Tag: dead

An Alternative to Waste Incinerators

  • A new process called alkaline hydrolysis is forecasted to be a cheaper, safer way to dispose of animal carcasses. (Photo by Dr. Beth Williams, University of Wyoming, courtesy of CWD Alliance)

Animal research labs usually get rid of carcasses by burning them in incinerators. Now, a new more environmentally friendly technology is being used to dispose of the diseased dead animals and the lab supplies they contaminate. The new method has worked well enough that hospitals are considering it as a way to dispose of medical waste. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Julie Halpert reports:

Transcript

Animal research labs usually get rid of carcasses by burning them in incinerators. Now, a new more environmentally friendly technology is being used to dispose of the diseased dead animals and the lab supplies they contaminate. The new method has worked well enough that hospitals are considering it as a way to dispose of medical waste. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Julie Halpert reports:


Until recently, the only safe way to destroy diseased tissue and other infectious waste was to burn it in an incinerator. But dangerous chemicals such as dioxins spew from the incinerator smokestacks, and burning leaves behind a toxic ash.


(sound of machine whirring)


Now, there’s an alternative to burning. Dr. Gordon Kaye stands in a spotless room beside one of the units manufactured at a company he helped found, WR Squared, in Indianapolis, Indiana. The unit will eventually be used to dispose of 5,000 pounds of dead animals – about the equivalent of five large cows – that were used for veterinary research.


But there will be no smoke. There’ll be no fire.


Kaye’s idea for a new type of disposal technology began 12 years ago when he was a pathology professor at Albany Medical College. He was frustrated with how much it cost to dispose of dead research animals. So, he started experimenting with a new technology. And alkaline hydrolysis was born.


“Well, there are no air emissions from it. It’s a sealed system. It takes place in a hermetically sealed pressure vessel. No dangerous products are produced in it because of the temperature which it takes place.”


Alkaline hydrolysis works like this: infectious waste goes into a tightly sealed vessel, along with strong alkalis which are very caustic. The waste is then cooked at temperatures well above boiling. A chemical reaction causes the waste to break down. The infectious components are neutralized. When it’s over, you end up with two products: a sterile, water-like solution, that can head to a sanitary sewer system, and sterile crushed bones, the consistency of powder, that can be used as fertilizer. Because the end products are clean, they don’t require complicated disposal, so the process is cheaper than incineration.


WR squared now has 60 units in 15 states, primarily at research facilities. The U.S. Department of Agriculture has purchased several of them. New York was the first state to allow use of the technology. Ira Salkin directed that state’s medical waste program when it approved WR squared’s process.


“It has less potential problems than is being found with incineration and the use of incineration in the U.S. is decreasing and therefore their system holds great promise. As the numbers of incinerators decrease, one finds they have this alternative to be used to treat pathologic material.”


Environmentalists agree with Salkin that the technology is sound. Horhay Emmanuel is with Health Care Without Harm. He notes that it’s especially effective for one troublesome type of waste, cattle dead from Mad Cow disease.


“Not only does it destroy infectious agents, but it also destroys prion-contaminated waste. And prions are what are believed to cause things like Mad Cow disease, which are difficult to destroy, even by incineration, so WR squared has been shown to destroy these prions in the contaminated waste.”


Last April, The Environmental Protection Agency approved alkaline hydrolysis, along with incineration, as a way to treat Mad Cow diseased waste. And WR Squared’s Gordon Kaye sees that as a big future market.


Horhay Emmanuel, with Health Care Without Harm, says while alkaline hydrolysis is generally good for the environment, there is one concern. The fluid that’s produced could overwhelm some small town’s sewer systems. The company says in communities with small sewer systems, the solution can be released more slowly or during off-peak hours.


So, alkaline hydrolysis process is cheaper, it pollutes less, government agencies like it, and environmentalists find little to criticize.
Now, the company is broadening its reach to treat hospital waste. Many hospitals are using smaller, not very efficient incinerators that pollute more.


WR Squared’s Gordon Kaye says he expects big growth with this new method to dispose of medical and infectious waste as labs and hospitals look for ways to replace their incinerators over the next several years.


For the GLRC, I’m Julie Halpert.

