Tag: glass

Money Back for Water Bottles

  • Nationally, we go through more than 30 billion non-carbonated drinks every year (Photo by Lester Graham)

Most states don’t have bottle deposit laws to encourage people to return their empties. Only eleven states do. Now, some are expanding their recycling programs to include bottled water. Sadie Babits reports the states know requiring a deposit for the bottles will keep them from ending up in landfills:

Transcript

Most states don’t have bottle deposit laws to encourage people to return their empties. Only eleven states do. Now, some are expanding their recycling programs to include bottled water. Sadie Babits reports the states know requiring a deposit for the bottles will keep them from ending up in landfills:

Every time Mary Nemmers buys a bottled beverage, she’s pays a five cent deposit at the register.

She wants to get that money back eventually. So she saves up her bottles and once a month brings them here to New Seasons Market in Portland, Oregon.

(sound of bottles being sorted)

Nemmers thinks this is a pretty convenient system. She gets to shop while a store employee sorts and hand counts her bottles.

Today Nemmers is getting nine dollars and change for her empties. While she’s glad to get that money back, she’s excited to learn that Oregon’s bottle deposit program has expanded.

“I just got some news that they’ll take back all the cans for deposits. Not just the ones that they sell. That started in January and that saves me an extra trip.”

That’s only part of the change. People in Oregon now also get five cents for every water and flavored water bottle they return to stores. That ends up being a lot of bottles.

Nationally, we go through more than 30 billion non-carbonated drinks every year. And that number is growing. Most of them end up in a landfill.

For Heather Schmidt, it makes sense to require a deposit for these bottles. She runs the sustainability program at New Seasons.

“We’re getting more back from our customers and that’s a good thing (chuckles). And we know that there’s quite a bit of water purchased, you know, and we’re selling it we want to take it back.”

Out of the eleven states that have bottle deposit programs, Oregon is one of the first to include bottles for water and other non-carbonated drinks.

Maine includes just about every beverage bottle. Connecticut adds bottled water to its program in April. New York and Massachusetts are debating similar expansions.

Mary Nemmers says it was about time that her state recognize that something needed to be done to make sure water bottles stay out of landfills.

“Because I do a lot of walking and I’ve seen lots and lots of water bottles thrown around and in trash cans. I assume that the expansion will reduce that and I’d like to see Oregon stay on the cutting edge of recycling.”

Not everyone is thrilled.

I spoke with the president of the Northwest Grocery Alliance who told me stores want recycling off their property.

A spokesman for the major food outlet Winco said the same thing. Stores say it’s messy to deal with “garbage” and stores have to dedicate staff time to recycling.

Heather Schmidt says at New Seasons Market, they don’t mind.

“Operationally, because we’ve increased the volume, it does mean we’ve had to add some staff labor to that to process but it’s something that we’re committed to.”

While most of the bottles are hand counted at New Seasons Market stores, large chain grocery stores use reverse vending machines.

I can stick a redeemable bottle into the machine. The machine checks to make sure it’s the right kind of bottle. Once it’s accepted, the bottle gets crushed and I get my five cents. Those crushed bottles, along with the plastic ones, end up here.

(sound of recycling plant)

We’re inside a glass and plastic bottle recycling plant. It’s a labyrinth of conveyer belts and equipment. The last drops of stale beer and old soda pop in the bottles make it smell sort of like your gym shoes meet the town dump.

Sadie: “Can we check out where the plastic bottles go?”

John: “Yes, We’ll go back this way.”

That’s John Anderson. He’s the President of the Oregon Beverage Recycling Cooperative.

“Now, the plastic, we have seen an increase, but we’re only two months into this expansion at this point and it’s a slower time of year for water and flavored water.”

We stop in front of three bales of recycled plastic that remind me of massive hay bales.

I can pick out the water bottles scrunched together with a lot of soda bottles. These plastic bales will be sold to manufacturers – mostly overseas – who will turn this plastic back into something useable.

Anderson says all of the glass though, stays local and gets turned back into beer bottles.

Bottle deposits work.

The states that have bottle deposit laws have dramatically high bottle recycling rates – as high as Michigan’s 97%.

