America’s Food Waste

  • It takes 25% of all the fresh water Americans use just to produce food that ends up being wasted. (Photo courtesy of Samara Freemark)

Government researchers recently put out a study that says American’s throw away forty percent of their food. Samara Freemark reports:

Transcript

Americans waste a lot of food – by some estimates, almost half of the total amount in the food supply. Samara Freemark reports that the problem goes way beyond cleaning your plate.

A couple of months ago, government researchers put out a study that said Americans waste 40% of their food.

When I read that figure, it seemed incredibly high. So high that when I sat down with a food policy expert, I was actually a little embarrassed to ask her about it.

“I saw this number, 40%. Is that possible? It seems high to me.”

“I think the wasting of 40% of food, I actually think that could be a low number.”

That’s Jennifer Berg. She’s the director of the graduate program in food studies at New York University, and she spends a lot of time thinking about the food waste problem – in particular, about its huge environmental impacts.

It turns out, it takes 25% of all the fresh water Americans use just to produce food that eventually ends up in the garbage. It takes a lot of fuel to move that food around; packaging it takes plastic and paper, and throwing it away fills up landfills.

“There’s that old, you know ‘an orange peel…’ An orange peel takes years to break down. You know, a banana peel, half a loaf of bread. All that stuff goes into landfills. It doesn’t matter whether it’s organic matter or not. It doesn’t decompose. It doesn’t break down, when it’s all put together like that.”

Berg says Americans get plenty of messages about cleaning their plates.

But they don’t necessarily understand how much food gets wasted before it even makes it to the table.

“If you think about meat. Other countries, they will consume 85% of a cow. We will consume 30%. 20%. We only eat very specific cuts. We want our food totally filleted, we want it boned. We just eat very very specific food.”

I wanted to see what a waste-free meal looked like, so I took a trip to EN Japanese brasserie in Manhattan.

For the past couple of months, EN Brasserie has hosted special dinners where customers pay good money to eat the kinds of things most Americans throw away.

Reika Alexander owns the restaurant. She came up with the idea for the dinners when she moved to New York and saw how much food people in the city threw out.

“I realized that New Yorkers create so much garbage. When I saw that my heart was really aching. We have to do something about that.”

Alexander showed me some of the food she’d be serving that night. The first thing she handed me was a plate of fried eel backbones.

“We import live eels. So we get the whole thing. So we deep fry the bone part. It’s like a really flavorful rice cracker. Want to try. You just eat it? Like the bone? The whole bone? It’s good, right? It’s really good. The bones just fall apart in your mouth.”

There was a platter of rice topped with scraps of fish and vegetable trimmings. A salad made from salmon skin. And a cauldron of soup with whole fish heads bobbing in the broth.

“The eye, it’s so flavorful and delicious. The fish eyes have so much flavor. It makes a beautiful fish stock.”

At the dinner that night I asked college student Cordelia Blanchard what she was eating.

“I don’t know. I think the idea is that what’s left over the chefs just throw in a pot, and that’s what we have the pleasure of eating tonight. It makes me want to be more creative about how I combine what’s left in the kitchen sink.”

Which is the kind of attitude that restaurant owner Reika Alexander likes. Still, she says, she doesn’t expect the average American to sit down to a dinner of eel bones and fish eyes any time soon.

For The Environment Report, I’m Samara Freemark

Related Links

Making Manufacturers Take It Back

  • Craig Lorch, co-owner of Total Reclaim in Seattle. His company is certified to recycle electronic waste under Washington's e-waste law. (Photo by Liam Moriarty)

It used to be that when a company
sold you a widget, they got your
money, you got the widget, and
that was the end of it. Now, that
way of doing business is changing.
Liam Moriarty reports that in Europe, and in the
US, businesses are being required
to take responsibility for their
products in new ways:

Transcript

It used to be that when a company
sold you a widget, they got your
money, you got the widget, and
that was the end of it. Now, that
way of doing business is changing.
Liam Moriarty reports that in Europe, and in the
US, businesses are being required
to take responsibility for their
products in new ways:

(sound of recycling machine)

In a huge industrial building in Seattle, forklift-loads of TVs and computer monitors are heaved onto conveyor belts. Workers go at them with screwguns and hammers.

