Turning trash into treasure

Diverting waste is the ultimate act of sustainability

by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

There are abundant resources for any home sustainability project you wish to undertake. All you have to do is learn to look in the right places first! And, these resources are completely free.

There is nothing more sustainable than trying to get the most use out of the embodied energy of any material. That means: if you have got an old cupboard you don’t have a place for anymore, don’t smash it and use it as firewood! Countless gallons of water and petroleum went into turning that wood into a cupboard, so brainstorm other ways to use it in its high-energy state, or give to someone who can use it. In fact I am normally the one who ends up with such an item from others, as I am generally happy to accept such donations, though I have to say that my home is currently a little overflowing with such items.

In “Cradle to Cradle”, the authors talk about how recycling materials often results in “downcycling”– where the subsequent use of the material results in low-grade, un-recyclable products. Since this is the current state of design, recycling is nowhere near “sustainable.” On the other hand, reusing materials and not thinking of them as “waste” leads to a more ecologically-responsible lifestyle.

Don't let me loose on any skip, as dumpsters are called over here, as long as there is place at home, in the garage or the shed. Alas there are times where stuff has to remain there for one or the other reason. The biggest one is that I am not a driver and do not own a motorcar. Thus transportation is a problem at times and other times it is the case, as it is at present, that there is simply no space either in the house, the grange or the shed. The grange is full of bicycles, abandoned and some damaged, to be rebuilt, and the shed is just, well, full. But using found and available materials makes everything in my home all the more specific, original, and creative!

Here are some tips for where you can find just about anything you need.

“Garbage picking” in affluent neighborhoods. This is by far the most successful means of acquiring excellent materials. Simply driving or biking around the streets on trash night (easily determined on the Internet), there are tons – at times literally – of interesting and useful things to be picked up.

The neighborhoods don’t have to be affluent either, but I think you’ll find that the rate of good materials is higher on a house-to-house basis in such neighborhoods. Shame on them for being so wasteful… but good for you and your projects.

Freecycle or the “Free” section on Craigslist. Dozens of furniture items, building materials, and miscellaneous household stuff are being given away right now in your neighborhood on these online forums! For FREE! When was the last time you could get loads of lumber for free? Also, check out the barter and other sections for good deals.

Dumpsters or skips, as they are called in Britain, or Containers in Germany: Ever driven around to the back of a grocery store or a strip mall? There is lots of great stuff there but, and here it comes; in many places going through those is, theoretically and practically, regarded as trespass and theft. So, you have been warned. Check your local ordinances and laws as to this.

Tag sales. Sometimes people just don’t know what goodies they are tossing out.

Free box. Some community projects, especially cooperatives, may offer a free box. Common items include clothing, slightly damaged tools, and miscellaneous small items.

Wholesalers. Occasionally you will find large, unusual items from food distributors, retailers, supply stores, etc. This includes 55-gallon drums. And don’t forget…

The Junkyard! Want to build a wind turbine for home use? It’s a pretty simple procedure… and it requires a car alternator. Get one for a couple bucks at a junk yard!

Well, I think you are getting the idea.

I am lucky, in a way, that I often find useful items thrown away by people in my day job. I love litter bins... and on top of that there is what people “fly tip”.

While, officially, I hate fly tippers, and that is true, there are times when the stuff is rather useful, such as a bow saw – perfectly usable still though may need a new blade – dumped by some tree surgeons that fly tipped a load of branches in the park.

I could start a very long list here of stuff people throw into bins, or not, as the case may be, and also lose and never bother to cone back for but that would be way too long and, I should think, boring. Suffice to say I won't have to buy a woolly hat for years.

© 2011

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Landfills nearly at capacity

by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

According to the ONS (Office of National Statistics) we have less than 7 years landfill capacity left in the UK. The fact is that some areas have no capacity left, SE England only 3 years or so capacity left.

This information was distributed by Tweeter @earthexchange (Alex Albon) from Cheshire, UK, and I would not doubt this one bit.

In fact, in my personal opinion, I am surprised that, as a nation, we still, basically, have 7 years left. Holes in the ground are hard to come by and we must make a serious change in our habits and behavior. Exporting our waste, as we do already to some extend cannot be allowed to be the option.