But the U.S. average is below 40%. The rest of those bottles spend forever in a landfill.

For The Environment Report, I’m Sadie Babits.

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Cleaning Up Compact Fluorescents

  • Photograph of illuminated incandescent-replacement fluorescent bulb. (Source: Jdorwin at Wikimedia Commons)

Compact fluorescent lightbulbs are one of
those classic environmental dilemmas. They’re very
efficient – they use as little as one fourth of the
energy a traditional lightbulb uses. But there’s
a twist: they have a small amount of the toxic chemical
mercury in them. Rebecca Williams takes a look at
what to do if a lightbulb breaks in your home:

Transcript

Compact fluorescent lightbulbs are one of
those classic environmental dilemmas. They’re very
efficient – they use as little as one fourth of the
energy a traditional lightbulb uses. But there’s
a twist: they have a small amount of the toxic chemical
mercury in them. Rebecca Williams takes a look at
what to do if a lightbulb breaks in your home:

You can’t get around it – right now there has to be mercury in compact
fluorescent lamps, or what the experts call CFLs. The bulbs can’t produce
light without it. But mercury is toxic. It can cause brain damage and
developmental problems in fetuses and young children. And that worries
people.

The good news is: the amount of mercury in compact fluorescents is very
small. On average there are about 5 milligrams of mercury in a CFL.
That’s about what would fit on the tip of a ballpoint pen.

Jeff Krcmarik is an expert on household hazardous waste.

“There’s 100 times more mercury in a thermometer than in one CFL.”

Krcmarik says there’s absolutely no reason to panic if a bulb breaks in your
house. You just need to be careful cleaning it up.

So, let’s have the experts walk us through it. First, we’re going to have to
smash a light bulb.

“Well we have a compact fluorescent light bulb here and what we’re going to
do is break it and then bring over our methylmercury gas vapor detector to
show what exactly the exposure issue is with a broken CFL.”

Okay, here we go. And kids – don’t try this at home.

(sound of lightbulb breaking)

(high pitched whining sound of vapor detector)

“This is what we use to identify hot spots in mercury spills. Dan’s going
to wand over it.”

Dan is Dan Moody. He’s the guy with the vapor detector.

“Right now we’re showing about 936 nanograms. We like to see below
300 to 400 nanograms for mercury in the environment, particularly in a residential setting or anywhere children
would be spending time.”

Very quickly, the reading’s dropped to 304 nanograms. That’s because we’ve
got the door open and the room is vented. Moody says that level’s not
something to worry about for your average adult.

The problem is the mercury can linger in your house if you don’t clean it up
the right way.

Most importantly the experts say never, ever use a vacuum. Vacuums can
spread mercury vapor through your house.

Deb Stahler is a researcher with the Maine Department of Environmental
Protection. She recently tested the best ways to clean up broken
fluorescent bulbs.

So, when you break a bulb:

“Make sure that your pets and children and other extraneous people are out of the
room. Open a window and leave the room yourself for a little while.”

Wait about 15 minutes to let the room air out before you clean up the broken
bulb.

“So when you go back in the room then I’d recommend having stiff paper, like
index cards or even just a deck of cards, to pick up the bigger pieces.”

Here’s where good ol’ duct tape comes in. You can use it to get the last
little shards of glass off the floor. Then, put all your materials into a
glass jar with a lid, seal it up, and take it out of the house.
Although some states don’t allow it, in most states, it is legal to throw
the broken lightbulbs in the trash.

And when you go to the store to replace those lightbulbs, you do have some
choices.

Alicia Culver is with the National Green Lighting Campaign. She says
manufacturers are trying to find alternatives to mercury in fluorescent
bulbs. But for now, the best you can do is try to buy ones with lower
mercury levels.

“We’re encouraging consumers to not just buy the cheapest CFL but to look
for ones that are Energy Star rated. And Energy Star is starting to put a
mercury limit on lightbulbs that they’ll qualify and rate.”

So, the bottom line? Culver says compact fluorescents are still the best
lightbulbs to buy.

Because they’re so much more efficient, compact fluorescents cut back on
electricity use. And that reduces demand on coal-burning power plants: by
far the biggest source of mercury we’re adding to our world.

