Tag: garbage

Getting Paid to Recycle

  • 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.


For the Environment Report, I’m Rebecca Williams.

Related Links

Tossing Food Scraps to the Worms

Every day we have to deal with throwing away
garbage. For most, that means taking it to the curb.
But some people keep the food scraps for something
special. Richard Annal has the story of a
family that’s using a money-saving, all-natural way
to dispose of food waste:

Transcript

Every day we have to deal with throwing away
garbage. For most, that means taking it to the curb.
But some people keep the food scraps for something
special. Richard Annal has the story of a
family that’s using a money-saving, all-natural way
to dispose of food waste:


I’m driving through the rain to meet a woman who’s doing something I’ve
heard about for years but have never actually seen. And she’s doing it in her basement. She’s taking her
family’s food scraps and feeding them to worms downstairs. Brenda
Lotito’s home is white and brown, and sits on a little hill in a suburban
neighborhood. Brenda is expecting me and greets me at the door. Behind
her, there’s a little commotion. That’s her son John and the family dog,
Charlie.


I have a seat at the kitchen table. I find out it was John who first
took an interest in worms. He likes the red, slimy night crawlers:


“What sparked my interest in the worms is how they feel when you touch
them and how you can’t hold them very well because they keep slipping
out of your hands.”


With a little research at their local library, Brenda and John found
worms work as a natural garbage disposal. So for the past five years,
instead of putting the garbage out, they’ve been feeding the worms.
They turn the food scraps into compost.


We all head down to the basement, including Charlie, the dog. That’s
where Brenda keeps the family’s worm box.


The Lotitos have a typical basement. Washer, dryer, sports equipment…
and a box of worms. It’s wood. It’s about 2 feet wide by 4 feet long.
Brenda tells me they can be different sizes depending on what you need.
This one is more than large enough for Brenda, John, her husband, and
Charlie, the dog. Brenda says she can put just about all her food waste
into the box:


“I don’t put meat or anything like that in there but we put all our
vegetables. Ya know, I don’t have to cut anything up. I just simply
throw the corn cobs in there throw the husks in there. And they eat
it.”


I open the lid and peer in. The first thing I notice is what I don’t
notice. There’s no offensive odor. The only smell I do detect is that
of fresh earth. I move the contents of the box around. There’s some
shredded newspapers, some corn cobs in the process of becoming worm
food, coffee grounds, and other food waste.


After a little poking around, I find the worms: dozens of red,
well-fed looking worms. They’re fat.


Brenda tells me she has been making worm boxes for years and she thinks
others can benefit from her experience. She’s selling worm composting
kits for a small price. She says worm boxing is easy to get started,
takes a little investment, and the maintenance is low:


“Once you buy a batch of red worms, they’ll just keep on multiplying every
7 to 10 days, and um, you’ve got yourself a great composting bin.”


Brenda says worm box composting has a lot of benefits. In her town,
the trash pick-up service charges by volume. So, she saves money on her
garbage bill by putting most food waste into the box instead of the
trash can.


And she saves money on fertilizer. Brenda is a gardener. The compost
left by the worms is a great all-natural fertilizer. And in addition,
the worm’s, um, leavings work as a natural bug repellant as well:


“What it does is it makes the plant create an enzyme that is bitter to
aphids and other creatures.”


And Brenda thinks fewer chemicals and fossil fuel-based fertilizers
makes the food in her garden that much better:


“You know I can pick the tomato right off the plant. Ya know, wipe it
off, wash it off, And feel comfortable that I’m putting it in my mouth.
Everything has come from the earth. It’s a circle, it’s awesome.”


Brenda says to her, the biggest benefit of worm box composting comes
from letting people know there’s another way to dispose of food waste.
It’s all-natural. It means less garbage to pick up, less garbage to
fill up the landfill, and at the same time it saves money, provides a
superior fertilizer that’s all organic, and puts nutrients back into
the Earth… where they come from.


For the Environment Report, I’m Richard Annal.

Related Links

Composting in the City

  • 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.


For the GLRC, I’m Karen Kelly.

