The Tehachapi Wind Farm in California. The turbines produce enough electricity to meet the needs of 350,000 people each year (Photo courtesy of the Department Energy)
Large wind turbines are popping up all over
the United States. But some homeowners are beginning
to put up their own backyard wind turbines. Lester
Graham reports:
Transcript
Large wind turbines are popping up all over
the United States. But some homeowners are beginning
to put up their own backyard wind turbines. Lester
Graham reports:
Dozens of companies are popping up, making these smaller wind generators.
Southwest Windpower is one of the older manufacturers.
Andy Kruse is a Vice President there.
He says these smaller wind turbines can supply power for houses on the grid; maybe
even enough to sell some electricity back to the power company. But some states
haven’t passed the laws necessary to require power companies to allow the turbines to
be hooked up to the grid.
“States that have yet to do that, you know, they have to question it. I mean, some of
them have never even heard something like this either for solar or for wind, so it’s a
learning curve for them.”
Kruse says home-grown wind power is starting to catch on, with thousands of people
asking about getting their own small wind turbine put up in their backyard.
For The Environment Report, this is Lester Graham.
A ship discharging its ballast water (Photo courtesy of the US Geological Survey)
Congress might take a final vote soon on a bill
that would make foreign ships treat ballast water to
kill unwanted species, before entering US waters.
Many environmental groups support the measure, but some
worry about the loss of state control. Chuck Quirmbach
reports:
Transcript
Congress might take a final vote soon on a bill
that would make foreign ships treat ballast water to
kill unwanted species, before entering US waters.
Many environmental groups support the measure, but some
worry about the loss of state control. Chuck Quirmbach
reports:
Backers of the ballast water requirement, recently passed by the House, hope to reduce the
number of invasive species brought in by foreign vessels.
Dozens of non-native species, like the zebra mussel, are causing major problems in the
Great Lakes. But the group ‘Midwest Environmental Advocates’ is raising concerns.
Executive Director Karen Schapiro says the House bill would prevent states from
developing ballast water treatment standards that are tougher than federal law, or that
take effect sooner.
“You know we would like to see the most feasibly stringent standards on the table, on the books,
even if that’s done on a state by state basis.”
But the shipping industry says it doesn’t want a patchwork of state regulations. The
national ballast water language is part of a Coast Guard bill that still has to be reconciled
with a Senate measure.
Exposed to toxic chemicals such as lead and mercury, workers stay at the scrap yards for the $130-a-month pay. (photo by Ted Land)
Copper wire is stripped, circuit boards melted and other parts burned to retrieve metal from old electronic equipment in illegal scrap yards in China. (Photo by Ted Land)
Although China banned electronic waste, illegal operations still take American E-waste to retrieve precious metals and some throw the leftovers into the river. (Photo by Ted Land)
Many workers say this is better than family scrap yards where American e-waste fuels toxic fires across the countryside. (photo by Ted Land)
Like many large electronic equipment buyers, the State of Illinois was surprised to find its old equipment was being shipped overseas to scrap yards. (Photo by Ted Land)
High school students test the water for pollutants. They take their results to government officials who have little power to stop the e-waste imports. (photo by Ted Land)
At your home, chances are your TV, computer and other electronic gear were made
overseas. That’s because it’s cheaper to make them there. And it’s cheaper to get rid of old
electronics overseas. Someday, your old cell phone or CD player might end up right back
where it started: in China. Ted Land visited a Chinese city where electronic waste, or e-waste, is shipped by the thousands of tons. Pollution from that waste is threatening the
health of people who live there:
Transcript
At your home, chances are your TV, computer and other electronic gear were made
overseas. That’s because it’s cheaper to make them there. And it’s cheaper to get rid of old
electronics overseas. Someday, your old cell phone or CD player might end up right back
where it started: in China. Ted Land visited a Chinese city where electronic waste , or e-
waste, is shipped by the thousands of tons. Pollution from that waste is threatening the
health of people who live there:
The city of Taizhou is in eastern China. It’s an industrial port city. A lot of the people
who travel here are here on business. Ships loaded with new products are often headed
for the United States. But it’s not just what leaves this city that makes business boom…
it’s also what’s coming in:
“I know it’s polluted here but it’s not a big deal. The most important thing is my
children, that’s the reason why I found work here.”