For the Environment Report, I’m Rebecca Williams.

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Bird Hospital Moves Closer to the Battle

Sometimes tackling environmental problems is not as simple as rounding up volunteers and getting to work. Obstacles get in the way. In one big city, bird lovers face heavy traffic while getting injured birds to the vet. So, they’re bringing the vet a little closer to them. The GLRC’s Shawn Allee has the story:

Transcript

Sometimes tackling environmental problems is not as simple as rounding up volunteers
and getting to work. Obstacles get in the way. In one big city, bird lovers face heavy
traffic while getting injured birds to the vet, so they’re bringing the vet a little closer to
them. The GLRC’s Shawn Allee has the story:


It’s early morning and Annette Prince is scouring bushes beneath high rise office towers. She’s dodged downtown traffic for several hours now, hunting for birds; specifically,
ones that have flown into windows. Prince pulls her latest find out of a paper sack.


“This is a woodcock.”


“What do you see with the head trauma there?”


“He’s bleeding from his mouth. This bird impacted a building when we were
watching it a few minutes ago. He flew right into the glass and he died
instantaneously.”


There are survivors, though. Prince stowed some in her green mini van.

Paper sacks hold another woodcock and a tiny, grey-feathered bird called a junco.


“Both were found after they hit a building this morning. They’re resting in the bags
and they’re going to rehab where they’ll receive an evaluation by a wildlife
rehabilitator to decide what kind of treatment they need and what they’re potential
is to be released.”


Injuries such as skull fractures need quick treatment, but when Prince and others find injured birds, their options are limited. The nearest wildlife rehab center is twenty-five miles away from downtown Chicago. In heavy traffic, the drive takes a while.


“People have indicated a great desire to step up and help whenever they can. Up
until now, we’ve had to tell them there wasn’t any place they could take the birds
they found, short of having to drive for more than an hour. And many city residents
can’t. They either don’t have cars or that’s too far a distance.”

But if you can’t get birds to the vets at the rehab center maybe you can bring the vets
closer to the birds. A new bird hospital’s opening near downtown, where people can
reach it by bus or a short cab ride.


Dawn Keller runs a rehab center in a Chicago suburb, and soon she’ll oversee the new
downtown hospital. She says when she’s finished the city will have its own miniature avian ER for immediate
treatment.


“We’ll be moving in things such as scales, so we can weigh the birds when they come
in, so we can properly dose the medicine. We’ll be bringing in cages, refrigerator,
food supplies, all of the things that we’ll need to properly care for the birds.”


Keller says, birds with the most serious injuries will recover out in her suburban rehab
center. The bird urgent care center isn’t just good for birds, it’s good for volunteers. Keller says area bird watchers bring in about nine hundred birds a year, and sometimes
the volunteers are overwhelmed especially during peak migration times.


“Our peak day, I think was about 127 in one day. We put in a lot of hours on those
days; those are pretty much sleepless nights.”


Keller says, the sleepless nights and long drives through traffic out to the rehab center
add up to volunteer fatigue.

She hopes the convenience of a closer hospital will keep more volunteers on board. Wildlife rehab experts say the Chicago hospital’s part of a trend; professionals are getting
help closer to the problem and making it easier on volunteers. Elaine Thrune directs the National Wildlife Rehabilitators Association. She says most wildlife care centers are small and heavily rely on volunteers.


“Even at a center you have some staff, but the actual hands-on care of feeding the
birds or assisting the veterinarian is done by volunteers.”


Thrune says rehab centers face a location conundrum. Volunteers rescue wildlife in cities or suburbs, but rehab centers and professional staff
are often in far away, rural areas. That’s because injured animals recover best when they’re away from noise and people,
but Thrune says rehab centers are experimenting. They’re opening intake centers in popular spots, like shopping malls.


“It’s a convenient place for people to bring things and to drop them off. And it’s a
good place for a veterinarian or a trained rehabilitator to examine them
immediately and then do what’s necessary.”


