More than half of the mercury switches still on the road are in GM’s cars. But, since filing for bankruptcy, GM stopped paying into the program. (Photo courtesy of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory)
The new General Motors, which recently emerged from bankruptcy, wants to create a clean, green image with its Chevy Volt electric car. But GM might have a bit of an environmental PR problem on its hands. Tamara Keith explains:
Transcript
The new General Motors, which recently emerged from bankruptcy, wants to create a clean, green image with its Chevy Volt electric car. But GM might have a bit of an environmental PR problem on its hands. Tamara Keith explains:
Automakers used to use mercury switches for lights and anti-lock brakes. But when old cars are scrapped and melted down, those parts turn into toxic air pollution.
So automakers and environmental groups created a program to recycle the mercury.
More than half of the mercury switches still on the road are in GM’s cars. But, since filing for bankruptcy, GM stopped paying into the program.
Rich Bell is president of the program, and he also works at Ford.
“None of our members are interested in paying for GM’s environmental legacy issues, and so we’re looking for a path forward, and we’re kind of in the midst of that now.”
In a statement, the new GM said those cars with mercury switches were made by the old GM.
The new GM that emerged from bankruptcy is not responsible for those old switches.
The airport in Portland has installed water collection drains for passengers to dump liquids before getting on their flights. (Photo courtesy of the Port of Portland)
Three years ago, the Department
of Homeland Security passed new
regulations. If you’re a regular
flyer, you know them well: no more
bringing your drinks on the airplane.
It turns out that this ruling isn’t
just inconvenient for us – it’s also
inconvenient for the environment.
Deena Prichep reports
on the beverage restrictions, and
what one airport is doing about it:
Transcript
Three years ago, the Department
of Homeland Security passed new
regulations. If you’re a regular
flyer, you know them well: no more
bringing your drinks on the airplane.
It turns out that this ruling isn’t
just inconvenient for us – it’s also
inconvenient for the environment.
Deena Prichep reports
on the beverage restrictions, and
what one airport is doing about it:
(sound of an airport)
Modern air travel can be a hassle. We take off our shoes, take off our belts, and get rid of our drinks. Announcements like this one are so common that you barely notice them:
“Morning, folks. Make sure you drink up those beverages prior to going through. That includes bottled water, sodas, juice, coffee.”
Okay, you might notice him. That’s Roger Nelson. He’s a TSA guy at the Portland International Airport.
For most of us, following Nelson’s instructions isn’t really a big deal. But while the impact on the passenger is small, the impact on the environment can be bigger than you’d think.
After the ban on carry-on beverages was put in place, many airports saw a big rise in their checkpoint waste. At Seattle’s Sea-Tac Airport, the weight of their trash went up 25%. In the Houston Airport system, checkpoint waste collection went up 70%. Even at an airport the size of Portland’s, they estimate up to a ton of liquid per day was ending up in the waste stream.
Stan Jones is the environmental compliance manager at the Port of Portland. He watches airport trash and recycling to see how good a job they’re doing:
“If we look in the recycling at the checkpoints, people have recycled bottles, but they’re full of beverages. And one thing we don’t want in our recycling is liquids, because the recycling centers don’t want a bunch of wet papers, which wrecks the quality of the recycling. At the same time, we’re seeing if we look in the garbage at the checkpoints, same thing, we got bottles half-full of water, bottles full of water.”
Jones oversees many programs that cut waste at the airport. So he looked into tackling this problem as well. And he found that this wasn’t just an environmental problem – it was costing the airport money. Up to $100 a day in extra dump fees. The tossed-out drinks were also costing money on the staffing side. Janitors struggled to get a handle on overflowing watery trashcans.
Jenny Taylor coordinates the facilities staff.
“One of the things we did was increase the frequency in which the cans were dumped, from every two hours to half an hour. So that was almost a full-time position. That ended up being roughly $100 buck a day, or between $30 and $40,000 a year.”
So with up to $100 a day for extra dumping, and $100 a day for extra staffing, the waste was costing the Airport about $75,000 a year.
So the Port launched a program last fall to tackle the problem. They set up stainless steel collection bins right outside the security checkpoints. Twice a day they’re wheeled off, measured, and drained into modified mop sinks, by janitors like Jason Weixel.
(sound of water draining)
“And, almost 25, I’d say 24 gallons today.”
The liquids flow into the sewer system, instead of being hauled to a landfill, and the empty bottles can then be recycled.
But changing people’s recycling habits can be difficult, especially when they’re running for a flight. Many travelers still toss full bottles into the trash without even noticing the new drains.
But at the Portland International Airport, people like Roger Nelson are there to remind them.