“They’re pulling the plastic covers off of devices, they’re pulling the picture tubes out of them. They’re basically dismantling it to component parts.”

Craig Lorch is co-owner here at Total Reclaim. His company is certified to recycle electronic waste under Washington’s e-waste law.

The law requires that these old machines don’t end up being dumped, where their toxic chemicals can poison humans and the environment.

Recycling old electronics has been happening for years. John Friedrick explains what’s new about Washington’s e-waste law.

“It’s a producer responsibility law, which takes the burden of all of this off of the taxpayer.”

Friedrick runs the state-wide recycling program that’s fully paid for by electronics manufacturers. It started just a year ago, and already it’s collected more than 38 million pounds of e-junk, costing producers nearly 10 million dollars. Basically, it requires electronics companies to cover the end-of-life costs of the products they sell.

That concept – called extended producer responsibility – is new in the US. When Washington’s e-waste law was passed three years ago, it was the first to put full responsibility on manufacturers. But this isn’t a new idea in Europe.

Klaus Koegler is with the European Commission’s Directorate General for the Environment in Brussels. He tells me about a keystone of EU environmental policy – what’s called the “Polluter Pays” principle.

“That simply means whoever causes damage to the environment is responsible, also in financial terms, to repair it or to minimize it right from the beginning.”

Koegler says that gives regulators the muscle for a range of laws. One example: any car sold in the EU has to be 85% recyclable. Koegler says that creates an incentive.

“If you are responsible for the recycling, that means you will try to design a car to make your life as a recycler as easy as possible.”

And a product that’s easy and cheap to recycle is likely to be easier on the planet, too. Europeans also see making manufacturers take back and recycle their old products as a way to reclaim resources. For instance, nickel and other metals are becoming more scarce and expensive.

“So in keeping the waste here, recycling it here, and recovering these metals, we are protecting the environment. At the same time, we are helping to secure supply for our industries.”

So, the EU is moving toward setting even more ambitious goals for recycling. In the US, Wisconsin recently became the 20th state to pass a take-back law for electronics. States are also extending producer responsibility to other products – including batteries, fluorescent lamps and paint.

Now, the electronics industry is pushing back. Two major industry groups have filed a lawsuit against the e-waste law in New York City. They say it’s unconstitutional. Environmental activists see the suit as an attack on the whole concept of producer responsibility.

But Rick Goss with the Information Technology Industry Council insists it’s not.

“We support producer responsibility. We understand and recognize, that as manufacturers, we have a role to play in offering our consumers options and solutions for used products here. But we don’t have the only role to play.”

Still, the suit makes constitutional arguments that could be used to challenge the right of states to impose recycling requirements on manufacturers.

For The Environment Report, I’m Liam Moriarty.

Related Links

Reducing Gift Wrap Waste

  • According to the Environmental Protection Agency, the average American uses two pounds of wrapping paper a year. (Photo source: 5ko at Wikimedia Commons)

There may be nothing prettier than
beautifully wrapped gifts under the
Christmas tree. But some environmentalists
say the cost of that beauty is too
high – and they want people to stop
wasting so much paper on gift-wrapping.
Julie Grant has more:

Transcript

There may be nothing prettier than
beautifully wrapped gifts under the
Christmas tree. But some environmentalists
say the cost of that beauty is too
high – and they want people to stop
wasting so much paper on gift-wrapping.
Julie Grant has more:

Americans produce 6 million extra tons of waste between Thanksgiving and New Year’s.

All that trash is enough to make Bob Lilienfeld cringe. He runs what’s called The Use Less Stuff Report. Lilienfeld says, one way people can reduce all the holiday waste is to stop wrapping presents.

