Little Action After Lots of Green TalkIn Search of Quiet PlacesUnderground Diner Supports Local FarmersEmotions Run High Over Dam Removal QuestionsInvasive Species and Toxic ChemicalsSelling Asian Carp to ChinaOil Spill Creates Manufacturing BoomBudget Money & Businesses Reduce Waste
Host: Lester Graham
Show date: 05/11/2009
Summary:
President Obama's budget includes
a big chunk of money to restore
the nation's biggest bodies of
water. Lester looks at what's
going where if Congress approves
the budget. And... what if you could sell your
trash? Julie Grant met with one
business that discovered the things
they threw away might be valuable to
someone else.
More…
The President’s budget and the environment…
This is The Environment Report. I’m Lester Graham.
Since the government’s big stimulus package, we’ve paid a lot of attention to things like green energy, climate change and creating green jobs. But there are the old fashioned environmental issues… like cleaning up pollution in the air, the water and the land. The President’s budget was released last week and the Environmental Protection Agency outlined how its ten-and-a-half billion dollar budget would tackle those things as well as energy and jobs.
In the EPA’s budget highlights, one of the top items was a plan to protect and clean up the largest fresh water lakes in the world, the Great Lakes. Under the President’s proposal, the EPA and other agencies would have 475-million dollars for the Great Lakes. They want to clean up past pollution. The need to fix sewer plants that still spill raw sewage into the lakes during heavy rains. And they’ll deal with the biggest problem on the Great Lakes… dozens and dozens of invasive species that damage the fisheries and the envrionment. Foreign invaders such as zebra mussels.
Andy Buchsbaum heads up the Great Lakes office for the National Wildlife Federation.
“This is a reversal of literally decades of disinvestment in the Great Lakes. We’re thrilled to see the budget and now we’re going to work to make sure Congress passes it.”
Congress will have its own ideas about a budget for the nation… but Buchsbaum says early signs are good that this budget item will stick.
“They haven’t given final approval, but both the House and the Senate approved budget resolutions that include this 475-million dollars for the Great Lakes.”
And there’s also money to work on the Chesapeake Bay, San Francisco Bay, Puget Sound, Lake Champlain and other big bodies of water around the nation.
(((STING)))
This is The Environment Report.
When you’re in the business of making things, you can wind up with a lot of waste material. But these days more companies are realizing trash has value. Julie Grant reports instead of spending big bucks to dump their waste in a landfill, these companies are making money from it. .
Jeff Baldassari’s company makes sleek, upscale office furniture.
BALDASSARI: I WOULD HAVE NEVER GUESSED TEN YEARS AGO I’D BE THE GUY TELLING YOU THIS STORY RIGHT NOW. [:05]
Baldassari is the CEO of The Taylor Companies. A few years ago he started planning for a new factory. The site where they wanted to build it was an old brownfield. That’s a site that had been contaminated by a past manufacturer. Baldassari says they got grant money to clean up the land – and it got them thinking about the environment-- really for the first time:
BALDASSARI: ‘OKAY WE CLEANED UP THIS BROWNFIELD – BUT LET’S NOT STOP THERE. WHAT ELSE CAN WE DO FOR THE ENVIRONMENT, WHAT ELSE CAN WE DO FOR OUR BOTTOM LINE TO PAY FOR THIS NEW FACILITY, TO GET IT TO PAY FOR ITSELF?’ [:12]
They started looking at their waste.
[SOUND: FACTORY]
On the factory floor, a worker is tracing the shape of a chair leg onto a piece of wood. After it’s cut, the scrap wood is tossed into a large box.
BALDASSARI: TREES DON’T GROW IN THE SHAPE OF FURNITURE PARTS. SO THERE IS A LOT OF WASTE. ULTIMATELY, 40-PERCENT OF EACH BOARD ENDS UP AS SCRAP WHEN IT’S ALL SAID AND DONE - 30-40 PERCENT WILL END UP AS SCRAP. [:12]
Baldassari says they used to pay to send all that scrap wood to the landfill – along with huge dumpsters full of sawdust.
That cost the company. But his team started making some calls. They found horse farms that wanted sawdust for bedding. They found companies that wanted wood chips for mulch.
Instead paying to have dumpsters of waste hauled away… they found markets for the waste material.
It was the same deal with leather coverings for the chairs and sofas. One-fourth of the leather used to end up in the scrap heap as trash. Now a hand-bag maker in Montreal comes to pick it up for purses and wallets.
And Baldassari is pretty happy about it. These days he’s sending only one-eighth of the waste to the landfill as before. That saves the company 30-thousand dollars a year.
[SOUND OUT.]
For many companies, this is the future. Joel Makower says smart corporate leaders are finding ways to reach zero-waste. Makower is the executive editor of greenbiz-dot-com.
MAKOWER: WE’RE STARTING TO SEE COMPANIES THINK IN TERMS OF CLOSED LOOP SYSTEMS. FACTORIES WEHRE BASICALLY THERE MAY NOT BE ANY SMOKESTACKS, DRAIN PIPES, OR DUMPSTERS.
WHERE EVERY WASTE PRODUCT IS TURNED INTO SOME KIND OF RAW MATERIAL FOR ANOTHER PROCESS. [:15]
But a lot of these companies are not necessarily cutting waste because it’s good for the earth. Like Jeff Baldassari, these corporate leaders often start the process as a way to save money.
