The Good Guide website's turkey rating page.
(Image by Jessi Ziegler)
There’s a new way for consumers to find
out more about the products they buy.
Samara Freemark has the story
of a new online guide that lets you look
up how good products are for you and for
the environment:
Transcript
There’s a new way for consumers to find
out more about the products they buy.
Samara Freemark has the story
of a new online guide that lets you look
up how good products are for you and for
the environment:
The website is called the Good Guide, and it lets consumers get a pretty in-depth look at more than 60,000 foods and household products. The site ranks products by their impacts on health, the environment, and society.
The Good Guide is the brainchild of Dara O’Rourke. He’s a professor of environmental policy at the University of California at Berkley. O’Rourke says consumers don’t have easy access to the information they need to make smart buying decisions.
“What we’re trying to do is bring the best available science, put it in an easy accessible and free format, then get it to people whenever and wherever they make a decision about a product or a company.”
That’s where the Good Guide iphone application comes in. Shoppers can scan barcodes at the store to get instant product information.
That application, and the site, can be found at goodguide.com
One NYC artist recruited arborists and neighbors to record messages about the city's trees. She placed markers in the cement listing numbers to call to hear the recordings. (Photo by Samara Freemark)
Trees along big city streets have a rough
life. Between pollution, development,
and vandalism, street trees die off at
a pretty alarming rate. One New York
artist thinks if people knew more about
street trees, they’d appreciate them more –
and treat them better. Samara Freemark reports from New York’s “Tree
Museum”:
Transcript
Trees along big city streets have a rough
life. Between pollution, development,
and vandalism, street trees die off at
a pretty alarming rate. One New York
artist thinks if people knew more about
street trees, they’d appreciate them more –
and treat them better. Samara Freemark reports from New York’s “Tree
Museum”:
When artist Katie Holten was commissioned to do a piece commemorating Grand Concourse boulevard in the Bronx, the first thing she thought of was trees. The Concourse, after all, is lined with them. The problem was, no one else seemed to notice they were even there.
“I had conversations with people who were sitting under the trees for the shade. And I’d ask them about what they thought of the trees. And they would say, ‘oh, there aren’t any trees on the concourse.’ But they were sitting underneath one.”
And if people did notice the trees, they weren’t always thrilled they were there.
“Kids told me that trees should all be chopped down because they couldn’t see the view. A teacher told me that all trees were the same, that there was only one kind of tree.”
People didn’t pay much attention to the trees. When they did, they often abused them – which is pretty common treatment for the trees that line city streets. People pin street trees with flyers. They spray trees with grafitti. They chain their bikes around trees, stripping their bark. City buses jump curbs and plow into trees. And developers chop them down to put up new buildings.
“You can’t just stick a tree in the ground and hope for the best. It’s a really tough environment.”
In fact, half of all trees planted in New York City die.
Holten figured one way to protect street trees was to get people to understand all the good that trees do.
So she recruited arborists and neighbors to record messages about the Grand Concourse’s trees. She placed markers in the cement listing numbers to call to hear the recordings. And she called the whole thing the Tree Museum.
“There are 100 trees along the 4 miles. And each of the trees gets a small marker. So we can walk up here to 165th street and I’ll show you one. Here’s one of the markers- nice and dirty.”
(sound of dialing in)
We dial and hear…
“I’d like to a moment to say thank you to this tree. This tree is busy cooling the air and helping to keep the river clean. The leaves in the canopy above are pulling water out of the air, reducing humidity, like an AC.”
It’s not really clear how many people are actually calling in to the museum, or whether the recordings are changing anyone’s mind. But it’s a start.
Joyce Hoagy lives further up the Concourse. She recorded a message for tree number 31. And now she feels kind of possessive of it.
“This is my tree. It’s a honey locust and I’m identified by it.”
Hoagy says Bronx trees have been under particular threat lately. This year the city cut down hundreds of mature oaks to make room for the new Yankees stadium.
“One street had these giant oaks, and they formed this canopy. And on the hottest day of the year you could walk down…people didn’t know what they had till it was gone.”
So now Joyce Hoagy’s spreading the word about the Tree Museum too. She hopes it will give her neighbors a hundred reasons to care about trees around them – and watch out for them.
A one-size-fits-all phone charger could cut down on the electronic waste generated by cell phones (Photo by Shawn Allee)
That search for the right cell
phone charger should soon become
a thing of the past. Cell phone
makers have agreed to come up with
a universal adaptor. Julie Grant
reports that that could save tons
of landfill space:
Transcript
That search for the right cell phone charger should soon become a thing of the past. Cell phone makers have agreed to come up with a universal adaptor. Julie Grant reports that that could save tons of landfill space:
Top cell phone makers – including Nokia, Samsung and Apple – have struck a deal to standardize handset chargers for European consumers by next year.