Liu Qinzhen works at this Taizhou scrap plant. It’s the final stop for some of the nearly
4,000 tons of scrap and e-waste that enters the port each day. Liu is one of hundreds of
workers who squat under an outdoor pavilion picking apart old circuit boards and wires.
She works 9 hours a day, 7 days a week, earning about 130 dollars a month.
The work is dangerous. She and the other workers are exposed to harmful chemicals
from e-waste such as lead and mercury. The 23-year-old moved here for this job because
she needed to support her two kids:
“I used to work in a shoe factory but then I had a baby and it’s not convenient to have a
baby there so I moved here even though the pay is the same. I come from the countryside.
You can’t earn money on a farm.”
The plant where she works is considered safer than scrapping these materials in the
countryside where families work in their front yards and in their homes. They melt
circuit boards and burn wires to extract bits of valuable copper and gold.
Environmental organizations have documented evidence that what’s left over after the
valuable metals are retrieved is dumped into local rivers and streams:
(Land:) “I noticed when we arrived they shut down the other door of that other shop?
“They are doing the same kind of e-waste, but they are afraid of being discovered by
others.”
Afraid, says Taizhou resident Chen Yijun because what they’re doing is illegal. Chinese
law forbids the import of e-waste, yet piles of foreign electronics litter the countryside
and pour into scrap plants daily.
Yijun is a teacher at Taizhou #1 High School, where students are concerned about what
the e-waste industry is doing to their environment. They’ve been testing the water in
local streams, looking for signs of harmful chemicals:
On this day they draw several gallons from a stream. The banks are littered with piles of
electrical cable. Chen Zhengyan has been working on the project for years:
“The frogs here are different from frogs in other places because sometimes they have
extra limbs. We are sure the pollution is from e-waste because in this area there is no
other industry.”
Chen and her colleagues say this pollution is harmful to people, too. They tell local
government officials such as Liang Xiaoyong that something has to be done to improve
the situation. But, Liang says there’s only so much the government can do to combat an
illegal industry that so many residents make their living off of. He says cutting off the
imports is difficult because sometimes e-waste is hidden in with other scrap. He doesn’t
deny the waste industry is a big business here:
This industry generates a lot of tax money for us in the form of tariffs. So, if this industry
doesn’t exist, the Taizhou harbor won’t survive.
Jim Puckett is coordinator of the Basel Action Network, a Seattle based group that
confronts toxic trade issues around the world. He says it’s not that the Chinese
government is unwilling to stop imports, it’s simply unable to stop them.
“They’ve banned the import, the problem is they can’t control that flow, it’s just coming at
them container load after container load through various ports and they can’t possibly check every
single one.”
American waste is literally fueling the fires burning electronics that dot the countryside in
China. And many of the original owners of this gear had taken it to be recycled, and
thought they’d done the right thing. But, often it ends up on a ship, headed for scrap
yards overseas.
About seven thousand miles away from Taizhou, practically the other side of the globe,
there’s a warehouse in Springfield, Illinois stacked with old electronic gear.
The Illinois State Department of Central Management Services, or CMS, disposes of old
state property, including old copy machines, computers, and monitors. In 2005, CMS
was contacted by the Basel Action Network with some disturbing information. The
group was finding State of Illinois computers dumped in developing countries around the
world. Curtis Howard is manager of CMS state and federal surplus property:
“It hit me pretty hard, the fact that, not realizing, you know I always look at it, these guys
were here, they come in, they bid on our property, you know I’m maximizing the return on
the state’s investment, I’m doing a good job, I never really thought about the tail end of
the dragon.”
Basel Action Network coordinator Jim Puckett says if the Chinese are unable to stop the
imports, then it’s up to the United States to control what they export:
Other countries have laws forbidding it, laws controlling it, but in the United States, we
don’t even have a law to control this export.
The U.S. is one of only a handful of countries that have not signed and ratified the Basel
Convention, an international treaty that bans hazardous waste exports. That means if
anything is going to be done to stop electronic waste from polluting countries overseas,
it’s going to be up to the States to take action.
It starts with buying electronics from companies that make products that are more easily
recycled, and ends with making sure old electronic gear is getting into the hands of
responsible recyclers who don’t simply ship the e-waste to scrap yards overseas.