In the Unites States some areas, such as New York State and New York City, and some states further south even, have run out of ground space and are shipping – yes, you read right – their waste all the way into Canada, to places in Ontario and Quebec.

This is madness in the extreme and only a serious change in people's attitude, and that of industry, will make inroads here.

A serious reduction in waste is what is needed and that starts at the manufacturer and retail store. Personally I cannot see what, for instance, the replacement brushed for a Braun electric tooth brush come in their own individual packages which are then in a huge blister package that is very hard to recycle to boot. And this is but one example of the total packaging madness.

It is, predominately, packaging what fills up the landfill sites in this country and elsewhere and it is packaging that we must reduce. Eliminating is not possible, that I know, but reducing must be and is.

And this is also the place were reuse of bottles and glass jars comes in and it is reuse not just by consumers who upcycle the stuff into something else but a reuse by the manufacturer taking the bottles and jars back to be refilled. It has been done with bottles always until the disposable came about in the 1970s though it has not, as yet, been done with glass produce jars, but it could and can.

There are but a number of opening sizes and lid types for all glass jars on the market worldwide and therefore it is not rocket science to take them back and refill and reuse them. It makes sense in more than one way too for it saves costs for the manufacturer of the produce as well.

Time we began starving the landfill in a rather serious way.

© 2011

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Re-manufacturing has role in the war on waste

by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

Squeezed in somewhere between reuse and recycling, re-manufacturing sits most uncomfortably in the standard waste hierarchy.

The process, however, which essentially boils down to reusing the parts of a product which weather well and replacing those that wear out faster, can trace its roots back centuries to when repairing - rather than replacing - was the norm. And it was the norm until not all that long ago. So where did we go wrong?

Reworking too, falls, to some degree into this category, making things, such, as an example, usable knives from old knives – a trade that has been practiced by some Romani clans for generations, for instance. Other rework is possible with other things when those may not, in fact, be the same article and use but still.

Though the drivers behind the process were originally purely economic - it's cheaper to re-manufacture than build from scratch - the idea has a major environmental role to play in both cutting carbon emissions and reducing waste.

The UK re-manufacturing industry, according to its advocates, employs more than 50,000 people and contributes in the region of five billion Pound Sterling to the national economy, covering everything from printer cartridges to rugged industrial machinery.

The re-manufacturing sector has, nevertheless and unfortunately, been nigh on invisible, despite being on a par with the entire UK recycling industry.

One of the main hurdles today, however, is persuading both consumers and industry that re-manufactured products really are as good as new while clearing up confusion over what exactly the term means.

When it comes to repair, as mentioned above, though, the problem is that today we do live in a throw-away society where it is cheaper, I am afraid to say, to by new than to repair. It makes no sense when an ink jet printer costs less than £30 to buy and when it went wrong – and I am speaking from experience – after six month because of the high volume of print that was put through it (so Epson informed me) it would have cost 4x as much to repair it than what if cost to buy in the first place. Reply from company representative was “well, then you better buy a new one then and dump the old one.” This should not be thus, however, if we are serious about the environment and all that.

Ben Walsh, technical consultant at the government-sponsored Centre for Re-manufacturing and Reuse, acknowledged the problem in that he said that this is one of the big obstacles that they have as there is an issue that second hand is perceived by the consumers as second best.

The website of the Centre for Re-manufacturing and Reuse, www.remanufacturing.org.uk, explains what re-manufacturing is, who is doing it and with what products. It also provides a wealth of advice for businesses wanting to save money while at the same time helping the environment.

© M Smith (Veshengro), August 2008
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London Borough of Brent prepares for mandatory recycling

by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

Residents in the London Borough of Brent are gearing up and preparing themselves for the introduction of compulsory recycling next month.

From the 4th of August, those residents of the Borough who live in houses or houses converted into flats will have to recycle or will face a fine of up to £1,000 (US$2,000).

Brent Council is introducing those new regulations in a bid to increase its recycling rate and avoid rising landfill costs. The former is, obviously, in order to meet targets imposed from central government, the latter to save money.

Its landfill bill is set to be around £7m this year, but council chiefs predict it could increase to as much as £10m by 2011 if it continues to collect the same amount of waste.

