Officials from local governments are lobbying Congress to put more money into wastewater treatment projects this year. Chuck Quirmbach reports:
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Officials from local governments are lobbying Congress to put more money into wastewater treatment projects this year. Chuck Quirmbach reports:
President Bush’s proposed budget would cut money for keeping up and building new sewage treatment plants. The White House wants to reduce funds for a loan program that provides money for wastewater infrastructure for municipalities and factories and stormwater management.
Gary Becker chairs the Great Lakes — Saint Lawrence Cities Initiative. He says there’s a huge need for full funding of the program.
“As population expands, as cities grow, as municipalities grow you have a constant need to expand the plants. .. in addition to being able to upgrade the ones that were put in 30 years ago when the Clean Water Act was put together.”
Becker says he hopes Congress will reverse what the President has in mind. The Bush Administration has generally said it’s trying to shrink spending on everything – except for the military – as a way to reduce the federal budget deficit.
The Junkyard Symphony warms the crowd with their beats. They say recycling even a little goes a long way. (Photo by Karen Kelly)
The ring toss - a crowd favorite. (Photo by Karen Kelly)
Showing one of many uses for used pickle buckets. (Photo by Karen Kelly)
The old cup-on-the-head trick. (Photo by Karen Kelly)
It takes a keen eye to see the value in an old hubcap, a dented bucket or a broken bicycle horn. But when you’re searching for musical instruments, the junkyard can be an inspiration. Karen Kelly has the story:
Transcript
It takes a keen eye to see the value in an old hubcap, a dented bucket or a broken bicycle horn. But when you’re searching for musical instruments, the junkyard can be an inspiration. Karen Kelly has the story:
It’s a winter weekend festival in Ottawa, Canada and it’s freezing. And there are a few things you can count on – ice skating, ice sculptures, maple taffy… but bongo drums?
(sound of drums fades in)
As you make your way along a crowded path, you catch sight of the band, and you realize…these guys aren’t playing bongos.
They’re playing on recycling bins. And they’ve got paint buckets hanging on either side of them. Those bottle caps taped to the top turn them into snare drums. And there are PVC pipes sticking out of the bin with metal bowls on top. Those would be the cymbals. And – believe it or not – they sound really good.
(drumming)
They’re called Junkyard Symphony.
Two guys, dressed in khaki-green jumpsuits, playing on instruments they made themselves. Jonny Olsen is the founder of Junkyard Symphony.
“Usually, what I do is go to the junkyard and look through the stuff and take my stick and bang on stuff and experiment with different sounds. I get a lot of ideas for bits in the show just from the props that we find. Just use your imagination, basically.”
Like a beat-up Cheer detergent box. During the show, Olsen picks a little kid out of the audience to hold that box up in the air. And the audience does what it’s told.
(Olsen leads crowd in cheering)
Olsen started Junkyard Symphony about 20 years ago, when he was in high school. But what started as an Earth Day project became a summer job that put him through college. After graduation, he tried to stop, but couldn’t.
“Once I was done, I had so many people calling for the show, and I’ve never really been able to stop it, beacuse I’ve had so many people calling. I wasn’t able to move on to anything else. They wouldn’t let me.” (laughs)
What really gets the audience going are the tricks. There are plungers juggled between the legs. And the audience is invited to throw tennis balls at a tube attached to Olsen’s forehead.
One of Olsen’s favorite tricks is to place a kid on top of a milk crate, hands together, straight up over their head. The drum rolls, along with hundreds of mittens.
The kid’s looking nervous, and Olsen – standing behind him – starts tossing hula hoops at him. Kind of like human horseshoes.
That’s what attracts people like Joe Vinchec on a freezing cold day.
“I find them very creative and hilarious, actually. Quite funny.”
Olsen says he’s got three goals for his show. He wants to expand it beyond Ottawa, Montreal, and Toronto – where they play now.
He wants people to have fun.
And he wants people to think about reusing and recycling.
Some people have said he should move on to bigger issues, like climate change. Recycling is old news. But in Ottawa, where Olsen lives – and in many other cities – they’re running out of space for their garbage.
That’s why he argues everyday actions do matter.
“Every little thing you do adds up. Like when we first started Junkyard Symphony, we made our money on the street, by someone chucking in a quarter and eventually, all those quarters added up to my tuition. So if everybody just did little things, it would add up to having a cleaner environment.”
(sound back up)
Olsen blows into a homemade didgeridoo, and aims it at the nearest kid. (audience laughs)
It’s the traditional Australian instrument, but this one is made from a long piece of PVC piping.
Olsen doesn’t talk much during his show. And he definitely doesn’t preach. He believes if you inspire positive feelings – if you get them to laugh – you’re more likely to inspire people to take positive action, as well.
