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.
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.
The Anacostia River in Washington DC is ridden with garbage, and plastic bags make up 20% of the trash tossed in (Photo by Kavitha Cardoza)
For years, the Anacostia River that flows through
Washington DC was widely known as the forgotten
river, lost in the shadow of the better known
Potomac. At one point, some say the trash in the
river was so thick you could walk from one side to
the other without getting wet. Today things are
better. But, most people say not enough has been
done. DC’s city council is considering a five cent
tax on every disposable plastic and paper bag with
most of the money going to cleanup efforts. As Kavitha
Cardoza reports if it passes,
the fee would be the toughest law on plastic and paper
bags in the country:
Transcript
For years, the Anacostia River that flows through
Washington DC was widely known as the forgotten
river, lost in the shadow of the better known
Potomac. At one point, some say the trash in the
river was so thick you could walk from one side to
the other without getting wet. Today things are
better. But, most people say not enough has been
done. DC’s city council is considering a five cent
tax on every disposable plastic and paper bag with
most of the money going to cleanup efforts. As Kavitha
Cardoza reports if it passes,
the fee would be the toughest law on plastic and paper
bags in the country:
Kindergartners from the Evergreen School in Wheaton, Maryland are leaning over a rail and looking at bags, cups, wrappers and other trash floating in the Anacostia River.
They’ve travelled to D.C. to learn more about, as they put it, “what kills fish.”
The five-year-olds are NOT impressed with what they see.
The children roll up their sleeves and start pulling trash from the bank. But, it’s going to take a lot more than their small hands to clean up the mess.
Jim Connerly is with the Anacostia Watershed Society. He says Washington D.C.’s own environmental studies estimate each year 20,000 tons of trash is thrown into the Anacostia.
“It’s like a landfill on a conveyor belt.”
Studies also show plastic bags make up about 20% of the trash in the Anacostia.
When grocery bags are thrown away, many of them are swept up by rain water and carried into storm drains that flow into streams. They end up in the Anacostia.
The bags often ensnare birds and turtles. Fish eat the small torn pieces. That results in toxins making their way into the food chain.
Tommy Wells is the D.C. council member who came up with the idea of charging a nickel for plastic and paper bags.
“By charging a nickel, it really gets more into your head than your pocket. Also, it reminds you maybe I should have bought a reusable bag.”
And part of the money raised will help low-income residents buy reusable bags.
But Laurie Walker hasn’t heard about that proposal. She says, as a senior citizen on a fixed income, those nickels can add up quickly.
“Five cents is a whole lot of money, if I put it in a jar, every month when I get paid. I can buy a chicken, hot dogs, eggs for my grandchildren or for myself. I can buy a whole lot with that.”
The fee would raise nearly 2.5 million dollars a year. Besides the reusable bags, the money will fund educational efforts and return a portion to local businesses as an incentive.
The chemical industry which makes the plastic bags hopes anybody opposed to these kinds of fees or taxes will come out against this proposal. But environmentalists like the idea.
(sound of a beaver)
Back at the Anacostia River system, Jim Connerly says, with a little effort, the Anacostia could be trash-free in just a few years.
“In a perfect world, the water quality would be addressed. The thing that’s encouraging to me is that nature is always trying to seek balance. If we let the river alone, if we stop the input of pollutants, it would clean itself. It’s just that we’re not allowing the river to do that.”
Connerly and many others are hoping the Washington DC bag fee helps make that happen.
The lot that started Baldassari's quest to eliminate waste from his business. (Photo by Nancy Paladino of The Taylor Companies)
Wood scraps used to go to the dump - now they're used as mulch and at local farms for horse bedding. (Photo by Nancy Paladino of The Taylor Companies)
A canadian company picks up leather upholstery scraps to make wallets and purses. (Photo by Nancy Paladino of The Taylor Companies)
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:
Transcript
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.
“I would have never guessed ten years ago I’d
be the guy telling you this story right now.”
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.
“‘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?’”
They started looking at their waste.
(sound of a 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.
“Trees don’t grow in the shape of furniture
parts. So there is a lot of waste. Ultimately,
40% of each board ends up as scrap when it’s
all said and done – 30% to 40% will end up as
scrap.”
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 $30,000 dollars a year.
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.com.
“We’re starting to see companies think in
terms of closed loop systems. Factories
where 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.”
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:
“Once I got started, I literally became
addicted to it. But it was addicted, in the
sense again, it helped our bottom line.”
