelines it issued less than
five years ago:

Transcript

The Food and Drug Administration
has once again opened the debate about
how much fish pregnant women can safely
eat. Lester Graham reports the FDA might
abandon guidelines it issued less than
five years ago:

In early 2004 the FDA suggested pregnant women or women planning to become
pregnant should avoid fish with higher levels of mercury such as swordfish or shark.
And limit all other fish to a couple of meals a week.

Now, a proposed FDA recommendation indicates fish is too healthful to worry about
the mercury, and suggests instead of avoiding fish altogether, pregnant women
should eat more.

Sonya Lunder is with the advocacy organization, The Environmental Working Group.
She says the recommendation won’t hold up to scrutiny.

“And all the flaws in it will come to light. My concern is that the headlines that come
out that there’s a debate about the toxicity of fish or what pregnant women should
eat cause a lot of confusion.”

The FDA’s proposal comes after years of lobbying by the seafood industry.

For The Environment Report, this is Lester Graham.

Related Links

Making Products Close to Home

The price of everything from
shampoo to bottled iced tea could be
on the rise in the next few years –
unless companies find ways to produce
and distribute products more efficiently.
But if they do, it could be good news for
American workers. Julie Grant reports:

Transcript

The price of everything from
shampoo to bottled iced tea could be
on the rise in the next few years –
unless companies find ways to produce
and distribute products more efficiently.
But if they do, it could be good news for
American workers. Julie Grant reports:

Today, when a company makes, say a bottle of shampoo,
the plastic bottle is often made in China and shipped to the
U.S.

Daniel Mahler is with the global consulting firm AT Kearney.
His company finds the cost of labor in China is going up –
and cost of transporting bottles around the world is on the
rise.

Mahler says that means it’s smarter to start making the
bottles here in the U.S.

“Because the transportation costs will be much lower if I
have a supplier next door that ships to me my plastic or the
caps for my bottles.”

Mahler’s study says companies that don’t change could see
earnings drop by 30% in the next five years – and that would
mean higher prices for products.

For The Environment Report, I’m Julie Grant.

Related Links

Downtowns Make Room for Artists

  • James Abajian is an artist who lives in Elgin, Illinois. His entire apartment is stuffed with tools, paint, and works like this one. (Photo by Shawn Allee)

The stereotype of the
starving artist isn’t always true,
but, let’s face it, some artists
have a tough time finding affordable
places to both live and work. Shawn
Allee reports how one city’s
trying to solve this problem while
revitalizing its downtown:

Transcript

The stereotype of the
starving artist isn’t always true,
but, let’s face it, some artists
have a tough time finding affordable
places to both live and work. Shawn
Allee reports how one city’s
trying to solve this problem while
revitalizing its downtown:

The City of Elgin Illinois has a housing crisis – not so much for average residents, but for
some artists.

It’s not that they’re homeless, it’s just, well, to understand. It helps to meet an Elgin
artist.

“Come on in.”

“Are you James?”

“Yeah.”

This is James Abajian.

“Don’t really mind the house, I’ve been working on a couple of projects.”

When I get in, I’m dumbstruck.

Wood sculptures cover Abajian’s floor, and his dining room has stacks of paper and
canvas, and right where most apartments would have a TV, Abajian’s got an unfinished
drawing.

“It’s like a wine glass or a martini glass, and it’s on different angles.”

“Is it a charcoal drawing?”

“Yeah, it’s charcoal.”

Abajian started art eight years ago.

He says he’d like to make a living with it and rent a fancy studio, but he’s just not there
yet.

So, he lives where he works.

“My apartment is nothing but paintings and frames.”

“I think the major space that doesn’t have charcoal or something on it is your
couch.”

“Couch. That’s about it. Yeah.”

It can take a while for artists like Abajian to hone their craft, so, they make do with space
not meant for working.

It’s enough for the city of Elgin to step in and try to help at least some artists find better
quarters. Oh, and, by the way, the city thinks the solution might solve a problem it has,
too.

Ed Schock is Elgin’s mayor.

I find him downtown, outside a two-story brick building.

“So, where are we, Mayor?”

“We are looking at the Elgin Community College downtown campus building.”

Schock is considering whether this building might work as an artist colony – a place
where Elgin artists could afford to live and work.

