Though she couldn’t explain quite how it happened, Jewel Matthew of Brooklyn, N.Y., fell down her apartment building’s garbage chute. And thanks to her 200-pound girth, she wedged there. Good thing too, considering she lived on the building’s 15th floor, and while a fifteen-floor fall might be fine for bags of garbage, it’s not recommended for the people heaving them.
Firefighters immediately cut power to the automatic trash compactor at the bottom of the chute. They were still puzzling over how to extricate the 36-year-old Matthew when she unexpectedly dropped from the 15th floor to the 14th. She was rescued when firefighters were able to cut into the chute from below and pull her out.
The Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a floating raft of plastic trash the size of Texas in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, seems an insurmountable problem. But appliance manufacturer Electrolux has decided that when life hands you plastic, make vacuum cleaners.
Under a program called “Vac From the Sea,” the company will harvest plastic from the patch and other marine environments and use it to manufacture vacuum cleaners and other devices. It is largely a symbolic gesture, since plastic of so many disparate types is expensive and impractical to separate, clean and recycle. But Electrolux says it hopes the program will raise awareness of the threat plastic waste poses to the ecosystem.
Sadly, the company can’t manufacture a vacuum big enough to clean the world’s oceans of human waste once and for all.
Among the myriad reasons for concern as cleanup crews confront the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, add this one: untreated oil-soaked debris and liquid waste are winding up at landfills. While BP officials quoted in the New York Times report insist that flammable elements and carcinogens like benzene are inert by the time the material is landfilled, others quoted in the piece say there is still plenty of reason for concern.
As an example of what is going to landfills, the piece details the material collected at Fourchon Beach in Port Fourchon, La.:
About 35,000 bags — or 250 tons — of oily trash have been carted away from this beach, said Lt. Patrick Hanley of the Coast Guard, who is stationed at Port Fourchon. And as of Monday, more than 175,000 gallons of liquid waste — a combination of oil and water — had been sent to landfills, as had 11,276 cubic yards of solid waste, said Petty Officer Gail Dale, also of the Coast Guard, who works with at the command center in Houma.
Given the dissembling, half-truths and ineptitude that have marked BP’s handling of the oil spill thus far, it is easy to be skeptical when the company claims we have nothing to fear from the tons of oily waste it is burying. What’s your take? Is your company involved in the cleanup? What have you observed?
We’ve reported on freegansism before. Haling from all walks of life, freegans are united by their shunning of money and consumptive lifestyles in favor of bartering and scavenging what they need from nature and especially trash. So it was fascinating to read this week’s New York Times feature about a group of freegans in Buffalo, N.Y., who have gone so far as to “recycle” a few of that economically hard-hit city’s abandoned houses. Some might see this as glorified squatting, and it is, but the scene described in the piece differs greatly from the images of flop houses and drug dens squatting usually elicits. The freegans have elaborate rules for who can live in the house, for how long, and what they must contribute in terms of fixing up the property. Many use the houses as a way to learn valuable skills and get back on their feet. And it’s hard not to root for them given the alternative: homes — many of them historic — sitting empty until they decay into ruins.
But rarely do you see new homeowners most excited about a property due to its proximity to a well-stocked Dumpster.
Millions of people in the United States and around the world cannot afford the barest of necessities, including shoes and clothes. So it is more than a little infuriating to read stories like this one in the New York Times about corporations intentionally sending unworn clothing, shoes, and other textiles they cannot sell to landfills. It’s especially inexcusable given the slew of organizations that will accept these items and get them to the folks that need them. Waste Age hasreported on a few.
At a time when landfill space is at a premium, it is in the waste industry’s interest to help curb this wasteful, shortsighted practice.
While Disney/Pixar’s “Toy Story 3″ doesn’t hit theaters until June 18th, it’s reasonable to assume that a garbage truck will play a role in the plot. We can deduce this because, according to The Press Democrat, the studio approached Santa Rosa, Calif.-based North Bay Corp. about recording sounds made by the hauler’s collection vehicles for use in the film. The company obliged, sending four different trucks to Skywalker Sound where they were recorded while performing various tasks and made a MRF available for additional recording. In return, North Bay reportedly requested that Pixar depict the garbage truck in the film swathed in the company’s green and white paint job with red and white reflective tape. Looking at the tie-in merchandising, it would appear that request was fulfilled.