“We do have pouring stations. Yes, the big PS, either left or right, just pour it into there. Once you do pour it, empty out, take the empty bottle with you, fill it up on the other side. Our water is cold, filtered and free. Did I get you on the free part, right?”
So far this little solution is working. The dump stations are diverting several thousand pounds of liquid from the trash every month. And the Port of Portland is working with other airports looking to set up similar systems.
Michigan Waste Energy Chief Engineer Brad Laesser checks the cameras and emissions data at Detroit's incinerator. (Photo by Sarah Hulett)
The Michigan Waste Energy facility shreds and burns hundreds of tons of trash each day. The plant makes enough electricity to power about half the homes in Detroit. (Photo by Sarah Hulett)
Back in the 1980s and 90s,
dozens of communities across
the US built incinerators to
get rid of their trash. Many
of them financed the massive
furnaces with bonds they’re just
now paying off. And now that
those debts are off their books,
some cities are re-thinking whether
burning trash makes environmental
and economic sense. Sarah Hulett reports:
Transcript
Back in the 1980s and 90s,
dozens of communities across
the US built incinerators to
get rid of their trash. Many
of them financed the massive
furnaces with bonds they’re just
now paying off. And now that
those debts are off their books,
some cities are re-thinking whether
burning trash makes environmental
and economic sense. Sarah Hulett reports:
About 300 garbage trucks dump their loads each day at the nation’s biggest
municipal incinerator.
“You see the conveyor house going across, that’s conveying the fuel to the
boilers.”
That’s Brad Laesser. He’s the chief engineer at the Michigan Waste Energy
facility in Detroit.
The “fuel” he’s talking about is shredded-up trash.
And he says that’s the beauty of facilities like this. They produce electricity.
“So right now we’re putting out about 50 megawatts. But we can go to
here.”
Laesser points to 70 on the output gauge. That’s enough electricity to power
about half the homes in Detroit. And the leftover steam is used to heat and
cool more than 200 buildings downtown.
Sounds great, right?
Well, Brad Van Guilder of the Ecology Center says not so much.
“Be wary of people coming and talking to you about large, expensive magic
machines that are going to dispose of your waste for you.”
Van Guilder says municipal waste incinerators are major contributors to
smog, and spew dangerous pollutants like dioxin, lead and mercury.
And he says huge furnaces like Detroit’s make it nearly impossible to get
viable recycling efforts off the ground.
“Think about what’s in the trash that you throw out every day. One of the
most important components is paper and plastic.”
Both can be recycled. But Detroit has not had a curbside recycling program
for the past 20 years. That’s because the contract with the incinerator
required that all trash picked up at the curb be used to keep the furnaces
burning.
That changed this summer, though – when the contract expired. Now about
30,000 households are part of a curbside recycling pilot project. And there
are drop-off sites where people can take their recyclables.
(sound of recycling center)
Matthew Naimi heads an organization that runs several drop-off sites, and –
maybe surprisingly – he’s okay with the incinerator. Naimi says he sees
trash disposal and recycling as two separate industries.
“I realized that if we shut the incinerator down before we got a good
established recycling program running, we’d be burying our recyclables
instead of burning them.”
And officials with Covanta – which runs the Detroit incinerator – agree that
recycling and incineration can work together.
Paul Gilman is the chief sustainability officer for Covanta. He says landfills
are the problem – not recycling.
“Landfills and energy-from-waste facilities, that’s where the competition is.
It isn’t at the upper step of recycling.”
He says cheap landfill space makes the economics of incineration difficult.
But he’s hoping that could change with the passage of a climate change bill
in Washington. Gilman says in Europe and Asia, trash incinerators like
Detroit’s don’t get treated the same way as power plants fueled with coal or
natural gas.
“So in Asia, under the Kyoto protocols, a facility like this actually generates
what are called greenhouse gas credits. They’re reducing greenhouse gasses
by the act of processing solid waste and keeping it from going to a landfill.”
Where trash produces methane – a potent greenhouse gas.
But the people who want the incinerator shut down say they don’t believe
burning trash is the greener way to go. They want the city to landfill its
waste while it builds an aggressive recycling program.
So far, they’re not getting what they want from city leaders.
The board that oversees how Detroit handles its trash recently voted to go
with incineration for at least the next year.
San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom signs mandatory composting into law (Photo courtesy of the Press Office of Mayor Newsom)
San Francisco already leads the
nation in recycling. Now, that
city has the first mandatory
composting law in the country.
Emily Wilson reports that’s got
some people worried about “garbage
cops”:
Transcript
San Francisco already leads the
nation in recycling. Now, that
city has the first mandatory
composting law in the country.
