Tag: recycling

Finally! Experts Give Us Solutions to Those Wasteful Single-Cup Coffee Pods

Posted on by robbie

One in three Americans use them at home or at work. By 2016, they are expected to generate $5 billion a year in sales, according to market research estimates. Without them, you might not even be alert enough to read this.
We’re talking about single-cup coffee pods, the fastest-growing sector of the coffee industry. The caffeine fixes are superconvenient for the bleary-eyed; all you do is pop the top and toss the stump. Just like Elaine.
MORE: Meet the Hippest Barista in Nebraska
But what happens when you toss that hollow pod? It doesn’t decompose like a muffin stump. Those capsules can’t be recycled, so they sit in landfills, piling up to millions of pounds in trash every year. And every year, it’s getting worse.
There’s another problem: No one has a solution — at least, not yet. So we set out to find some. In our cross-country search for coffee lovers and waste haters, here are four suggestions about what can be done to reduce the growth of these mountains of disposable coffee cups.

Darby Hoover

Senior Resource Specialist, Urban Program, Natural Resources Defense Council

“Just make a regular cup of coffee with a reusable coffee filter; wash your filter out and use it later.”
[ph]

Peter Bower

Senior Lecturer in Environmental Science, Barnard College

“I compost the coffee grounds when done and rinse the capsule. … The coffee is fresher and there is no trash at all.”

Valerie Thomas

Anderson Interface Associate Professor of Natural Systems, Georgia Institute of Technology

“When you’re not making coffee, turn the machine entirely off. Unplug it from the wall.”
[ph]

Morton A. Barlaz

Professor and Head of the Department of Civil, Construction, and Environmental Engineering, North Carolina State University

“Why are we just worried about K-cups? Let’s worry about bottled water, carbonated beverages and all the other applications of packaging, and not just pick on one.”
[ph]
MORE: This Commonplace Item Went From Trash to Fashion

This Machine Fights Food Waste

Posted on by robbie

America has a gigantic food waste problem. The EPA estimates that every year, we throw out 36 million tons of grub. That’s not just wasteful, it’s harmful to the environment as well. Food waste from landfills converts into methane, a potent greenhouse gas. But a Washington state supermarket is trying to do its part to alleviate this problem by converting their leftover food into nutrient-rich fertilizers that return to farms.
The Bridle Trails Red Apple in Kirkland uses a nifty, patent-pending machine called the Harvester. Created by Redmond-based startup WISErg, the Harvester turns up to 4,000 pounds of food a day into mulch that goes to a processing plant where it’s converted into a registered, organic fertilizer. The fertilizer has reportedly shown promising results on Washington farms and can be used on home lawns.
The Harvester can solve many problems for grocery stores. Prior to using the machine, the Bridle Trails Red Apple merely tossed food that wasn’t eligible for food banks into the dumpster or compost. Not only did that create an unpleasant smell, it also resulted in expensive disposal fees. Now with the Harvester, there’s no odor, and as Huffington Post notes, the machine uses about the same amount of energy as a home refrigerator. WISErg told HuffPo there are currently three Harvesters in Seattle and there are talks to bring the machine to “several national brands.”
MORE: How Much Food Could Be Rescued if College Dining Halls Saved Their Leftovers?

Got Two Hands and 30 Minutes? You Can Help Clean Up Our World

Posted on by robbie

When it comes to social action, we can accomplish much more together than we ever could alone. That’s the idea behind the Two Hands Project, a worldwide collaborative campaign that seeks to eradicate plastic pollution from the environment, 30 minutes at a time. Two Hands is taking a grassroots approach to cleaning up our world, by asking citizens to complete a simple task: pick up (and ultimately recycle) trash for 30 minutes at a time, anywhere in the world. Originally launched in Australia by Paul Sharp and Silke Stuckenbrock, the Two Hands Project has used successful social media campaigns to inspire people from every continent to get involved and upload pictures of their “hauls” to the organization’s Facebook page, which now boasts more than 40,000 “likes.”
The organization is also working with governments and other industries to promote the development of a global reusable packaging and deposit system to replace disposable packaging — one of the main causes of plastic pollution — and a “cash for butts” program to deal with the overwhelming amount of cigarette butts found in the environment. But they’re not waiting for government intervention to realize their goal of a better world. “The broader idea is, you can take your two hands and apply it to anything in your own community that needs fixing; it can be social, environmental, anything at all,” Sharp says. With more than 7 billion people in the world, just imagine how much we could accomplish if everyone chipped in.
MORE: What Would a City With No Plastic Bags Look Like?

These Women Are Doing Something Amazing With Simple Plastic Bags

Posted on by robbie

Plastic bags are getting banned from cities left and right, but a group of women from Grand Rapids, Mich., are putting these environmental menaces to good use — to help disaster relief in Haiti. As Fox17 reports, the Michigan women regularly meet at their local YMCA to create plastic yarn that they weave into mats that people in Haiti can use to work, sit or sleep on.
MORE: How a Non-Profit Solved One of New York City’s Peskiest Pollution Problems
Haiti is still in recovery four years after a devastating 7.0 magnitude earthquake struck Port-au-Prince. Three million people were affected by the quake and many still do not have a roof over their heads. Every little bit of aid helps, and as group member Judy Major told FOX17, the effort takes zero money — all it takes is time. “The whole idea,” she said, “is to take our man-made resource that we see as waste and turn it into something useful to somebody else to make their lives better.”
RELATED: Utah is on Track to End Homelessness by 2015 with this One Simple Idea

Transforming Urban Planning With Discarded Airplane Parts

Posted on by robbie

When Ball State’s architecture grad students learned that commercial airplanes have around six million parts, they saw six million opportunities to transform urban planning. Professor Harry Eggink created a virtual “playground for an architect’s imagination,” giving his students a chance to use digital diagrams to get creative without worrying about costs. They designed bus stops and apartment complexes from the would-be waste. Next up: disaster shelters, emergency relief huts and much more, all from retired aircraft pieces.

This Company Solves a Bigger Problem Than You Think

Posted on by robbie

Kabira Stokes’ socially conscious company Isidore Electronics Recycling does more than just re-purpose e-waste, the valuable but potentially hazardous metal components in discarded phones and computers. It employs people with criminal records.  Stokes’ motivation to start the company came from a painful personal experience when she realized she had the power to make a difference. After two hundred tons of recycled e-waste and counting, the company is on firm ground to keep helping people stay employed and out of the prison system forever.

The Road to a Better Environment Is Paved with Something Pretty Surprising

Posted on by robbie

Roof shingles have a lifespan. Eventually they start to crack or corrode, and aren’t up to the job of keeping a home dry. In fact, 10 million tons of shingles are ripped off roofs in the U.S. every year and account for almost 5 percent of all landfill material. But twenty states and green-minded contractors are working to turn this roofing waste into something more productive. Asphalt shingles actually make great road material. It’s a win-win when fewer shingles go to landfills, and public roads are cheaper to pave.