In Paris, streets are lined with garbage bags – minus the cans. The clear bags keep garbage (“les déchets”) visible and function as a security measure. Specifically, they are intended to discourage people from depositing dangerous items (e.g., bombs), which could be more easily concealed in a can.
Cleveland is now requiring residents to recycle or pay a fine. The city’s residential bins now feature sensors, which have been installed to monitor whether residents are bringing their bins to the curb for weekly collection. If the bins are not brought to the curb regularly, trash collectors are empowered to begin checking to see [...]
On Friday, an article by Katy Rank Lev of Mother Nature Network highlighted recent environmental achievements by the U.S. Postal Service. These include recycling (220,000 tons in 2009), using electric vehicles, reducing energy consumption, and achieving Cradle-to-Cradle certification for packaging. To read the full article, click here.
A recent New York Times video, “Toxic Waters: From Air to Water Waste,” examines growing concerns about health hazards linked to buried wastes from coal-fired power plants. A number of Ohio landfills accept such wastes, termed coal combustion wastes (CCW), produced by plants such as the AEP Generating Station in Conesville. To watch the NY [...]
According to GreenBiz.com, Sunny Delight’s six manufacturing plants in the U.S. and Spain are now zero waste facilities. The company’s recent steps taken to achieve this goal include going paperless with its accounts payable and expense reporting activities. For more details, click here.
Mayor Michael Coleman discussed plans today for a curbside recycling program, which should begin serving Columbus households in 2012. Coleman’s plan calls for biweekly pick-up of paper, plastics, glass, and metals. More details are available at recyclecolumbus.org.
Early this month, the Hamilton County Solid Waste Management District began offering computer, computer equipment, and television recycling to Hamilton County residents. Residents can now drop off CPUs, hard drives, copiers, computer monitors, scanners, cell phones, televisions, and more to 2trg at 11092 Kenwood Road (Building 7), Blue Ash, Ohio 45242. For more information, click [...]
According to a recent article in the Coshocton Tribune, a planned expansion of the American Electric Power (AEP) Conesville Generating Station landfill has been approved by the Ohio EPA. The solid waste permit-to-install will allow the landfill, located approximately three miles south of Coshocton, to increase its disposal capacity by three to five years. For [...]
Dell is now using bamboo ‘product cushions’ for approximately half of their Inspiron models, along with outer boxes that are 25 percent recycled (post-consumer). The bamboo packaging is compostable and should soon be certified for recycling. Dell is also seeking FSC chain of custody (CoC) certification for the bamboo. For details on the new packaging, [...]
A recent article on the New York Times City Room blog explored the potential for cigarette butt recycling. For example, Chinese scientists have discovered ways to use cigarette butts to develop a solution for protecting steel pipes from corrosion, and in Brazil, designer Alexandra Guerrero has spun cigarette butts with sheep wool to create clothing. [...]