———————– ** Fresh Green Beans ** ———————– Grown in Kansas. Eaten Worldwide.

Has the poo crusade of Brad Pooterish had an impact in America? Let’s take a look at waste reduction and recycling in Lawrence, KS to find out.

Use less CRAP, people! Reuse your crap! Recycle your crap!

~ Sarah H

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This is the account of a poo expert’s crusade to save landfill space for dirty diapers. Brad Pooterish, founder and CEO of Daddies Using Diapers (DUDs) shares a dirty little secret behind America’s looming landfill crisis.

All statistics in this video are true and based on real reports from the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Diapers really do make up only 1.4% of the waste stream, while paper products and yard waste make up 47%. NO, paper and yard waste do NOT decompose in landfills. Landfills are designed to be a “dry tomb” environment; waste becomes mummified due to the lack of moisture and air flow.

What’s in your landfill?

REDUCE - REUSE - RECYCLE

For more info, visit http://www.epa.gov/msw/facts.htm

~ Sarah H

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Ah, May in a college town. You might think of graduation, flowers blooming, the start of summer vacations.

How about the not so beautiful sight of Dumpsters overflowing with couches, jeans and junk food wrappers?

The City of Lawrence figures that during the ginormous trash month of May, Lawrencians toss out a staggering 7,243 tons of trash, or 14.5 million pounds for you math-challenged out there. That’s enough to fill more than 600 of the average trash trucks that rumble down your street or alley.

Those trucks haul the food packaging, discarded Britney Spears CDs, soiled mattresses and abandoned Royals t-shirts to Hamm Waste Services in Jefferson County, north of Lawrence. They also abscond with a lot of the good stuff people toss, like still-useable cameras, televisions and cell phones.

All told, in 2007, the citizens and businesses of Lawrence added 72,703 tons of trash – roughly the weight of 10 Eiffel Towers – to the Hamm facility.

But there would be more trash headed to the landfill if the City of Lawrence didn’t offer incentives to recycle materials, especially yard waste and paper products. In fact, the city boasts the highest recycling rate in Kansas, at 34 percent.

What makes reducing waste in Lawrence such a challenge, however, is the transient nature of a college town. In Lawrence, 50 percent of all housing is rental. Students shed residence hall life or graduate from the University of Kansas and Haskell Indian Nations University. And every time they move out or move in, they leave belongings at the curb or bulging out of Dumpsters.

On top of all that movement, advertising available city and local recycling services can fall on deaf ears. The information has to be repeated year-round, every year.

KU, which has a thriving recycling program started in the mid 1990s, tackles part of the waste staff and students generate. The university offers a surplus property program, headed by Celeste Hoins of the KU Environmental Stewardship Program, that collects unwanted furniture on campus to offer it to area nonprofits. KU also has a Center for Sustainability, a kind of clearinghouse of resources to help the university reach for a more sustainable future.

The state university can’t offer services down the hill in the high-density “student ghetto,” where the city’s garbage trucks have to patrol daily during peak move-out times. There’s no way to coordinate moving belongings abandoned at the curb to people looking for new stuff.

So, what’s the solution, you ask? It’s time to pitch in. Got a truck or a van? Advertise your services for a day to get some of that furniture to area donation centers. (Try trading pickup service for after move-in beer.) Or, if you’re willing to think big, consider forming a group that could collect such property and find a way to give it to charity or sell it to those who want it, just as the KU surplus property program manages to do on campus. And if you’re one of the people moving, plan ahead, and consider shopping for “new” belongings at the curb or at area used furniture dealers, instead of buying new. -Jen Humphrey

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The 600,000 people of northeast Kansas generate this amount of trash, about 2-3 feet deep, daily at the area’s sanitary landfill. photo credit: Jen Humphrey

Egyptian pyramids have their mummies, and landfills have their petrified banana peels.

Yes, the banana peel your aunt Edna threw out more than three decades ago is almost perfectly preserved, still partly yellow, a mummified testament to the garbage she took to the curb that sunny day in June 1972.

