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

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

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.

Related Links

Turning Clunkers Into New Cars

  • The scrap heap - what's left of hundreds of cars and other metal waste after they go through a shredder. (Photo by Tamara Keith)

All those clunkers are working their
way toward the final melt-down at
a steel mill. Lester Graham reports
you’ll see the steel from those clunkers
again:

Transcript

All those clunkers are working their
way toward the final melt-down at
a steel mill. Lester Graham reports
you’ll see the steel from those clunkers
again:

The steel from those clunkers from the “Cash for Clunkers” program will eventually be melted down and used again.

Bill Heenan is the President of the Steel Recycling Institute. He says it’ll be a few months before that scrap gets recycled.

“It takes some time for that old automobile, the clunker in this particular case, to work its way through the dismantling system and then through the shredding system and eventually to the steel mill.”

Scrap yards can remove things such as fenders or hubcaps for used parts, but what’s left – including the engines – goes to the shredder.

Bill Heenan says those 700,000 clunkers won’t mean a glut of scrap steel.

“Let’s say there’s a ton of steel in each one, you’ve got 700,000 tons. That seems like a lot. But in a given year, we recycle 80-million tons.”

That 80-million tons of scrap is melted down and becomes the bulk of new steel products in the U.S., including new cars.

For The Environment Report, I’m Lester Graham.

Related Links

Old LCD Screens Used for Medical Treatment

  • One research team recovered polyvinyl alcohol from the computer screens, which can be used in medicine (Photo courtesy of the National Cancer Institute)

Some researchers want to recycle
a chemical in computer screens to
use it for a medical treatment.
Shawn Allee reports:

Transcript

Some researchers want to recycle
a chemical in computer screens to
use it for a medical treatment.
Shawn Allee reports:

Most LCD computer screens contain toxic mercury. The European Union will soon mandate those screens be recycled rather than thrown away.

There are other metals and chemicals in the LCD screens that are not dangerous.

Dr. Avtar Matharu is with Britain’s University of York.

His research team recovered polyvinyl alcohol from the computer screens.

It’s used in spongy pads that deliver medicine.

“We can take out Polyvinyl alcohol from the front and back of an LCD screen. We can take what effectively would be a waste resource and potentially use it in a medical application.”

Matharu says getting polyvinyl alcohol out of LCD screens is expensive compared to making it from crude oil, but he says it could be another reason to recycle rather than throw them into a landfill.

For The Environment Report, I’m Shawn Allee.

Related Links

Recession Proof Construction

  • One company created a website that acts as kind of a Craigslist just for reclaimed building materials (Photo courtesy of the National Centers for Environmental Prediction)

In the middle of a recession that’s

crippling the construction field,

there’s at least one sector of

industry that’s doing pretty well.

That’s “material reuse.” Taking pieces

of old buildings and using them in

new ones. Advocates say used materials

could save developers a heap of money.

Samara Freemark has the

story of one re-use company that’s both

green and in the black:

Transcript

In the middle of a recession that’s

crippling the construction field,

there’s at least one sector of

industry that’s doing pretty well.

That’s “material reuse.” Taking pieces

of old buildings and using them in

new ones. Advocates say used materials

could save developers a heap of money.

Samara Freemark has the

story of one re-use company that’s both

green and in the black:

You’ve probably heard what’s going on in the construction industry
these days.

(news montage of housing crisis)

But in middle of all that bad news, there might be one bright spot.

“We’ve actually been expanding quite a bit. I guess it’s one of the
only times I’ve heard
of where that’s the case.”

That’s architect Brad Hardin.

He got interested in reusing building materials pretty early in his career.
He likes the way
the old stuff looked. And he likes the idea of saving resources. And
he’s also kind of
horrified by the tens of millions of tons of construction waste that get
tossed into landfills
every year.

But actually getting his hands on used materials, so that he could reuse
them- that turned
out to be a real pain in the butt.

“You know you’ll be literally going out to someone’s yard and getting
rained on, or
sorting through someone’s basement– it was kind of a hit and miss
process.”

A big part of the problem was simple logistics. Imagine you’re knocking
down an old
house to build a new one. You’d like to sell off whatever pieces of the
old building you
can. But how do you find someone to buy all that stuff? Where do you store
it while you
look for a buyer? And how do you ship the materials?

