Clipmarks | urbanlife's 'trash' clips

Our Trash Circles the Globe: Combating E-Waste in India

Wed, 18 Jun 2008 18:22:44 GMT

clipped by: urbanlife
clipper's remarks: The fruits of our high-tech revolution are pure poison if these products are improperly disposed of at the end of their useful life.

The electronics industry is on the brink of a paradigm shift with respect to cost avoidance v/s risk avoidance.

Firms such as Eco-Reco are taking advantage of a booming but hazardous industry, where e-waste is usually dismantled by workers with little protection in recycling plants that have even fewer safety and environmental contamination guidelines.

In Mumbai, Eco-Reco will pick up your e-waste and at their plant, the e-waste then goes through a shredder on a conveyor belt, and the components are separated by a metal extractor. Workers then break up the plastic from the metal by hand. The entire system is based on the principles of clean environment and zero landfill.

Clip Source: www.inhabitat.com

Clip Source: www.wired.com

what happens to those old computers once they've been abandoned for newer models?

discarded electronics products, also known as e-waste

Clip Source: www.inhabitat.com

Half a million tons of e-waste is generated annually in India and is a serious threat to people’s health and the environment.

E-waste in India is dismantled and recycled manually in a hazardous, unorganized and unsafe manner.

In India, the e-waste generated from computers, mobiles and other electronic gadgets is usually burned by poorly-protected workers in perilous conditions

This releases harmful toxins like mercury and lead into the atmosphere as serious occupational hazards and threats to the environment.

Clip Source: www.treehugger.com

People are used to giving stuff to the kabadiwalas (scrap dealers) and getting money for it.

Clip Source: www.inhabitat.com

a new service launched in Mumbai could soon change the face of e-waste recycling and disposal in India.

Clip Source: www.treehugger.com

the privately owned and operated Eco Reco

boasting its very own professional e-waste pick-up service

goes door-to-door to pick up discarded electronics

Clip Source: www.greenpeace.org

Clip Source: www.ecoreco.com

Tags: india, e-waste, environment, eco-friendly, hazard, poison

How Does San Francisco Keep 70% of Their Trash Out of Landfills?

Thu, 08 May 2008 21:31:08 GMT

clipped by: urbanlife
clipper's remarks: “When we look at garbage, we don’t see garbage. We see food, paper, metal, glass.” The 70 % diversion rate includes recycling, composting and source reduction (meaning reusing things instead of throwing them out.)

The city has 12 recycling streams, or programs, devoted to different materials, including regular garbage, construction debris, furniture and paint. For example, much of the concrete from demolished buildings is recycled in new sidewalks.

Unwanted paint is blended it in 55-gallon drums: resulting in 3 colors — off-white, beige and green — are packed in 5 gallon tins and sent to local nonprofit organizations, schools or charitable institutions in Mexico.

They can collect scrap paper to re-sell because of low levels of glass contamination. Garbage trucks can compress mixed loads of paper, cans and bottles without breaking the bottles.

Compare 2006 diversion rates: Chicago 55%, New York City 30.6%, Milwaukee 24%, Boston 16% and Houston 2.5%.

Clip Source: www.sfenvironment.org

Clip Source: usinfo.state.gov

Clip Source: www.sfrecycling.com

Clip Source: www.nytimes.com

the city found out a few weeks ago that it was keeping 70 percent of its disposable waste out of local landfills

one of the main reasons the city keeps up the pressure to recycle

The No. 1 export for the West Coast of the United States is scrap paper

Another major innovation in the past decade was the development of infrastructure for turning food wastes

into baggable compost that is used in California’s vineyards and the vast farms of the Central Valley

The garbage from San Francisco’s 750,000 residents is picked up on the pay-as-you-throw principle — the more garbage bins you need, the higher your monthly fee

The city has 12 recycling streams, or programs, devoted to different materials, including regular garbage, construction debris, furniture and paint.