It’s a common misconception that food scraps, condoms, soup cans and celebrity gossip magazines rot in commingled gooey bliss in the landfill. At least, it was my misconception until I became a junk junkie, rifling through the glorious world of garbage.

Engineer Charlie Sedlock at Hamm Waste Services north of Lawrence set me straight. Trash doesn’t decompose. It stays suspended in time in a landfill, largely locked away from air, sunlight, moisture and even the microbes that might go to work on that banana peel.

Under the visible trash at Hamm’s rock quarry and landfill is an entire sewer system that drains away all moisture, leaving the garbage veritably toasty and dry. And above the trash, Hamm employees top the waste with soil and later with prairie grass. Charlie tracks every such tomb and the gases each emits at the 600-plus-acre operation – one of about 1,850 landfills left in the United States.

Those landfills hold the roughly 251 million tons of trash Americans generate annually – or about 4.6 pounds of trash per person, per day.

As in most modern landfills, the chief item you’d find at Hamm is paper – beer cartons, corrugated cardboard, office paper, junk mail and newspapers. On average, the federal government estimates that paper accounts for more than 40 percent of a landfill’s contents.

On one hand, it might not be a bad thing that all the leftovers of our lives, from cat litter to packaging, can be preserved in a landfill. Think of what could happen in a couple hundred years, long after Peak Oil, when we are scraping for scarce manufacturing materials (or that quintessential ugly college couch). Plus, that trash could help us develop energy from landfill methane.

However, when Charlie tells me he can find a banana peel from the year I was born (let alone some toy pharoh with gold peeling paint), it encourages me to keep potential petrifying material out of the landfill entirely.

For more information on getting rid of your goods, check out the city’s recycling and composting, and for big items, there’s freecycling or Larryville.

– Jen Humphrey

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In 1960, the United States produced 88 million tons of trash a year.  Today, we are producing 245 million.  Where it is ending up?  You guessed it, landfills.

It’s pretty obvious to most that we are a nation full of material things.  As Americans, all we want is more more more - but what happened to the recycling bandwagon that emerged in the 90’s and the thoughts of “going green?”  Despite the new green trends and efforts to improve sustainability, the trash is still piling up in landfills, and garbage does not lie folks.  We are still throwing away perfectly good materials that could either be, you guessed it:  Re-used or Rec-ycled. 

Here’s another disturbing fact for you.  In 1960, when no one had the option to recycle, each person only generated 2.7 pounds of waste per day.  Today, although Americans recycle more than ever, we also generate a disturbingly high amount of waste: 4.5 pounds per day.

Landfill limo.

Photo:  *Raffella, Flickr

So, what exactly is in our landfills?   According to the EPA, it separates our waste into two categories: product-related wastes and non-product wastes.  Product-related wastes are all the durable goods we use (appliances, furniture, books - anything that lasts over five years), non-durable goods (newspapers, disposable diapers - anything that lasts less than five years), and packaging. The non-product waste materials are food scraps, yard trimmings and miscellaneous waste. 

Paper accounts for the biggest portion of waste ending up in our landfills, at around forty percent.  The two runners-up are construction waste and yard trimmings.

The question of when our landfills are going to fill up is one that is under debate.  Georgia currently has a landfill that is almost at capacity, and Europe has a couple that have less than ten years left.  No matter what people are saying, it is inevitable. 

We need to start practicing what we were taught in kindergarten folks-reduce, reuse, and most importantly, recycle.  Otherwise, instead of hearing about landfills, we will all be living in one.

-Sarah Nelson

Giant piles of rotting garbage. Rows and rows of it strewn along in perfect piles. No, this isn’t a landfill but a city-owned lot in East Lawrence. In fact, this garbage is never meant to end up in the landfill. It’s composed mainly of lawn clippings, leaves, and the paper bags that we Lawrenciens set out on our curb every Monday after a gritty weekend of yard work. A few months later - after shredding, turning, and screening - it’s a rich, dark compost ready for us to pick up and take back to our homes to spread on gardens, flower beds, or even spread back over our lawns. Now that’s Mother Nature in action, right?

