If a football game is not preceded by tailgating, is it really a football game? University of Georgia (UGA) football fans may be left to ponder that philosophical conundrum this fall as they confront a new slate of crackdowns on pre-game revelry. University officials enacted the policies after raucous celebrations before the Sept. 12, 2009 home game left the school’s historic North Campus buried under 70 tons of garbage. According to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, some carefree fans went so far as to urinate on public buildings and defecate on the grounds.
UGA’s North Campus, featuring Greek Revival architecture, wrought-iron fences and well-manicured grounds, is the oldest part of the school, dating to roughly 1801. Under the new rules, tailgating there can begin no earlier than four hours before game time, and tents, kegs, generators and grills are banned. It is expected that tailgating will continue, unabated, elsewhere on campus.
The regulations also fail to set guidelines for fraternity-run games of Beer Pong.
Not counting the garbage many of you actually collect and process as part of your daily work, how much trash would you say you produce on the job? How much of it is actually trash? Burt’s Bees, the natural cosmetics company (now a subsidiary of Clorox), was curious about what their employees were throwing out, so in late 2008 it initiated what was dubbed “Dumpster Day.”
For two weeks, all landfill-bound waste produced at Burt’s Bees’ Raleigh-Durham, N.C., headquarters was saved. The resulting five tons of trash was dumped in the company’s parking lot. Employees outfitted with Hazmat suits sorted through the material, eventually discovering that 2.8 tons of it could be diverted from landfills.
As a result of the hands-on trash audit, Burt’s Bees was able to reduce its waste output by almost 50 percent and realized $25,000 in annual savings. It also led to a broader recycling and composting effort that has helped move the company move closer to its zero waste goal.
Leave it to a cosmetics company to put a pretty face on garbage.
Recently I received an interesting question via e-mail. I wasn’t sure of the answer, so I thought I’d throw it out to all of you. What resources exist for disposing of and possibly recycling large numbers of weathered/worn railroad ties? I know railroad ties are useful in garden construction and landscaping. Are they considered construction and demolition debris? Are they valuable for burning in WTE facilities?
A recent article in the Boston Globe highlights a demoralizing study from the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection that shows the diversion rate in the state largely stalled during the last decade. From 1997 to 2008, the residential recycling rate in Massachusetts hovered between 27 and 28 percent.
The article goes on to say that communities in the state are looking at pay-as-you-throw, single-stream, and continued education campaigns as ways to motivate residents to recycle. Indeed, Boston (13 percent recycling rate) recently conducted a very successful single-stream pilot program. But it’s hard not to be a little dismayed by the statistics. In many Mass. communities, the recycling infrastructure already exists, and it’s not like recycling’s a big mystery at this point.
Do you agree with the article’s general conclusion that it can all be chalked up to apathy?
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.”
So often are valuable things found in the trash, and so often does it end in a lawsuit.
So it went for Casey Ray, a St. Louis hair salon owner who in March 2009 was lucky enough to stumble across discarded but highly valuable scripts for the films “New Moon” (second in the blockbuster “Twilight” vampire series beloved by tween girls and their mothers, released late last year) and “Remember Me” (still unreleased) in the Dumpster behind her business. Ray returned the scripts to production company Summit Entertainment in exchange for tickets to the premieres and after-parties for each film, and autographed copies of the scripts.
After attending the events for “New Moon,” Ray decided to sell the “Remember Me” tickets on eBay. Summit balked and was further angered when Ray then tried to unload the tickets via private sale. They grudgingly agreed that Ray could transfer the tickets, but only if she relinquished the autographed scripts, prompting the inevitable lawsuit from Ray.
There’s a solution here. Perhaps Ray could be hired to tease out the hair of the brooding vampires and werewolves in the imminent third “Twilight” film?
What to do with misbegotten or just plain unwanted art of your own creation? Setting it out by the curb might to send the wrong message to the neighbors about your faith in your own abilities, and burning it seems a touch melodramatic.
So there’s certainly a need for Art Bin, an installation by British artist Michael Landy. Literally a room-sized steel and polycarbonate waste receptacle at the South London Gallery in England, the bin is filled with drawings, paintings, sculptures and other pieces deemed unworthy or simply disposable by their creators. Established artists, amateurs and students from around the world have augmented its contents. According to Landy, the growing pile of creative detritus is, itself, an artistic statement. As he told CBC News, Art Bin mulls “the worth our society gives to things.” Each new submission changes the nature of the piece.
True to the ephemeral spirit of the work, Art Bin will close on March 14 and all of its contents will be shipped to a landfill. Whether the landfill operator has the foresight to repurpose the facility as a gallery and start charging admission remains to be seen.
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.
If a football game is not preceded by tailgating, is it really a football game? University of Georgia (UGA) football fans may be left to ponder that philosophical conundrum this fall as they confront a new slate of crackdowns on pre-game revelry. University officials enacted the policies after raucous celebrations before the Sept. 12, 2009 home game left the school’s historic North Campus buried under 70 tons of garbage. According to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, some carefree fans went so far as to urinate on public buildings and defecate on the grounds.