“When you think about, wrapping paper is one of the most disposable items we have. It doesn’t provide any real functional value. And it’s used for basically a minute. And then it’s torn off and thrown away. So, from the environmental perspective, it really doesn’t make a lot of sense.”

Based on the last available data by the Environmental Protection Agency, the average American uses two pounds of wrapping paper a year. Lilienfeld says about half of that is used during the holiday season.

“If you cut that in half, down to a pound, that would save, what are there, about 300-million people in the country? We’re talking 300 million pounds. That’s a lot of paper.”

But it’s so pretty. And some people say that paper does serve a good purpose. Besides being pretty, it also helps to hide the gift.

Lizzie Post is the great, great-granddaughter of Emily Post – famous for her etiquette advice. Post says a wrapped gift is part of holiday decorum.

“You don’t want to just plunk down a box, straight from the store, and say, ‘here you go.’ That sort of has a lackluster feel to it.”

And it’s a tradition. Gift wrapping has been around for a long time – maybe as far back as 105 A.D. and the invention of paper. They started selling mass produced wrapping paper in the U.S. somewhere around1920.

Post says it looks nice, it shows care, and it’s fun.

“I think we’ve gotten used to the idea of unwrapping something or unfolding it and having that element of surprise there. And I think we wouldn’t want to lose that. That’s a nice tradition that we’ve all gotten used to.”

But Post says there are lots of creative ways to wrap gifts that aren’t wasteful. She suggests using cloth, reusing wrapping paper, or buying gift wrap made from recycled paper.

And after talking with a few shoppers, you can see how tough it would be to get people to stop wrapping gifts altogether. Here’s what a few had to say.

Shopper 1: “It would be hard for me to imagine that we would get to a point that we would say, ‘gee it’s pretty wasteful, so we won’t wrap any presents this year.’ I doubt that that would cross our minds.”

Shopper 2: “Why are they telling me to ruin a Christmas tradition? I mean, as if I didn’t already feel guilty enough about the mass consumerism that is Christmas. Now I’m being told not to wrap gifts. No, I’m certain they’re right about the mass of waste it’s going to create.”

The environmentalists who want us to use less paper don’t want to ruin the holidays. Bob Lilienfeld just wants people to look around for new ways to make gifts surprising – without piling up the trash.

“Go down to your basement, open your closets, go up to your attic and look at the paper that you already have on hand. And odds are you already have enough wrapping paper to make it through.”

At least for this year. At his house, Lilienfeld says he’s buying concert tickets for his teenagers, so they don’t need wrapping. And he’s hiding the gifts for his 3-year old – a scavenger hunt can be so much fun!

For The Environment Report, I’m Julie Grant.

Related Links

Greenovation: The Re-Use Store

  • The ReStore sells everything from building supplies to power tools to toilets and sinks. (Photo courtesy of the Habitat for Humanity of Huron County, Michigan)

Home improvement projects cost
a lot of money. Some environmentalists
have found a way to save some money,
conserve resources, and help other
people get into homes. Lester Graham
reports:

Transcript

Home improvement projects cost
a lot of money. Some environmentalists
have found a way to save some money,
conserve resources, and help other
people get into homes. Lester Graham
reports:

It seems like my friend Matt Grocoff with Greenovation TV is always working on a home improvement project. Not too long ago, he asked me to go with him to his favorite store. So we headed down the road where all the big box home improvement stores are in his hometown of Ann Arbor, Michigan, but that’s not where we ended up.

MG: “Just about anything I need, my first stop is always a re-use center. My favorite is, of course, the Habitat for Humanity ReStore. Today I’ve gotta find a– a, uh– what do you call them? A sander, a hand sander, a belt sander?”

Matt turned to Jackie Hermann who manages this ReStore. And she pulled a case from the shelf in back.

JH: “This absolutely beautiful Porter Cable professional random orbit sander with dust collection.”

MG: “This is gorgeous. This is exactly what I need. And how much is this?”

LG: “Looks like it’s never been used.”