In about two weeks, the eyes of the globe will turn toward South Africa as the 2010 FIFA World Cup commences. As the players from many nations enter the pitch, they will be scoring points not only for their teams but for the viability of recycling. According to Greenopolis (reporting on a story from Ecoterre) all national teams outfitted by Nike will sport jerseys made from recycled plastic bottles culled from landfills in Taiwan and Japan.
From Ecoterre:
Each shirt comprises up to eight recycled plastic bottles, a move that reduces energy consumption by up to 30 percent compared with manufacturing virgin polyester. Besides saving raw materials, Nike also diverted nearly 13 million plastic bottles (or nearly 560,000 pounds of polyester waste) from the landfill—enough to cover more than 29 football pitches.
Waste Age has reported on recycled athletic wear before. Given the importance of new markets for recycled material to the success of recycling, do you feel athletic wear made from recycled plastic is a compelling new sector or just a gimmick?
It is a well-known fact that you can make anything more endearing by endowing it with the ability to sing. It’s true for frogs. It’s true for raisins. And it’s apparently true for waste receptacles.
In a public service campaign adopted by municipalities around the country (most recently by Jackson Township, N.J.), young recycling bin Mikey is mentored by his older, wiser cohort, Herb, a trash bin. The spots, developed by Artisan Media Studios, a San Diego-based marketing and media firm, often result in one or both of the containers breaking out into song, such as a rendition of the Beach Boys’ “Sloop John B” with recycling-centered lyrics.
The spots work on two levels: Either you find them delightful and are compelled to recycle, or you want to shove recyclables into the bins’ mouths to shut them up.
Perhaps taking a cue from The Heap, which regularlyreports on precious items inadvertently thrown away and miraculously recovered, San Bernadino County, Calif., is thinking about getting into the trash sleuthing business. Under the proposed plan, customers who lose items in the trash could call the county’s public works department, which would identify the truck servicing that area and pull it aside when it reaches the landfill. Then customers would be charged $25 for every 15 minutes workers spend searching the load for the item.
The value of this service as a revenue stream is debatable. But its potential as a game show is undeniable.
As the BP oil spill continues to spread across the Gulf of Mexico, many frustrated onlookers are looking for some way — any way — to help. Much ink has been spilled over the donation of pet hair and human hair to sop up the mess. I received a similar proposal from New York-based consultant Albert Wilking via e-mail last week, wondering if old newsprint and other recycled paper might be repurposed to absorb the oncoming oil:
To Whom it May Concern:
I’m sending this email out to governmental authorities and to paper recyclers.
The question I have is would dumping massive amounts of our paper by products along the gulf shore lines allow the oil to be absorbed and thus prevent it being absorbed into the marshes.
We have at our disposal huge amounts of recycled paper being collected by our existing recycling companies. Would it benefit us to send barges, trucks and trains to the gulf with this paper to dump along the gulf states coastlines?
The possible benefits of creating even more of a mess with the paper is that:
The paper will absorb the oil to some extent.
Oil will be prevented from getting into the very sandy bottom of the marshes where it will be very hard to decompose without sufficient oxygen. If it does get into the sand it may be decades before it biodegrades.
The paper will biodegrade the oil quicker since the paper will encourage bacteria to attack the paper and the oil.
The paper contains oxygen which will be needed to degrade the oil.
Massive amounts of paper will act like natural booms, preventing the oil from being pushed further into marshes.
In shallow water the paper will be easier to collect than in deep water.
He makes some compelling points. Do you think this could be effective or would it just make a bigger mess?
Though she couldn’t explain quite how it happened, Jewel Matthew of Brooklyn, N.Y., fell down her apartment building’s garbage chute. And thanks to her 200-pound girth, she wedged there. Good thing too, considering she lived on the building’s 15th floor, and while a fifteen-floor fall might be fine for bags of garbage, it’s not recommended for the people heaving them.