“There are an unusual number of artists here who would like to continue to do their
art, but economic reality’s set in, one of the biggest one’s is housing. Plus, just
having 45-50 residents downtown is a big plus. One of our strategic goals is to
increase the number who reside in the downtown.”

Inside, Schock and I meet staffers from a non-profit group that’s helping Elgin develop
artist housing.

(sound of walking up stairs)

They’re with ArtSpace of Minnesota.

ArtSpace wants to see the building first-hand – they need to make sure it’s the best fit for
Elgin and the artists.

Wendy Holmes says lots of cities want artists to make older parts of town more attractive.

Holmes says it works for cities – but it doesn’t always work for artists in the long run.

“Artists have traditionally been displaced from their spaces because artists make
areas interesting and hip and desirable to move into and other people tend to move
in behind them. And those people can afford to pay higher rent therefore the artists
are usually forced out because their rents will be too high for the artists themselves
to afford.”

ArtSpace does something about that – it uses federal low-income housing credits, so rents
stay affordable, and struggling artists stick around.

Another staffer, Heidi Kurtze asks about public transit, grocery stores, and how much
light these windows get.

“You need natural light into your living space, but for artists in particular, natural
light is a critical piece for them to do the work they do.”

Kurtz takes this as seriously as a family buying a house – after all, this could be some
artists’ home for decades.

It could take two years for ArtSpace to finish its Elgin project.

Artists like James Abajain will have to make due until then.

For The Environment Report, I’m Shawn Allee.

Related Links

Wildman Forages for Food in Central Park

  • (Photo by Scott Bauer, courtesy of the USDA)

Everyone needs to eat. But
not everyone gets their groceries
at the shopping market. Some
people find their food. They forage
in backyards, forests, even city parks.
It’s free, some of it tastes pretty
good, and as Samara Freemark reports,
sometimes it’s even legal:

Transcript

Everyone needs to eat. But
not everyone gets their groceries
at the shopping market. Some
people find their food. They forage
in backyards, forests, even city parks.
It’s free, some of it tastes pretty
good, and as Samara Freemark reports,
sometimes it’s even legal:

It’s a beautiful fall day in New York’s Central Park, and Steve Brill is looking for
something to eat.

“Everyone come over here, we have another species. Come on over here.”

Steve Brill – I’m sorry, Wildman Steve – leads foraging tours in parks all over the New
York area. And today he says he’s going to prove to me and about thirty others that the
park is full of things to eat.

“Try this.”

But the tour starts off a little rough. At first we find a lot more plants that can kill us than
feed us. Yellow violets will make you vomit. So will pokeberries. And, so will
pokeweed.

“Is this the worst thing you’ve ever smelled? The chemical is called buteric
acid. The name comes from rancid butter. This is a common element in
decaying flesh.”

Foraging isn’t for the faint of heart – or the uneducated. Wildman is very careful to tell
people to study up before they start snacking on the weeds in their backyards. But he says
once you learn to recognize edible plants, it’s pretty easy to tell them apart from the
poisonous ones.

“You have to know what the plant is. If you go into a supermarket, you have
to tell the difference between the apples and the cigarettes. The apples are
good for you, the cigarettes will kill you. Black walnut doesn’t look much
like poison hemlock. They all have their identifying characteristics.”

And it turns out there’s a lot of stuff out there that is edible. Chew some birch bark – it
tastes like wintergreen. Primose has a root like a radish. Garlic mustard tastes like, well,
garlic. Mixed with freshly cut grass. We didn’t really love that one. But the crab apples
were great.

“This is a crab apple tree. And the ripe crab apples, they have a texture of applesauce and
a flavor like tamarind. Tell me if this doesn’t taste like tamarind.”

“Just eat it like this?”

“Yeah, just spit out the seeds. These are really addictive. I like these.”

Ok, but before you start poking around in your neighborhood park, there’s one more thing
you should know. The thing about foraging is, it’s kind of quasi-legal. You’re not really
supposed to pick the plants in most parks. And Wildman Steve himself has gotten in
trouble for this. In 1986 Central Park officials busted him for foraging. They led him off
in handcuffs and charged him with criminal mischief. Wildman eventually got off and he
hadn’t had any run ins with the law since, well, until this year.