MG: “Almost new condition. $35.00. And it’s used material that’s not going to a landfill or sitting in somebody’s basement not being used. And here I get to use it and save money. This is another one of the things where we can debunk the myth that going green costs more.”

Okay, so Matt got a good deal and it extends the useful life of a pretty good tool. But the idea is to raise money for Habitat for Humanity to help get people into homes, so I had to ask Jackie about that.

LG: “How much of that money actually goes to Habitat for Humanity and building houses for folks?”

JH: “We have a 12% administrative overhead, so 88-cents on every dollar into a habitat home.”

There are about 600 of these ReStores across the nation. The administrative overhead varies a bit from store to store, but the money raised at each store goes to homes in that store’s local area.

Jackie says, for her area, that’s meant a bit of a shift for Habitat for Humanity. You might have heard, in Michigan there are a lot of foreclosures.

JH: “We’re not building brand-new as much. We are buying foreclosed houses that are already existing in blighted neighborhoods, and we are rehabbing them and making it livable and improving the neighborhood.”

LG: “You’re recycling houses.”

JH: “We are! We’re recycling houses also. So, when Lowe’s, for instance, donated a large quantity of items, we kept a bunch aside for construction. They come and they look though and say what they can use, and then those items are set aside for them. And then as they need them, they use them.”

And anything left over is sold in the ReStore. It’s donations that make ReStore work. It might be overstock from places like Lowe’s or from local contractors. It could be people who are moving or retiring or just don’t need an appliance any longer. They might have extra cabinets, or carpeting, or a perfectly good sink they don’t need.

JH: “The proverbial kitchen sink. Lots and lots and lots of toilets. Light fixtures, flooring, doors, windows, fasteners.”

MG: “Lester, let me show you some of the stuff they’ve got here. My wife and I spent months looking for a really high-quality, affordable, high-efficiency, front-loading washer. This is a front-loading washer and dryer. (taps on appliance) In fact, this is the same model that we bought. We paid $600 for ours. Here, at the ReStore, it’s $200. And Jackie, how do we know that this works?”

JH: “Everything’s been tested. And, it’s guaranteed for two to three months – I’m really not picky about that.”

Some things are used, some are new. It all works.

Matt Grocoff with Greenovation.TV says it keeps stuff out of the landfill, it means perfectly good building materials and appliances for home improvement projects, saves resources, and raises money to help people get into a home.

MG: “It’s a win-win across the board.”

For The Environment Report, I’m Lester Graham.

Related Links

Taking Back the ‘Take Back’ Law?

  • 19 states have passed ‘take back’ laws that require manufacturers to take back old electronics and pay to recycle them. But manufacturers are challenging these laws. (Photo source: dirkj at Wikimedia Commons)

The City of New York is being sued
by the electronics industry. Samara
Freemark reports it’s over recycling
electronic waste, such as cell phones
and computers:

Transcript

The city of New York is being sued by the electronics industry. Samara Freemark reports it’s over recycling electronic waste such as cell phones and computers:

Electronic waste contains all sorts of hazardous chemicals, but safely recycling it is expensive.

So 19 states have passed ‘take back’ laws that require manufacturers to take back old electronics and pay to recycle them.

Now manufacturers are challenging these laws. Two industry groups have sued New York City. They want the city’s take back law overturned.

Kate Sinding is a lawyer with the Natural Resources Defense Council. That group has joined New York in the suit. She says a decision in the case could have consequences beyond electronics take backs.

“There are a lot of deeper questions that are raised by the lawsuit, including issues of corporate responsibility. If somebody’s going to produce something that has toxic components, what is their ongoing responsibility to deal with that, even after it’s sold into the market?”

The court will decide that next year.

For The Environment Report, I’m Samara Freemark.

Related Links

Footloose and Diaper-Free

  • Diaper-free parents say that their baby shows them signs when a bathroom break is needed. They call the dialogue "elimination communication." (Photo by Jessi Ziegler)

When most Americans have a baby,
the parents decide whether to use
disposable or cloth diapers. But
Julie Grant reports that there’s
another trend: no diapers at all:

Transcript

When most Americans have a baby,
the parents decide whether to use
disposable or cloth diapers. But
Julie Grant reports that there’s
another trend: no diapers at all:

Having kids without diapers might seem kind of far out. So,
who better to tell us about this then Willow Lune, of
Berkeley, California.