Air pollution from chicken, cattle and pig farms will be studied for the first time
on a nationwide basis. Chuck Quirmbach reports:
Transcript
Air pollution from chicken, cattle and pig farms will be studied for the first time
on a nationwide basis. Chuck Quirmbach reports:
More farms have large numbers of animals, and more non-farm neighbors are complaining
about odors and potential health risks from air emissions. The EPA has said for several years that
it doesn’t have enough data to tell whether big farms comply with existing air pollution laws. So
the government will team up with some universities on a two-year, 15-million dollar study at 24
farms in nine states.
EPA Administrator Steve Johnson says the results will be used to estimate emissions from future
large farms:
“That they will have the benefit of the ability to model and predict what air emissions may happen
that would enable us for them and for us to take preventative action.”
As part of a legal agreement the agriculture industry will help pay for the air pollution study.
In 1998, people became outraged when a company tried to ship Great
Lakes water to Asia. Politicians said they wanted the Lakes protected.
Now – almost a decade after the event that sparked the controversy –
officials say the effort to protect to the Great Lakes is picking up
steam. Noah Ovshinsky has more:
Transcript
In 1998, people became outraged when a company tried to ship Great
Lakes water to Asia. Politicians said they wanted the Lakes protected.
Now – almost a decade after the event that sparked the controversy –
officials say the effort to protect to the Great Lakes is picking up
steam. Noah Ovshinsky has more:
Two years ago officials from the eight Great Lakes states and two
Canadian provinces agreed on a plan that largely bans the diversion of
water outside the basin. The plan, known as the Great Lakes Compact,
went to each state’s legislature for debate.
Pete Johnson is with the Council of Great Lakes Governors. He says
even though it’s been two years the effort is starting to gain
momentum:
“We’re no longer at the beginning. There are still a number of states
that still need to pass the legislation but we feel that we’re well on
the way of actually turning this thing into law.”
Minnesota has officially signed onto the Compact. Illinois is expected to sign on soon. The legislation remains under consideration in the six other Great Lakes states.
For the Environment Report, this is Noah Ovshinsky.
Most states don’t have bottle deposit laws. Some of those states that do have the laws are expanding them to include deposits on bottled water and other beverages. Lester Graham reports:
Transcript
Most states don’t have bottle deposit laws. Some of those states that do have the laws are expanding them to include deposits on bottled water and other beverages. Lester Graham reports:
When Ed Solomon drives up in his delivery truck, he’s not just taking
in cases of soda and other beverages:
“Most every stop we go to as we deliver products, we take the empties
out, and the crates also. But, WHOOO! Yes. Sometimes there’ll be a
lot of empties at various stops.”
Solomon delivers Faygo beverages in Michigan. That state has the
nation’s highest deposit on bottles and cans: ten cents each. And
whether it’s Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Budweiser or Miller, if distributors
drop off product, they have to pick up the empties that people bring
back for the deposit refund.
Of the ten states that have bottle deposit laws, some are adding the deposit requirement to new beverages such as bottled water.
Forty other states have no deposit law at all.
Johnny Georges operates the convenience store Stadium Party Shop in
Ann Arbor, where Ed Solomon is dropping off new product and picking up
the empties. If the law in Michigan is expanded, it would mean Georges
and his employees would have to take in a lot more kinds of empty
bottles and cans.
“I think it’s going to take a little space in my opinion because there
are so many waters out there, so many juices, so many other brands.
So, it’s going to take a little space. Hopefully we’re going to
organize it as usual. And… we’ll see.”
Not everyone is that receptive to the idea. Beverage distributors and
major grocery chains are lobbying hard against expanding the deposit
law. Distributors don’t want to hassle with picking up the empties.
Major grocery chains say they don’t like the mess of people bringing
empties into the stores. They don’t like losing floor space to make
room for bottle and can collection areas. The bigger stores also have
to invest in bar code scanners to automatically count and sort the huge
volume of empties being returned.
A lot of small stores like Johnny George’s don’t have the fancy
equipment. Here, Georges just set aside a neatly organized area where
it collects and sorts the bottles and cans. He says he knows that an
expanded bottle deposit law would mean a little more hassle, but he
doesn’t mind:
“I like the new law. I hope they pass it. That takes a lot of trash
out of the street. And it’s good for the environment in the meantime.”