And the U.S. wireless industry association says Americans will likely see a universal charger before 2012.
That means when you buy a new phone, you won’t need to buy a new charger. You’ll be able keep using the one-size-fits-all charger.
Ted Scardamalia is with the technology analysis firm Portelligent. He says this is good for consumers – and the environment.
“If I have a charger that lasts for two or three or four phones, that’s two or three or four chargers I don’t have to recycle or put into a landfill.”
Last year, an estimated 1.2 billion cell phones were sold worldwide, according to University of Southern Queensland data reported by industry umbrella group GSMA (Groupe Speciale Mobile Association), generating up to 82,000 tonnes of chargers.
With concerns over the level of waste generated by redundant or outmoded chargers, European legislators had, prior to Monday’s agreement, considered forcing manufacturers to adopt universal technology.
Molycorp's rare-earth mining pit in Mountain Pass, California. (Photo by Shawn Allee)
To cut water use, Molycorp's installed new waste water ponds and
recycling equipment. (Photo by Shawn Allee)
Beneath this 60-acre spot are 100 feet of mine tailings, which
include salts and other mining by-products. The site's being remediated and
capped with vegetation, to ensure water doesn't move contaminants underground.
It's part of Molycorp's plan to recover from waste water leaks during the 1990s. (Photo by Shawn Allee)
Politicians like to show off pictures of wind turbines, hybrid cars, and other green hi-tech.
The idea is to get more of that in America, and maybe even make more of it here. Shawn
Allee found there’s a chance all of this could be complicated by the supply of key green-
tech ingredients:
Transcript
Politicians like to show off pictures of wind turbines, hybrid cars, and other green hi-tech.
The idea is to get more of that in America, and maybe even make more of it here. Shawn
Allee found there’s a chance all of this could be complicated by the supply of key green-
tech ingredients:
I don’t know about you, but there’re a whole bunch of minerals I completely ignored in
high school chemistry.
Jack Lifton knows them by heart.
“… lanthenum, serium, neodymium…”
Lifton’s a market expert on these so-called ‘rare-earth’ minerals. And he says, even if you
haven’t heard of them, you might have them – even in your pocket.
“Without rare earths, we probably would not have portable computers and you
certainly wouldn’t have display screens today on anything – television or computer,
iPod, or iPhone, whatever.”
Rare earths make electronics light and they don’t need much power: just what wind
turbines and electric hybrid cars need.
There’s a problem in the rare-earth market, though. China’s the big supplier, but Lifton
says it might keep it’s rare-earth supplies for itself.
“In the next three or four years, you cannot make a device with a rare earth unless
it’s made in China and then the Chinese have made it very clear that their priorities
are to manufacture goods for their own consumer economy and keep the Chinese
employed.”
So, is the US gonna be left dry when it comes to green high tech? Well, there is a rare
earth mine in America, but it’s had some environmental problems.
The mine is trying to turn that around now.
Honan: “On the left is the overburden stock pile. Once you’ve seen one of those,
you’ve seen them all.”
Allee: “Big pile of rocks.”
Honan: “Big pile of rock.”
Mine manager Scott Honan’s driving me around the top of a mine in the middle of the
California desert.
He manages the mine for Molycorp. Honan’s showing me the mine’s waste water
ponds.
Honan: “Those two are fresh water.”
Allee: “Basically, you’re trying to recycle as much of this water as you can. Why is
that?”
Honan: “We have to confine all of our water activities on the site. We have to be
very efficient when we use water, we can’t afford to waste it.”
Gotta admit, this is not very sexy stuff, but Molycorp is crossing its fingers that
expensive water recycling and treatment investments pay off.
Molycorp uses water to process the rare-earth ore, and back in the 90s, the mining and
processing stopped for a while due to waste water leaks.
It’s desert, after all – and regulators didn’t want what little water there is contaminated by
a slurry of salts and mining byproducts.
Allee: “So where’re we heading, here?”
Honan: “The pit.”
Allee: “Is that what everyone calls it? ‘The Pit?’”
Honan: “Yeah. It’s about 55 acres if you look at the perimeter. From the top of the
high wall over there to the bottom, it’s about 500 feet.”
Honan says Molycorp will expand the mine in a few years – just in time for when China
might stop exporting rare-earths.
The company might be jumping a tad – regulators might clamp down on the operation if
Molycorp repeats some of its past water pollution mistakes.
Still…
“I think a lot of us at the mine have a big stake in the success of this operation going
forward. A lot of us feel it’s important for our country. What we produce here is
going to drive a lot of this energy efficient technology that people are anxious about.
It’s cool to be a part of that.”
And for Honan, what’s even cooler is that someone’s talking about building a wind farm
not too far from his mine.
Honan says it’d be awefully nice if his rare-earths are in those turbines.