Not quite. As great as it is to keep the natural “dust to dust” cycle going, we’ve altered that cycle considerably, stirring in more fossil fuels than necessary to get the same result. This includes fossil fuels used to collect the yard waste (an extra route driven by trucks each week) and trips by residents to pick up their old waste in its new form.

Although setting out your yard waste for the weekly collection is a great idea, there are simpler ways to do Mother Nature a favor. You can start by mulching your grass and leaves right back on the yard they came from. Mulching, or grasscycling, is like adding free fertilizer to your lawn and helps you avoid the hassle of bagging.

While you are at it, you can cut out additional polluting emissions by using an electric or manual reel mower. Believe it or not, gas mowers like the one in your garage are responsible for as much as 5% of all ozone forming emissions and 17 millions gallons of spilt gasoline each year. Electric mowers, while still powered by a fossil fuel-fired energy plant, produce less carbon monoxide and hydrocarbons. A reel mower gets rid of all of that because it’s powered by you. Those funny looking mowers you only see in cartoons may just be making a comeback.

The Reel Deal: Cut down on carbon emissions while cutting your grass with a reel mower. (Source: Wendy Gay, flickr.com)

I’m not suggesting that we should put an end to the city composting program. This is a great service that creates a carefully monitored product that couldn’t as easily be done in your own back yard. And, since the city started collecting yard waste separately from trash in 1993, we’ve diverted 33 to 35% of our waste from the landfill, amounting to nearly 18,000 tons in 2007.

But the first of those tried and true 3R’s of waste is “reduce”, and mulching or mowing with a reel mower reduces more than just waste. It reduces the need for fertilizer, cuts emissions, and saves the city money by reducing collection and processing time. So when it’s time to fire up the mower, consider keeping your “garbage” in your backyard and enjoy the benefits of a greener, cleaner lawn.

I’m just going to come out and say it: I heart John Mayer.

Photo by Kim Wallace | I waited four hours in the rain to get to the front row to see John at Uptown Theater in Kansas City in 2005. In 2006, I saw him in St. Louis (but not as close). I’m planning to see him in Mountain View, Calif., this summer, if all goes as planned…

Now, you may be thinking, “What the heck does this have to do with our environmental blog, Kim?”

Well, I’m a crazed fan, and I really like to keep up with what he’s doing because he’s my favorite musician. I read his blog, his fan blogs and any other JM-related stuff. Laugh it up, chuckles. Laugh it up.

So of course it caught my attention when I learned that John was getting all emo eco on me. He played at Live Earth and partnered with Reverb, a non-profit that “educates and engages musicians and their fans to promote environmental sustainability” for his 2007 summer tour. He designs and sells eco-friendly (but expensive—that’s another post) tote bags on his website.

But John’s newest venture got me wondering a bit.

He’s partnered with ReProduct, a green greeting card company that prides itself on the reuse of its cards. John designed a collection of cards that are “made from environmentally healthy plastic.”

Does that even make sense?

But it gets better: Instead of chucking the card when it’s time to clear what you’ve hoarded and pack-ratted for months, you can send the card back to the company so that it may be re-purposed into Shaw carpet tile backing.

That means that USPS is going to be driving a ways back and forth and around to redistribute these babies.

I’m just not sure that the supposed eco-friendliness of this product outweighs what can easily be done with conventional, recycled-paper cards: Receive card. Take out money. Put card in recycling bin. Take recycling to the curb/to Wal-Mart recycling center. Spend green on shoes.

ReProduct could have saved so much paper by NOT encouraging the mailing cycle, and could have refused “healthy plastics” by using recycled paper—there’s enough of it to go around, right?