She remembers when her son was 3-months old. They
were at her mother-in-law’s house. Her husband took the
baby to the bathroom – and accidentally left the door open.

“And his mother came in and saw him holding our son over
the toilet. And she said, ‘what are you doing?’ And my
husband said, ‘well, he’s going to the bathroom, just like you
do.’ And it took her about a minute, and she said, ‘that’s so
cool.’”

Lune and her husband said it was normal to see babies
without diapers when they were traveling in Tibet and
Thailand. So, when their son was born, they decided to try
it. He’s was going to the toilet on his own by age 1 and a
half.

Now Lune teaches classes in Berkeley and other areas
around San Francisco.

She says diaper-free little ones can wear crotch-less pants –
or might not wear anything from the waist down.

And it’s up to the parents to pay close attention – or risk
having to reach for the cleaning supplies.

“There might be a little wiggle, or sometimes just the staring
at you. There’s just little subtle clues that they actually give
you from the time they’re born. So it’s our job to look at that,
listen for that, pick up on that. And then respond to it.”

Turns out, there’s a name for this little dialogue between
babies and parents. They call it elimination communication,
or E.C. Instead of using diapers – and then training them to
go in the toilet a few years later – Lune says parents can just
pay attention. They can show babies from the start what to
do when the need arises.

Lune says one of the reasons she and her husband do this
is because they are concerned for the environment.

Pampers and Huggies clog up the landfills. The other major
option – washing cloth diapers – takes more attention from
parents. But doing that can use a lot of water and electricity.

Jennifer Williams lives in the San Francisco area. She has
three children – all under age four.

Williams is also concerned for the environment. And she
wants to pay close attention when her 6-month old daughter
goes to the bathroom. She even uses cloth diapers.

“Even just with cloth diapers, you have to be way more in
tune to what’s going on with someone’s body. Where –
she’s in disposable right now – I’ll just forget about it for five
hours. You don’t have that option with cloth. Unless you
want to give her a horrible a rash. So, the whole EC thing is
really interesting, because you really have to be in touch with
what’s going on physiologically.”

But Williams works full time. Elimination communication just
is not practical for her family.

“Yeah, I mean, because you really do have to be available to
whenever the baby has to go to the bathroom. With one
baby, when I was home on maternity leave, I probably could
have done it. Once you have more than one running
around, it just doesn’t fit. Maybe I’m lazy. So be it.”

Supporters of the diaper-free lifestyle say it’s actually easier
then potty training kids when they’re older. And they say
parents don’t have to do it all the time. They can try it when
they do have time to pay close attention.

For The Environment Report, I’m Julie Grant.

Related Links

Recycling Your Roof

  • Several states are studying how the material holds up for asphalt roads, but for now most of the singles are mixed in asphalt used for parking lots. (Photo courtesy of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory)

It’s estimated, every year, somewhere
between seven and eleven-million tons
of old asphalt shingles end up in landfills.
Some states are short on landfill space.
Lester Graham reports, they’re now
encouraging grinding up and recycling
the old shingles:

Transcript

It’s estimated, every year, somewhere
between seven and eleven-million tons
of old asphalt shingles end up in landfills.
Some states are short on landfill space.
Lester Graham reports, they’re now
encouraging grinding up and recycling
the old shingles:

Two-thirds of American homes have asphalt shingle roofs. They last twelve to twenty years before they need to be replaced.

Since most of the material in asphalt shingles is the same stuff used in asphalt pavement, that’s where they’re going.

(sound of machinery)

New businesses are popping up across the nation that take the shingles.

Chris Edwards is co-owner of Ideal Recycling in Southfield, Michigan. He says roofers can dump old shingles at his place cheaper than taking it to the landfill.