And Georges isn’t the only one who thinks it would be good for the environment.
Polls show a large majority of people support the idea.
James Clift is with the environmental group Michigan Environmental
Council. He says it’s time to expand the law to other containers.
When the bottle law was written 30 years ago, beer and soda pop cans
and bottles were the biggest concerns.
“But since then, bottled water, tea, other beverages, energy drinks,
we’ve got a whole new set of drinks on the market. And they’re a
larger and larger segment of the market to the point they may become
the majority of the market in the next five to ten years.”
Clift says his state needs to catch up to the changing market, but the
majority of the states don’t require a deposit on cans and bottles at
all. And Clift argues, you can tell when you’re traveling in one of
those states:
“You know, because you see all the trash along the roadways, you see
trash cans filled with bottles and cans and it just seems so unnatural
for someone who grew up in Michigan, you know, to throw away a bottle
or a can. Luckily, we’ve been programmed to know that that has value
and has other uses.”
So people there bag or box up their empties, take them to the store, the
stores can sort them and guys like Ed Solomon can take them back to be
recycled:
“It’s hectic, yes, it really is, you know, to deal with these empties.
Yeah, but, that’s the law I guess.”
And if the can and bottle deposit law is expanded to, and other drinks, as it has been some states, more distributors
and grocers in Michigan will find the job a little more hectic… while
40 other states do little to nothing to reduce the number of cans and
bottles headed for the landfill.
For the Environment Report, this is Lester Graham.
If you don't recycle, the bin can make a handy shelf. Cities are trying to get people who don't recycle much or at all... to get into the habit by offering them incentives.
Recycling can have some economic benefits. But as a country, we’re
just not doing that much of it. The US Environmental Protection
Agency says the national recycling rate has been hovering around 30%
for several years now. Rebecca Williams reports some cities
are trying to get people to recycle more… by paying them to recycle:
Transcript
Recycling can have some economic benefits. But as a country, we’re
just not doing that much of it. The US Environmental Protection
Agency says the national recycling rate has been hovering around 30%
for several years now. Rebecca Williams reports some cities
are trying to get people to recycle more… by paying them to recycle:
It’s not easy getting someone to admit they don’t recycle. But I was
over at my friend Andrea’s house for dinner, and she confessed.
(Sound of Andrea opening a can of beans)
“Normally I would take this can and throw it away in the garbage and
never look at it again. I don’t really like cleaning garbage to throw
it away.”
Now in her defense, she doesn’t really produce that much trash to begin
with. Maybe just one small bag a week.
Andrea says it just feels like too much work to recycle. Taking the
labels off, cleaning out the cans, walking down four flights of stairs.
Though they’re indoors and carpeted.
(Sound of garage door opening)
Right now she’s using her recycle bin as a shelf. She’s got some books
and a quart of oil sitting on it.
If Andrea did recycle, she’d have to drag her bin out to the curb from
the garage. About oh, three feet or so.
“In the mornings I run pretty late so just taking the garbage out and
lugging it down the stairs along with my bags for work is quite a hassle in
and of itself and I’m proud of myself for doing that, so… (laughs).”
Now… my friend can’t be the only one out there who doesn’t recycle.
A recent survey found that 28 states reported a decrease in their
recycling rates since 2001.
That’s not good news for cities, because cities can benefit from
recycling. If they can divert enough recyclables from the waste
stream, they can avoid some of the high costs of disposing waste in
landfills.
But even if you have trucks that drive around and pick up people’s cans
and newspapers from their curbs, there’s no guarantee they’ll put them
out there for you.
Unless, of course, you offer them a reward.
Some cities on the East Coast are paying people to recycle. They’re
using a company called RecycleBank.
With RecycleBank, you get a recycling container with a tracking chip
embedded in it. You can toss all your cans and newspapers and bottles
into that one container… so, none of that annoying sorting.
Ron Gonen is the company’s co-founder.
“There’s a mechanical arm on the truck that picks up your container,
reads the chip, identifies that your household recycled and how much
your household recycled. The amount that your household recycled is
translated into RecycleBank dollars.”