Harry Giles is a professor of green architecture at the University of
Michigan.

He says most developers don’t want to bother with all that hassle. In the
end, they usually
just end up bulldozing everything. Giles says that’s because there’s no
real secondhand
market for used construction materials- not like there is in a lot of other
industries.

“If you take the car industry, a lot of it is geared around the reuse of
materials. Not just
taking the car and crushing it, but taking it apart and finding useful
components on it.”

You know, like a salvage yard.

And that was the problem Brad Hardin wanted to solve – how to create a
secondhand
market for spare building parts. He figured that if he could do that,
reusing building
materials could actually end up profitable.

So last year he started a company called Planet ReUse. The company’s
website acts as
kind of a Craigslist just for reclaimed building materials. Buyers and
sellers can find each
other on the ‘net.

And Planet ReUse tests all material to make sure it’s up to code. That
way the buyer
doesn’t end up with, say, eight tons of rotten planking. And Planet ReUse
arranges all the
shipping- trying to hook up sellers to nearby buyers. That saves money and
fuel.

By removing those basic barriers, Hardin says his buyers save about 20%
compared to
buying new. And Planet ReUse still makes a profit.

And it’s also a start to reducing those millions of tons of landfill
waste.

So, what kind of stuff does he sell on the site?

“How much time do you have? Steel, flooring…”

It turns out there’s money in just about everything you can salvage from
a building.

Harry Giles says that cash is the key to cutting down waste.

“If people see that it’s a lucrative business to actually salvage
materials, that will drive it
much faster than concern for the environment.”

And it’s not just buildings. Remember President Obama’s inauguration
stage? Well, that
got torn down, and Planet ReUse is trying to get the pieces to New Orleans.
They’ll be
used to rebuild houses damaged by Hurricane Katrina.

It’s just one more way for Planet ReUse to prove that you can do good, be
green, and
make a little money too.

For The Environment Report, I’m Samara Freemark.

Related Links

Peace Out, Plastic Bags

  • Whole foods Store Manager Sherry Wiseman, says her Cleveland store hasn’t had plastic bags since February and her customers have hardly noticed. (Photo by Lisa Ann Pinkerton)

It’s one of the eternal questions, ‘paper or
plastic?’ They’re both recyclable, but only paper
bags come from a renewable resource. And since only
1% of all the plastic bags on earth are actually
recycled, Lisa Ann Pinkerton reports some cities and
even one national company are wondering why we need
plastic bags at all:

Transcript

It’s one of the eternal questions, ‘paper or
plastic?’ They’re both recyclable, but only paper
bags come from a renewable resource. And since only
1% of all the plastic bags on earth are actually
recycled, Lisa Ann Pinkerton reports some cities and
even one national company are wondering why we need
plastic bags at all:

(garbage truck sounds)

Americans send around 100 billion plastic bags to landfills every
year, where they’re supposed to be compacted by bulldozers.

(sound of plastic bag in the wind)

That is, unless they catch the wind and transform into mini
parachutes.

Carmine Camillo is a spokesman for the national company Waste Management.

“The tree lines and fence lines can be littered with bags, until we get
a chance to get out there and clean them up.”

This happens so much around the world, it’s picked up the nickname ‘tree condoms’. Besides that,
they clog storm drains, and
eventually end up in waterways and oceans, where fish
mistake them for jellyfish.

The solution, it would seem, is to recycle them.

But shopper Mary Jo Wickliffe says that’s too much of a hassle.

“You unload your groceries and you go home and throw them away. That’s what I do with them.”

Since Wickliffe shops at the organic market Whole Foods she
says she’s been doing less of that. Because the
chain recently bagged the plastic.

Cleveland Store Manager Chery Wiseman says to stop offering plastic bags is a decision that goes against busines school 101.

“It costs us more money to buy our paper recyclable bags, but we
feel that’s worth it to keep the plastics out.”

Whole Foods’ paper bags are made from 100% recycled content and
shopper Bruce Kane says it’s about time plastic went out of
style.

“I notice that China has fines for stores that use plastics. I think it’s a
positive trend and I’m glad to see it coming to Whole Foods and coming to the
United States.”