“And then they can also sell it to their customers that they are recycling and it’s green. So it does help the contractors quite a bit.”

Several states are studying how the material holds up for asphalt roads, but for now most of the singles are mixed in asphalt used for parking lots.

For The Environment Report, I’m Lester Graham.

Related Links

Company Trash, Classroom Treasures

  • Anita Gardner (right) and Shirley Ellington of the Discovery Center of Cleveland rummage through boxes at ZeroLandfill. (Photo by Julie Grant)

Furniture stores and architectural
firms get a lot of samples – of fabric,
tiles, and carpet. Those samples can
pile up. Usually, they get thrown in
the trash. But, in some cities, they
are starting to make unused design
samples available to artists and art
teachers. Julie Grant has more:

Transcript

Furniture stores and architectural
firms get a lot of samples – of fabric,
tiles, and carpet. Those samples can
pile up. Usually, they get thrown in
the trash. But, in some cities, they
are starting to make unused design
samples available to artists and art
teachers. Julie Grant has more:

(sound of Anita looking thru boxes)

Anita Gardner is rummaging through boxes of old tile samples. They’re still attached to those three-fold sample books you’d see at a design store. But she’s imagining what else the kids at her community center might make with them.

“You have to see it first, sometimes. Sometimes it doesn’t come. It comes later and then you go, ‘we can do this and we can do that.’”

Gardner is at a special event called ZeroLandfill. Furniture stores, architects and design centers can drop off unwanted materials, and people like Gardner can take whatever they want – for free.

“This has been a godsend to us, because we really don’t have a lot of money to spend on arts and crafts.”

Last year, she found a lot of unused fabric – so she taught the kids at her center to sew quilts.

“And a lot of children in our community have never even threaded a needle. Now they’re learning to use sewing machines. They’re learning to piece all types of fabric together. They’re learning patterns and designs. They have no idea, they’re actually learning math.”

And in inner city neighborhoods, where kids can go to bed cold in the winter, Gardner is especially pleased that she’s started a quilt-making trend. It also warms the hearts of the folks who organize ZeroLandfill.

David Fox helps to run these events in Cleveland.

“A lot of samples end up just being discontinued and then, where does this all go? And it ends up being thrown out a lot of time. Or – they just have so much stuff they just keep hoarding and hoarding and hoarding.”

About five years ago, some folks at architecture and design firms around Cleveland, as well as a carpet company, all started talking about what to do with their unwanted material. They were spending a lot of money to send it to the landfill. So they held a one-day drop-off for companies to recycle it.

Fox says they soon realized their trash might be treasure to artists and art teachers.

“It was a program that started as a one-day thing. Firms were able to come and drop stuff off. But it has turned into a yearly process and now it’s even gone to other cities.”

Fox says they’ve already saved more than 100 tons of material from going to the landfill.

Arts and crafts teacher Anita Gardner says it’s also provided innumerable lessons for kids and teenagers at her community center.

“They see now that anything can be art. Anything can be a craft. And it doesn’t have to cost a lot to be beautiful.”

ZeroLandfill has been training architecture and design firms how to organize these events regularly. They’re now held annually in cities around Ohio – and new ZeroLandfills are being held in Minneapolis, Louisville and Boston this year.

For The Environment Report, I’m Julie Grant.

Related Links

Tracking Down Your Trash

  • (Photo source: Daniel Candido at Wikimedia Commons)

Businesses keep track of the supply-
chain, but no one really keeps track
of trash in the same way. Lester
Graham reports some researchers
think there’s something to learn
from what we throw away:

Transcript

Businesses keep track of the supply-
chain, but no one really keeps track
of trash in the same way. Lester
Graham reports some researchers
think there’s something to learn
from what we throw away:

MIT researchers are going to keep track of some trash, using smart tags – tiny electronic tags. They’ll tag thousands of piece of trash, like plastic bottles. Then they’ll track them online in real time.