While we all agree, I am sure, that recycling is the way to go, aside from the first step and that is reduction of waste for starters and also reuse, running about slapping fines on those that do not recycle (enough) is certainly not the answer. It would appear to me that this yet another way of taxing people and getting more money for the coffers of the councils.

A huge publicity campaign has been underway to alert local people to the change and hundreds of households have ordered recycling boxes from the council.

Council leader Cllr Paul Lorber said: "I want to say thank you to everyone who is already recycling. If you aren't, you should get involved to avoid a fine.

"We all have to recycle more or the cost will be passed onto local people. And recycling will help us preserve the planet for future generations.

"Two-thirds of what people throw away can be recycled, and it's easy to do using the green box scheme, so compulsory recycling should help us make a substantial improvement.

"The early signs are good - more and more people are getting involved. Let's work together to make Brent one of the best recycling boroughs in Britain."

This is despite the fact that Brent council is part Liberal-Democrats and part Tories and that the Tory party only the other day called for financial incentives for recycling rather than fines and was accusing central government of that. Here it is it's own party members in this councils that seem to follow a completely different line. Obviously, sound and text bites for the media are something different to reality, whether Tory, Labor or Lib-Dem. What's new? It would appear that the Tory leadership are either not in tune with its councillors and others or that the Shadow Cabinet members are but out to get publicity while the truth remains different.

If you aren't recycling already, you should get involved to avoid a fine, say the leader of the Council to his residents. In other word, a threat. Get a recycling box and recycle or get fined.

What the result of this will be is like elsewhere where such schemes have been introduced and that is the increase in fly tipping, especially in alleyways and in parks, open spaces and derelict land. Brilliant idea – NOT!

© M Smith (Veshengro), July 2008

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The fourth “R” of waste management

by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

Most people, if not indeed all, by now will be familiar with the commonly quoted three “Rs” of waste management, that is to say “reduce, reuse and recycle”.

However, I think that somewhere there must be added a fourth “R”, namely the “R” of “Rethink”.

We must urgently rethink the waste, amount and type that we produce and we also must rethink our approach to and the way that we use, reuse and recycle it.

Reducing the waste we produce is probably the most important step in waste reduction and -management and this applies, basically, to all waste.

The biggest proportion of all of out waste that we generate, from households and elsewhere, is packaging that has no other use and either has to be recycled – if possible and often it is not – or needs to be deposited in landfill or burned in incineration.

The field of packaging is where Rethink must be applied to start with, and this will have to be on at least two levels.

Level one is to actually rethink packaging (and the need for it) all together and to consider how much packaging is actually needed.

I cannot, for the life of me, see the reason for electric toothbrush replacement heads for a Braun electric toothbrush that are already each individually “wrapped” in their own little blister to then having to be encapsulated in yet another big solid blister pack. I also know that this example given here for Braun toothbrushes is but one example of such bad practice and over packaging.

Then there are the supermarkets with their pre-packed vegetables on those dreaded Styrofoam trays and similar packs and wraps.

No one seems to have died, not to my knowledge at least, from ever purchasing goods loose from grocers, as used to be the case with grocers only a few decades ago. You brought your own packaging, that is to say, your own bags, your own jars and your own small milk churn and such along, where your purchases were decanted into or you bought loose dry goods and those were put loose, like sugar, pulses, rice, etc., into strong Kraft paper bags and those bags were often used again at least once after taking the dry produce home in them and that was more often than not as lunch bags for kids going to school and such.

The jars that you took to the store to be filled and the other containers you washed after you emptied the contents or finished the contents and then you took them back for refilling.

Nowadays to buy loose goods, such as rice, beans, peas and such, and even ordinary vegetables in a store is nigh on to completely impossible and do not even try to buy loose sugar, loose salt, loose flour; no chance in that department whatsoever.

If I go and buy a freshly made sandwich – not that that happens often – at a sandwich bar why, pray, do they insist on sticking it into one of those triangular plastic boxes? Why not put it into a good ol' kraft paper bag with a napkin, as it used to be? Rethink time, methinks.

Where, for hygienic reasons or reasons of protection from knocks, tamper, etc. packaging is unavoidable we must apply the Rethink process here to designing, and I have said this before more than once, I am sure, packaging in such a way that it, immediately, has a second and even third life after the first – already designed in.