A week after I met Wildman Steve he was in court again, this time for harvesting
sassafras.

“Defacing the park. That was my crime. There’s no defacing at all. I didn’t damage or
destroy anything. This is just total nonsense.”

Wildman Steve faces fines of up to $2000. But that hasn’t stopped him from leading
tours. Why would he stop, he asks me. His tours can change how people see the world
around them. And that’s more important than a court date.

Take 12 year old Rory Langan. Rory told me his cousin has a black walnut tree in his
backyard. But it never occurred to him that the walnuts he found on the lawn had any
connection to the nuts you buy in the store.

“I actually never thought you could eat these. I thought it was poisonous. It’s pretty cool
though. It’s actually pretty good.”

He says he can’t wait to go home and show his cousin what to do with all those snacks in
the backyard.

For The Environment Report, this is Samara Freemark.

Related Links

The Logic of Parking Rate Hikes

  • Cyrus Haghighi owns a food and gift shop in Chicago's Andersonville neighborhood, which has become a retail hot-spot in recent years. Haghighi worries suburbanites will avoid his shop once Chicago hikes its parking prices. (Photo by Shawn Allee)

Nobody likes to pay more than
they need to for parking, but a lot
of cities are bumping up the price
lately. Chicago’s going with one
of the biggest hikes. In most
neighborhoods prices are doubling,
and they’ll jump again and again
for years to come. Shawn Allee wondered what might happen to
businesses when parking gets pricier:

Transcript

Nobody likes to pay more than
they need to for parking, but a lot
of cities are bumping up the price
lately. Chicago’s going with one
of the biggest hikes. In most
neighborhoods prices are doubling,
and they’ll jump again and again
for years to come. Shawn Allee wondered what might happen to
businesses when parking gets pricier:

I’m in a neighborhood miles from Chicago’s glitzy downtown, but there’re still
plenty of shops, restaurants and furniture stores to attract shoppers up here.

One problem the neighborhood has is parking.

Until recently, it only cost 25 cents per hour to park here. As you can guess, the very
cheap price for parking has meant very few parking spots available for people who
are driving through.

Now, the neighborhood’s going through a change. It’s bumping up to 75 cents per
hour, and in a few years it will cost 2 dollars per hour.

So, I’m here to see what businesses think will happen to their bottom line once this
price increase for parking comes through.

I’m gonna start at this grocery store.

It’s called Pars Grocery – the sign here says it serves up Mediterranean food, teas,
and gifts.

The owner’s Cyrus Haghighi.

Haghighi: “So of course nobody would come and it would be too expensive for them
to spend too much money for the parking, and I don’t know why they’re doing this
– it makes everybody worried.

Well, that’s one owner who thinks the parking price increase is going to scare
shoppers away.

But I went around the neighborhood to get some other opinions, and I’m now at
another store – the Andersonville Galleria.

I have a clerk here.

His name is Rafe Pipin

Rafe what do you think of the parking price increase?

Pipin: “With the parking meter rates being a quarter an hour now, what happens a
lot of times is that store employees or managers take up the parking on the street
and stay there all day, whereas this may might provoke them to look for parking
further away. So they wouldn’t have to feed higher meter rates all day and open up
space for people visiting the neighborhood to do some shopping.”

Okay. We have two opinions.

One, higher prices will scare people away.

And, another that higher prices might free up space for more paying customers.

Who’s got it right?

Well, I put this to a kind of parking guru.

His name’s Donald Shoup, and he teaches at UCLA.

I’ve told Dr. Shoup about how tight parking is in this neighborhood and where prices are
headed.

“The higher prices that drive away some people will attract other people who are
willing to pay for the curb parking if they can easily find a space. Well, who do you
think will spend more in a store or leave a bigger tip in a restaurant? Somebody
who will come only park free or someone who’s willing to pay the market price for
parking if they can easily find a vacant space?”

Dr. Shoup says cities often make parking too cheap.

He says this discourages public transit.

Plus, it wastes gas because meters fill up fast, and shoppers keep driving around to find
the few empty ones.

Shoup says politicians just don’t want to increase fees.

In Chicago’s case, the city privatized parking meters, so the city made one tough decision
that will last 75 years.