But did John think of that? I just wonder how schooled he is in the pros and cons of the sustainability market. Sure, I’m no expert, but it seems that if I was a famous person, I would want to think before I added my name to something “eco.” I won’t stop loving him for this, but I just wonder why he couldn’t have just designed a cool e-card for Care2 and said to hell with all tangible greeting cards, paper or plastic?

Do you think some celebrities are as schooled in the environment as they need to be? John doesn’t claim to be an eco-hottie, but you could put him in that category for the different things he’s been doing.

What do you think about the pros and cons of the sustainability initiative? Is it really give and take, as it seemed to be with the LEED video we watched in class, as well as this ReProduct company? Can anything EVER be zero-waste? Should companies be allowed to claim “zero-waste”? Tell me, tell me, tell me!

-Kim “I-Wish-I-Was-An-Eco-Hottie” Wallace

When we think about reducing our family’s carbon footprints, we often are neglecting to remember the impacts of our extended family…our pets. You know, the cute little ones we can’t live without?

With almost 62 million dogs in the in US, they are unquestionably making an impact on our environment too. They poop outside, they eat unnatural food, and they chew up plastic toys that have to be replaced. Now companies are giving pet owners the opportunity to green their pets too! Organic dog toys, biodegradable poop bags, and microchip trackers are the future of the ‘green pet.’

The most important thing to do is to adopt a homeless pet. Over 50,000 cats and dogs are born every day in the US, most without homes. Adopting a furry, loving, homeless pet is a great feeling - and a huge step forward to getting rid of this problem. And remember as Bob Barker says, “Spay and neuter your pets!”

A little dog, with a big opinion.

Photo: Dasqutt, Flickr

In order to green your pet, buy sustainable goods for them. Web sites like EarthDog and GreatGreenPet offer everything from organic toys to hemp collars and leashes. While browsing through Petsmart the other day, I even came upon a whole section of organic dog clothes and toys that were reasonably priced, and also some natural doggy shampoos. Not only are organic and all natural dog foods better for you pet, they are also obviously more eco-friendly. There is a growing number of these types of foods available in pet stores and online.

An eco-friendly pet store.

Photo: ddp4566, Flickr

The main eco-concern about our animals is their poop, as fun as that is to talk about. People need to make sure to clean up after their dogs and if possible, use biodegradable bags to do so. Something little that can make a huge difference.

Without pets, life wouldn’t be the same for me. At least now we can start helping our animals live a little greener, and healthier, while making the change for ourselves as well.

-Sarah Nelson

Planning a conference gives you incredible purchasing power, why not use it for good?

(Image from Lunar Events, UK)

Each year, your event planning team meticulously plans a conference bringing thousands of the best from your industry together for a few days to learn and share expertise and discover the latest industry perspectives. Whether the theme is information security, investment strategy, global health, consumer demands, or one of a myriad of others, there is one thing that all conference planners must consider: sustainability of the conference itself.

Building sustainability practices directly into the conference itself can both wow your stakeholders by demonstrating that you’ve got green savvy while pleasing your eco-critics with your new and improved environmentally responsible conference.

A whole systems approach will maximize the sustainability factor of your next conference, here’s a few steps to get you started:

1. Cut printing and mailing costs by going paperless.

*Launch a website for the conference and perform registrations and confirmations electronically.
*Keep the conference agenda and other materials online providing on-demand access for individuals with computers or handheld devices.
*Advertise the conference using online marketing and email.
*Encourage conference speakers to post presentation handouts online rather than printing them out.

2. Use recycled, chlorine-free paper and vegetable-based inks when printed materials are absolutely necessary. Use both sides of each page.

3. Choose your host city carefully.

*Reduce travel by choosing a location that’s close to as many delegates and speakers as possible.
*Does the city have an eco-friendly reputation?
*A recycling program?
*Public transportation?
*Walking and bicycle routes?