Related Links

Designing Bird-Friendly Buildings

  • In Chicago, many migrating birds are attracted by the lights on tall buildings. This attraction causes some birds to crash into the buildings, often resulting in death. (Photo by Lester Graham)

Scientists estimate up to a billion birds are killed every year when they collide into building windows in the United States. Now, a group of bird watchers, biologists and architects are working together… hoping to lower the death toll. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lynette Kalsnes has the story:

Transcript

Scientists estimate up to a billion birds are killed when they collide into building windows in the United States every year. Now a group of bird watchers, biologists and architects are working together, hoping to lower the death toll. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium Lynette Kalsnes has the story:


If you call the group the Chicago Bird Collision Monitors, you’ll hear this message:


“If you have found an injured bird, please place the
bird gently in the bottom of a brown paper sack. A
grocery bag is just fine. Please put the bag with the bird in it in a quiet, dark place that’s warm. Inside, please.”


That’s the voice of the group’s founder and director Robbie Hunsinger. She’s followed those same instructions herself hundreds of times.


During migration season, in a single night, thousands
of birds fly over Chicago. They are attracted to the
lights on tall buildings and crash into the windows.
Hunsinger and other volunteers get up before dawn so
they can rescue the injured birds before the rats and
gulls get them.


After a morning of picking up injured birds, Hunsinger
has filled her car with brown paper bags containing
hurt swallows and cuckoos. Then, she’s driven up to 3
hours round-trip to get the birds to wildlife
rehabilitators.


She’s even cared for some of those birds herself.
Hunsinger has filled her music studio with mesh cages
and used up all her dishes for food and water. She says she decided to do something to help the birds three years ago after she saw 80 dead birds one morning in just a small area downtown.


“It was horrendous. Everywhere we looked, there were
birds, and they kept coming down. They were still
hitting when we were out there. So you’re standing
there, and birds were falling out of the sky.”


Hunsinger says she found the fallen birds clustered on
the sidewalks just as the busy city began to wake.


“It was rather surrealistic. Especially as the sun
started came up, and people started coming to work.
People were stepping over birds everywhere. People in
suits, people in high heels, coming in from the train
stations, going to their jobs in the Loop.”


Hunsinger says something changed in her that day. She
says she could no longer be an armchair
conservationist.
So, she formed a group of volunteers to help her save
the birds.


But rescuing injured birds didn’t seem to be enough.
Now she’s working with biologists, architects and bird-watchers to make buildings safer for birds.


Chicago already asks the managers of its tall
buildings to turn out the lights at night during
migration to avoid attracting the birds. But it’s
become clear that something more has to be done to
prevent so many birds from crashing into the building
windows.


This spring, the city and the Chicago Ornithological
Society will host what’s believed to be the first
conference on bird-friendly design. Those who’ve studied it say the problem is that birds
don’t recognize glass.


“The glass surface will act as a perfect mirror.”


That’s biology professor Daniel Klem Jr. of Muhlenberg College in Pennsylvania. He estimates that collisions with windows kill a billion birds a year in the U.S.


“A bird is not capable of determining that that image
on the glass surface is not a real tree. It attempts
to fly to it. Or it attempts to fly to light seen in
the window, as if it was a passageway to safety. And
the bird gets whacked and dies.”


Klem says installing windows at an angle or using
patterned glass can help. So can shades or
decals. Klem’s also pushing for research to develop special
glass or coatings that would be invisible to humans
but visible to birds.


It’s a new field. Limiting bird crashes isn’t part of
building design. Ellen Grimes is an assistant architecture professor at
the University of Illinois at Chicago. Grimes says
architects think about light, heat, power, water and
human traffic, but not bird traffic.


“When architects have approached sustainable design,
it’s been an engineering question. But there has not been a lot of consideration of
the biological interactions.”


Grimes acknowledges the issue of protecting birds
might be a hard sell because it might mean
compromising other design elements. But she’s hoping bird friendly design becomes as much
a part of green buildings as energy efficiency.


The rescue group’s Robbie Hunsinger says we share the
migrating birds with other nations. We have an
obligation to be good stewards of the birds.


“This can be fixed. These our our buildings. And we
should do it. We, by God, should do it.”


Meanwhile. Hunsinger is among a group of bird
watchers pushing for a center in downtown Chicago to
care for injured birds that collide with the building
windows. She’d like to keep the cages out of her home music
studio so she can actually practice music.


For the GLRC, I’m Lynette Kalsnes.