Emily Wilson reports that’s got
some people worried about “garbage
cops”:
Putting recyclables into the blue bin is second nature for people in San Francisco.
But this new law now means also putting coffee grounds and eggshells into a green bin.
There are some people who are concerned about Big Brother looking through their garbage. And then there’s the $100 fine.
Mark Westlund at the Department of the Environment says ‘no worries.’ Not much is going to change.
“Well, we get a lot of calls from people who are worried about garbage cops and that frankly is not going to happen. For years now we’ve been looking in peoples recycling to make sure they’re doing it correctly and if not, they get a tag and if they continue misusing it, they get a letter and a follow up call and then a visit.”
So there are warnings before the fine.
Cities across the country will be watching San Francisco’s mandatory composting law to see how it goes.
One research team recovered polyvinyl alcohol from the computer screens, which can be used in medicine (Photo courtesy of the National Cancer Institute)
Some researchers want to recycle
a chemical in computer screens to
use it for a medical treatment.
Shawn Allee reports:
Transcript
Some researchers want to recycle
a chemical in computer screens to
use it for a medical treatment.
Shawn Allee reports:
Most LCD computer screens contain toxic mercury. The European Union will soon mandate those screens be recycled rather than thrown away.
There are other metals and chemicals in the LCD screens that are not dangerous.
Dr. Avtar Matharu is with Britain’s University of York.
His research team recovered polyvinyl alcohol from the computer screens.
It’s used in spongy pads that deliver medicine.
“We can take out Polyvinyl alcohol from the front and back of an LCD screen. We can take what effectively would be a waste resource and potentially use it in a medical application.”
Matharu says getting polyvinyl alcohol out of LCD screens is expensive compared to making it from crude oil, but he says it could be another reason to recycle rather than throw them into a landfill.
Koichi Wakata (left), space station commander Gennady Padalka (center),
and Michael Barratt (right) take ceremonial sips of recycled
urine in a key milestone for the lab complex. (Photo courtesy of NASA TV)
NASA has technology light years ahead of what’s available to the rest of us. Advanced water recycling is
one of them. For years, astronauts have collected and recycled sweat and even water vapor. Shawn Allee
looks at NASA’s latest water recycling technology and whether anything like it is already on Planet Earth:
Transcript
NASA has technology light years ahead of what’s available to the rest of us. Advanced water recycling is
one of them. For years, astronauts have collected and recycled sweat and even water vapor. Shawn Allee
looks at NASA’s latest water recycling technology and whether anything like it is already on Planet Earth:
A press conference between NASA headquarters and the International Space Station got some attention
recently.
It was about making drinkable water from astronauts’ urine.
Headquarters: “The Expedition 19 crew inaugurating the use of the water recovery system to
produce recycled, purified water.”
NASA figures sending water into space wastes rocket fuel.
Why pay good money, if you can just reuse water that comes out of astronauts’ bodies?
Astronauts have recycled other fluid, but urine was kinda the final frontier.
Astronaut: “Everybody’s talked about recycling water in a closed-loop system, but nobody’s ever
done it before. So, we’re going to be drinking yesterday’s coffee frequently up here, and happy to do
it.”
Three astronauts hold up their drink pouches.
Astronaut: “And, here we go. Here’s to everybody who made this happen.”
Group: “Cheers.” (laughter)
Headquarters: “That’s looks really, really good from down here. Um…”
For all the jokes cracked in space, water’s a serious problem down here on Earth.
Is anyone recycling urine like they are on the space station? Depends on how you cut it.
NASA’s system is a closed loop: water out, urine in, water out.
Similar technology’s used during some natural disasters, and the country of Singapore gets close.
Singapore recycles sewage water but it’s sent to reservoirs where it’s diluted.
How far does America get with recycled water? Public service announcements hint at who’s furthest
along.
“Southern California is getting drier. Go to bewaterwise.com. Find out how your community is
dealing with mandatory conservation.”
For decades, California utilities have used recycled waste water to spruce up landscaping and golf courses –
but you’re not allowed to drink it.
Orange County goes a tad further. It replenishes an underground aquifer with recycled water. The utility
draws water out of that aquifer.
So, it’s a kind of water recycling – more like Singapore’s diluted variety than NASA’s fully-closed loop.
According to the federal Environmental Protection Agency – no city in America has astronaut-style water
recycling.
But, some water utility managers predict some city will.
“It’s a non-issue. From purely a perception standpoint, Oh my god you’re making
me drink toilet water. You know, get over it, because you’ve been doing it anyhow.”