Thrune says the drop-off centers are like hospital triages; staff patch up the easy cases
quickly. Then, animals with more serious injuries recover out in the country. The
Chicago bird watchers and wildlife rehabbers are betting on this strategy. They say they’ll need to if they’re to keep the current stable of helpers, and they hope
with the convenience of the nearby downtown center more people will scour near
downtown Chicago for injured birds.


For the GLRC, I’m Shawn Allee.

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Building an Ark for the World’s Plants

  • Prairie plants are being lost to development.(Courtesy of Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory)

You’ve heard about the ark Noah built to save the world’s animals. Now comes news of another kind of ark – one designed to help save the world’s plants. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Sandy Hausman has that story:

Transcript

You’ve heard about the ark Noah built to save the world’s animals. Now
comes news of another kind of ark – one designed to help save the
world’s plants. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Sandy Hausman
has that story:


(Sound of walking through the prairie up then under)


You might say Pati Vitt is looking for the right stock to fill the ark.
She’s dressed in jeans and a t-shirt, her long brown hair in braids, a field
notebook in hand, and a pencil tied to her pants. For nine months of each
year, she wanders along railroad tracks, through old cemeteries and
nature preserves, filling shopping bags with the seeds of prairie plants.


Vitt is a conservation scientist with the Chicago Botanic Garden. She has
studied these plants since she was a child. She knows their Latin names.
She dreams about them at night. She even knows the intimate details of
their reproductive lives:


“One does it having teeny little flowers and taking small little bees, and
another one does it by having huge flowers and lots of nectar and they
have really big bees or maybe a moth that pollinates them.”


And, she says, prairie plants are hearty. Native to the Upper Midwest,
they can handle icy winters and long, hot droughts, but they can’t fight
plows or bulldozers. Farmers and developers have destroyed almost all
the land where prairie plants once grew. Today, one-tenth of one percent
of the original prairie remains.


“That means that what we’re looking at right here is one-tenth of one
percent of the population that this plant once enjoyed. I’m sorry. Even
though there’s a lot in this prairie, this plant should be endangered,
because there are so few acres of its habitat left and everyday we’re
coming and we’re taking more and more of it. The prairie habitat is more
endangered than tropical rainforest.”


That worries Vitt, not only because she thinks the prairie plants are
beautiful, but because they may have value to people. For example, she
says about half of our modern medicines came – originally – from plants
or the fungus found in the soil beneath them.

“If you think about penicillin… penicillin came from mold. We might be
standing on a treasure trove of antibiotics, which we need, but if we let
the plants go, we let the soil fungi go, we let the potential antibiotics go.”


(Sound of seeds dropping into a jar)


So Vitt is collecting prairie seeds from about 1,500 plants and shipping
them to the English countryside.


(Sound of birds)


Just south of London, the British government has built what it hopes will
be the largest seed bank in the world devoted to wild plants. The
building looks like a series of greenhouses made from concrete, stone,
glass and steel. In the basement, fire and bombproof vaults hold billions of
seeds from 24,000 species:


“That’s the exciting bit. We thought big.”


Michael Way is a scientist at the Millennium Seed Bank. He says it’s
needed now because a lot of wild plants are in danger of
disappearing because of global warming and the pace of human
development. Way believes a third of the world’s plant species could be
gone by 2050.


“You hope that the worst is not going to happen. Of course, from time to
time the worst does happen. If a plant population is destroyed, if a
decision is taken to build houses or factories or roads on a particular area
which was home to some quite special plants, seed banking is one tool
you can use to protect that genetic diversity that might be unique to that
site.”


Each day, seeds arrive from Africa, Australia, Europe, the Middle East
and the Americas. They sit in colorful plastic crates — waiting to be
cleaned, dried and frozen. Way says these seeds could survive for a
century or more.


“Seeds are tough – small but tough, and the whole point of seeds is to be
dormant and allow themselves to be transported around, so unless we do
something really stupid, they will remain viable.”


Back in the U.S., Pati Vitt says seed banks like the one near London
could mean the survival of humanity, since people can’t live without
plants.


“I think fundamentally we all understand that we are a part of nature, but
in our daily lives we get so cut off from it that we forget.”


She sees the Earth as a garden, and she wants people to act like
gardeners. Setting up seed banks is an important first step.


“We will have the tools that we need to bring things back if necessary.”


