Rainwater Toilets Caught in Red Tape

  • Jill Stites shows off a cistern that collects water from the roof of a welcome center for the Lake County Forest Preserve District of Illinois. An underground cistern collects water for fire protection and, come summer, toilets.(Photo courtesy of Shawn Allee)

Sometimes we hear complaints that environmental regulations stop us from doing what we want with our property.
Environmentalists say there’s one issue where doing the green thing can attract a bunch of red tape.
Shawn Allee reports it’s about using rain water to flush our toilets.

Transcript

Sometimes we hear complaints that environmental regulations stop us from doing what we want with our property.
Environmentalists say there’s one issue where doing the green thing can attract a bunch of red tape.

Shawn Allee reports it’s about using rain water to flush our toilets.

This story starts at a forest preserve in Lake County, Illinois, north of Chicago.

Jill Stites is here to show off the forest preserve’s custom-built welcome center.

Stites: This building was built for people to come out and see what people could do in their own homes.

In other words, the idea was, we could do it, it didn’t break the bank entirely, here’s something you might want to try, that sort of thing?
Stites: yes, you can really do green building in a responsible way.

Stites shows me how the building collects rain water from the roof.
That keeps rain out of sewers.
That way, the local waste-water treatment plant doesn’t waste chemicals and electricity to purify rainwater.
After all, rainwater’s already clean and you can store it in cisterns, like this one.

Stites: It collects water off of the roof and goes directly in there. and there’s a spout on the bottom of the cistern that you can hook up a hose to and water your flowers with.

But Stites’ building wanted bigger bragging rights.
They wanted to prove people can collect rain water for more than just flowers.
You can use it for something more urgent: flushing your toilet.

Stites: you don’t need drinking water to flush your toilet. you’re saving the water from going to the storm sewers to be treated to come back as drinking water when that’s not necessary.

There was trouble, though.
The forest preserve district couldn’t get a permit to use rain water in the toilets.

It wanted a connection to city water, as a kind of backup.

But the state worried untreated rain water might somehow contaminate the city’s drinking water.

It took years to get special permission.

Stites: We’re bragging about it. It’s been in the paper about the possibility of it happening and we’re hoping by summer that it’s going to be a fact.

Well, the Lake County Forest Preserve District got its permit, but it won’t let the issue die.
It wants average homeowners to have an easier time, so do environmental groups.

Ellis: It’s a time-consuming process. If we’re going to have more individuals and business doing this, it’s just going to become a bureacratice mess if they have to get variances every time.

This is Josh Ellis.
He’s with the Metropolitan Planning Council in Chicago.
He wants rain collection for toilets to go mainstream in Illinois, but state law needs an update.

Ellis: It would just be a matter of course instead of a special process just to run your toilets a little bit differently.

He says engineers and plumbers have proven rain water collection can work for toilets, safely.

Ellis: We just need to upgrade the plumbing code and I think it will be smooth sailing from there.

Maybe smooth sailing … if you have the cash.
I ask an industry leader for specifics.
His name’s Joe Wheeler, and he’s with the American Rainwater Catchment Systems Association.
The U-S Environmental Protection Agency estimates, each year the average household spends just 200 dollars on water.
Wheeler says, for a rain water collection system …

Wheeler: You could do a really good job for about 4500 to 15,000 dollars. Every house is different. We’re not talking McDonald’s Big Macs here, we’re talking every one of them is a unique situation.

Wheeler says overseas, using rainwater for toilets is common and cheap.
Take Germany, for example.

Wheeler: Basically when you go into a home, you don’t know … you can’t tell the difference.

But Wheeler says German homes and businesses get pushed toward rain harvesting.

Wheeler: People would actually get a rebate on their waste water and that gave the whole market in Germany a critical mass.

It doesn’t work like that here, so in the U-S, rain harvesting for toilets is nowhere near critical mass.

For The Environment Report, I’m Shawn Allee.