That’s Frank Jaeger. He runs the water system in Parker, a Denver suburb.
He says most water systems are more like Singapore’s and Orange County’s than you might think.
“I was in New Orleans, and I had the chance to go through their treatment process. And, they
pointed out that ten years in a row they had won the drinking water award for turbidity, taste, odor –
and that water going down the Mississippi had been through 12 stomachs by the time it had gotten to
New Orleans. They mix it with a little more scotch than we do, but they drink it.”
Jaeger says, think of the advantages a full water recycling system would have.
Some cities would save energy since they’d pump water shorter distances. And you’d get a consistent
supply of water, since you can count on people bathing and flushing on a regular basis.
“It is silly, in this day and age, to be worried about these sorts of things – especially
here in the United States, where we have such good wonderful treatment
processes.”
There’s no federal regulation that specifically prohibits full toilet-to-tap water recycling.
So, Jaeger says, someday, some politically brave local government will move forward.
Each compact fluorescent light bulb has a small amount of mercury in it
(Source: Yann at Wikimedia Commons)
Old incandescent light bulbs
are getting pushed out of the
way by the more efficient compact
fluorescent light bulbs. But
the bulbs contain a small amount
of a toxic chemical. Mark Brush
reports, that has some regulators
concerned:
Transcript
Old incandescent light bulbs
are getting pushed out of the
way by the more efficient compact
fluorescent light bulbs. But
the bulbs contain a small amount
of a toxic chemical. Mark Brush
reports, that has some regulators
concerned:
Each one of these CFL bulbs contains a tiny amount of mercury.
It’s not a big a concern. If a bulb breaks in your home, you’re supposed to vent the room for 15 minutes before you clean it up.
But regulators are concerned about large volumes of bulbs.
The state of New York decided to crack down on CBS after the Late Show with Dave Letterman threw bulbs off a rooftop.
Letterman: “You have some incandescent light bulbs and you have some fluorescent light bulbs. How many do you think you have there?”
Assistant: “Uh, a couple of hundred.”
Letterman: “A couple hundred”
(sound of bulbs crashing on ground)
The little cloud of dust that rose as the bulbs broke caused people from around the country to call the New York Department of Environmental Conservation. And CBS reached a settlement with the state.
Most home owners don’t need to worry about state regulators knocking on their doors. It’s not illegal to put them in your trash in most states.
But officials encourage home owners to find a bulb take-back program like the ones listed on EPA’s website.
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.
One company created a website that acts as kind of a Craigslist just for reclaimed building materials (Photo courtesy of the National Centers for Environmental Prediction)
In the middle of a recession that’s
crippling the construction field,
there’s at least one sector of
industry that’s doing pretty well.
That’s “material reuse.” Taking pieces
of old buildings and using them in
new ones. Advocates say used materials
could save developers a heap of money.
Samara Freemark has the
story of one re-use company that’s both
green and in the black:
Transcript
In the middle of a recession that’s
crippling the construction field,
there’s at least one sector of
industry that’s doing pretty well.
That’s “material reuse.” Taking pieces
of old buildings and using them in
new ones. Advocates say used materials
could save developers a heap of money.
Samara Freemark has the
story of one re-use company that’s both
green and in the black:
You’ve probably heard what’s going on in the construction industry
these days.
(news montage of housing crisis)
But in middle of all that bad news, there might be one bright spot.
“We’ve actually been expanding quite a bit. I guess it’s one of the
only times I’ve heard
of where that’s the case.”
That’s architect Brad Hardin.
He got interested in reusing building materials pretty early in his career.
He likes the way
the old stuff looked. And he likes the idea of saving resources. And
he’s also kind of
horrified by the tens of millions of tons of construction waste that get
tossed into landfills
every year.
But actually getting his hands on used materials, so that he could reuse
them- that turned
out to be a real pain in the butt.
“You know you’ll be literally going out to someone’s yard and getting
rained on, or
sorting through someone’s basement– it was kind of a hit and miss
process.”
A big part of the problem was simple logistics. Imagine you’re knocking
down an old
house to build a new one. You’d like to sell off whatever pieces of the
old building you
can. But how do you find someone to buy all that stuff? Where do you store
it while you
look for a buyer? And how do you ship the materials?
Harry Giles is a professor of green architecture at the University of
Michigan.
He says most developers don’t want to bother with all that hassle. In the
end, they usually
just end up bulldozing everything. Giles says that’s because there’s no
real secondhand
market for used construction materials- not like there is in a lot of other
industries.
“If you take the car industry, a lot of it is geared around the reuse of
materials. Not just
taking the car and crushing it, but taking it apart and finding useful
components on it.”