4. Implement the 3Rs everywhere.

*You’re paying for the services of the hotel and/or conference venue, don’t hesitate to ask for visible and accessible reduction, reuse and recycling services for paper, plastic and other relevant conference materials.
*Or better yet, look for conference space (hotels, convention centers, universities) with recycling and/or composting programs already in a place.
*The morning coffee reception is an ideal time to implement the first two Rs: reduce and reuse. Get the event sponsors on board by providing reusable mugs printed with their logo(s). These can also be given away on the last day of the conference.

5. Use a responsible and environmentally conscious food and beverage service.

*Ask for meals that use fresh local produce, organic when possible, and free-range meat and poultry.
*Offer vegetarian meal options.
*Use reusable service ware and/or ensure that any packaging can be recycled or composted.
*Arrange for excess food and waste to be composted or donated to a soup kitchen or pig farm.

6. Green the swag.

*Distribute all giveaways in reusable bags.
*Suggest that your sponsors or exhibitors giveaway items that are in line with the conference’s sustainability values - recycled, durable, and/or reusable.
*Include a Poplar tree cutting as part of the mix, ask delegates to plant their tree back home to offset their carbon emissions from conference travel.

7. Promote your green conference innovations.

*Get creative, contact the media or network with bloggers to get the message out that you’re an environmental leader.
*Gather statistics about how many tons of waste were composted, recycled or avoided all together by your initiatives. Statistics can be expanded to include energy, fuel, and carbon savings.
*Remember: don’t make any claims that you can’t back up!

8. Educate yourself by finding out more! Check out these great resources:

Meeting Strategies Worldwide: sustainability experts

(Recently Launched!) Green Meeting Blog by event planning expert Nancy J. Wilson

US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Green Meetings Initiative

BlueGreen Meetings

EPA’s Guide to Planning and Conducting Environmentally Aware Meetings and Events

~ Sarah H

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Here Comes the Bride, All Dressed in White….

We all know the song, we all know the tune, and everyone of us women has a memory of sashaying in a princess gown and plastic heels with hot pink lipstick smeared from our nose to the bottom of our chin as we acted out our pretend marriages. (Don’t worry, I still do it, too.)

Wedding rings, the traditional gold band with the glitzy diamond rock on top, have also been part of the fantasy. In reality, most of us are aware of the environmental and social implications of diamond mining - but have you ever stopped and thought about the band, too?

Gold mining, as with most types of nonrenewable resource extractions, has disastrous environmental side-effects. A mammoth cube the length of an average six-foot human, the width of that same person across, and the depth of that person’s giant 10-feet brother yields enough gold for a single measly pair of wedding bands. To even get that much gold out, the rock is doused with a cyanide spray to loosen the gold flakes- since when did rat poison become romantic?

Yanacocha, Peru (world’s largest gold mine); indymedia.org

I spent the past week in El Salvador, and one of the most urgent environmental calls to action has been against new gold mines. “Don’t drink the water”, is the mantra to any traveler heading south of the U.S. border, but most of the people living in Central America have no alternative. The addition of more mines will only add to the high rates of birth defects and sicknesses caused by the contaminated water - can you imagine if your only source of drinking water was laced with toxic levels of cyanide? Local communities and solidarity groups, like the Sister Cities program I traveled with, are fighting against the mines - but we all know it will prove an uphill battle.

Since we live in the United States, we don’t have to all fly to El Salvador to make our opposition to gold mining known - we have strong voices through our consumption choices. (Plus, if you’re like me, you’re not quite ready to give up that fantasy wedding). A lot of “eco-ring” companies (such as this one and this one) claim to offer conflict-free diamonds, recycled gold bands, or other alternative materials - I assume the same two month’s salary price rubric would come into play here. There’s also always the option of an heirloom ring, either from great-grandma and great-grandpa or an antique store.

woodrings; flickr.com

heirloom ring, flickr.com

As citizens in a globalized society, it’s important to remember the effects our choices have on other parts of the world - although nothing says “I Love You” like an open strip mine blown into the side of a mountain.

–Jennifer Kongs