Related Links

Song Satirizes Trash Dumping

If you think your neighbor across the border sends too much garbage to your local landfill, you now have a songwriter on your side. The GLRC’s Chuck Quirmbach reports:

Transcript

If you think your neighbor across the border sends too much garbage to
your local landfill, you now have a songwriter on your side. The Great
Lakes Radio Consortium’s Chuck Quirmbach reports:


Some states are dumping grounds for trash from other states and from
Canada. The U.S. federal courts have ruled that the garbage hauling is
interstate commerce and have protected the practice, but that doesn’t
quiet a Wisconsin musician who lives near a fast growing landfill which
takes in trash from three states.


“Thank you for your generosity. Mountains full of garbage give us one
more place to ski.”


Kevin McMullin’s song urges the other states to just send cash instead of
trash, but many pro-business legislators in some states see trash as cash.
So, when environmentalists call for higher landfill dumping fees to try to
slow the amount of garbage… the lawmaker’s song remains the same –
they vote no.


For the GLRC, I’m Chuck Quirmbach.

Related Links

Maggots: Reviving an Ancient Medical Treatment

  • Maggots can be used as a medical treatment. Specifically, to help treat wounds. (Courtesy of the National Institutes of Health)

An ancient medical treatment is starting to be used again to treat wounds. But for many people, just the thought of the treatment is stomach-turning. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Melissa Ingells has the story:

Transcript

An ancient medical treatment is starting to be used again to treat wounds,
but for many people, just the thought of the treatment is stomach turning.
The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Melissa Ingells has the story:


Ray Peterson has already lost one leg to diabetes. On his remaining foot
there’s a deep wound, and it’s not healing. It’s not getting better because
of the diabetes. He could lose his second leg.


His doctor is taking the dressing off Peterson’s wound. The wound…is
ugly. It looks like someone drilled a quarter-sized hole deep into
Peterson’s foot. The wound smells bad, and then the doctor finds
maggots. The blowfly larvae are squirming around in there. The doctor
is not surprised, though. He put the maggots there a few days ago. It’s
part of the treatment to save Ray Peterson’s leg.


They’re not exactly the kind of maggots you’d find in your garbage can,
but they’re similar. Last summer the FDA approved maggots as medical
devices.


The maggots eat the dead tissue, not the live flesh. In a process
researchers don’t completely understand… the maggots actually clean
and disinfect the wound much better than a surgeon could. Apparently,
they’re attracted to the bacteria in the dead tissue.


Ray Peterson is in his doctor’s office, trading in some big, full maggots
for some new hungry ones.


The old, fat maggots are washed off with saline. The doctor has to dig around
with the tweezers to get a few strays out.


Ray Peterson says he doesn’t mind seeing the process.


“I enjoy watching them, truthfully.”


The doctor cleans the wound a bit more and then places tiny, new maggots on
it with a small spatula.


(Sound of office)


There are plenty of maggot jokes as Dr. Dowling and the nurses work on
Peterson’s foot. Dowling says that his staff has become comfortable with
the maggots, but many health care professionals are not.


“Actually the patients react much better than the doctors. Every patient
I’ve done it on has been very excited and enthusiastic. I can’t say that’s
always the case for the medical community at large. I’ve had some
doctors tell patients if you have maggots on your foot, don’t come in my
office, but I think that will go away with time the more it’s accepted.


The new maggots start moving around as soon as they feel warmth and smell
food. Dr. Dowling and his nurses quickly contain them with a bandage.


“We build a cage around the wound to hold the maggots in, we’ll put the
maggots in, cover up the cage, and leave it there for two to three days,
and during that time the maggots will increase in size two to three times.
And then, when they come in we’ll take the cage off and wash the maggots out
with saline solution, and look at the wound and decide if it needs another
application or not.”


Several clinical studies have been conducted on the maggot treatment.
The results have been overwhelmingly good, but because the idea is so
repulsive to many patients or their doctors, the practice is still not
widespread.


Robert Root Bernstein is a professor of physiology at Michigan State
University. He co-wrote the book “Honey, Mud, Maggots and other Medical Marvels.”