Those RecycleBank dollars can be cashed in as coupons to shop at more
than 300 stores.
“We really look at it from the lens of the recycling industry and that if
your household recycles you’re actually creating value, and some of
that value should be passed back to you.”
Gonen says each family can earn up to $400 a year. He says people are
so into it, they’re even bringing stuff from work to recycle at home.
And he says recycling rates have tripled or even quadrupled in
neighborhoods using RecycleBank.
But some cities have found incentives only work up to a point. So
they’re making it against the law not to recycle. Seattle, for
example, won’t pick up your trash if there’s stuff in it that could be
recycled.
Timothy Croll is Seattle’s Solid Waste Director. He says trash
collectors aren’t going through trash cans, but they are peeking in.
“It’s not like we’re taking these things into an MRI or anything like
that it’s just what the garbage collector can see at the top when they
open the lid.”
Croll says the law works. He says only a few trash cans have been left
behind with a note. And Seattle did try incentives first. The city
charges residents less for trash collection if they use a teeny little
trash can and recycle a lot more. Croll says that’s been pretty
successful. But he says the city wanted to push for even more
recycling… so, they made it a law.
“Some tools work better for some people than others. For some people
it might be they know it’s the right thing to do, but their lives are
busy, and unless you give them one more reason they’re just not going
to get over that threshold and do it. It’s like yeah I know, I know I
should floss too, you know?”
Croll says it’s up to cities to first make recycling convenient… And
then try sweetening the deal.
You know, my non-recycling friend DOES recycle her soda cans. She
lives in Michigan, so she gets 10 cents back for each one. It’s enough
of an incentive that she’s saving bags of cans at work and stashing
cans in every corner under her kitchen sink.
A bill before the U-S House of Representatives would stop state and local governments from passing their own restrictions on chemicals. We have more from the GLRC’s Rick Pluta:
Transcript
A bill before the US House of Representatives would stop state and local
governments from passing their own restrictions on chemicals. We have more
from the GLRC’s Rick Pluta:
California recently passed a law that would ban the use of a fire retardant that’s been
linked to neurological disorders, and other states are looking at passing regulations that
are stricter than federal rules governing fertilizers, pesticides, and industrial chemicals.
Democratic Representative John Dingell of Michigan says all of those could be sidelined
by the bill before Congress:
“In other words, it is a wall not only against existing law, but it is a wall against the states enacting additional laws which would make it safe for people.”
He says the bill would also require environmental regulators to perform a cost-benefit
analysis as part of their decisions, when the health of the public should be their top
concern.
Supporters say the United States needs a single standard governing pesticides and
chemicals to comply with an international treaty.
Backyard composting isn't quite as inticing a hobby in the wintertime. (Photo by Karen Kelly)
Composting has always been a part of farm life, but a growing number of city folks are trying it as well. The GLRC’s Karen Kelly is one of those city dwellers. And she found if composting isn’t convenient, it doesn’t get done:
Transcript
Composting has always been a part of farm life, but a growing
number of city folks are trying it as well. The GLRC’s Karen
Kelly is one of those city dwellers, and she found if composting
isn’t convenient, it doesn’t get done:
“So we’re going to put in our banana peels, and the oatmeal that
nobody ate, and I’m going to break some of this up because apparently
it breaks down faster if it’s in smaller pieces. So right now we’ve got,
half a scone, a bowl of oatmeal, some banana peel… ”
It’s just after breakfast and my kitchen is covered with dirty dishes.
Some of the food is heading into the garbage, the rest I’m going
toss into the composter. It kind of looks like a brown garbage can
with a lid, but it takes about half my garbage and turns it back into
soil.
I started about a year ago, when I finally got a small backyard
where I live here in Ottawa, Canada’s capital city. First, I asked
my friends Connie and Dan how they do it.
“How would you guys describe your approach?”
“Laissez faire.”
“Yeah. It’s really a shame that everybody doesn’t do this because it can
be really easy. Just put it in a box and let it sit there.”
I liked the sound of that hands-off approach, but I was also
wondering what to put in and what I needed to leave out. So, I gave
George Reimer a call. He’s the city of Ottawa’s composting expert.
“ust stick with kitchen scraps, vegetables, fruit scraps…plants that
you have from the gardening season, that type of thing.”