Recellular employee Myron Woods tests phones
to see if they can be resold or re-used. Here, he's got a
Nokia 6019, the model reporter Shawn Allee dropped off for
recycling. (Photo by Shawn Allee)
Mark Glavin's shop in Franklin Park, Illinois
is part of sims Recycling solutions. Glavin's machines and
furnaces recover gold, silver and other metals from phones
that Recellular can't find a market for. (Photo by Shawn Allee)
Michigan-based Recellular sorts through millions
of used cell phones, hoping to find ones that can be resold
for secondary phone markets, including those overseas. (Photo by Shawn Allee)
Sims Recycling turns bins of cells phones into
inch-sized chunks that can be further processed for recycling. (Photo by Shawn Allee)
It’s pretty clear Americans like their cell phones. On average, we get a new one about every
eighteen months. And yet, we hold on to the old ones, too; the government estimates there’re
about one hundred million lying around in closets and drawers. Shawn Allee found people eager
to take your old phones – if only you’d recycle them:
Transcript
It’s pretty clear Americans like their cell phones. On average, we get a new one about every
eighteen months. And yet, we hold on to the old ones, too; the government estimates there’re
about one hundred million lying around in closets and drawers. Shawn Allee found people eager
to take your old phones – if only you’d recycle them:
I put an old phone in a recycling box a while ago.
I checked around and found it went to one of the nation’s largest phone refurbishers.
It’s a company called Recellular. And it’s based in an old auto parts plant in Dexter, Michigan.
“It’s a big open space with a lot of room to handle the 20,000 phones that come in every day.
You need a lot of benches, you need a lot of cubby holes.”
Vice President Mike Newman points to some incoming collection boxes.
“Every box is a mystery. You have no idea what’s in there until you open it up and start
sorting it out.”
Newman’s company is hunting for working phones to resell here or overseas. Before that, his
people sort and test every model of phone.
And workers like Myron Woods remove personal data.
“Contacts, the voice mails, the ringtones, text messages. Hit OK and the phone’s cleared
out. After that you make sure the phone calls out. You get a ringtone, you hear the
operator, and then you’re done.”
Newman: “In 2008 we processed almost 6 million phones and for 2009, we’re looking at
more than double-digit growth again.”
And of those six million phones, Mike Newman says he can sell about half of them. He’d do
better if people like me didn’t keep phones in drawers for so long.
“The longer you wait, the less value it has so, if you move down from that old phone, as
hard as it might be to part with it, it’s really important to recycle it as soon as possible – it
will do the most good.”
What about Newman’s other phones – the duds? He has a different company near Chicago
recycle them.
Allee: “And here they are … holy mackerel.”
I’m now at Simms Recycling Solutions. A conveyer belt is moving thousands of phones.
“There’s the end of the line for your cell phones.”
Mark Glavin is the VP of operations here. He says there’s gold, silver, and other metals in the
phones he gets from Recellular.
“The cell phones get shredded into somewhat uniform-sized pieces.”
Glavin sticks the pieces in an oven to burn off the plastic – and then grinds what’s left.
Glavin: “That’s what’s left of the cell phones.”
Allee: “It’s almost like the powder you use for a baby, except its black.”
Glavin: “Yes.”
Glavin says there’s gold and other metal in the powder – so metal companies will buy it.
He also has stubborn chunks of metal that won’t grind.
“Those get pulled off and then those go to the furnace room to be melted.”
Glavin: “This is appropriately named the furnace room, where all the melting goes on. It
gets nice and toasty in here in the winter time.”
Allee: “Wow, what are we seeing here?”
Glavin: “After the material has been melted, we’ll cast it into molds and into 30-40 pound
ingots.”
He’ll sell metal from these ingots along with that black powder.
Recellular and Glavin’s company recovers about 96 pounds of gold from its phones each year.
Plus, that gold’s worth more than a million dollars. And recycling saves energy, and prevents
pollution from gold mining.
Glavin says recycling is taking off, and he can always count on people wanting the latest and
greatest phones.
Glavin: “Pretty soon your cell phone will be a chip like, on an ear-ring and a watch, and
there’s nothing to it except for a very tiny electronic.”
Allee: “And people will still swap it for the next one.”
Possums pretty much just want to be left alone – and they let you know by opening their mouths full of teeth. It’s called an alligator gape. (Photo by Patti Roman)
Wildlife rehabber Patti Roman with an orphaned baby possum. The mom got hit by a car. (Photo by Rebecca Williams)
Some people think possums look like rats... but the baby-size version is arguably pretty darn cute (at least when they’re not baring their sharp little teeth). (Photo by Rebecca Williams)
Baby possums getting a meal at their temporary home in Patti Roman’s basement. (Photo by Patti Roman)
Roman says possums that are released back into the wild will take off into the woods, and, unlike many other animals that can get used to humans and start depending on them for food, possums are happy to get away from people and will quickly find their normal diet of spiders, deer poop and dead squirrels once they’re back in the woods. (Photo by Cheryl Dagner)
Let’s say you find a baby chipmunk that fell
out of a tree… or worse, you hit an animal with your car.