“Taking a maggot or a bunch of maggots and putting them in a wound and watching
them crawl around in there is not something that most people find appealing, and
usually okay for the patient – the patient doesn’t actually have to look. It’s the
practitioners who have to deal with these squirmy little things and have to put
them in and take them out who seem to have most of the problem with the therapy.”


Root Bernstein says maggot therapy might catch on. That’s because doctors are seeing
more and more diabetic wounds as the rate of diabetes keeps going up in the U.S.
When medicines such as antibiotics don’t work on the stubborn wounds,
patients and doctors sometimes turn to the maggot therapy as their last hope for
recovery.


Ray Peterson found out about maggot therapy when his daughter saw an
article in a local newspaper. He says at first his friends were a little put
off, but then started kidding him about the procedure.


“They call me maggot man. Just for a joke. I go along with them. You’re a pretty
good sport about this. You gotta be.”


And Peterson says the good-natured ribbing is sure a lot better than the
alternative. Peterson also thinks if people can get past the “ick” factor…
more people’s limbs might be saved by maggot therapy.


For the GLRC, I’m Melissa Ingells.

Related Links

Trash Burning Can Threaten Human Health

  • Burning trash smells bad and it can create the conditions necessary to produce dioxin. If livestock are exposed to that dioxin, it can get into the meat and milk we consume, creating health risks. (Photo courtesy of the Minnesota Office of Environmental Assistance)

For most of us, getting rid of the garbage is as simple as setting it at the curb. But not everyone can get garbage pick-up. So, instead, they burn their trash. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports… that choice could be affecting your health:

Transcript

For most of us, getting rid of the garbage is as simple as setting it at the
curb, but not everyone can get garbage pick-up. So, instead, they burn
their trash. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham
reports… that choice could be affecting your health:


(Sound of garbage trucks)


It’s not been that long ago that people everywhere but in the largest cities
burned their trash in a barrel or pit in the backyard. That’s not as often
the case these days. Garbage trucks make their appointed rounds in
cities, small towns, and in some rural areas, but they don’t pick up
Everywhere, or if they do offer service, it’s much more expensive
because the pick-up is so far out in the country.


Roger Booth lives in a rural area in southwestern Illinois. He says
garbage pick-up is not an option for him.


“Well, we burn it and then bury the ashes and things. We don’t have a
good way to dispose of it any other method. The cost of having pick up
arranged is prohibitive.”


He burns his garbage in the backyard. Booth separates bottles and tin
cans from the rest of the garbage so that he doesn’t end up with broken
glass and rusty cans scattered around.


A lot of people don’t do that much. They burn everything in a barrel and
then dump the ashes and scrap in a gully… or just burn everything in a
gully or ditch. Booth says that’s the way most folks take care of the
garbage in the area. No one talks about the smoke or fumes put off by
the burning.


“I haven’t ever thought much about that. So, I don’t suppose that I have
any real concerns at this moment. I don’t think I’m doing anything
different than most people.”


And that’s what many people who burn their garbage say.


A survey conducted by the Zenith Research Group found that people in
areas of Wisconsin and Minnesota who didn’t have regular garbage
collection believe burning is a viable option to get rid of their household
and yard waste. Nearly 45-percent of them indicated it was
“convenient,” which the researchers interpreted to mean that even if
garbage pick-up were available, the residents might find more convenient
to keep burning their garbage.


While some cities and more densely populated areas have restricted
backyard burning… state governments in all but a handful of states in
New England and the state of California have been reluctant to put a lot
of restrictions on burning barrels.


But backyard burning can be more than just a stinky nuisance. Burning
garbage can bring together all the conditions necessary to produce
dioxin. Dioxin is a catch-all term that includes several toxic compounds.
The extent of their impact on human health is not completely know, but
they’re considered to be very dangerous to human health in the tiniest
amounts.


Since most of the backyard burning is done in rural areas, livestock are
exposed to dioxin and it gets into the meat and milk that we consume.