Related Links

Recycling Trains

  • Although recycling train cars is good for the environment, Buffalo’s transit authority is also doing it to save some money. (Photo courtesy of the US Department of Transportation)

Some cities are trying to save some money by recycling trains. They’re renovating and re-using their old mass-transit rail cars. Joyce Kryszak went to find out just how you go about recycling a train:

Transcript

Some cities are trying to save some money by recycling trains. They’re renovating and re-using their old mass-transit rail cars. Joyce Kryszak went to find out just how you go about recycling a train.

It’s hard to say whether there are more roads or train tracks running through the small town of Hornell, New York– a couple of hours southeast of Buffalo. The acres and acres of tracks of the old Erie Railroad yards are here. And for more than 150 years, Hornell has repaired trains in its shops. But recently, it’s started completely rebuilding some passenger rail cars.

We crouch underneath one of the jacked-up 40 ton cars and Mike Bykowski shows us how.

“This is car 114, it’s the furthest along in the rebuild process, you want to step up and take a look inside?…Sure.”

Bykowski is the director of engineering for the Niagara Frontier Transportation Authority in Buffalo. And he’s in charge of overseeing the renovation of the Authority’s twenty seven light rail cars. Bykowski says after a quarter century of harsh Buffalo winters, the city’s rail cars were showing their age.

“The older cars that are out in the system right now, there’s a fair amount of rust along the bottom of the vehicles.”

“What we have done is when we replaced the frame we also replaced approximately 18 inches with stainless steel, which is a corrosion proof material.”

So, not everything on the old cars is reused. Workers at the Gray Manufacturing Industries shop are stripping down the first two cars to their shells. They’ll put in new sidewalls, new windows and seats. New electronic signage and audio systems also will be installed. But Bykowski says there’s a lot being recycled too.

“You’re saving all the steel, a lot of wiring that would have to be replaced. You’re saving copper. You’re reusing parts that are there.”

Bigger components are saved too.

The trucks and wheels are being patched, polished and eventually reattached to the cars.The motors will be rehabbed and go back into service too.

But, to be honest, Buffalo’s transit authority didn’t decide to recycle its rail cars because it’s good for the environment. It’s just trying to save some money. You see, rehabbing the cars costs about a million dollars each. That’s a third of what new cars cost.

Dave Gray is president of GMI, the company renovating the cars. Gray says they’re rebuilding cars for the Chicago and Philadelphia transit systems too.

“Most transit authorities try to rebuild vehicles. They always reach their mid-life, which is what the NFTA’s vehicles [have] done, and it’s very cost effective, so refurbishing makes a lot of sense.”

Not every city has had to be so frugal. Recently, some cities received federal stimulus money for their light rail systems. And a few of them, such as San Francisco, Washington D.C. and Miami, are simply going out and buying a brand new fleet. It is a whole lot easier and faster. It’s going to take three years to refurbish all of the rail cars in Buffalo’s fleet. Larry Meckler heads Buffalo’s transit authority. Meckler says he certainly doesn’t blame other cities for scrapping their fleet.

“If there’s other jurisdictions that can pull it off and get new cars, I’d say get the new cars because it’s a lot of effort, a lot more work, a lot more engineering – but they cost less. So, obviously, if we had the money and life was great and this was a utopian situation, every time a car hit [the end of] its usefulness, I’d just go out and buy another one.”

Still, being fiscally responsible is paying off. The authority saved taxpayers a lot of money. And in the end, Buffalo’s refurbished cars will look and work as every bit as good as new ones. Plus, even if it was unintended, the transit authority’s decision to reduce, reuse and recycle does let it claim the moral high ground.

For The Environment Report, I’m Joyce Kryszak.

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

Should We Recycle Everything?