Related Links

‘Land Bank’ Reinvests in Inner City

  • Heavy cleanup crews from the Genesee County Land Bank use chain saws, wood chippers, tractors and brute force to move piles of debris on the lot of an abandoned house on the north side of Flint, Michigan. (Photo by Chris McCarus)

One community is fighting its problems of abandoned lands and unpaid property taxes. Those problems have led to a decaying inner city and increased suburban sprawl. The new tool the community is using is called a “land bank.” It uses a unique approach to try to fix up properties that otherwise often would be left to deteriorate. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Chris McCarus reports:

Transcript

One community is fighting its problems of abandoned lands and unpaid property taxes.
They’ve led to a decaying inner city and increased suburban sprawl. The new tool the
community is using is called a “land bank.” It uses a unique approach to try to fix up
properties that otherwise often would be left to deteriorate. The Great Lakes Radio
Consortium’s Chris McCarus reports:


(sound of work crews operating wood chipper)


Cleanup crews are sending downed branches through a wood chipper on a vacant lot.
They’re also removing tires, used diapers, car seats, sinks, old clothes and dead animal carcasses.
The workers are from the Genesee County Land Bank in Flint, Michigan. They’re trying to
make abandoned property useful again. Dan Kildee is the Genesee County Treasurer and the brains
behind the land bank. He thinks this new approach can recover unpaid property tax money and help
improve the Flint Metro area.


“The community gets to make a judgment on what we think we should do with this land. We get
to take a deep breath.”


Empty lots and rundown homes have been multiplying for a generation. That’s left the city of
Flint in a terrible economic state. But the land bank is beginning to change things.


Until just three years ago, Michigan was like most other states. No one had come up with
a solution. The state would auction off a city’s tax liens. Then conflict between the tax
lien buyer and the property owner could go on for up to seven years. In the meantime,
properties were left to neglect and often vandalized.


Under this new program, the treasurer’s office forecloses on a property and hands it over
to the land bank, which acts as the property manager. The land bank might then demolish
a house; it might throw out the owner and let a tenant buy it; or it might auction it off
to the highest bidder. A private investor can’t just buy a tax lien. He has to buy the
property along with it and take care of it.


The land bank is financed in two main ways: through fees on back taxes and through sales
of the few nicer homes or buildings the land bank acquires that bring in relatively big
profits. Treasurer Dan Kildee says it makes sense to take that revenue to fix up old
properties and sell them to people who deserve them.


“There is no system in the United States that pulls together these tools. Both the
ability to quickly assemble property into single ownership of the county, the tools
to manage it and the financing tools to develop that property.”


The land bank program hopes to change the perception of Flint. As thousands of abandoned
homes, stores and vacant lots become eyesores, people and their money go other places,
usually to build more sprawling suburbs. The perception that people are abandoning the
inner city then speeds up that abandonment. Many people who can afford to leave the city do.
And those who can’t afford to move are left behind.


According to data gathered by the research group Public Sector Consultants, Flint has the
state’s highest unemployment and crime rates and the lowest student test scores.


Art Potter is the land bank’s director. He thinks the downward spiral can be stopped.
When it is, those folks in the central city won’t have to suffer for still living there.


“Even though the City of Flint has lost 70,000 people in the last 30 years, the people who
are still here deserve to have a nice environment to live in. So our immediate goal is to
get control and to clean these properties now.”


Urban planning experts are watching the land bank approach. Michigan State
University’s Rex LaMore says Flint is typical of Midwestern cities whose manufacturing
base has shrunk. Private owners large and small have left unproductive property behind.
As the land bank steps in, LaMore says it’s likely to succeed and become an example that
other municipalities can follow.


“They can begin to maybe envision a city of the 21st century that will be different than
the cities of the 20th century or the 19th century that we see around the United States.
A city that reflects a more livable environment. So its an exciting opportunity. I think
we have the vision; the challenge is can we generate the resources? And the land bank model
does provide some opportunity to do that.”


But the land bank is meeting obstacles. For example, the new mayor of Flint who took over
in July canceled the city’s existing contracts. A conservative businessman, the mayor is
suspicious of the city’s past deals. They included one with the land bank to demolish 57
homes. This has slowed the land bank’s progress. Its officials are disappointed but they’re
still working with the mayor to get the money released.


(sound of kids chatting, then lawn mower starts up)


The weeds grow rampant in a neighborhood with broken up pavement and sometimes
no houses on an entire block. It’s open and in an odd way, peaceful. Like a
century-old farm. It’s as if the land has expelled the people who invaded with their bricks,
steel and concrete.


In the middle of all the vacant lots, Katherine Alymo sees possibilities.


“I’ve bought a number of properties in the auctions from the land bank and also got a side
lot acquisition from them for my house. My driveway wasn’t attached to my house when I
bought it. And it was this huge long process to try to get it from them. But they sold it
to me for a dollar. Finally.”


And since then, she’s hired people to fix the floors, paint walls and mow the lawns.
She’s also finding buyers for her properties who want to invest in the city as she has.
Together, they say they needed some help and the land bank is making that possible.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Chris McCarus.


(lawn mower fades out)

Related Links