Who do you call? Rebecca Williams has the story of people
who feel it’s their duty to nurse these animals back to health…
and get them back to the wild:
Transcript
Let’s say you find a baby chipmunk that fell out of a tree… or worse, you hit an animal with your car. Who do you call? Rebecca Williams has the story of people who feel it’s their duty to nurse these animals back to health… and get them back to the wild:
(sound of phone ringing)
“Thank you for calling the Friends of Wildlife hotline for squirrels, chipmunks and other small rodents. If you have rescued a small animal please keep it warm and quiet…” (beep)
There are hotlines like these set up all over the country. There are bunny hotlines, woodchuck hotlines… you name it and there’s a volunteer hotline for it.
The woman who answers the Possum Hotline is Patti Roman. She volunteers in Michigan. She has a basement full of baby possums.
“Mom has 13 babies so if you get a weekend where two or three moms are hit I’ll get a lot of babies in a few days.”
She says possums get hit by cars a lot. They love to eat roadkill, and they’ll just sit there in the middle of the road, staring at your headlights.
Possums are marsupials like kangaroos. Except they don’t hop out of the way. They keep their babies in their pouches. When a mom gets hit, a lot of times the babies will survive. Someone will find the babies and call the Possum Hotline.
Patti Roman says she’s had up to a hundred baby possums in her basement at one time.
She puts gloves on before she pulls a possum out of its terrarium. I don’t know if you know possums, but they look like a huge hairy rat on its worst day. But this baby possum is kinda cute. He’s giving us a sharp-toothed little grin. It’s a I’ll-rip-your-hand off kind of grin.
“He’s doing the alligator gape right now. But he’s not biting me, but he is trying to scare me.”
That mouth full of sharp teeth is your first clue that possums just want to be left alone. If your dog chases after one, the possum might play dead. Then it’ll get up and waddle off when you’re not looking.
Patti Roman takes care of the possums until they’re a few months old. Then she takes them into the woods and lets them go. She says wildlife is always better off in the wild. But she says she does get criticized for interfering with nature.
“A possum who gets hit by a car is not supposed to die. It has nothing to do with natural selection. And if we can help I think we should.”
But some scientists debate that. Jim Harding is a wildlife specialist at Michigan State University.
“I think the majority of rehabilitation efforts is often just based on a human need to care for things. It isn’t really related to conservation unless you’re dealing with a very rare species.”
Harding says rehabbing some types of common animals can actually make things worse. For example – he says there are so many raccoons that they can wipe out a lot of birds because they eat their eggs.
But Patti Roman says she really feels like she’s doing the right thing. She spent 18 years at the Humane Society rescuing dogs and cats. But she never knew for sure those animals would be placed in good homes.
“When you call to check on the animal a year later – it’s been given away or run away or accidentally been killed. It was breaking my heart. And after awhile I thought, you know, I enjoy doing the wild animals because when they’re ready to go I’m not dependent on people anymore. It feeds my soul. It really does. I do this and I feel very, very good every morning that I can save a life.”
She says when she lets the possums go they don’t look back. They just take off into the woods. And even if that little possum ends up getting eaten by a fox, Roman says that’s okay, because at least that’s natural.
The US Postal Service is beginning an e-waste recycling program through the mail (Photo courtesy of the USPS)
Many of us just don’t know what to do
with that old cell phone or outdated digital
camera. While some companies take the devices
back, not all do. Now, the US Postal Service
says it’s coming to the rescue. Mark Brush
reports – the post office is developing a free
electronics recycling program:
Transcript
Many of us just don’t know what to do
with that old cell phone or outdated digital
camera. While some companies take the devices
back, not all do. Now, the US Postal Service
says it’s coming to the rescue. Mark Brush
reports – the post office is developing a free
electronics recycling program:
Throwing out an old electronic device is wrong for several reasons. The devices can
contain toxic heavy metals which can pollute the environment. And there are many parts
that can be reused.
The US Postal Service is piloting a recycling program in some big cities across the
country – including Los Angeles, Chicago, and Washington D.C.
They’re giving people
free, postage-paid envelopes. You can stuff your old cell phone or mp3 player into the
envelope and drop it in the mail.
It’s delivered to a recycling company called Clover Technologies Group. The company
says it tries to refurbish and resell what it can. If the device can’t be resold, it’s broken
down, and the materials that can be are recycled. The other stuff is thrown in a landfill.
Critics say while these recycling programs are a good first step, the companies who
make these devices should design them so all the parts can be reused.
The Good Guide website's turkey rating page. (Image by Jessi Ziegler)