  • Right now, San Francisco is at 72% recycling. They also just passed legislation to make composting mandatory. (Photo source: Tewy at Wikimedia Commons)

Recycling has become the law in
San Francisco. Residents who fail
to recycle and compost will face
warnings and, eventually, a fine.
It’s part of the city’s goal to
eliminate waste altogether. But,
as Amy Standen reports, recycling
and composting can only take us
so far:

Transcript

Recycling has become the law in
San Francisco. Residents who fail
to recycle and compost will face
warnings and, eventually, a fine.
It’s part of the city’s goal to
eliminate waste altogether. But,
as Amy Standen reports, recycling
and composting can only take us
so far:

(conversation in Chinese)

Janis Peng is a foot soldier in San Francisco’s war against garbage. Today, she’s going door to door in a San Francisco Chinatown apartment complex, trying to convince the mostly elderly residents to make better use of their city-provided compost bin.

In fact, Peng is part of a city-wide effort to eliminate waste altogether. In 1989, California passed a law, which was considered radically ambitious at the time. They wanted to divert away from landfills 50% of the state’s garbage by the year 2000.

For San Francisco, that wasn’t enough.

“We got to 50%, and we said, ‘well we’re here now, what are we going to do next?’”

That’s Jared Blumenthal. He’s head of San Francisco’s Department of the Environment. Today, he’s in the backseat of a Toyota Prius. He’s on his way to a recycling press conference.

“So in 2003, we set the goal of 75% by 2010 and to zero waste by 2020.”

Right now, San Francisco’s at 72% recycling. City officials say that mandatory recycling will bring that number up even higher. But can any city ever get to zero waste?

(sound of trucks and machinery)

“It’s almost 9:45 in the morning and some of the trucks that went out this morning are coming in with their first loads.”

Robert Reed is a spokesman for Sunset Scavenger Company, in San Francisco. Here at Pier 96, dozens of workers stand by conveyor belts, sorting out the contents of an entire city’s worth of blue bins.

“All these materials go to different places, the glass goes to a glass plant, the paper goes to a paper mill.”

Sunset Scavenger sells these commodities to buyers here and in Asia. That generates revenue that helps fund the program. But recycling is expensive, in part because some products – like many plastics – cost far more to recycle than they’re worth.

“We’re dealing with clear plastic and opaque plastic and medium plastics. And many of these containers have three types of plastics.”

Aluminum and glass can be yanked off the conveyor belts with magnets and other machinery. But plastic has to be hand sorted.

Mark Murray is executive director of Californians Against Waste, a Sacramento non-profit group.

“We have seven different types of plastic resins and manufacturers invent new ones every day. And I know it might make us feel good to put those number sevens into the recycling bin, the scrap value is insufficient. It’s not sustainable recycling.”

Murray says he hears all the time from residents who want to eliminate waste all together.

“They recycle everything, but they can’t get their city to take a certain type of number 6 or 7 plastic in their program. And they’re mad at the city. But it’s not just about recycling everything we get. That’s not gonna solve the problem.”

That’s because some things may never make sense to recycle. Like ballpoint pens and plastic razors.

Murray say that maybe if the costs for those items included what cities pay to take them apart for recycling or to dump them in the landfill, maybe people would use less of them, bringing us a little closer to the holy grail of zero waste.

For The Environment Report, I’m Amy Standen.

Related Links

Sustainable Prisons Project, Part Two

  • This is the entrance to The Hub. Prisoners who’ve been cleared on good behavior get to work here. This is where the prison’s beekeeping operation, recycling center and gardens are. (Photo by Sadie Babits)

Prisons probably aren’t the first
place you’d expect to find organic
gardens or beekeeping. But in some
prisons in western Washington, inmates
are being taught new skills and getting
involved in conservation work. As Sadie
Babits found out, inmates say they’re
restoring their own lives by helping save
native prairies and growing veggies:

Transcript

Prisons probably aren’t the first
place you’d expect to find organic
gardens or beekeeping. But in some
prisons in western Washington, inmates
are being taught new skills and getting
involved in conservation work. As Sadie
Babits found out, inmates say they’re
restoring their own lives by helping save
native prairies and growing veggies:

Stafford Creek Prison would feel like a college campus if it weren’t for the series of
heavy metal gates and the barbed wire.