Packaging could be designed in such a way that it has instructions printed on it (on the indiside) that would show people what second use is intended for the box or such.

Such kind of re-purposing has been designed into packages before, such as the box of a media center that becomes, with a few moves, a shelf unit upon which the center sits, with room beneath for all the paraphernalia, such as CDs, Videos, etc.

Cardboard, though the above mentioned was not just simple cardboard, can, in fact, be very strong indeed, as long as it does not get exposed to rain and such like.

The next biggest item of waste is paper and especially here from factories, offices and educational establishments. The offices of the governments probably churn out the greatest amount of waste paper, but other organizations and companies are not far behind.

Much of the waste generated here should not need to have all that much thinking applied during the Rethink process, as the solutions are often very simple. Paper often is used – that is to say, printed or written upon – on one side only and is then tossed straightaway into the waste that goes to landfill or, if lucky, the paper recycling plant. Why? If the back is clean then use it for scrap paper, turn it through in-house printing, and with computers there is no excuse in not doing it, into notepads, telephone message pads, and other such things. No excuse not to do. Just Rethink required.

As far as food waste is concerned, with the fact that not only it being expensive but there being many, even in our developed world, that go hungry, there should not be any and we should and must Rethink our use of food and how we purchase and also and especially as to reusing leftover food the next day. For many this may mean actually to learn to cook rather than to rely on ping meals.

In order to reuse food leftovers one must have a little – more than a little at times – ideas of how to create meals from scratch. It can be done, believe me. All those of a slightly older generation will be able to agree with me there, I am sure, that their parents did exactly that; use leftovers from the Sunday roast, for instance, with which to create the dinner for the Monday after. Now, with refrigeration and even freezers this is even easier. The problem today only is that a great majority of people are unable to cook meals from scratch. They cannot even use tinned foods to make things with, let alone working with “raw” foods.

When I was growing up, being of a Romany family, we often did not know where the next meal would come from and it often depended on what could be garnered, hunted or found it other ways. We also knew what was edible and good to eat from the hedgerows and other wild and semi-wild places.

The latter may also stay some people in good stead should food get more expensive than it is already.

Already because of the fact that food prices are rising we should make every bit of food go as far as possible.

While we want to no waste food, I do, like all of us, that there will always be some waste, and not just peelings and tops and tails cut off from vegetables. There will always be something that goes off without us wishing this to happen. Any such waste, peelings and gone off food, should then, however, not be thrown into landfill but should be recycled by composting.

Reuse and Recycling

When we now finally come to reuse and recycling the Rethink process also must be applied here.

Reuse
Too many people don't seem to know what to do with the glass jars, plastic boxes and other packaging materials that come their way.

Having seen the lack of ingenuity in people and the only thing that they can think of is to put it into the recycle bin of the appropriate grade, e.g. glass to glass and plastics to plastics, I think that some could not only do with a period of thinking the Rethink but with some ideas and such being sent their way. This may happen at some state in this here magazine and/or as a PDF publication.

Reuse is not only possible without or with some little adaptations here and there with the glass jar and the plastic container but even including some packaging materials, such as cardboard boxes of various types. The use of the old shoebox for the storing of photos and such is an old one, I know. However, there are many other ways of making use of various size boxes that come one's way, in the home and in the office.

Recycling
On recycling there also needs a Rethink process to be employed so as to get some community involvement in small scale recycling – practical recycling – projects where this or that type of waste, or a number of different kinds, are being recycled by hand and such into new items for sale. Example could be the likes of Trashe Bolsas in the Philippines that make tote bags and others from old advertising tarps.

With the right approach and the right Rethink I am sure that there will be many projects that can be created that could bring money to poor people and to those that would like an independent life, away from factory floor or cube farm.

Such recycling could and should be done by small crafts people and crafts co-operatives, the latter that specifically specialize in recycling.

While there is a place for the large-scale commercial recycling there is a much greater place for community livelihood projects based on recycling things and materials into items for sale on markets and elsewhere. Direct practical recycling should be promoted and given priority over the other kind, as the former uses much less resources than the latter and as, generally, done locally also has a much smaller environmental footprint as far as mileage is concerned.

Now, let's start this Rethink process and add this as a fourth “R” to the already existing “Three Rs” of waste management.

© M Smith (Veshengro), July 2008

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