“Spring Cleaning – Trash = Recycling”
It’s a new season: fresh air, new ideas… maybe even the chance to learn new habits like recycling in the midst of your spring cleaning. Spring cleaning is a great opportunity to becoming “anew” as old habits die and new habits come alive.
Src: flickr.com
According to the Environmental Protection Agency, “Americans accumulated 250 million tons of trash in 2008 and recycled or composted only 33% of it”. Successful spring cleaning is achieved when the ”trash” doesn’t contribute to our landfill quotas. Instead, families can contribute to their local communities just by doing a bit of research regarding the proper disposal (recycling) of old clothes, e-waste, and reuse old houseware products such as paper, buttons, jewelry and wood.
While keeping these “green” options in mind, Recology’s focus is on waste elimination through the highest and best use of reclaimed resources. We provide a collection service for bulky items through RecycleMyJunk.com. This service now accepts clothes, furniture, computers, appliances and other large items.
By recycling your items, you are contributing in a positive way to your communities, including nonprofit organizations and thrift stores for people in need.
Let’s RECYCLE the old, BRING in the new!
Changing Waste into Biofuel
Guest blogger, Chris Choate, VP of Sustainability at Recology, leads us through the dynamic world of creating biofuels.
What’s eating my garbage now???
In a January Article “Microbes Produce Fuels Directly from Biomass” author Lynn Yarris of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, reports that “deploying the tools of synthetic biology, U.S. Department of Energy’s Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI) researchers engineered a strain of Escherichia coli (E. coli) bacteria to produce biodiesel fuel and other important chemicals derived from fatty acids.” Scientifically, this is very exciting news!
Recology is driven to find the social, environmental, and economical solution to powering a fleet of vehicles with a fuel produced from the residual resources (waste material) of your trash. We have evaluated, researched and collected knowledge on how-to generate and utilize biomethane from our landfills and anaerobic digesters to power our trucks. We have started integrating biofuels into our fleet fuel sources by converting equipment and utilizing compressed natural gas (CNG), liquefied natural gas (LNG) and B20 biodiesel. Having a biodiesel fuel created by E. coli bacteria from the waste material we collect would absolutely be consistent to our rally cry of Waste Zero.
Recology continues to partner with the City of San Fracisco in their effort to lead the nation in diverting material from landfills. Over 70% of the material diverted is collected through an integrated system of reduction, reuse, recycling and composting. Even with all this activity, over 62% of the current material going to the landfill is degradable and a good source of biomass material. From our research, Recology has found that refuse-derived biomass is a good source of fatty acids. For Recology to deploy the tools of biology is key to achieving the Zero Waste goal.
The City’s Department of Environment created the City’s Zero Waste Plan from over-riding environmental principles that include:
- Reusing materials at a level that is their next best and highest use
- Avoiding high-temperature conversion (incineration)
- Achieving the highest carbon footprint reduction possible
- Employing local and biological processes that mimick nature
Currently a biology process is used, managed, and exploited to stabilize thousands of tons of rotting organic material a year via a process Recology uses and proudly calls composting. To further employ a biological process to produce a biodiesel from the remaining residuals in the city’s waste stream is consistent with these over-riding principles. However, the term synthetic is a concern and would require further evaluation regarding any potential biohazard that could be created by the engineered strain of E.coli. That alone may delay the commercialization of the discovery for a good many years.
Stay tuned! The appetite for something that will eat my garbage is changing fast…
Food Scraps and Yard Debris Compost vs. Biosolids
The city of San Francisco is a dynamic place. On the one hand it’s an international city that attracts dreamers, business people, and techies from around the world. On the other hand, it’s a small community where people know their neighbors, say hello to the grocery store owners, garbage men, and dog walkers.
San Francisco is also a place where experimentation is welcome. Sometimes that experimentation results in positive innovation, and sometimes it ends up on the front page of the San Francisco Examiner. The controversy around the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission‘s decision to comingle biosolids with food and yard debris and give it away to urban gardeners has caused a minor stir. The issues are the use and definition of the word ”organic” in this context, the standards set by the Environmental Protection Agency, and public perception.