These days Baldassari says he’s the kind businessman he never guessed he’d be: one who’s always looking for ways to eliminate waste:
BALDASSARI: ONCE I GOT STARTED, I LITERALLY BECAME ADDICTED TO IT. BUT IT WAS ADDICTED, IN THE SENSE AGAIN, IT HELPED OUR BOTTOM LINE. [:07]
Baldassari wants it clear: he’s not a tree-hugger. But, at this point, he’s actually having fun. He’s caught up in finding ways to save money – by eliminting waste…
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This is The Environment Report. I’m Lester Graham.
Since the government’s big stimulus package, we’ve paid a lot of attention to things like green energy, climate change and creating green jobs. But there are the old fashioned environmental issues… like cleaning up pollution in the air, the water and the land. The President’s budget was released last week and the Environmental Protection Agency outlined how its ten-and-a-half billion dollar budget would tackle those things as well as energy and jobs.
In the EPA’s budget highlights, one of the top items was a plan to protect and clean up the largest fresh water lakes in the world, the Great Lakes. Under the President’s proposal, the EPA and other agencies would have 475-million dollars for the Great Lakes. They want to clean up past pollution. The need to fix sewer plants that still spill raw sewage into the lakes during heavy rains. And they’ll deal with the biggest problem on the Great Lakes… dozens and dozens of invasive species that damage the fisheries and the envrionment. Foreign invaders such as zebra mussels.
Andy Buchsbaum heads up the Great Lakes office for the National Wildlife Federation.
“This is a reversal of literally decades of disinvestment in the Great Lakes. We’re thrilled to see the budget and now we’re going to work to make sure Congress passes it.”
Congress will have its own ideas about a budget for the nation… but Buchsbaum says early signs are good that this budget item will stick.
“They haven’t given final approval, but both the House and the Senate approved budget resolutions that include this 475-million dollars for the Great Lakes.”
And there’s also money to work on the Chesapeake Bay, San Francisco Bay, Puget Sound, Lake Champlain and other big bodies of water around the nation.
(((STING)))
This is The Environment Report.
When you’re in the business of making things, you can wind up with a lot of waste material. But these days more companies are realizing trash has value. Julie Grant reports instead of spending big bucks to dump their waste in a landfill, these companies are making money from it. .
Jeff Baldassari’s company makes sleek, upscale office furniture.
BALDASSARI: I WOULD HAVE NEVER GUESSED TEN YEARS AGO I’D BE THE GUY TELLING YOU THIS STORY RIGHT NOW. [:05]
Baldassari is the CEO of The Taylor Companies. A few years ago he started planning for a new factory. The site where they wanted to build it was an old brownfield. That’s a site that had been contaminated by a past manufacturer. Baldassari says they got grant money to clean up the land – and it got them thinking about the environment-- really for the first time:
BALDASSARI: ‘OKAY WE CLEANED UP THIS BROWNFIELD – BUT LET’S NOT STOP THERE. WHAT ELSE CAN WE DO FOR THE ENVIRONMENT, WHAT ELSE CAN WE DO FOR OUR BOTTOM LINE TO PAY FOR THIS NEW FACILITY, TO GET IT TO PAY FOR ITSELF?’ [:12]
They started looking at their waste.
[SOUND: FACTORY]
On the factory floor, a worker is tracing the shape of a chair leg onto a piece of wood. After it’s cut, the scrap wood is tossed into a large box.
BALDASSARI: TREES DON’T GROW IN THE SHAPE OF FURNITURE PARTS. SO THERE IS A LOT OF WASTE. ULTIMATELY, 40-PERCENT OF EACH BOARD ENDS UP AS SCRAP WHEN IT’S ALL SAID AND DONE - 30-40 PERCENT WILL END UP AS SCRAP. [:12]
Baldassari says they used to pay to send all that scrap wood to the landfill – along with huge dumpsters full of sawdust.
That cost the company. But his team started making some calls. They found horse farms that wanted sawdust for bedding. They found companies that wanted wood chips for mulch.
Instead paying to have dumpsters of waste hauled away… they found markets for the waste material.
It was the same deal with leather coverings for the chairs and sofas. One-fourth of the leather used to end up in the scrap heap as trash. Now a hand-bag maker in Montreal comes to pick it up for purses and wallets.
And Baldassari is pretty happy about it. These days he’s sending only one-eighth of the waste to the landfill as before. That saves the company 30-thousand dollars a year.
[SOUND OUT.]
For many companies, this is the future. Joel Makower says smart corporate leaders are finding ways to reach zero-waste. Makower is the executive editor of greenbiz-dot-com.
MAKOWER: WE’RE STARTING TO SEE COMPANIES THINK IN TERMS OF CLOSED LOOP SYSTEMS. FACTORIES WEHRE BASICALLY THERE MAY NOT BE ANY SMOKESTACKS, DRAIN PIPES, OR DUMPSTERS.
WHERE EVERY WASTE PRODUCT IS TURNED INTO SOME KIND OF RAW MATERIAL FOR ANOTHER PROCESS. [:15]
But a lot of these companies are not necessarily cutting waste because it’s good for the earth. Like Jeff Baldassari, these corporate leaders often start the process as a way to save money.
These days Baldassari says he’s the kind businessman he never guessed he’d be: one who’s always looking for ways to eliminate waste:
BALDASSARI: ONCE I GOT STARTED, I LITERALLY BECAME ADDICTED TO IT. BUT IT WAS ADDICTED, IN THE SENSE AGAIN, IT HELPED OUR BOTTOM LINE. [:07]
Baldassari wants it clear: he’s not a tree-hugger. But, at this point, he’s actually having fun. He’s caught up in finding ways to save money – by eliminting waste…