Shoup says there’s a better way – set aside some of the parking money and spend it in
neighborhoods that generate it. Donald Shoup says some people still won’t like parking price increases.

But he says there’s plenty of fuss at first, but then people eventually chuck over the
additional money and forget the increase ever happened.

For The Environment Report, I’m Shawn Allee.

Related Links

The “Enviropig” Cuts Pollution

  • Researcher Cecil Forsberg created the first Enviropigs in 1999. Their meat may soon be available at American supermarkets. (Photo by Julie Grant)

At factory farms, cows and
pigs produce a lot of manure, and
that sometimes causes a lot of
pollution. Julie Grant reports that
one scientist says he’s got a solution:
genetically modify pigs so they produce
less pollution. But to be successful,
people have to be willing to eat
genetically modified meat:

Transcript

At factory farms, cows and
pigs produce a lot of manure, and
that sometimes causes a lot of
pollution. Julie Grant reports that
one scientist says he’s got a solution:
genetically modify pigs so they produce
less pollution. But to be successful,
people have to be willing to eat
genetically modified meat:

Murray Borrello says pig and cow poop is killing everything
in some of the water he studies. He’s a geologist and has
been researching water pollution with chemists and
biologists at Alma College in Michigan. Borrello says there’s
no fish in parts of the river – because of all the animal feces
running off of nearby farms.

“It’s very obvious. It’s this kind of brown, mucky,
murky looking substance.”

That poop is full of phosphorous, nitrogen, and other things
that cause pollution problems. It creates algae that clogs up
waterways and sucks out all the oxygen.

Borrello says some of the farms house more than
10,000 hogs. Farmers sometimes hold 20 million gallons of
pig manure in lagoons. They liquefy it and spray it on the
fields for fertilizer. But Borrello says it’s too much manure,
so it runs off the land and into the waterways.

In some places, it’s the same water is used for drinking
water. And the same rivers drain into the Great Lakes.

On the northern side of the Lakes, a Canadian scientist says
he’s found a possible solution to this pig pollution problem.

(sound of a pig barn)

It’s called the Enviropig.

Cecil Forsberg has genetically modified pigs so they produce
less pollution in their waste.

I met him at his research barn at the University of Guelph in
Ontario.

There are no windows – just a ventilation system. And,
wow, it’s hard to concentrate – the smell of pig waste is so
strong.

He introduces me to a group of Enviropigs, they’re about a year and
a half old. He says they have no detectable difference from
regular pigs.

“They have four legs, two ears, a snout, and they like to dig
in the shavings.”

But while most pigs poop out a lot of polluting phosphorous,
Forsberg has made the Enviropig into a much better
machine for digesting phosphorous.

He’s no Dr. Frankenstein. But to do it, he did use DNA from
a mouse. He says it’s considered a safe technique, but he
knows it makes people cringe.

“There’s no mouse in these pigs, except for a little fragment
of DNA.”

The mouse DNA allowed Forsberg to add a bacterial gene to
the pigs. It’s that bacteria that triggers the pig’s salivary
glands to start the digestion of phosphorous.

Forsberg says the waste from these pigs does a lot less
damage to the environment than most pigs.

“There’s a reduction in the phosphorous in the manure by up
to 60%. And that’s important because phosphorous is the
component in manure that is the first one that’s problematic.”

And it’s part of what chokes the oxygen out of the waterways –
killing fish and other aquatic species. Forsberg wants to see
Enviropigs bred on the global scale to reduce pollution from
the growing number of large scale hog farms.

Back in Michigan, water specialist Murray Borrello
says reducing phosphorous pollution from giant hog farms
will benefit water quality, but he does not think a genetically
modified pig is the answer.

“The problem is that does not address the issue of all the
other stuff that is very concentrated going into surface water
and ground water.”

Stuff, such as nitrogen and ammonia.

Borrello says a better solution is to reduce the size of hog
farms, so there aren’t so many pigs concentrated in such
small spaces.

But the Enviropig is starting to get some traction.

When Forsberg and his colleagues created the first
generation of Enviropigs, nearly 10 years ago, the question
was: could they do it?

Today, seven generations of pigs later, the question is: will
people eat it?

Until recently, the US government hadn’t allowed the sale
of genetically modified meat. But, the Food and Drug
Administration recently published guidelines for it. And
some industry analysts say you could be eating pork from
animals like the Enviropig as soon as 2011.