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 eliminating waste.
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.”
The city of Toronto has started collecting old mattresses at a central recycling center.
(Photo by Julie Grant)
At Simon Zysman's factory, Recover Canada, mattresses to be dismantled. (Photo by Julie Grant)
A worker deconstructs a used mattress. (Photo by Julie Grant)
The steel coils at this factory are used make rebuilt mattresses. Other dismantlers
recycle the steel. (Photo by Julie Grant)
One of the bigger things we
throw away are old mattresses. Landfills
are stuffed full of them. Julie Grant
reports that new companies are springing
up to recycle the steel and cushioning
from old mattresses. They say the government
could help, but it’s lying down on the job:
Transcript
One of the bigger things we
throw away are old mattresses. Landfills
are stuffed full of them. Julie Grant
reports that new companies are springing
up to recycle the steel and cushioning
from old mattresses. They say the government
could help, but it’s lying down on the job:
(sound of a mattress factory)
Simon Zysman has been working with mattresses for more
than half-a-century. For the past 16, he’s been running a
business in Toronto that tears old mattresses apart so the
pieces can be reused.
“i’ve only dismantled with my own hands 3,000 used
mattresses and my enterprize in the 16 years has only
dismantled 40,000 mattresses, and therefore i know very
little. I’m just learning.”
Yeah, like Lance Armstrong is just learning to ride a bike.
Now, apparently dismantling mattresses is not a cushy job.
(sound of mattress deconstruction)
Workers pull mattresses from a big pile. I watch one as he
makes a long cut all around the edge, snips material where
it’s connected to the coils. And then pulls the entire face of
the cushioning away from the springs. It’s kind of like
filleting the mattress.
When he’s done, the cushioning goes on one pile. The steel
springs on another.
Zysman sells the different parts to companies in the U.S.
that rebuild mattresses. Other people in the business just
recycle the steel and sell the cushioning for things like
carpet-padding and oil filters.
Zysman used to toss and turn when he thought about the
huge numbers of mattresses out there, but his supply’s not
been steady.
When you buy a new mattress, a lot of times the company
that delivers it will pick up your old mattress. Most
companies just send them to the dump. Only a few pay
people like Zysman to have them dismantled.
Until recently those few have provided Zysman’s only
supply.
But the city of Toronto has started a pilot program to collect
old mattresses from residents at the curbside for companies
like Zysman’s.
“The city’s pioneering mattress recycling program has been
a great boost to us and a great help to us. That is a
wonderful development.”
(sound of a recycling center)
The mattresses the city picks up are stockpiled at a recycling
center.
Bryan Farley runs the city’s new program. He says Zysman
and other people like him are getting paid to keep
mattresses from stuffing the landfill.
“Landfill space in Ontario is a premium. It’s hard to find.
And there are laws and regulations that are more focused on
not putting materials into the landfill.”
Farley figures getting mattresses out of the waste stream will
help the city to meet its ambitious goal of reducing trash by
70%.
Mattresses take up a lot of space. They’re big and bulky and
don’t smash down all that well in a landfill.
South of the Canadian border, in Ohio, Chuck Brickman has
been piecing together a mattress recycling business.
He wishes the government here would help increase the
supply of used mattresses. Brickman can get some from
local hotels and furniture stores, but it’s not enough so far to
run a steady business.
“There’s two companies right now in New Jersey that are
sending 2 to 5 thousand mattresses a month by rail from
New Jersey to a landfill in Michigan.”
Why? It’s cheap.
A few cities and states have special landfill fees for bulky
items like mattresses, but most don’t. So, it’s usually
cheaper just to dump them.
Brickman wants local or state governments to create more
‘incentives’ for the mattresses to be recycled. In other
words, higher fees to dump mattresses.
“It’s easier and more economically feasible for them to throw
them in a couple rail cars and send them a couple states
over because there are no established tipping fees in some
of the Midwestern states like Ohio and Michigan.”
Mattress recyclers say government officials can raise those
fees on dumping mattresses. That would make the mattress
recycling business less of a dream, and more of a reality.
The city of Chicago has hired the company Camp Dresser and McKee to dig through residents' trash and figure out what
exactly people are throwing away (Photo by Michael Rhee)
Chris Martel is an engineer, and a solid waste
expert (Photo by Michael Rhee)
Large cities in the US are still
struggling to find ways to recycle their trash.
That’s because you can’t use the same program
for every high-rise, office building or condo.