For the GLRC, I’m Sandy Hausman.

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Dairy Farmers Keeping Milk Close to Home

  • When people drink a tall glass of milk, they seldom think of how much energy it takes to produce the milk they consume. (Photo by Adrian Becerra)

A dairy farmer who got tired of shipping his milk to far away dairies is now processing it on the farm. By not trucking it away, he’s reducing the amount of energy used to produce milk and giving local customers different kinds of dairy products. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Chris McCarus reports:

Transcript

A dairy farmer who got tired of shipping his milk to far away dairies is now processing it on the farm. By not trucking it away, he’s reducing the amount of energy used to produce milk and giving local customers different kinds of dairy products. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Chris McCarus reports:


(sound of glass clinking)


Recycled glass bottles are banging around inside a giant dish washer.


“Bottles just are put in here in rows and they go through a soap tank for 3 to 4 minutes and they come through a few rinse cycles and a chlorine rinse, down the belt down to the filler.”


After they’re washed, the bottles are filled with milk and capped. Crates of fat-free, 2 percent, whole and chocolate milk are stacked into a cooler.


Sally and George Shetler set up this bottling plant on their farm 5 years ago. They say for a pretty small investment, they’re reaping more profits. They’re also saving energy because they don’t ship their milk somewhere else for processing. Their 38 cows are just a few feet away in their barn, so the milk’s journey from cows udders to containers is short.


George Shetler used to just sell his raw milk to a company that would pump it out of his tank and into their truck. But he says – like milk everywhere – the first trip was only the beginning of a long trip for his cows’ milk.


“Now some of the larger dairies, it goes through one or two transfer stations where it’s transferred from one truck to another truck to another truck to a milk plant. I’ve got a cousin that used to drive for a milk company out west where he was hauling milk from New Mexico up to North Dakota for processing then some of it goes from North Dakota to Wisconsin for processing.”


And so a lot of fuel is wasted getting the milk from cow to jug. George Shetler says he’s also saving energy at the beginning of the process. Instead of trucking in grain, or burning fuel to plant and harvest grain to feed the cows, he’s letting his cows eat grass.


Brian Halweil is with the WorldWatch Institute in Washington DC. He has written a book on local agriculture called “Eat Here.” He says the grass-fed cows require less energy to produce milk than do cows on modern farms.


“The feed that the cows eat needs to be brought in, driven in, which consumes a lot of energy, the production of that grain takes a lot of energy, there’s water pumping and cleaning that’s associated with factory farmed dairy cows and in contrast to that the grass-fed farms essentially runs on sunlight.”


Sunlight is the only energy grass needs to grow. But despite all the savings in energy costs, the Shetlers’ milk is more expensive. That’s because the huge system in place to distribute milk works on economies of scale. The big dairies can balance production and distribution. Milk reaches just the right place at the right time in the right amount. The dairies also get huge government subsidies to keep the price of milk lower.


“It’s kind of a fake price that we pay in the supermarket.”


Brian Halweil says that the price should not be the only reason to buy a locally produced gallon. Burning extra diesel fuel and gasoline should also be considered.


“It’s a price that doesn’t include the cost of shipping, that doesn’t include all the pollution associated with that shipping and it doesn’t include all the health and environmental and social impact of factory-raised animals versus a local grass-fed dairy.”


And many people would rather buy the milk from cows that don’t receive as much antibiotic medicines and hormone injections that make the cows produce more milk.


Inside their pasteurizing vat the milk is heated to a lower temperature. This allows some of the enzymes to stay alive, which some people believe is healthier. One customer says she comes to the store right on the farm because she wants to connect with the people and animals that make what she drinks.


“It’s much better. That’s all I can say. It’s wonderful milk.”


And many of the customers who buy the locally-produced milk from nearby stores say they prefer it. Just like farmers markets, local dairy products are becoming popular. Environmentalists believe that’s good for the local economy and for saving fuel.


For the GLRC, I’m Chris McCarus.

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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.