For The Environment Report, I’m Julie Grant.

Related Links

Renting Rooftops for Solar Power

Some big utility companies are
looking at projects using more renewable
energy. Some are investing in solar on
the rooftops of their customers’ homes. Julie
Grant reports on one of the biggest pilot
projects in the nation:

Transcript

Some big utility companies are
looking at projects using more renewable
energy. Some are investing in solar on
the rooftops of their customers’ homes. Julie
Grant reports on one of the biggest pilot
projects in the nation:

Duke Energy plans to rent 425 rooftops from homeowners
and businesses in North Carolina to install and maintain
solar panels.

Dave Scanzoni is a spokesman for Duke Energy. He says
building a new nuclear or coal plant could take a decade.
But this solar project could contribute electricity to the grid in
just a couple of years.

“Instead of a big, main baseload power plant that we
traditionally think of, we have several hundred small, little
power plants. It’s distributed power plants, a different way to
distribute energy closer to the customer.”

If the project is approved by regulators, the money to pay for
it will come from ratepayers – an 8-cent hike on the average
utility bill.

Other utilities have rooftop solar projects in the works as
power companies begin to experiment to find ways to reduce
carbon emissions.

For The Environment Report, I’m Julie Grant.

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Tag-Teaming the Dead Zone

  • It is predicted that the dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico is the size of the state of Massachusetts (Photo courtesy of NASA)

A scientific panel wants two
federal agencies to start working together,
to reduce pollution. Fertilizer pollution
is causing problems for the Mississippi
River system and contributing to a ‘Dead
Zone’ in the Gulf of Mexico. Chuck Quirmbach
reports:

Transcript

A scientific panel wants two
federal agencies to start working together,
to reduce pollution. Fertilizer pollution
is causing problems for the Mississippi
River system and contributing to a ‘Dead
Zone’ in the Gulf of Mexico. Chuck Quirmbach
reports:

Nitrogen and phosphorus come from fertilizers used on lawns and farm fields. The chemicals
pollute water throughout the Mississippi River Basin and down to the Gulf of Mexico. The
National Research Council has been studying the problem.

David Dzombak is an Engineering Professor at Carnegie Mellon University, and helped the
council write a new report. He says the biggest recommendation is for the US Environmental
Protection Agency and the US Department of Agriculture to team up.

“This is a very large scale problem. It’s taken many years to develop and will take many years to
turn around.”

And Dzombak says the two agencies need to get started. The report recommends the federal
agencies work with states to restrict the amount of fertilizer that can go into streams and rivers. It
also calls for a network of experiments to filter or buffer the fertilizer runoff in badly-polluted
watersheds.

For The Environment Report, I’m Chuck Quirmbach.

Related Links

Getting Consumers to Want Greener Cars

  • The Editor of Car and Driver Magazine suggests that customers will demand gas guzzlers as long as gas is cheap. (Photo courtesy of the US Department of State)

Some members of Congress called
for GM, Chrysler, and Ford to make more
fuel efficient and less polluting cars
and trucks during the debate over federal
loans for the Big Three. Lester Graham
reports one industry observer thinks that’s
not helpful:

Transcript

Some members of Congress called
for GM, Chrysler, and Ford to make more
fuel efficient and less polluting cars
and trucks during the debate over federal
loans for the Big Three. Lester Graham
reports one industry observer thinks that’s
not helpful:

Csaba Csere is the Editor of Car and Driver magazine. He says those forcing the
Detroit automakers to build greener cars is not the solution. He says customers will
demand gas guzzlers – as long as gas is cheap.

Csere suggests if the government really wants to change the kinds of cars Detroit
builds, it’ll have to give car buyers a reason to buy more fuel efficient cars.

“If we really wanted to have an energy policy in this country, the solution is not to
force the carmakers to build more efficient vehicles, it’s to force the consumers to
buy them. And a gas tax is a way to achieve that.”

He’s not advocating that policy. And a whole lot of people don’t like the idea – at all.
Members of Congress would rather pressure the troubled automobile manufacturers,
than to tell the voters at home, ‘hey we’re voting to raise taxes on gasoline because
it’s good for the environment.’

For The Environment Report, this is Lester Graham.

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