One city is trying to attack this problem by
digging through the garbage. Mike Rhee reports:
Transcript
Large cities in the US are still
struggling to find ways to recycle their trash.
That’s because you can’t use the same program
for every high-rise, office building or condo.
One city is trying to attack this problem by
digging through the garbage. Mike Rhee reports:
(sound of trucks beeping)
This is a waste transfer facility on Chicago’s South Side. It’s kind of a temporary dump.
Garbage trucks pick up trash from people’s homes and pile it up here. The piles are then packed
onto even bigger trucks and hauled to landfills far away.
Chris Martel looks over the mounds of trash here. Martel is an engineer, and a solid waste
expert.
“There’s a lot of different paper types here, there’s a plastic bottles, all things that are recyclable.”
But they’re probably not going to be recycled. They’re going to a landfill. That’s why Martel is
here.
He works for a consulting firm called CDM, or Camp Dresser and McKee.
The city of Chicago has hired the company to dig through residents’ trash and figure out what
exactly people are throwing away. Martel has been doing waste sorts like this for more than a
decade.
As we walk to another part of the building, he remembers his first one fondly.
“That’s where I fell in love with my wife, after giving her flowers out of the trash and stuffed
animals out of the trash.”
She didn’t mind they were recycled.
We get to the waste sorting area. There’s a group of workers surrounded by dozens of large and
small bins.
(BOOM)
(laughs) “That boom was the tipper dropping the waste load.”
A rugged, yellow loader dumps about 300 pounds of garbage at our feet. It’s a sample from one
of the large piles in the facility.
A team starts sorting through the garbage.
Scott Keddy is one of them. He picks up a plastic garbage bag.
“We just open it up and see what kind of surprises lie inside, like it could be this #1 plastic PET
bottle, or this rigid, plastic thinga-ma-jobber that did something for somebody at some point,
which is different from that.”
They’re sorting them into 81 different containers. Each one is for a kind of paper, plastic, metal,
food or some other piece of trash.
The point is to figure out how much of each material people are throwing out. And where it’s all
coming from.
Suzanne Malec-McKenna is commissioner for Chicago’s Department of Environment.
She says the tough thing about creating a recycling program in a city like Chicago is the diversity.
Not only do you have residents and businesses creating waste, but restaurants, prisons,
manufacturers for car parts. Each of these creates a different kind of garbage.
The city has been trying to come up with a recycling program that works for everyone for 20
years. Malec-McKenna says the study will help the city decide how to manage it all.
“You can’t have a cookie cutter approach for a city this diverse. You’ve got to come up with a
range of different kind of program options for it. We’ll come up with the right mix.”
But while the city figures recycling out, the garbage will keep piling up in landfills.
Martel, the waste expert, says he hopes that waste is reduced soon. He says most people don’t
understand the sheer quantities of garbage that are out there.
“Unless you physically see and touch it you don’t realize what a large amount it is and what the
implications are and how easy it is to divert these materials.”
Big cities around the country are realizing this, and working on a solution.
A study by the University of Arizona estimates that the average household wastes about
14% of the food that’s bought (Photo by Rebecca Williams)
Thanksgiving is just around the
corner. A consumer expert says you can
avoid wasting a lot of food with just a
little planning. Lester Graham reports:
Transcript
Thanksgiving is just around the
corner. A consumer expert says you can
avoid wasting a lot of food with just a
little planning. Lester Graham reports:
A study by the University of Arizona estimates that the average household wastes about
14% of the food that’s bought. Some of it spoils. Some of it becomes leftovers that
never get eaten.
Bob Lilienfeld is the author of the Use Less Stuff Report. He says you can keep a
couple of things in mind. If food is left on the serving platter, it can be re-used. If it
makes it to your plate and it’s not eaten, it’s wasted.
He also says, on Thanksgiving, plan for leftovers.
“Think, when you buy turkey, ‘What else does my family like turkey. Oh, they like soup.
They like chili.’ Buy the ingredients for the next round when you buy the turkey so that
everything is sitting in your home the day after Thanksgiving, and you’re wondering,
‘Alright, what am I going to do with this bird?’”
And, Lilienfeld says, label and date your leftovers. You’re more likely to use them
before they go bad.
Digital TV is killing the analog star
(Source: Zaphod at Wikimedia Commons)
In a couple of months, television
signals will be going digital. Congress
is requiring the switch. In February, if
you have an analog TV with rabbit ears,
it’ll be useless unless you get a converter
box. And even before the official transition,
people have been buying up new digital TVs.