The trendsetter in this country is San Francisco. It’s the only city to successfully ban plastic bags.

New York City, Annapolis, Maryland, New Haven,
Connecticut, Santa Monica, and Portland, are looking to shun plastic too. But the bruising the city of Oakland took might make them think twice.

A plastics industry group, called the Coalition to Support Plastic
Bag Recycling sued Oakland over its ban and won. It
claimed the city didn’t do its homework on alternatives such as compost-
able plastic bags or a recycling program.

Sharon Kanise is a spokeswoman for the plastics industry at the
American Chemistry Council.

“We certainly hope that the city of Oakland will work with the state of
California on recycling, because it
doesn’t belong in the roadways, it belongs in the recycling bin.”

Plastic bags are made from petroleum and natural gas, but
Kanise says their manufacture and transport uses 70% less
energy and produces half the carbon dioxide that making paper
bags does.

But for some, choosing between paper and plastic isn’t enough. A few people are starting to shop with reusable cloth bags. Some
stores sell them for about a dollar and Wal-Mart recently gave
away 1 million free to its customers.

But the concept of bringing
their own bags to the store is still foreign to some Wal-Mart
shoppers.

Customer 1: “It really doesn’t matter to me, but I’m going to need a
bigger bag than this.”

Customer 2: “It’s easier just to throw these out and come back to
the store with nothing in our hands.“

Customer 3: “Well, it’s just becoming popular, so I’ll start to.”

Whether it’s paper, plastic, or cloth, each can be environmentally-friendly, if
consumers go to the extra effort. But if people keep throwing them away, local governments might attempt to
reduce plastic bag use. A move the plastics industry will certainly
contest.

For The Environment Report, I’m Lisa Ann Pinkerton.

Related Links

From Coffins to Couches

  • Vidal Herrera recycles coffins, turning them into couches (Photo courtesy of coffincouches.com)

One entrepreneur is testing the limits
of recycling, by turning unused coffins into
furniture. Rebecca Williams has more:

Transcript

One entrepreneur is testing the limits
of recycling, by turning unused coffins into
furniture. Rebecca Williams has more:

Vidal Herrera used to be a crime scene investigator in Los Angeles. After
he retired he started a business renting out props for shows like the CSI
series.

One of his showbiz clients wanted a creepy couch made out of a coffin. And
so, a business was born.

Herrera says coffins that can’t be sold are usually thrown away. So he
approached funeral directors with the idea of recycling them instead.

He says he removes the insides, adds legs, and puts in cushions to make
a couch. He says he’s gotten a lot of positive responses.

“The Goth people and bikers in tattoos – they really like that stuff. In fact, they
made suggestions- why don’t we make beds, love seats,
file cabinets.”

Coffin couches cost 3,500 dollars a piece. But people are buying them.
Herrera says he’s sold four, with 62 more on order.

For The Environment Report, I’m Rebecca Williams.

Related Links

From the Toilet to the Tap

  • Inside the Reverse Osmosis building for the Groundwater Replenishment System in Orange County, California. (Photo courtesy of Orange County Water District)

Treated sewage water has been used to water
lawns and flush toilets before. But now the world’s
largest “toilet-to-tap” system has gone online. Mark
Brush reports on the new water treatment system:

Transcript

Treated sewage water has been used to water
lawns and flush toilets before. But now the world’s
largest “toilet-to-tap” system has gone online. Mark
Brush reports on the new water treatment system:

You think flush the toilet and it’s gone, right?

Well… that’s not happening in the O.C.

In Orange County California, the water people flush from their homes and businesses will
eventually come back to their taps.

The treated sewage water is sent to a water purification plant. It’s treated some more and
then pumped back into the aquifers where the county gets its water supply.

Mike Wehner is with the Orange County Water District. He says, at first, people kind of
held their nose at the idea:

“The biggest concern is kind of a general yuck-factor. It’s just, ‘You mean sewage? We’re
not going to drink that.’ But after people develop an understanding of the kind of
treatment processes we’re talking about, the yuck-factor diminishes, it goes away.”

Wehner says when the half billion dollar system is at its peak; it will add 70 million
gallons of recycled water a day to the areas drinking water supply.

