A recent story in the Las Vegas Sun reveals that the Las Vegas Convention Center and Cashman Center recycled more than half of the waste material collected at those facilities in 2009. That gives the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority (LVCVA), which operates both facilities, one of the highest diversion rates among U.S. meeting facilities operators.

From the article:

[Taryle Spain, director of client services for the LVCVA and leader of its “green team”] said overall, the LVCVA recovered 2,665.9 tons of materials of 4,070.7 tons processed for a recovery rate of 66 percent. That percentage is well ahead of most of the city’s convention rivals and just ahead of the Orlando convention center’s reported recycling rate of 65 percent.

Waste Age is well acquainted with the Las Vegas Convention Center, as it seems like WasteExpo is held there every other year (but not this year). While I have not spied any separate recycling receptacles during those shows, it’s likely most of the material is being separated post collection.

Okay, maybe it’s not an Oscar, but New Jersey’s Union County Utilities Authority (UCUA) was recently honored with a Silver MERCURY Award in the Public Awareness Video category for its educational video, “It’s Not Waste If It’s Energy.”

The slick video, viewable below, sings the praises of waste to energy (WTE) in general and the Union County, N.J. WTE plant in particular, highlighting the benefits of the technology and its status as a renewable resource.

The MERCURY Awards, established in 1987 by MerCOMM Inc., recognize outstanding achievements in professional communications. Winners were chosen from 290+ categories and classifications, honoring “creativity, determination, functionality, originality, and smart thinking.”

Last weekend, several Home Depot stores in our area were accepting old oil and latex paint for recycling. My wife and I took them up on their offer (yes, that’s me at right), since we’ve accumulated quite a bit of unwanted paint — mostly a trunk-load of quart-sized samples, indicative of our indecision in choosing final colors for our home. The collected paint will be separated by type (oil or latex) and then mixed into two or three hues (usually “warm” and “cool”) and donated to bedeck low-income housing, government buildings, etc.

Waste Age has covered paint recycling before and I even saw Mike Rowe do it on “Dirty Jobs,” but it still seems like an extremely rare phenomenon. Prior to this event, whenever we inquired with our local waste handler about the best way to dispose of paint, we were told to either leave the lid off and let it dry out, or absorb it with kitty litter, both ending with a trip to the landfill. That was unacceptable to us, so in the basement it sat until a better option came along.

Do you have regular access to paint recycling where you live? If you are a waste handler, does your company offer such a service?

Are you watching the XXI Winter Games in Vancouver? I am a huge Olympics junkie. Ever since volunteering during the Centennial Olympics in Atlanta back in 1996, I’ve loved the Games (both winter and summer varieties) and pretty much devote two weeks of my life biannually to watching them. After consuming four hours of coverage nightly for the last week, the only things more heavily glazed than the short track speed skating rink are my eyeballs.

I was fascinated to discover that all of the medals being awarded in Vancouver include gold, silver and bronze (actually copper, since little or no bronze is used in electronics) reclaimed from computer motherboards. It’s the first time Olympic and Paralympic medals have contained e-waste. The short film below, produced by Dell Computer’s blog Motherboard, shows how the medals were created and the thought process behind them.

Know any environmentally-minded kids or teens? They might be eligible for recognition. Action For Nature, a San-Francisco-based non-profit, is currently soliciting nominations for its 2010 International Young Eco-Hero Awards, which it says “honor youth ages 8 to 16 for their outstanding accomplishments in environmental advocacy, environmental health, research and protection of the natural world.”

Honorees receive up to $500 cash, an award certificate and tantalizing “other forms of recognition,” which I’m hoping equates to a personalized bobble-head doll.

The application deadline is Feb. 28, 2010. Guidelines and applications are available at http://www.actionfornature.org/eco-hero/ecoheroawards.html

This week, recycling consultant Earth911.com released its 2009 Annual Recycling Report, which shows, perhaps unsurprisingly, that electronics generated the most recycling queries on the site.

“Electronics have always been popular searches on Earth911.com, but with the increased attention these devices have received, this past year was our highest yet,” said Corey Lambrecht, president of Earth911, in a press release. “Also, overall recycling searches increased 12 percent over 2008, as consumers want to know more about how to dispose of these items.”

The top 10 products consumers looked to recycle in 2009 using Earth911’s database were:

1. Computers

2. Batteries

3. Televisions

4. Paint

5. Aluminum cans

6. Used motor oil

7. CFLs

8. Glass

9. Fluorescent lamps

10. Christmas Trees

A .PDF of the full report can be obtained at here.

While some couples planning their wedding seem determined to put themselves in debt, a couple in Spokane, Wash. is attempting to pay for their ceremony by recycling aluminum cans. Andrea Parrish and Peter Geyer have set a goal of collecting 400,000 cans, or 5 tons of aluminum, worth roughly $3,800. At one point, the couple had 18,000 cans filling their living room.

Parrish and Geyer set up a Web site, weddingcans.com, to solicit cans and to track their progress. As of the time of this writing, the site shows the couple at 82 percent of their goal (helped, no doubt, by a flurry of press coverage last month), making it highly likely they will reach 400,000 in time for their July wedding date. At the end of January, they announced that they would continue to collect cans beyond their initial goal, donating the resulting proceeds to charity.

They’ll probably also want to set a few aside for the best man to tie to their car’s bumper.

Source: NPR

Congratulations to the Fort Bliss (Texas) Recycling Program, which recently received a first place award for Waste Reduction (Government Category) from Keep America Beautiful. Fort Bliss, the first U.S. Army installation to offer single-stream recycling, was profiled in the June issue of Waste Age. You can read the article here.

Atlanta’s Fernbank Museum has found a great way to encourage e-waste recycling. According to TreeHugger, from Jan. 15-24, the museum is offering free tickets for the IMAX documentary “Wild Ocean” to people who turn in an old cell phone for recycling. Given the film’s eco-friendly message, the offer is probably preaching to the choir, but it’s a good idea nonetheless.

What are some similar, simple ways we can get people to recycle key items they might otherwise toss in the trash?

Residents of Ghent, Belgium use an advanced radio-tag- (RFID) based pay-as-you-throw data collection system that purports to measure the city’s waste stream down to the pound. According to a post on Greenopolis, trash and organic waste carts fitted with special RFID tags, or “IntelliGhent” chips, make it possible to track each emptying of the bins. A device on collection vehicles reads customer data (name, address, type and size of container) on the chips. That information is then used to generate automatic bills each day. Recyclables go in blue plastic bags printed with specific instructions as to what is and isn’t accepted for recycling.

These and several other forward-thinking moves have helped the city’s diversion rate to skyrocket since 1995. That accomplishment is undercut somewhat by the revelation that the system has had a negligible effect on or possibly increased greenhouse gas emissions.