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Category Archives: Recycling
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Emily DeMasi in Inspiring People 1 day ago
Ever wonder what you should be doing with your old computers, cell phones and televisions? Bruce W. Fraser reveals the answer in the September 2010 issue of FA Green. Ask Electronic Recyclers International (ERI), he says, the largest electronics recycler in the United States. Fraser reports that John Shegerian founded ERI “to remedy the problem… Read More…
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Heidi Tolliver-Nigro in Recycling 7 days ago
Recently, I moved into a new municipality that makes recycling part of its trash management program. If you pay for trash removal, recycling comes default as part of the service. Cool. Even more recently, I got it together to figure out how my new municipality handled mixed office waste. I was told that all I… Read More…
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Cindy Tickle in Inspiring Ideas 19 days ago
The city of Montreal has turned its retired mechanical parking meters in to piggy banks or “ParcoDons”. These ParcoDons are designed to collect loose change in order to help the city’s homeless population. The meters were first installed in the downtown borough of Ville-Marie in 2007, and since its inception, the program has raised $23,000… Read More…
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Have you ever wondered what happens to all that waste paper you are encouraged to recycle? As far as most people know, it disappears into a massive, fuel-guzzling monster truck and magically reappears on the shelf of an office superstore nicely wrapped and bar-coded and ready to use again. So what happens in-between? There are… Read More…
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Look around you. How much of what you use on a daily basis comes from the forest products industry? Everything from the office paper you put into your printer to the wood fiber in the RTA furniture in the office is produced by this massive, global industry. Sometimes, the news coming out of this industry… Read More…
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A free webinar explains California’s new mandatory commercial recycling law… will you be in compliance? If you run a business in California, then you are aware of California Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006 (AB32). The act requires California to develop regulations that will reduce greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020. It is… Read More…
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My last post on questioning conventional wisdom on recycled paper generated some terrific comments. After all, when you look more deeply into some of these issues, they aren’t all they are cracked up to be. Is possible that post-consumer waste (PCW) paper isn’t as green as we think it is? The question was worth asking…. Read More…
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I’ve been thinking about postconsumer waste lately (apparently, I have too much time on my hands). What I was wondering was this: Postconsumer waste is only one of three waste streams for unused paper. There is also mill broke (scrap collected at the mill and recycled back into the same type of paper from whence… Read More…
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If you want to “green” your news reading, just go online, right? Ditch that dirty, landfill-clogging paper. Not so fast, argues Sarah Westervelt, environmental expert and activist. In a recent article on The Dead Tree Edition, Westervelt said that she was “too informed about what’s going to happen to my computer when I’m done with… Read More…
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I did something a little nuts today. I have run a small niche publishing business since 2000, and I learned very quickly that when you print books on demand and sell them retail, you either lose nearly all your profit margin by buying packing boxes or you have to charge a lot more than you… Read More…
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It’s the time of year when people are making resolutions to lose weight, better manage their finances, better manage their anger, and myriad other things. Is increasing your commitment to environmental sustainability on that list? As I wrote in my very first post for The Inspired Economist in the fall of 2008, the neat thing… Read More…
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Do you like to play with online tools? I do. I like environmental calculators. It’s fun to plug in a bunch of numbers and see what you come up with. Take environmental calculators offered by paper companies. Want to know how much you can green your print marketing just by making a simple switch? They’ll… Read More…
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Did you notice something different on the back pages of The Order of the Phoenix? If you live in the Canadian market, you might. The fifth book in the Harry Potter series has something unusual on its back pages. It’s an environmental audit. The audit, produced using New Leaf Paper’s Eco Audit Calculator, uses New… Read More…
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Lisa Wojnovich in Conservation 414 days ago
Researchers at the University of York have recently come up with a method of recycling that seems like it fell from the pages of a science fiction novel. They want to turn discarded television screens into components for biomedicine.
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Sometimes we think we have to change governments and corporations in order to see environmental change, but change is just as powerful when it happens one person at a time. And sometimes it’s easier to do. About a month ago, I made two posts about the environmental efforts of SunChips, a snack food company. I… Read More…
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Kelli Peterson in News 427 days ago
The opportunity for San Francisco’s composting effort will be to imaginatively engage us in a herculean effort to educate AND motivate compliance.
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In their ongoing efforts to achieve a more environmentally friendly image, the Coca-Cola Co. announced earlier this month that they will be launching new biobased plastic bottles for their Dasani water line later this year and vitaminwater next year. They’re calling their new packaging the “PlantBottleTM.”
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Reenita Malhotra in Recycling 498 days ago
Growing at an annualized rate of 6.3 percent for the past five years to 2008, Recycling Facilities is one of the few industries in the “green sector” to observe a decline. IBISWorld, an industry research firm tell us that recycling is expected to decline significantly in 2009 – after five years of strong growth.
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Do you need to raise funds for your local school or non-profit organization? Consider Funding Factory’s funding-through-recycling program.
While funding in a down economy is not an easy task for any kind of venture, schools and non-profits seem to bear the brunt of the recession even more than for-profit companies. But as funding gets even tighter, the concept of a green economy is burgeoning. One company, Funding Factory, actually provides by being the first link in supply chain for re-manufacturing.
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Brenda Keener in Recycling 516 days ago
Department store giant Sears is jumping on the green bandwagon by announcing plans to offer “green” clothing in May – suits made from recycled PET bottles with NO petroleum used in the manufacturing process. Made in partnership with the US arm of Japan based Teijin Fibers Limited, each suit will be 54% recycled polyester, 42% wool, and 4% spandex, and will be fully machine washable.
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Inspired green progress continues to be made by Terracycle – the company that first made fertilizer from worm poop and tote bags from food wrappers. The next initiative by this innovative company is to place recycling bins outside Petco and Home Depot, OfficeMax, and BestBuy stores to collect items that were normally not even considered as… Read More…
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Keith Rockmael in Recycling 580 days ago
Ah, the smell of coffee wafting through the evening air. Except this time that aroma doesn’t come from our French press but rather our fireplace. No, we haven’t thrown can of perfectly unacceptable canned, non-fair trade supermarket java into the fire, but rather a firelog partially made from coffee grounds. Sounds rather sustainable, huh? Okay,… Read More…
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A Japanese company has come up with yet another use for old plastic bottles. Earlier this month, Teijin Fibers Ltd. announced that they are now supplying recycled polyester fibers to Toyo Tire & Rubber for use as cords in a new line of automobile tire marketed for use on environmentally conscious passenger cars.
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Most of us have heard the popularly cited statistics that given the choice between two similar products, 83% of consumers will chose those that are “environmentally friendly” and will pay more for them. According to the DoubleClick study, not only are consumers interested in green products and companies, but nearly half are willing to pay… Read More…
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Jeff McIntire-Strasburg in Conservation 659 days ago
Styrofoam (or polystyrene) is nasty stuff: it lasts forever, can leach chemicals (especially when heated), and is really, really difficult to recycle. Wal-Mart Canada is launching an effort to address that last issue by partnering with Grace Canada (a division of W.R. Grace & Co.) to reuse styrofoam waste from packaging in the production of… Read More…