John Giesy is with the National Food Safety and Toxicology Center at
Michigan State University. He says as people burn garbage, the dioxins
are emitted in the fumes and smoke…


“So, when they fall out onto the ground or onto the grass, then animals
eat those plants and it becomes part of their diet, and ultimately it’s
accumulated into the animal and it’s stored as fat. Now, particularly with
dairy cattle, one of the concerns about being exposed to dioxins is that
then when they’re producing milk, milk has fat it in, it has butter fat in it,
and the dioxins go along with that.”


So, every time we drink milk, snack on cheese, or eat a hamburger, we
risk getting a small dose of dioxin. Beyond that, vegetables from a
farmer’s garden, if not properly washed, could be coated with dioxins,
and even a miniscule amount of dioxin is risky.


John Giesy says chemical manufacturing plants and other sources of
man-made dioxin have been cleaned up. Now, backyard burning is the
biggest source of dioxins produced by humans.


“So, now as we continue to strive to reduce the amount of dioxins in the
environment and in our food, this is one place where we can make an
impact.”


“That’s the concern. That’s the concern, is that it’s the largest remaining
source of produced dioxin.”


Dan Hopkins is with the Environmental Protection Agency. He says,
collectively, backyard burning produces 50 times the amount of dioxin as
all the large and medium sized incinerators across the nation combined.
That’s because the incinerators burn hot enough to destroy dioxins and
have pollution control devices to limit emissions. Backyard burning
doesn’t get nearly that hot and the smoke and fumes spread unchecked.


The EPA wants communities to take the problem of backyard burning
seriously. It wants state and local governments to do more to make
people aware that backyard burning is contaminating our food and
encourage them to find other ways to get rid of their garbage.


“(It) probably won’t be a one-size-fits-all solution, but by exchanging
successful efforts that other communities have had, we should be able to
help communities fashion approaches that have a high probability of
success.”


But public education efforts are expensive, and often they don’t reach the
people who most need to hear them. The EPA is not optimistic that it
will see everyone stop burning their garbage. It’s not even a goal. The
agency is just hoping enough people will find other ways to get rid of
their trash that the overall dioxin level in food is reduced.


For the GLRC, this is Lester Graham.

Related Links

Trash Proposal Worries Canadians

Every day, hundreds of trucks loaded with trash from Ontario
stream across the U.S. border. The possibility of Congress passing a
bill that would allow states to close their borders to out-of-state trash
has some Canadian officials worried. It would mean Ontario would
have to find a new place to put the 3.5 million tons of garbage it sends
to the state of Michigan each year. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s
Dan Karpenchuk has more:

Transcript

Every day hundreds of trucks loaded with trash from Ontario stream across the U.S. border. The
possibility of Congress passing a bill that would allow states to close its border to out of state
trash has some Canadian officials worried. It would mean Ontario would have find a new place
to put the three-and-a-half million tones of garbage it sends to the state of Michigan each year.
The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Dan Karpenchuk has more:


Garbage is a politically charged issue in Ontario. And so far most politicians, appear to have
ignored it. If the border closes, Toronto can store garbage for only two days.


The Toronto region has started the process of finding an alternative landfill, or another
technology to deal with the problem… but getting a new plan in place could take years.


Anne Mitchell is with the Canadian Institute for Environmental Law and Policy. She says the
provincial government and residents must make the issue a priority.


“And it’s going to take a lot of increasing awareness so that people in fact are managing their own
garbage better. Because I know right now we’re not.”


The province could allow, or even force, other large Ontario landfills to take Toronto’s garbage,
But that would almost certainly lead to fierce local opposition.


For the GLRC, I’m Dan Karpenchuk.

Related Links

Dumpster Divers Find Their Gold

  • One man's junk could be another man's organic groceries or building material. (Photo by Andrew Purtell)

A group of activists has found a way to live almost entirely off the stuff other people throw away. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Amy Coombs finds one person’s trash is another’s ethical lifestyle:

Transcript

A group of activists has found a way to live almost entirely off the stuff other people throw away. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Amy Coombs finds, one person’s trash is another’s ethical lifestyle:


(Sound of dumpster opening and rummaging)


“Cheesy bread, it’s kind of nice heated up… Some people love this crap.”