You know, like a salvage yard.
And that was the problem Brad Hardin wanted to solve – how to create a
secondhand
market for spare building parts. He figured that if he could do that,
reusing building
materials could actually end up profitable.
So last year he started a company called Planet ReUse. The company’s
website acts as
kind of a Craigslist just for reclaimed building materials. Buyers and
sellers can find each
other on the ‘net.
And Planet ReUse tests all material to make sure it’s up to code. That
way the buyer
doesn’t end up with, say, eight tons of rotten planking. And Planet ReUse
arranges all the
shipping- trying to hook up sellers to nearby buyers. That saves money and
fuel.
By removing those basic barriers, Hardin says his buyers save about 20%
compared to
buying new. And Planet ReUse still makes a profit.
And it’s also a start to reducing those millions of tons of landfill
waste.
So, what kind of stuff does he sell on the site?
“How much time do you have? Steel, flooring…”
It turns out there’s money in just about everything you can salvage from
a building.
Harry Giles says that cash is the key to cutting down waste.
“If people see that it’s a lucrative business to actually salvage
materials, that will drive it
much faster than concern for the environment.”
And it’s not just buildings. Remember President Obama’s inauguration
stage? Well, that
got torn down, and Planet ReUse is trying to get the pieces to New Orleans.
They’ll be
used to rebuild houses damaged by Hurricane Katrina.
It’s just one more way for Planet ReUse to prove that you can do good, be
green, and
make a little money too.
Robert Olsen used to burn his trash. Now he drives his trash into town. (Photo by Todd Melby)
Getting rid of your trash in the city
is easy. Take it to the curb on pickup
day and the city does the rest. In rural
areas, many people don’t have garbage pickup.
So they burn their trash. And that causes
pollution. Todd Melby tells us about one
place that’s trying to change its burning
habits:
Transcript
Getting rid of your trash in the city is easy. Take it to the curb on pickup day and the city does the rest. In rural areas, many people don’t have garbage pickup. So they burn their trash. And that causes pollution. Todd Melby tells us about one place that’s trying to change its burning habits:
Robert Olsen lives out in the country. He used to burn his garbage. But not any more.
(Pickup hatch opens)
On this windy morning, Olsen has driven his pickup into town to dump his trash.
“I think this is probably a week’s worth for us.”
He grabs the blue plastic bin from the back of his pickup and dumps it into a green Dumpster.
“Not too difficult.”
Olsen runs the environmental office here in Lincoln County, Minnesota. It was his idea to set-up nine Dumpsters throughout this sparsely populated county. He did it because he knows that burning garbage pollutes.
“The issue is that when you burn garbage at home, in the country, the first people or persons who are going to experience any harmful effects from that garbage are going to be you.”
That’s because a lot of trash — including even plain old paper — contains chlorine that produce dioxins when burned at home. Plastic is even worse.
Mark Rust is a solid waste expert with the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency.
“If you’re using a burn barrel or fire pit or you’re burning garbage in any way on your own property, you’re creating a perfect factory for producing dioxins.”
Smoke from burn barrels and fire pits are now the leading source of dioxins in air pollution. Some studies have connected dioxins to cancer. Burning garbage is especially bad because there are no anti-pollution scrubbers on do-it-yourself burners.
“With a burn barrel, it’s all right there.”
Melby: “It all just goes right up into the air?”
“Into the air, into the soil. Ultimately, we’re going to be taking it in on the dinner table.”
Most states still allow people living in the country to burn their garbage. In Minnesota, only farmers and those without access to affordable garbage pickup can burn. A 2005 survey found that about half of the people living in rural Minnesota burn at least occasionally.
Which is why the state offered rural counties some start up money to get people to burn less.
Rural residents in Lincoln County, Minnesota have had access to drop-off sites for seven months now. When the program started, haulers took away about 8 tons of trash every month. Now it’s up to 15 tons.
Back at one of the county’s drop-off sites, Clarence Lietz is getting of his Buick and grabbing newspapers for the nearby recycling bin. What doesn’t get recycled, gets burned, he says.
“What garbage we have like small things for the yard we just burn right at home, you know. I’d say about a five-gallon pail full or something like that.”
Another elderly customer — she didn’t want her name used — says she burns junk mail and envelopes at home.
“Papers. That’s all you can burn. I don’t burn garbage.
Melby: “And why don’t ya?”
“It’s not right to burn garbage. It don’t burn any good anyway.”
More than half of the mercury switches still on the road are in GM’s cars. But, since filing for bankruptcy, GM stopped paying into the program. (Photo courtesy of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory)