Assaf Biderman is with the MIT SENSE-able City Lab. He says already the public seems interested, but he hopes some other people follow along: big city decision-makers and waste disposal companies.

Biderman: “Who could benefit greatly from a better understanding of how garbage moves through the system with the idea of making their processes as good as possible.”

Graham: “Save some fuel, maybe?”

Biderman: “Save some fuel, you know, be better to the environment. I think everybody can benefit.”

Exhibits in New York and Seattle open this week, but starting tomorrow, anyone can follow the trail of trash online at MIT’s trashtrack website.

For The Environment Report, I’m Lester Graham.

Related Links

Recycling Your Ride

  • Bassam Jody of Argonne National Laboratory is helping develop novel ways of sorting and cleaning shredder residue left over from cars, construction debris, and major household appliances. (Photo by Shawn Allee)

We’ve all heard over and over again
about that government program ‘Cash
for Clunkers.’ It’s got drivers
thinking about what exactly happens
to dead cars, regardless of how they
die. Shawn Allee looks at
how car recycling works and who’s
trying to improve it:

Transcript

We’ve all heard over and over again about that government program ‘Cash for Clunkers.’ It’s got drivers thinking about what exactly happens to dead cars, regardless of how they die. Shawn Allee looks at how car recycling works and who’s trying to improve it:

You might not think about it this way, but your car just might be the biggest thing you own that gets recycled.

I mean, someday you’re going to junk it, or maybe some future owner will. Anyway, I’m out in front of a car shop in my neighborhood, and with the health of cars in mind, I thought I’d ask some people around here, percentage-wise, just how much of a junked car gets recycled?

“I would say maybe, like, 5% of the car.”

“I’ll say, 20% – 30% probably, of a car.”

“I guess the recycled one could be 30% of the car.”

“I guess, like, 50%.”

“About 70%.”
++

In my little unscientific survey here, it turns out that most people are giving a pretty low estimate of how much of a junked car ends up being recycled.

The auto industry and the federal environmental protection agency say about 80% of the junked car gets recycled. The rest heads to landfills. That sounds pretty good, but that means we bury about five million tons of junked car pieces each year.

To understand why they can’t recycle even more of the car, I’m going to talk with Jim Watson.

He runs ABC Auto Wreckers in a suburb just south of Chicago.

“We don’t want to landfill anything. The objective is to take the vehicle, process it and have all the parts be used.”

Watson shows me his shop where he pulls parts for the used market. A dozen workers lift hoods, twist tires, and pull out stuff I don’t even recognize. It’s like an assembly line in reverse.

“They do an analysis and inventory each of the parts of the car that have a probability of sale and then they harvest or pull those parts off the car.”

Watson and some of the bigger auto wreckers have parts-scrapping down to a science, but it’s expensive to keep pulling parts and keep space open for scrap yards.

Eventually, Watson’s pulls off everything usefull and he’ll send it to a car shredder.

“A machine that beats it apart and shreds the car into small fist-sized or hand-sized components.”

Recyclers can pull out big shreds of steel and aluminum, but about 20% of the car is left-over. This shredder residue gets tossed into landfills. But scientists are thinking about how to recycle this shredded mess.

One works at a lab at Argonne National Laboratory near Chicago.

“This is what shredder residue looks like.”

Dr. Bassam Jody reaches into a cardboard box and scoops a jumble of car seat foam, metal cable, wood, and shards of plastic.

Jody says shredder residue is a recycler’s nightmare.

“Maybe there are more than twenty different kinds of plastics. I tell you, plastics are generally incompatible, they don’t like each other and they don’t work together very well.”

Jody is developing machines to safely clean and separate all this stuff. It’s tough science.

Jody: “The more things you have in the mixture, the harder it is to separate. The trick is, you have to do it economically, and to produce materials that can be used in value-added products.”

Allee: “What can you make out of them?”

Jody: “Car parts. For example, this is a seating column cover.”

Jody says he gets a kick out of his work. He might just squeeze a bit more good out of our cars.

For The Environment Report, I’m Shawn Allee.

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