Mayor Gavin Newsom

will soon be sending the city’s Board of Supervisors a proposal that would make the recycling of cans, bottles, paper, yard waste and food scraps mandatory instead of voluntary

we can get to 75 percent

Clip Source: usinfo.state.gov

Tags: trash, environment, recycle, landfills, local government

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch: Also Know As The Trash Vortex

Tue, 08 Apr 2008 18:42:35 GMT

clipped by: urbanlife
clipper's remarks: Sad Picture: No one to blame for this but ourselves. Four fifths of the plastic detritus floating over 2.5 million square miles of ocean surface arrives there from land-based run off: from stormwater, in other words: litter.

Sadly - many people take the "out of sight, out of mind" approach.

Plastic contamination in the world's oceans is worse than previously imagined and no amount of technology can clean it up.

We are damned to a future of pollution by plastic. All succeeding generations will only see an ocean filled with trash.

Net a piece of plastic, and you’ll find barnacles and small crabs clinging to it. Not a good thing for fish, birds, and mammals that mistake it for its natural food, such as eggs, jellyfish, or other sea creatures.

Most of the plastic will eventually photo-degrade into small, dust-like particles to the point that it will be non-detectable to the human eye, but ingestible by sea mammals, birds, and fish—many of which we then consume ourselves.

Clip Source: www.treehugger.com

The carcass of an albatross on the beach; birds and sea mammals mistake plastics for food then inevitably starve to death. This is the bird’s actual gut sample.

Clip Source: www.treehugger.com

the "Great Pacific Garbage Patch," or "trash vortex" - essentially a floating expanse of waste and debris in the Pacific Ocean now covering an area twice the size of the continental U.S. Believed to hold almost 100m tons of flotsam, this vast "plastic soup" stretches 500 nautical miles off the Californian coast, past Hawaii and almost as far as Japan

"trash vortex" aren't just limited to the marine ecosystem

"What goes into the ocean goes into these animals and onto your dinner plate. It's that simple."

Clip Source: www.treehugger.com

It’s everywhere. Multiple paths of Ziploc baggies, bottle caps, balloons, pretzel bags, and other debris lead you to the swirling trash vortex like a trail of bread crumbs

In the most polluted areas, the plastic-to-plankton ratio is 48 to 1. It’s become part of the oceanic landscape

Clip Source: www.treehugger.com

Tags: ocean, plastic, what will happen, litter, trash, dirty, ignorance

7 Eco-Resolutions for 2008: I Will Try To Live Green

Fri, 11 Jan 2008 14:16:27 GMT

clipped by: urbanlife
clipper's remarks: Do you really need berries from Chile?

Don't collect stuff you will never use. If you trash those once-new goodies when you’re no longer interested in them, they will live in a landfill for years and years.

Cut the power to your electronics by plugging them in to a power strip and flipping the switch to off when you’re not watching or listening.

Public transportation use saves 1.4 billion gallons of gasoline each year, and can reduce household expenses by $6,200.

Plastic bags are made from petroleum and only about 1 percent of the estimated 500 billion to 1 trillion Annie Bell plastic bags consumed worldwide are recycled each year. Most end up in landfills (wherethey take perhaps 1000 years to decompose) or in the sea.

By purchasing recycled paper products you’re preventing trees from being chopped down, and paper waste from ending up in landfills. In addition, less energy and water is required to produce a recycled paper product.

Clip Source: www.thedailygreen.com

1. I will relinquish my title of Most Likely to Acquire Useless Crap I Don’t Wear or Need.

It’s time to clean out, and stop the crap collecting.

2. I will avenge my phantom load.

The term refers to the energy wasted by electronics and power chargers when they are plugged in but not in use.

3. I will be smarter than bottled water companies and drink for free what they are trying to sell me.

buy an eco-chic reusable stainless steel bottle, and refill it throughout the day — for free

4. If I can remember to TiVo “Dancing with the Stars,” I can remember to bring my own bags to the grocery store.

5. I will switch to recycled paper products at home (but not if they make me chafe).

6. I will consider whether my meal came from the farm or the factory.

Think of how many miles your food has traveled

how many chemicals are used, and how much pollution and waste have been generated in the production of your foodstuffs

7. I will take a day off from road rage and take mass transit or car-pool one day a week.

Tags: eco-resolution, live better, 2008, new year, environment, global

Eco-Sin Tax? Chicago Fights the 7 Sins of Bottled Water

Mon, 07 Jan 2008 20:03:39 GMT

clipped by: urbanlife
clipper's remarks: Chicago's 5-cent tax on bottled water took effect on Jan. 2, 2008. The tax is expected to bring an extra $10.5 million annually into the city's coffers while encouraging people to drink tap water and eschew the environmentally suspect bottles.