(sound of mechanical gates opening)

2,000 prisoners are held at this medium security facility. A select group of them
who’ve been cleared on good behavior get to work in what’s called the Hub. It
doesn’t sound too exciting – until you spot the greenhouses.

(sound of door opening and fans)

Inside the largest greenhouse, there are hundreds of yellow plastic tubes. Three
inmates are filling these tubes with dirt. They are planting seeds to help restore
native grasses.

Toby Erheart is one of these prisoners.

“I don’t know if what we’re doing will make a huge impact on the world, but I know
it’s making a huge impact on this project. It will change the face of the prairies in
western Washington.”

This is the project’s first year. The goal is to grow 200,000 plants for the prairies.

It’s getting hot and muggy inside the greenhouse. So Inmate Jeff Harrigan heads
outside. He leans against the greenhouse as he talks about what it’s like to grow
these plants.

“It’s been a learning experience for me cause I’ve never done nothing like this on the
streets.”

Harrigan has been in and out of prison six different times.

“I’ve just learned doing other things than stealing and doing drugs makes you feel
better about yourself. I feel like I’m putting something back, something that is
saving something, ‘cause it’s saving the butterflies from what they told us.”

Harrigan says he’s never planted anything before until coming to Stafford Creek.

“And actually, it’s kind of cool cause since coming here I asked my girlfriend
something I never asked her before, what her favorite flowers were, just cause I had
started planting flowers. (laughs)”

Turns out marigolds and hens and chicks are her favorites. Two plants, Harrigan
says, that can be found around the prison. When he’s not planting native grasses,
Harrigan works in the prison’s vegetable garden.

“Right here, this is stuff that we’ve planted. There’s onions, radishes, beans.”

So far, he’s helped harvest peas, garlic and 200 pounds of zucchini. The kitchen staff
took that squash and turned into zucchini bread for the inmates.

Harrigan talks about how hard it was for him keep a job when he was outside
prison. Drugs always got in the way. Now he says he feels like he’s doing something
that matters and he hopes this experience in prison will help him when he gets out.

“Actually, it’s teaching me better work ethics too, cause I’ve never really had them
out there. I never really kept a job probably because I didn’t like it, you know.”

Harrigan says he does like gardening. He says he now knows how to germinate
seeds and how to get plants to take off – skills he says could help him get a job once
he’s back in society.

“For a person like me, who still wants to feel human and still got good parts in me,
this stuff brings you back to reality.”

He’s got another year and half to go before he’s free. Harrigan says he’s already told
his girlfriend, when he does get out, they have to plant a garden – something he
hopes will keep him from coming back to Stafford Creek.

For The Environment Report, I’m Sadie Babits.

Related Links

Sustainable Prisons Project, Part One

  • Inmates at Stafford Creek who’ve been cleared on good behavior can work in the prison’s recycling center. (Photo by Sadie Babits)

Some industries and businesses have
been greening up their operations to
save money. Now, another big industry
is getting into the act – American prisons.
California has announced 16 new green
energy projects at prisons that they
say will save millions. And prisons
in Indiana, Virginia, and Nevada are
installing solar panels and wind turbines.
But, as Sadie Babits reports, the state
of Washington is taking their green
program a few steps further:

Transcript

Some industries and businesses have
been greening up their operations to
save money. Now, another big industry
is getting into the act – American prisons.
California has announced 16 new green
energy projects at prisons that they
say will save millions. And prisons
in Indiana, Virginia, and Nevada are
installing solar panels and wind turbines.
But, as Sadie Babits reports, the state
of Washington is taking their green
program a few steps further:

(sound of cutting an onion)

Jason Chandler has already spent four years behind bars for a crime he won’t talk
about. He recently was hired to work here in this organic garden at Stafford Creek
Prison. Before this, Chandler says, he was working here as a janitor.