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The Economics of Recycling

More and more Americans have been taking recycling seriously over the last two decades. So much so that today, the EPA says about 30% of the trash Americans produce in their homes is recycled. And the recycling rate for most Midwest states is near that average, but while the agency expects that number to continue to rise, not everyone thinks more recycling is better for the environment. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Mark Brodie takes a look at the economics of recycling:

Transcript

More and more Americans have been taking recycling seriously over the last two decades. So much so that today, the EPA says about 30 percent of the trash Americans produce in their homes is recycled. And the recycling rate for most Great Lakes states is near that average. But while the agency expects that number to continue to rise, not everyone thinks more recycling is better for the environment. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Mark Brodie takes a look at the economics of recycling.

A small bulldozer collects materials that have sprawled out across the floor of this recycling center…. it then pushes the mound up against a wall. The glass and plastic pile up almost to the ceiling of the building … some ten feet in the air. Welcome to the tipping floor, where workers collect and sort recyclables from the Albany, New York area. Joe Gieblehaus is the solid waste manager for the city. He says Albany officials hope to recycle between 30 and 35 percent of the city’s waste…

“The 30 to 35 gives us I guess the best bang for our buck, basically, recycling is a situation of declining marginal returns. If we try to go after another product in the waste stream, it just costs us more money, and more money, and more money and more money. 30 to 35 seems to give us an economic benefit, the best economic benefit available.”


Albany’s recycling target is similar to that put out by the EPA… and is about the limit that one former EPA assistant administrator says is necessary. Doctor J. Winston Porter was instrumental in starting curbside recycling in the United States in the 1980’s…. but now he says people are taking a good thing too far.

“The last few years, I’ve been somewhat concerned that people are, if anything, aiming too high. You know, I set a 25% goal and there’s nothing wrong with going to 30 or 35 or 40% if you can. But I think many states have set goals of like 50% and I think what we’re doing, we’re getting into an area that’s very non-cost effective and may even hurt the environment because you’re in effect trying to use too much energy and too much processing to recycle too much trash.”


One of those states that’s right about at porter’s limit is Wisconsin. Greg Swanson of the state’s department of natural resources says Wisconsin recycles about 40 percent of its waste. He says the state’s laws call for beneficial re-use. That means the state does not want to spend more energy recycling something than it took to make it in the first place. Swanson says that makes decisions about what to recycle and what not to recycle a little easier.

“You’d like to be able to recycle everything that’s recyclable, but you have to keep in mind the political and economic realities of being able to actually do something with it once you collect it.”


Swanson says that end result is crucial for recycling programs to survive. He says Wisconsin has budgeted more than 24 million dollars for recycling programs this year. That money goes to pay for trucks, drivers, and people who sort the recyclables, among other things. If a state or city recycles something, it has to be able to sell it. If the costs of recycling are higher than the profits from selling the materials, the city or state loses money on the deal. But not everybody believes more recycling hurts the economy. Will Ferrety is the executive director of the national recycling coalition. He says the more Americans recycle, the better it is for both the environment…. and the economy.

“At its fundamental basis, recycling is helping us eliminate the notion of waste because if we can turn what would otherwise be a discarded product into a useful product, we’re making for a more efficient system.”


Ferrety says states should try and recycle as much as possible. He says it’s preferable to many of the alternatives.

“When you look at that entire system, and compare that to what I would call a one-way system where we extract resources, make a new product, use them up, and simply throw them away in a landfill, hands down, there’s less energy used, there’s fewer air pollutants, there’s fewer water pollutants that result from that recycling system when compared to that one way system.”


Among Great Lakes states, Minnesota and New York have the highest recycling rates…at more than 40 percent each of their total waste. The EPA says other Great Lakes states recycle between 20 and 29 percent. Albany, New York’s Joe Gieblehaus says even though many officials on the state and local level would like to recycle more…. the green of the environment sometimes has to take a back seat to the green in the wallet. He says the market drives decisions about whether or not to recycle something. He says the city can only recycle materials that can then be sold to offset the cost of collecting them in the first place.

“There are so few end uses to close the loop; it’s hard for us at the beginning of the loop to find a market for this material…a sustainable market for this material.”


Gieblehaus says his trucks collect about 13 thousand tons of recycled materials a year. He says that’s just enough to help keep the environment green…. without putting the city into the red. For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Mark Brodie.