For the Environment Report, I’m Mark Brush.

Related Links

Cradle to Cradle Design

  • Used resources can be remade into all kinds of things. These street signs were made into switchplates. (Photo by Ann Dornfeld)

The people who make everyday items – from cars to chairs to cell phones – attractive and functional are called industrial designers. Now a new generation of industrial designers is learning how to create products that are environmentally friendly as well. That makes their jobs a bit more challenging. Ann Dornfeld reports:

Transcript

The people who make everyday items – from cars to chairs to cell phones – attractive and functional are called industrial designers. Now a new generation of industrial designers is learning how to create products that are environmentally friendly as well. That makes their jobs a bit more challenging. Ann Dornfeld reports:


A lot of the things you buy have a pretty limited life cycle. Think about it. Before you buy a product, it uses up raw materials, then you use it for a while, then it ends up in a garbage dump. But that doesn’t have to be its fate.


A group of industrial design students at Western Washington University was given this challenge: create attractive, useful products that are also completely recyclable, reusable or biodegradable. On top of that, they had to use waste that would have ended up in the dump.


Rachel Bjarnasson explains what’s known as “closed-loop” design:


“Instead of a product life cycle and a designer’s job ending with that product when the product is at the end of its useful life, that that is just a new material that can be reused and turned into a new product.”


This sustainable design principle has caught on in Europe. There, household appliance manufacturers are required to take back old dishwashers and clothes dryers to reuse their components. U.S. factories are adopting closed-loop systems, too, as a way to save money on raw materials and benefit the environment.


One of the first lessons the students learned was that in closed-loop design, it’s not enough to use recyclable materials. You have to think about how you attach one material to another.


“If you have a recyclable material like an aluminum bonded to a plastic that’s non-recyclable, suddenly the recyclable component is no longer recyclable.”


Bjarnasson says they had to avoid using strong glues for that reason. And also because the adhesives can release toxic fumes.


The students also had to figure out where to get their raw materials.


Seth Tucker wanted to make bracelets out of disposable chopsticks.


“I found that between Japan and China, one billion pairs of chopsticks are thrown away every year. They’re taking down whole forests just for chopsticks!”


He asked local Asian restaurants whether he could install chopsticks recycling bins to collect enough for his project.


“Some restaurants, it was kinda funny, they gave me this kinda look like ‘you’re crazy, I would never give you used chopsticks.’ But it was really cool, ’cause other places were like, ‘oh yeah, totally, we’re definitely cool with the idea.'”


Tucker sanitized the chopsticks he’d collected, cut them into pieces and sandblasted them into what look like little driftwood beads. He strung them into bracelets along with natural turquoise and antique African trade beads.


One student turned newsprint into biodegradable flower pots.


Another made used-up retail gift cards into colorful luggage tags.


Rachel Bjarnasson challenged herself to use fabric scraps that she usually throws away in her job as a seamstress. She stitched strips of silk into baby booties, and lined them with scraps of fleece she got from a local glove manufacturer. Then she cushioned the soles with leftover carpet padding from a flooring company.


“And so all of this was materials that would’ve been thrown out, and I turned them into little striped baby booties.”


Several stores agreed to carry the products. One of them was Goods for the Planet in Seattle. Suzanne O’Shea is the co-owner.


“We were thrilled to do it because one of our goals is to find products as close to home as possible and support the local economy.”


The students’ products were a hit with her customers. O’Shea says some even sold out right away – like the chopsticks bracelets.


And sushi rollers made from stainless steel bicycle spokes flew off the shelves.


“And a lot of chefs that have come in and people that make sushi at home have really been impressed by this design because it has more weight than the standard bamboo sushi rollers.”


And that’s the idea. Student Rachel Bjarnasson says they learned the ideal sustainable product is at least as attractive and useful as the competition.


“You still need to make a product that looks beautiful and has good tactile sensation and is something that people ultimately want to buy. Even if it has the best of intentions in saving the environment, it won’t do its job if it’s not something that people want or need.”


The students say they’ll try to integrate the closed-loop design principles they’ve learned into all of their future products. They don’t want anything they design to ever end up in the trash.


For the Environment Report, I’m Ann Dornfeld.

Related Links