A diagram of a dry storage cask for nuclear waste.
(Photo courtesy of the US Energy Information Administration)
President Barack Obama is
proposing billions to build
new nuclear power plants in
the US. But Shawn Allee reports the President
is also trying to tackle a
problem facing the country’s
old nuclear reactors:
Transcript
President Barack Obama is
proposing billions to build
new nuclear power plants in
the US. But Shawn Allee reports the President
is also trying to tackle a
problem facing the country’s
old nuclear reactors:
President Obama mentioned the future of nuclear power in his State of the Union Address.
“But to create more of these clean energy jobs, we need more production, more efficiency, more incentives. That means building a new generation of safe, clean nuclear power plants in this country.“
At the same time, Obama’s dealing with an old nuclear problem: what to do with the hazardous radioactive waste building up at reactors in thirty one states. Obama gave up on an old plan to bury spent fuel inside Nevada’s Yucca Mountain. That project dragged on for decades and cost nine billion dollars.
Recently, the President set up a panel that recommend what to do with all this waste. That panel’s supposed to report to the President in less than two years.
Meanwhile, spent nuclear fuel is stored at nuclear power plants.
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)
88 cents of every dollar from this ReStore go back to Habitat for Humanity homes.
(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.
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.
To go from these chickens... (photo by Romula Zanini)
...to chicken filets requires quite a bit of processing and a lot of waste. The EPA tightened its regulations on how much pollution is allowed to get into waterways... but some critics note the regulations are not as strict as when first proposed. (Photo by Rene Cerney)
The largest meat and poultry processing plants in the country must follow new rules regarding how much pollution they release into waterways. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Tom Weber reports:
Transcript
The largest meat and poultry processing plants in the country now must follow new
rules regarding how much pollution they release into waterways. The Great Lakes Radio
Consortium’s Tom Weber reports:
The new rules apply to about 170 plants in the country that turn cows and chickens into
hamburgers or filets. Wastes will have to contain fewer nutrients like ammonia and nitrogen
before it’s released into water. Mary Smith heads a division within the Water Office of the
Environmental Protection Agency. She says the rules are not as strict as when first proposed.
That’s in part because of concerns from the industries that it would cost too much. Smith
says the limits are tougher than what the law was before. But she adds these aren’t the only
industries that release waste into the water.
“So we can’t really kind of single out the meat industry, necessarily. Everyone, in a sense,
needs to do their part. But it’s another piece of the puzzle in terms of getting cleaner water.”
The new rules mark the first time poultry plants will have these kinds of limits. The EPA
estimates meat and poultry plants use 150 billion gallons of water each year. That water needs
to be cleaned of wastes like manure, blood, and feathers before it’s discharged.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Tom Weber.
A diagram of a dry storage cask for nuclear waste. (Photo courtesy of the US Energy Information Administration)