Rebecca Williams reports the switch to DTV
has some people worried about the growing
pile of TV trash:
Transcript
In a couple of months, television
signals will be going digital. Congress
is requiring the switch. In February, if
you have an analog TV with rabbit ears,
it’ll be useless unless you get a converter
box. And even before the official transition,
people have been buying up new digital TVs.
Rebecca Williams reports the switch to DTV
has some people worried about the growing
pile of TV trash:
(sound of guy playing guitar hero)
William Borg says he’s really bad at Guitar Hero. So instead, we’re
watching one of his teenage customers play the game on a huge flat screen
digital TV.
“And this is another reason customers are after those high definition TVs
because you can really maximize the overall picture and sound quality.”
There’s not an analog TV in the place. Best Buy doesn’t sell them anymore.
You can’t buy them anywhere actually, except maybe at a thrift store.
Digital TV is killing the analog star.
“I think the end of analog TV is here.”
Megan Pollock is with the Consumer Electronics Association. She
represents TV makers and big box retailers.
“Just like record players some people will just fall in love and keep them for
as long as they can but I think in 5 to 10 years it’ll be very, very hard to find
one in anyone’s home.”
That’s right – analog TVs are gonna be museum pieces, or, more likely,
filling up landfills.
Megan Pollock says sales for digital TVs go up every year. She expects 36
million to sell next year.
In February, all broadcasters are required to switch over to digital TV. If
you have one of those old TVs with rabbit ears or an antenna, you’ll have to
get a converter box. If you’re hooked up to cable or satellite, you’re fine.
You don’t have to buy a new TV.
But TV recyclers say they’re seeing more people getting rid of perfectly
good analog TVs anyway.
Linda McFarland runs a TV and computer recycling business.
“We’re really gonna start seeing these in droves.”
We’re standing in front of seven foot tall stacks of old TVs.
McFarland says of all electronics, TVs are the least valuable. And the TVs
are full of toxic stuff. Especially lead in the cathode ray tubes.
Most of the time we export our TV waste. It ends up in Asia or Africa.
There, everyone from grandparents to little kids use acid or open flames to
melt the circuit boards to get to the tiny bits of gold and silver.
“Children are working on top of these electronic heaps and breathing
cyanide acid.”
Linda McFarland says it’s easy for recyclers in the US to make deals with
importers in other countries. They sneak the TV waste in along with much
more valuable computer parts.
“You might just stick it on containers and tell the marketplace that’s buying
from you I’ll give you two good containers for every container I give you.”
McFarland says that probably happens nine out of ten times. She wants new
laws to force recyclers to take care of TVs correctly.
That’s at the end of a TV’s life. Others want to start at the beginning. They
want TV manufacturers to do more.
Barbara Kyle is with the Electronics TakeBack Coalition. She says it’s not
just the lead in old TVs, many new digital TVs have toxic mercury in them –
and that’s hard to remove too.
“I think of the LCD TV as the poster child as to how this industry is still not
thinking about how to design with the end of life of products in mind. It’s
clearly not even in their work plan.”
But – she says some companies are getting better about taking back old TVs
for recycling. She says Sony, Samsung and LG already have good
programs. Others are just beginning.
Kyle says, whatever you do, don’t throw your old TV in the trash. She says
it’ll take some work, but you can find a responsible recycler – one that
doesn’t export waste to developing countries.
The recycling industry is the
latest to take a hit from the world’s
economic problems. Rebecca Williams
has more:
Transcript
The recycling industry is the
latest to take a hit from the world’s
economic problems. Rebecca Williams
has more:
The bottom has dropped out of most commodity markets: recycled paper,
metals, everything. It’s tied to the collapse of economies worldwide.
Tom Watson is with the National Waste Prevention Coalition. He says
recycling companies’ profits are way down.
“A lot of it is connected with China – and the demand for fewer products
there so they need less of the recycled materials for the packaging.”
Watson says China is buying a lot less of our recycled paper and cardboard
to make packaging, because we’re all buying a lot fewer products from
China.
That means recyclables are stacking up in a lot of places. Recyclers are
starting to talk about charging garbage companies to drop stuff off. And that
might mean we’ll be paying higher trash bills.
San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom signs mandatory composting into law (Photo courtesy of the Press Office of Mayor Newsom)