Illinois residents consumed 270 million gallons of bottled water in 2005, making the state the seventh-biggest bottled water consumer in the United States.

The Earth Policy Institute estimates manufacturers use more than 17 million barrels of oil in making polyethylene terephthalate plastic bottles. Only 23 percent of those bottles are is recycled, according to the Container Recycling Institute. The rest are tossed into landfills.

Clip Source: www.thedailygreen.com

Sin taxes have always been the most palatable of fees to voters who hate taxes

Welcome to the era of the eco-sin tax

Chicago is the first major U.S. city to tax bottled water

seven sins of bottled water

are these:

Plastic bottles are made from petroleum

The bottles often go into the trash, rather than the recycle bin (in part because many states don't offer five-cent deposits to encourage recycling, as they do on soda and beer cans and bottles).

water is pumped far from where it is sold, creating needless pollution as trucks and barges transport it across the country

water underground or flowing from natural springs is publicly owned and should not be exploited for profit

Bottled water is rarely as closely monitored as tap water.

Tap water in the United States, when provided by a municipal system, is the most highly monitored and safe supply in the world.

Some of the water sold in little plastic bottles is tap water, but it costs an awful lot more per gallon.

Tags: bottled water, chicago, eco-sin tax

Naples Is Drowning In Garbage...Mozzarella In Danger

Fri, 04 Jan 2008 21:39:22 GMT

clipped by: urbanlife
clipper's remarks: The streets of Naples, Italy are filling up with garbage thanks to the country's mafia. The problem is having a devastating effect on the local cheese industry. One of the biggest, healthiest industries in and around Naples is milk, butter and cheese producing.

Clip Source: marketplace.publicradio.org

this has to do with garbage on the streets of Naples, the birthplace of pizza

The city is filling up with garbage

The mafia owns Naples

it controls the whole city

Northern Italy has been,

literally dumping its garbage in and around Naples,

a big reason for this is that the camorra, which is the Naples mafia, it's been making a lot of money by just accepting garbage from all over the country

now, all of the garbage dumps are full, so there's no place for the garbage to go for local people.

garbage on the street

garbage in ditches, caves, abandoned fields

Any space that people can find to put their garbage.

they've started setting fire to the garbage

they're burning plastic, and it's releasing toxic waste into the air, which of course goes into the water system, which goes into the grass

all of the world's mozzarella cheese comes from around Naples

so there's huge concern in Italy that the mozzarella cheese is toxic now

the European Union is actually suing Italy to try and get the problem under control

Tags: naples, trash, italy, cheese, mafia

Zero-Waste Plan: Austin To Cut Landfill Waste to Zero

Wed, 02 Jan 2008 18:46:29 GMT

clipped by: urbanlife
clipper's remarks: Plan being drafted sets goal of reducing, reusing, recycling and composting all trash by 2040.

Clip Source: www.statesman.com

The City of Austin has launched an effort to try to dramatically reduce garbage and boost reuse and recycling within a generation.

a zero-waste plan: a long-term strategy to reduce to zero the amount of garbage sent to landfills by reusing, recycling and composting materials instead.

focusing not just on recycling but on ways to prevent garbage from getting to landfills in the first place.

to reduce the garbage sent to landfills by 20 percent per capita by 2012

to achieve zero waste — an international standard set by the U.N. Environmental Accord — by 2040.

selling recyclable materials such as paper, aluminum and plastic to businesses to turn into new products.

to recruit more companies to Austin that make use of recycled materials

add a pickup program for composted materials

the city has banned plastic foam takeout containers from restaurants

banned petroleum-based plastic bags

increased its garbage rates to compel residents to produce as little trash as possible

Tags: trash, recycle, reuse, compost, austin