Where is it?! Oh! There it is - up in the corner - eeek! (Photo by Tom Wojnowski)
Bats like our homes as much as we do. (Photo by Tom Wojnowski)
Tom Wojnowski and his wife, Brenda Hines, moved into a new home and discovered they had wildlife neighbors. (Photo by Kyle Norris)
Tom Wojnowski lives in the suburbs but on the edge of a natural area. Like a lot of suburban homeowners, he struggles with the damage to his house caused by wildlife. (Photo by Kyle Norris)
A woodpecker damaged Tom Wojnowski's house. He's learning to live with his wild neighbors. (Photo by Kyle Norris)
More and more people are moving into areas that are natural habitats for animals. And a lot of people are finding that the animals don’t want to move out of the neighborhood. Kyle Norris reports that this can make for some interesting interactions:
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More and more people are moving into areas that are natural habitats for animals. And a lot of people are finding that the animals don’t want to move out of the neighborhood. Kyle Norris reports that this can make for some interesting interactions:
Get this: woodpeckers want to live inside Tom Wojnowski’s house.
“There’s a hole. And when you’re in house here’s what you hear, you hear this: (knocks) and you know you’re being attacked!”
Wojnowski is not so keen on sharing his house with the woodpeckers. He managed to scare that one away, but then another woodpecker made a pretty good-sized hole on the other side of the house.
Wojnowski put up one of those menacing plastic owls, you know, to scare the woodpecker away – and he thinks it’s working. He’ll probably even buy another plastic owl. You know, with those cute eyes, all wide.
Wojnowski lives in a suburb, but it’s sort of out in the country. There are dirt roads, and lots of trees. And lots of wildlife in the area.
Wojnowski started having problems with animals pretty much the day they moved into the house. Actually, he can list off his problems to the ABCs.
“Well let’s start with A. Ants haven’t been a big problem. There’s been a few but none in the house and they’re out there so I leave them alone. B. You have bees and bats.”
Ok, this could go on for a while… so I’m going to jump in here.
Bats were living in the attic. Carpenter bees chewed holes in the siding. So, for “D” you’ve got deer. The deer ate pretty much all the landscaped plants. Ok so now, let’s jump to “F.”
There was this fox. It had been living in Wojnowski’s drainage ditch. And it would bury its kill in the lawn—things like dead, smelly skunks. Yeah.
So, one day Wojnowski was getting his mail and the fox came strolling out of woods. And they locked eyes.
Wojnowski noticed the fox was small and red… and beautiful.
But he was tired of dealing with it.
“So I took this rock and I put it in front of the drainage ditch hole. And he watched me do that and it was almost like ‘what are you doing to me here?’ So then he went next door and went to their drainage ditch.”
Wojnowski is not the only guy who’s battling it out with the wildlife.
As people keep moving into areas near wildlife, there are problems. I mean at a certain point it starts to feel like…(Boxing announcer: in this corner, with acres of ravaged lawns and gardens to their credit, we have the wildlife. (applause and boos) And in this corner, with a hoe, live traps, and a BB gun, we have the human homeowners…” (applause and boos and the ‘ding’ of the boxing bell)
But experts say it does not actually have to be ‘us’ versus ‘them’.
Jennifer Kleitch is a wildlife technician with the Michigan Department of Natural Resources.
She says people need to realize that they’re part of the problem.
Dog food outside is a free meal for coyotes. People who mow their lawns all the way to the edge of their pond create paradise for geese: short grass near water.
And then there’s this kind of thing which can happen with raccoons:
“If we leave out our garbage and they get into it, we get mad and they’re being a nuisance. But we are in essence responsible for them being there and being drawn to it.”
She says people tend look at it as if animals are the problem. But… the people moved into the animals’ neighborhood.
Stephen Vantassel says we’re conflicted about wildlife. He’s a wildlife damage educator with the University of Nebraska Lincoln Extension office.
“We tend to have the Disney effect with wildlife. We have these rather pastoral images of a person walking through a deep forest and seeing the deer in the distance. And then that attitude can change dramatically when they see that same deer ravaging a plant they paid $500 for to have put in their backyard.”
He says when people start thinking of wildlife as “evil” (As in, “that thing that tore up my flower bed is ‘evil’”) well, that can be bad.
The animals are not the enemy… they’re part of the environment… the same environment that people want to live in.
So… Tom Wojnowski? You know, the ABC guy?
Well, he says his perspective has changed a little over time. He still thinks if animals are destroying his property… yeah, well then they’ve got to go. But he’s starting to realize there are things he can do to discourage wildlife from damaging his property… without waging war.
He’s kind of getting into it actually. He’s started reading up on different animals. He says he likes and respects animals… even the mole tearing up his lawn. He thought it was a whole colony. Turned out… it was just one mole. But one heck of a hard-working mole.
Experts say there are plenty of cheap, simple things you can do just to prevent problems.
