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Want to save the oceans? Stop recycling plastic
Want to save the oceans? Stop recycling plastic If you put your plastic in your recycling bin, there’s a decent chance it will end up in the seas off east Asia. If you put it in landfill, it’s going nowhere Plastic in a river in Manila, the Philippines, where a significant amount of Western ‘recycling’ […]
Want to save the oceans? Stop recycling plastic
Want to save the oceans? Stop recycling plastic If you put your plastic in your recycling bin, there’s a decent chance it will end up in the seas off east Asia. If you put it in landfill, it’s going nowhere Plastic in a river in Manila, the Philippines, where a significant amount of Western ‘recycling’ […]
Used Car Battery Problems Take Shine Off China’s ‘Green’ New Energy Vehicles
Workers assemble electric cars in a factory in Zouping, east China’s Shandong Province on Sept. 16, 2014. (AFP/AFP/Getty Images) Used Car Battery Problems Take Shine Off China’s ‘Green’ New Energy Vehicles In the last decade, China has rapidly expanded its “green” new energy vehicle (NEV) industry but recycling and disposing of hundreds of thousands of […]
Plastic, plastic everywhere
Plastic, plastic everywhere When we discard a plastic bag, an electronic device encased in plastic, a plastic pen emptied of its ink or any of the myriad plastic objects which populate our lives, we usually say we are throwing the object “away.” By that we mean into a trash or recycling bin and from there […]
Recycle Crisis Sweeps Across America After China Halts Plastic Waste Imports
Recycle Crisis Sweeps Across America After China Halts Plastic Waste Imports The green movement of the 1970s formed the modern American recycling industry, although there is some concern today that it could be collapsing in many parts of the country, The New York Times warned. “The sooner we accept the economic impracticality of recycling, the sooner […]
“Pollution Panic” Strikes US Cities As Officials Face Consequences of China’s Waste Blockade
“Pollution Panic” Strikes US Cities As Officials Face Consequences of China’s Waste Blockade Beginning in Feb 2017, as part of China’s broader “National Sword” campaign, the largest buyer of recyclables from the US, banned 24 types of solid waste from being imported and placed tougher restrictions on the ones it continues to accept. The move left the recycling industry and […]
Your Recycling Might Be Poisoning Poor Communities
Your Recycling Might Be Poisoning Poor Communities You know the routine, which has become a required liturgical rubric of the American civic religion. You separate your trash: plastics here, glass here, cans here, papers here. Doing so is our little way of showing we care about the environment. Not doing so – let’s just say […]
How Circular is the Circular Economy?
How Circular is the Circular Economy? Illustration: Diego Marmolejo. Introducing the Circular Economy The circular economy has become, for many governments, institutions, companies, and environmental organisations, one of the main components of a plan to lower carbon emissions. In the circular economy, resources would be continually re-used, meaning that there would be no more mining […]
Repurposing Wood
REPURPOSING WOOD Not so long ago, my wife Emma and I bought our property, a place for which we’d been looking for nearly four years. And, in doing so, the enormity of what we were about to undertake sunk in. I’d been gathering up wood in anticipation of us needing to build a home, but […]
The Perils of Plastic Pollution
The Perils of Plastic Pollution Plastics are found in the products we use every day: the toys we give our children, the clothing we wear, the disposable cups we drink from, the automobiles we make, the straws we use, the list goes on. Cheap and easy to make, plastic goods and plastic production have exploded […]
Low Oil Prices Take Their Toll On Recycling Sector
Low Oil Prices Take Their Toll On Recycling Sector “Plastics,” Mr. McGuire tells Ben Braddock in the 1967 film “The Graduate.” He was impressing on the young man the importance of one of the chief branches of the oil industry: Virtually every item available at the time contained plastic, or was packaged in it. So […]
Getting it wrong on recycling
Getting it wrong on recycling Let’s see what those disparaging America’s rate of recycling as “too high” either get completely wrong or fail to understand. You can read recent commentary suggesting that the recycling rate is too high here, here and here. The number one complaint is that it costs more to recycle some categories of waste than to […]
6 Useful Ends for Spent Tea and Coffee
6 Useful Ends for Spent Tea and Coffee Coffee is just divine. I’ve woken up other ways and have even taken to drinking a glass of water first thing every morning, before coffee happens, but nothing makes the world feel so right as the sun coming up over a steaming mug, even in—especially in—the muggy […]
Canadians piling up more garbage than ever before as disposables rule
Canadians piling up more garbage than ever before as disposables rule There’s a high price to pay for our love affair with products of convenience We like to think we’re behaving like model citizens, hauling our recycling to the curb and composting our banana peels. But the sad truth is, Canadians are piling up more household garbage […]
The circular economy’s missing ingredient: Local
The circular economy’s missing ingredient: Local Courtesy ofMari Viramontes The Chicago flag, made from wood salvaged at The Plant. One Saturday in early June, a group of people gathered behind an old meatpacking plant on Chicago’s South Side, armed with shovels and handmade compost sifters. In teams of three, the group began sifting a huge […]