Babits: “What are you doing?”

Chandler: “Cutting the onions off to prepare for the kitchen. Just cutting the roots
and the stock off. Least the winds going my eyes ain’t watering.”

The Stafford Creek prison in western Washington has this garden, a recycling center,
greenhouses, and a beekeeping operation. Chandler says working these jobs beats
mopping floors and cleaning toilets.

“I had to ask my counselor to put me on the list. There are quite a few people on a
waiting list to get positions like this and they got by an application basis and, if
you’re willing to work, it’s a good job to have.”

It’s a job made possible through the Sustainable Prisons Project – a partnership
between Evergreen State College and the Washington Department of Corrections.
The grant-funded project has been running formally for more than a year. While it’s
clear prisoners like these jobs, officials say it’s too early to tell whether beekeeping
or growing vegetables will reduce recidivism rates.

But prison officials say that wasn’t the project’s main goal.

“My early motivation was money, surely money.”

Dan Pocholke is the Deputy Director of Prisons. It costs more than $30,000 a year to
house just one prisoner in Washington state. The Department of Corrections was
ordered several years ago to save money by doing things like conserving water and
energy.

To do this, Polcholke says they got help from Evergreen State College to “green”
Cedar Creek – a minimum security facility in Washington. He says they got prisoners
involved in cutting back their water use.

“And we started studying our use rates and our consumption rates and, low and
behold, a year later we had brought our water use rates down by an astonishing
level.”

Pocholke says the partnership with the college has another benefit. Prisoners are
learning new skills. And Evergreen State College says one of their goals is being
fulfilled too – to spread environmental science to unlikely places – like prisons.

Some inmates in this program get to do research on everything from raising frogs to
growing native prairie grasses. There’s already been a few success stories. One
inmate has gone on to co-author a scientific paper and is now working on a
doctorate degree.

(sound of recycling)

And, while some prisoners are learning new skills, the goal of saving money is also
being met. Stafford Creek prison has cut the amount of garbage they send to
landfills by more than half by recycling.

Inmate Kevin Madigan says he’d like to keep even more out of the landfill.

“The more self sustaining you can become, the less burden you are on the people out
there. And that in itself is a good thing.”

Madigan rips open a clear plastic bag and dumps the garbage onto this conveyer
belt. He gets paid 42-cents an hour to work here, but for him it goes beyond just a
job.

Madigan says it’s one way for him to make amends for all the trouble he caused
outside these prison walls.

For The Environment Report, I’m Sadie Babits.

Related Links

Not Just Tailpipes and Smokestacks

  • 42% of the greenhouse gas emissions in the US are related to everything that goes into creating the food and products we use, and then throw away. (Photo courtesy of the National Cancer Institute)

More than 100 world leaders are
in New York today talking about
climate change at The United Nations.
A new report from the U-S Environmental
Protection agency says a big chunk of
greenhouse gas emissions can be pinned
on how we use land and resources.
Tamara Keith has more:

Transcript

More than 100 world leaders are
in New York today talking about
climate change at The United Nations.
A new report from the U-S Environmental
Protection agency says a big chunk of
greenhouse gas emissions can be pinned
on how we use land and resources.
Tamara Keith has more:

Some EPA scientists say greenhouse gas emissions are not just about tailpipes and smokestacks. They say you have to look at the big picture.

42% of the greenhouse gas emissions in the US are related to everything that goes into creating the food and products we use, and then throw away. So, they say more reduce, reuse and recycle. And, a lot of emissions are caused by urban sprawl. We have to drive everywhere.

Brigit Lowery is with the EPA. She says there are ways to reduce those emissions too.

“Encouraging compact development, such as promoting smart growth. But also reducing development pressures on green space, such as redeveloping formerly contaminated properties.”

Lowery said she knew going into it that land use and resource management contributed to climate change. But she was surprised by how much.

For The Environment Report, I’m Tamara Keith.

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