Like modify bird feeders to guard against squirrels. Chimney caps discourage uninvited guests from dropping in. And people can fill in the cracks and crevices around their home to stop things like bees and mice from sneaking in.
But the experts say that the best thing you can do is cool your jets. Stop viewing the animal as the problem. And realize that the animal is just trying to do its thing.
As for the wildlife around Tom Wojnowski’s place, well, they’re stalled at the letter W. Which is the first letter in his last name. The animals are still trying to learn to live with him.
Used resources can be remade into all kinds of things. These street signs were made into switchplates. (Photo by Ann Dornfeld)
Used chopsticks are cleaned and sandblasted to make a bracelet. (Photo by Ann Dornfeld)
Reused fabrics made into baby booties. (Photo by Ann Dornfeld)
Old toothbrushes are used as handles for cutting blades. (Photo by Ann Dornfeld)
The people who make everyday items – from cars to chairs to cell phones – attractive and functional are called industrial designers. Now a new generation of industrial designers is learning how to create products that are environmentally friendly as well. That makes their jobs a bit more challenging. Ann Dornfeld reports:
Transcript
The people who make everyday items – from cars to chairs to cell phones – attractive and functional are called industrial designers. Now a new generation of industrial designers is learning how to create products that are environmentally friendly as well. That makes their jobs a bit more challenging. Ann Dornfeld reports:
A lot of the things you buy have a pretty limited life cycle. Think about it. Before you buy a product, it uses up raw materials, then you use it for a while, then it ends up in a garbage dump. But that doesn’t have to be its fate.
A group of industrial design students at Western Washington University was given this challenge: create attractive, useful products that are also completely recyclable, reusable or biodegradable. On top of that, they had to use waste that would have ended up in the dump.
Rachel Bjarnasson explains what’s known as “closed-loop” design:
“Instead of a product life cycle and a designer’s job ending with that product when the product is at the end of its useful life, that that is just a new material that can be reused and turned into a new product.”
This sustainable design principle has caught on in Europe. There, household appliance manufacturers are required to take back old dishwashers and clothes dryers to reuse their components. U.S. factories are adopting closed-loop systems, too, as a way to save money on raw materials and benefit the environment.
One of the first lessons the students learned was that in closed-loop design, it’s not enough to use recyclable materials. You have to think about how you attach one material to another.
“If you have a recyclable material like an aluminum bonded to a plastic that’s non-recyclable, suddenly the recyclable component is no longer recyclable.”
Bjarnasson says they had to avoid using strong glues for that reason. And also because the adhesives can release toxic fumes.
The students also had to figure out where to get their raw materials.
Seth Tucker wanted to make bracelets out of disposable chopsticks.
“I found that between Japan and China, one billion pairs of chopsticks are thrown away every year. They’re taking down whole forests just for chopsticks!”
He asked local Asian restaurants whether he could install chopsticks recycling bins to collect enough for his project.
“Some restaurants, it was kinda funny, they gave me this kinda look like ‘you’re crazy, I would never give you used chopsticks.’ But it was really cool, ’cause other places were like, ‘oh yeah, totally, we’re definitely cool with the idea.'”
Tucker sanitized the chopsticks he’d collected, cut them into pieces and sandblasted them into what look like little driftwood beads. He strung them into bracelets along with natural turquoise and antique African trade beads.
One student turned newsprint into biodegradable flower pots.
Another made used-up retail gift cards into colorful luggage tags.
Rachel Bjarnasson challenged herself to use fabric scraps that she usually throws away in her job as a seamstress. She stitched strips of silk into baby booties, and lined them with scraps of fleece she got from a local glove manufacturer. Then she cushioned the soles with leftover carpet padding from a flooring company.
“And so all of this was materials that would’ve been thrown out, and I turned them into little striped baby booties.”
Several stores agreed to carry the products. One of them was Goods for the Planet in Seattle. Suzanne O’Shea is the co-owner.
“We were thrilled to do it because one of our goals is to find products as close to home as possible and support the local economy.”
The students’ products were a hit with her customers. O’Shea says some even sold out right away – like the chopsticks bracelets.
And sushi rollers made from stainless steel bicycle spokes flew off the shelves.
“And a lot of chefs that have come in and people that make sushi at home have really been impressed by this design because it has more weight than the standard bamboo sushi rollers.”
And that’s the idea. Student Rachel Bjarnasson says they learned the ideal sustainable product is at least as attractive and useful as the competition.
“You still need to make a product that looks beautiful and has good tactile sensation and is something that people ultimately want to buy. Even if it has the best of intentions in saving the environment, it won’t do its job if it’s not something that people want or need.”
The students say they’ll try to integrate the closed-loop design principles they’ve learned into all of their future products. They don’t want anything they design to ever end up in the trash.