What’s in sewage sludge? According to the Australia and New Zealand Biosolids Partnership:
Biosolids are mainly a mix of water and organic materials that are a by-product of the sewage treatment processes. Most wastewater comes from household kitchens, laundries and bathrooms. Biosolids may contain:
- Macronutrients, such as nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium and sulphur and
- Micronutrients, such as copper, zinc, calcium, magnesium, iron, boron, molybdenum and manganese
Biosolids may also contain traces of synthetic organic compounds and metals, including arsenic, cadmium, chromium, lead, mercury, nickel and selenium. These contaminants limit the extent to which biosolids can be used, with all applications regulated by appropriate government authorities in each State and federally. Australia has one of the strictest regulatory regimes for biosolids production and application in the world.
Although sewage sludge or “biosolids” is technically organic (i.e. contains carbon), in the United States the sludge also contains pharmaceuticals that people ingest, and along with everything else, gets flushed down the toilet. Pharmaceuticals are often synthetic chemicals that have been manufactured to diagnose, cure, prevent or delay a disease. They may be persistent chemical compounds that don’t break down or decay during the total 151 days of high-temperature sludge treatment. The “organic” waste may then become a problem in the human food chain if the synthetics are absorbed by plants (such as tomatoes grown in urban gardens) that are then consumed by anyone participating in the “home gardening revolution“.
For many years, Recology has warned against the improper disposal of medicine, and has been very careful in this area. We do not comingle biosolids with the food scraps and yard debris we compost for this reason. Our compost comes from two sources: food scraps generated from restaurants, hotels, markets, and coffee shops in the Bay Area, and from yard trimmings generated north of San Francisco. Closing the loop on compost is a creative process, suitable for an innovative environment like one found in the city of San Francisco. Unfortunately, the SFPUC has taken it a little too far.
Recology Participates in Chinese New Year Parade
On Saturday, February 27, 2010, Recology celebrated the Year of the Tiger by participating in the San Francisco Chinese New Year Parade. The parade is the largest New Year parade of its kind outside of China, as well as the largest night parade in the United States.
The event is an annual favorite of Recology employees and their families. Daisy, a dragon made from recycled materials by artists Dana Albany and Flash Hopkins, headed the Recology contingent that also included two antique garbage trucks and the award winning drill team lead by Ramiro Alvarez. Participating drill team members were Quentin Booker, Ruben Candelario, Tony Falzon, Jaime Gonzalez, Alfredo Guzman, Joe Rattaro, Moises Reynoso, Manuel Vera, Jim Wile, and Luis Zuniga.
Gung Hay Fat Choy!
The green and sustainable landfill?
In December, 2009, BioCycle published an article on the amount of electricity that could be generated from the methane emitted from a Michigan landfill. The author corrected the misperception that there was enough landfill gas emitted from the landfill to generate 300 MW of electricity. 300 MW is a lot of electricity. In reality, the potential was closer to 4.5 MW. Wishful thinking and incomplete information have a lot to do with the public perception that landfills are ”green” and sustainable.
In general there are two hopeful stories out there about “green” landfills:
- The gas emitted from them can be used to generate electricity, and therefore they are green, and
- The long buried materials in their bellies can be harvested at a later time and recycled.
Landfills that are already in use generate methane as the organics that are buried there decompose. The US Environmental Protection Agency has a simple pamphlet explaining the link between climate change, greenhouse gas generation, and waste management. It also explains why recycling reduces the generation of greenhouse gases.
There are three quick points to make regarding the “green” landfill:
- Although landfill gas can be collected and used to generate electricity, the best collection systems still only collect 70% (at most) of the emissions while they are installed. The percent collected is actualy more like 40-50%. The methane generated before installation and after decommission is still emitted into the atmosphere.
- The recyclable material in landfills (glass, metals, plastics, and paper) degrades and shatters or corrodes, reducing the reuse value of the materials and increasing the health hazards to the people tasked with excavating them.
- There is no such thing as a sustainable landfill. The materials that endup burried in a landfill are not returned to society as productive assests. For example, if the gas from a landfill is collected and made into a biofuel, the biofuel can be used as an alternative to gasoline or diesel fuel, but it cannot replenish the soil or be used to raise new crops.
While products and materials continue to be designed without consideration for their full lifecycle (raw materials extraction, manufacturing, transportation, installation, use, reuse, decomission and disposal), and we while continue to be a throw-away society, landfills will have a place. However, as the UK’s Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs posts on their website, “landfills should become the home of last resort for waste.” The US Composting Council, recyclers, and people everywhere understand this, and continue to push to find the best and highest use for landfill-bound materials. It takes a little coordination, a little communication, and minimal effort from consumers.
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