Jean C. has been dumpster diving for eight years and no longer considers it a chore.


“Dumpster diving can be a spiritual endeavor if you happen to believe it’s a sin to throw away food.”


C. is an activist. She’s also an accountant and is by no means homeless. She says she dumpster dives for food, clothing, office supplies, and building materials because she can’t bring herself to support wasteful manufacturers.


“The point of the dumpster diving lifestyle is to reclaim the waste of consumerist society.”


After dumpster diving in four major metropolitan areas, C. says you would be amazed by how much perfectly good stuff society throws away. If you do your homework, she says you can find almost anything you want.


“We’ve found organic cherries and chocolate and organic tofu, organic tofu burgers, chocolate soymilk, once we even found a whole case of white wine.”


Probably not too surprisingly, health officials say the lifestyle raises some sanitation concerns. Jerry LeMoine is a Food Inspector at the Santa Cruz County, California Health Department. He says even if dumpster-divers go for high-quality organic foods, taking food from a dumpster is risky.


“Potentially any type of bacteria could grow in a dumpster. Flies can get into dumpsters, rats, other types rodents, disease vectors, so it’s just unknown as to what the conditions are there and conditions might change at any moment in a dumpster.”


Dumpster divers say they’re aware of the risks, but Jean C. says she exercises great discretion. She says wading knee deep through other people’s trash is no worse than grocery shopping, as long as you know what to look for.


“We never eat unsanitary or dirty food. We only take meats if they’re frozen or vacuum sealed. Once we found a whole dumpster full of smoked salmon that was not going to go bad for years – and that was good. Everybody ate it.”


Lee Turner,a long-time dumpster diver, says people throw things away because Americans are wasteful. Turner has spent the past thirty years troubleshooting ways to build gadgets from others’ trash. He’s even built a back woods cabin entirely from salvaged materials.


(Sound of crickets)


“Welcome to my home… This is the kitchen, spice rack, this is the food cabinet, got running water, there’s a rain barrel, see…”


(Sound of water)


Turner built his shack illegally in a public forest, but he says he’s always been careful not to hurt the surrounding environment. He considers dumpster-diving to be part of a larger love for Nature.


Turner says using material that’s headed for the landfill makes a lot more sense than buying wood and encouraging the lumber and timber industry to cut down more trees.


“Most of the materials are found materials. Some of the wood came out of dumpsters.”


Turner and C. have turned dumpster-diving into an organized effort. They target the highest quality products, they stake out factory dumpsters to learn when mislabeled items are routinely tossed, and look for store employees willing to leak information about the next scheduled inventory reduction. It’s a conspiracy to salvage.


“What happens in a dumpster-diving collective is that you need to get a small group of quiet people, hopefully, and have them take a large amount of food back to a central location, where you’re going to wash it and process it and redistribute it, so that everyone gets what they need.”


It’s impossible to know how many students, activists, and old nature lovers scour garbage cans, but dumpster-diving is becoming an increasingly popular sport. And despite the social inhibitions and threat of food contamination, activists such as Turner and C. say they won’t abandon their search for edible, usable and fixable refuse any time soon.


For the GLRC, I’m Amy Coombs.

Related Links

Capturing Wasted Methane From Landfills

  • A landfill is full of things people don't consider useful anymore. One group begs to differ. (Photo by Roberto Burgos S.)

The landfill is often seen as the end of the line… the burial ground of our trash. But one company says there’s still something to gain from that buried garbage. It’s planning to build a new plant to retrieve one final product from all of our trash. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Karen Kasler has the story:

Transcript

The landfill is often seen as the end of the line… the burial ground of our
trash. But one company says there’s still something to gain from that buried
garbage. It’s planning to build a new plant to retrieve one final product from
all of our trash. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Karen Kasler has the
story:


You probably don’t think of landfills as “green.” But Steve Wilburn does.
Wilburn is the president of FirmGreen. He says he knows different ways to
turn byproducts of landfills into useful energy.


First, capture the methane that’s produced when all that garbage stews
underground. Second, use it as fuel to generate electricity. Third, turn it into compressed gas for trucks. And finally, mix
it with soybean oil to make soy diesel.