“Okay, okay. So no animal products basically?”
“Exactly.”
Once you have a good mix of kitchen scraps, leaves and grass, the
best thing for compost is to mix it around on a regular basis. When
you add that oxygen to the microorganisms already in the garbage,
it breaks the waste down even faster.
It’s not as easy as it sounds – especially if you compost in a plastic
drum. Just imagine sticking a pitchfork into your garbage can and
trying to flip over a pile of wet dirt.
So, armed with that information, I asked George if he could take a
look at our progress after our first week of composting. He stooped
over to pull open a sliding door at the bottom of the container.
“Oh, you haven’t got anything in there, have you?”
“Well I did put some things in there…”
“Yeah, you need to put a slab down or dig it into the ground
because obviously something’s gone in there and removed it all.”
“Yeah, there’s no food in there. Okay. All right then. That was
a week’s worth of squirrel feeding.”
“Yeah exactly.”
(Sound of bricks laying)
So, the next day we go to a big box store to get some bricks. We
lay them all around the base of the composter. The squirrels are defeated.
A few weeks later, I see a huge raccoon shuffling across the backyard.
It knocks the top off the composter and climbs in.
We drive back to the big box store and buy some flat, heavy bricks
to lay on top of the lid. We also buy a few bags of fertilizer, of
course because we still have no compost. I think, this is starting to
feel like work and to be honest – I find it disgusting.
(Sound of brick noise)
“So now, it’s even more challenging to do this.”
(Sound of dumping)
“Ewww. A lot of it is sticking to the pot, which is disgusting but
alright. Uhh, brick back up, auxiliary bricks, okay.”
Now that I had to move those bricks, I was less likely to run out
with just the dinner scraps, and we weren’t mixing the compost very
often, either. So, I tried to remind myself of why I started doing this.
For one, it seemed like a shame to throw vegetable scraps into a
plastic bag and send them to a landfill. Especially when landfill
space is so tight that some Canadian cities are shipping their
garbage to the U.S.
Plus, we have a garden, which could use the nutrients from the
compost. According to George Reimer, those nutrients stick
around a lot longer than the ones found in commercial fertilizer.
I knew all that, and yet, on a stinking hot day in July – and the
composter was stinking because we rarely turned it – I officially
stopped. For a while… for six months. Until recently, when my
guilty conscience prodded me out the door with a bowl of kitchen
scraps.
(Sound of walking in snow)
“We’ve got snow on the ground and a bowl of fresh vegetable
scraps. Umm, interesting. It’s about a third full so there must be
compost under there somewhere.”
Last time I looked, the container had twice that amount in it.
Which makes me think that most of the food has broken down into
something we can finally use on the garden. It gives me an
incentive to start over. Plus, in a few years, I’ll have to compost.
Ottawa will join at least 18 other Canadian cities where residents
are required to throw food scraps into a separate container, and
hey, if all else fails, there’s nothing like a new law to get you
motivated.
Pennsylvania has joined a growing number of states that are cutting mercury emissions beyond federal guidelines. Mercury is a neurotoxin that can cause brain damage in fetuses and small children. The GLRC’s Susan Phillips
reports:
Transcript
Pennsylvania has joined a growing number of states that are cutting
mercury emissions beyond the federal guidelines. Mercury is a
neurotoxin that can cause brain damage in fetuses and small children.
The GLRC’s Susan Phillips reports:
Pennsylvania officials say the EPA’s current mercury standards threaten
public health. That’s why they announced a plan this week to reduce
mercury pollution by 90 percent within the next decade.
Michael Fiorentino is an environmental lawyer and a member of a
committee that will review the plan.
“Pennsylvania has some very significant coal fired power plants and the
mercury emissions are also significant so it’s the perfect opportunity for
the state to step in and do more than what the federal government was
willing to do.”
Industry representatives in Pennsylvania say the new standards will put
the state’s power plants at a competitive disadvantage. They support the
less stringent federal guidelines.
With three dozen coal burning plants, Pennsylvania is one of the largest
mercury polluters in the country.
The Tehachapi Wind Farm in California. The turbines produce enough electricity to meet the needs of 350,000 people each year (Photo courtesy of the Department Energy)