Steve Wilburn says it’s an ambitious project.


“This is the first of its kind in the world. The Green Energy Center concept is
something I came up with about four years ago, and as we explored for ways to
implement it, we needed a centerpiece, a technology that was missing, and that
was to clean up the landfill gas in a very cost-effective way.”


FirmGreen is building what it calls its Green Energy Center right next to the
landfill in Columbus, Ohio. Mike Long is with the Solid Waste Authority of Central Ohio – SWACO for short. Long says right
now, there’s no practical use for the methane and carbon dioxide produced by the rotting garbage in the landfill.


“Currently, SWACO’s control technology is to have a flare where we burn off the
gases to keep it from getting up into the atmosphere. But the new technology,
we will take that gas and make it into energy and consumer products rather than
just simply burning it and exhausting it.”


Instead of burning those landfill gases, they’ll be redirected a small
electric generator operated by FirmGreen. The electricity will be sold back to
SWACO to power its main office and its fleet garage. That’ll start in just a
few months.


Later, FirmGreen will convert methane into compressed natural gas. That will
be used to fuel SWACO’s vehicles, which could save the waste authority an
estimated 100 thousand dollars a year.


FirmGreen’s President, Steve Wilburn says the final part of the project is the
real profit maker for his company: turning methanol into biodiesel.


“When we create
methanol, we then have the bridge to the hydrogen economy because ethanol is an
excellent hydrogen carrier. It’s also used in the manufacture and production of
biodiesel. Ohio is a large soybean producing state. So we’ll take our green
methanol and we’ll blend that with the soy oil and we’re going to create
biodiesel.”


When the FirmGreen biodiesel processing facility is up and running, it will
need 69 thousand acres of soybeans to produce 10 million gallons of biodiesel
annually. FirmGreen already has a contract with Mitsubishi Gas Chemical
Company to provide 6 million gallons of biodiesel a year. FirmGreen also hopes
to interest the growing hydrogen fuel cell industry.


“Biofuels” have their critics, who are concerned that it takes as much energy
or more energy to create biofuels than they produce. Mike Long at SWACO says
he’s heard that before, but it doesn’t apply to this project.


“The
energy is already here, and is being flared off right now at our landfill. There’s no recovery of the energy, no beneficial
use. So for those who argue that this process would be a consumer of energy, it’s not a net consumer, and right now, we’re wasting energy.”


Long and Wilburn point to statistics from the U.S. EPA. They says the data show
the Green Energy Center will have the same effect as reducing oil consumption by
more than twenty thousand barrels a year. They say that’s like taking 2,000 cars off the road.


Sam Spofforth is with the Central Ohio Clean Fuels Coalition. He says even
when factoring in the fuel used by trucks transporting the methanol to the
remote biodiesel processing facilities, the project still looks green to him.


“In terms of biodiesel, it’s about three point two energy units out for every one energy
unit in. What is even more exciting about this project – methane
gas is about twenty times as potent as a greenhouse gas as carbon dioxide. So the
fact that they’re using methane that would otherwise be vented into the air
makes the net emissions of those greenhouse gas even more positive.”


The Green Energy Center in Ohio is the first in the nation, but a second one
is planned to be built near Saint Louis, Missouri. With giant landfills venting
off methane in places around the country, if these two make money, it’s a
pretty sure bet others will be built in the near future.


For the GLRC, I’m Karen Kasler.

Related Links

Roadblocks to Closing Toxic Waste Loophole

  • Trash and toxic waste cross the U.S.-Canada border every day, and untreated toxic waste often ends up at the Clean Harbors facility. Some are trying to restrict this practice and purge the idea that waste is a commodity.

There’s only one place in North America that still dumps
toxic waste straight into the ground without any kind of pre-treatment. A legislator from Ontario, Canada wants this landfill to clean up its act. But trade in toxic waste is big business. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Mary Ann Colihan follows some trucks to learn more:

Transcript

There’s only one place in North America that still dumps toxic waste straight into the ground without any kind of pre-treatment. A legislator from Ontario, Canada wants this landfill to clean up its act. But trade in toxic waste is a big business. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Mary Ann Colihan follows some trucks to learn more:


(Sound of trucks)


6,000 trucks cross the Blue Water Bridge every day between Canada and the United States. Just under the bridge, Lake Huron funnels into the skinny St. Clair River on its way to south to Lake Erie. The Blue Water Bridge connects Port Huron, Michigan with Sarnia, Ontario. This is the second busiest truck crossing between the United States and Canada. With post 9/11 security, the border can get backed up for miles in both directions. A lot of these trucks are carrying garbage back and forth across the border. Canadian trash and toxic waste is going to the U.S. and American toxic waste is going to Canada.


During her first month in office, Ontario Member of Parliament for Sarnia-Lambton, Caroline Di Cocco, found out just how much toxic waste was coming into her district.


“In 1999 that year, it was over 450,000 tons. To put it in perspective, the Love Canal was 12,000 tons.”


Di Cocco went on a five year crusade to change the Ontario laws that govern the trade in toxic waste. She adopted the U.N. resolution known as the Basel Agreement, as her model.


“The notion from that Basel Agreement is that everybody should look after their own waste and it is not a commodity.”


Di Cocco is not alone in her fight to slow or stop the flow of garbage and toxic waste from crossing the border. Mike Bradley is the mayor of Sarnia, Ontario. He can see the backup on the Blue Water Bridge every day from his home.


“One of the ironies on this is that while Michigan is very much upset, and rightly so, with the importation of Toronto trash, there are tens of thousands of tons of untreated toxic waste coming in from Michigan crossing the Blue Water Bridge into the Clean Harbors site.”


The Clean Harbors facility is the only place in North America that does not pre-treat hazardous waste before it dumps it into its landfill. Frank Hickling is Director of Lambton County Operations for Clean Harbors. He says imports from nearby states in the U.S. accounts for about forty percent of its volume.


“It’s from the Great Lakes area. We do reach down and take waste that our facility is best able to handle. We’re right on the border.”


Rarely do lawmakers on both sides of the border agree on an environmental issue. But pre-treatment of hazardous waste is the law in all fifty states, Mexico and every other Canadian province and territory except Ontario. Pre-treatment reduces the amount of toxic waste or transforms it into a less hazardous substance. But Hickling says disposing hazardous waste in Clean Harbors is a better economic bet.


“Obviously, if you don’t have to pre-treat it, it is cheaper there’s no doubt about that. But what isn’t obvious is the security of the site. Pre-treating waste doesn’t help immobilize the material forever.”


Clean Harbors’ company officials say their landfill won’t leak for 10,000 years. They say that the U.S. pre-treats hazardous waste because they expect their landfills to leak in hundreds of years or less. Hickling says the blue clay of Lambton County that lines Clean Harbors landfill gives them a competitive edge as a toxic dump.


“The facility is in a 140-foot clay plain and we go down about 60 feet. So there’s 80 feet below.”


But Clean Harbors has had big environmental problems. When volume was at its peak in 1999 the Clean Harbors landfill leaked methane gas and contaminated water. Remedial pumping of the landfill is ongoing.


Caroline Di Cocco found other ways to deal with toxic waste rather than simply dumping it in her district.


“First of all, there has to be a reduction of the amount of generation of this hazardous material. The more expensive you make it for industry to dispose of it, the more they are going to find creative ways to reduce it. Then there are what they call on-site treatments and closed-loop systems. You see technology is there but it’s expensive and again we go to the cost of doing business. And so a lot of the hazardous waste can be treated on site in a very safe way. And then what can’t be, well then you have to have facilities to dispose of it. But I believe that the days of the mega dumps have to end.”


Meanwhile, Clean Harbors looks at what the new Ontario regulations for pre-treatment will cost them.


“Certainly when you’re making the investment in pre-treatment and you’re adding all that cost for no additional environmental benefit we’re going to have to be getting larger volumes to ensure its profitability.”


Until we see a reduction in the loads of toxic waste that need to be dumped in Clean Harbors, it’s likely the trucks will roll on down the highway.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Mary Ann Colihan.

Related Links