Category Archives: Waste Management

Addressing India’s Waste Management Problems

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Out of all the measures that are necessary in addressing India’s impending waste management crisis, the most efficient will be changes at the national policy and planning level. It is well-known among the small but growing waste management sector that urban India will hit rock bottom due to improper waste management.

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Unfortunately, they think such a crisis is required to bring about policy changes, as they generally tend to happen only after the damage has been done. This attitude is unfortunate because it indicates a lack of or failed effort from the sector to change policy, and also the level of India’s planning and preparedness.

An average of 32,000 people will be added to urban India every day, continuously, until 2021. This number is a warning, considering how India’s waste management infrastructure went berserk trying to deal with just 25,000 new urban Indians during the last decade. The scale of urbanization in India and around the world is unprecedented with planetary consequences to Earth’s limited material and energy resources, and its natural balance.

Rate of increase in access to sanitation infrastructure generally lags behind the rate of urbanization by 33% around the world; however, the lack of planning and impromptu piecemeal responses to waste management issues observed in India might indicate a much wider gap. This means urban Indians will have to wait longer than an average urban citizen of our world for access to proper waste management infrastructure.

The clear trend in the outbreak of epidemic and public protests around India is that they are happening in the biggest cities in their respective regions. Kolkata, Bengaluru, Thiruvananthapuram, and Srinagar are capitals of their respective states, and Coimbatore is the second largest city in Tamil Nadu. However, long term national level plans to improve waste management in India do not exist and guidance offered to urban local bodies is meager.

Apart from the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JnNURM), there has been no national level effort required to address the problem. Even though JnNURM was phenomenal in stimulating the industry and local governments, it was not enough to address the scale and extent of the problem. This is because of JnNURM is not a long term waste management financing program, sorts of which are required to tackle issues like solid waste management.

Are Cities Hands-tied or is Change Possible?

In the short term, municipal corporations have their hands tied and will not be able to deliver solutions immediately. They face the task of realizing waste management facilities inside or near cities while none of their citizens want them near their residences. Officials of Hyderabad’s municipal corporation have been conducting interviews with locals for about eight years now for a new landfill site, to no avail.

In spite of the mounting pressure, most corporations will not be able to close the dumpsites that they are currently using. This might not be the good news for which local residents could be waiting, but, it is important that bureaucrats, municipal officials and politicians be clear about it. Residents near Vellalore dump protested and blocked roads leading to the site because Coimbatore municipal officials repeatedly failed to fulfill their promises after every landfill fire incident.

Due to lack of existing alternatives, other than diverting waste fractionally by increasing informal recycling sector’s role, closing existing landfills would mean finding new sites.  Finding new landfills in and around cities is nearly impossible because of the track record of dumpsite operations and maintenance in India and the Not in My Backyard (NIMBY) phenomenon.

However, the corporations can and should take measures to reduce landfill fires and open burning, and control pollution due to leachate and odor and vector nuisance. This will provide much needed relief to adjacent communities and give the corporations time to plan better. While navigating through an issue as sensitive this, it is of the utmost importance that they work closely with the community by increasing clarity and transparency.

Municipal officials at the meeting repeatedly stressed the issue of scarcity of land for waste disposal, which led to overflowing dumpsites and waste treatment facilities receiving more waste than what they were designed for. Most municipal officials are of the sense that a magic solution is right around the corner which will turn all of their city’s waste into electricity or fuel oil or gas, or into recycled products. While such conversion is technologically possible with infinite energy and financial sources, that is not the reality.

Despite their inability to properly manage wastes, the majority of municipal officials consider waste as “wealth” when approached by private partners. Therefore, a significant portion of officials expect royalty from private investments without sharing business risk.

Emerging Trends in Recycling and Waste Management

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Waste management is an inelegant subject to discuss, but a crucial one when thinking about national infrastructure. With a growing population, and a finite volume of resources, cities across the US begin to buckle.

Waste collection and disposal is a small but essential part of a larger societal puzzle, and a vital discussion when sustainability measures are more important than ever before. But change is afoot, as the following emergent trends in recycling and waste management effectively illustrate.

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Zero Waste Programs

Zero waste programs are the bread and butter of contemporary waste management solutions, being agitated for by sustainability activists and local communities and receiving widespread corporate support. Big businesses are increasingly on-board to re-evaluate their business’ waste practices – and to seek ways to bring excess waste down to zero.

More importantly, US cities are getting on board, with municipal waste programs that promote recycling and re-use techniques to citizens and businesses alike.

Technological Advancements

1. Tech-Enabled Waste Receptacles

There are many ways in which technological is having a positive impact on waste management, but some smaller developments are set to have a significant effect on urban waste collections and cleanliness. One specific scheme has seen compactors installed in larger city waste containers, allowing a much larger amount of waste to be stored.

Sensors are used in tandem with new compactor technology to alert waste removal services when an area is ready for collection. This cuts down on fuel costs and logistical issues, through cutting down the number of waste trucks and visits needs to clear an area.

smart waste management

AI-based waste management systems can help in route optimization and waste disposal

2. Domestic 3D Printing

Developments beyond the world of waste management could provide their own unique solutions to domestic waste management, as evidenced by the possibilities created by the 3D printer. 3D printers have become a commercial success at rapid speed, enabling consumers to ‘print’ their own designs and products out of a plastic compound. With the help of firewire cables and basic CAD software, product design has been effectively democratized.

But more innovation is on the way, as the prospect of directly recycling plastics into new products becomes a reality. Waste plastics could be ground up in the home and used to feed 3D printers, in order to create new items and effectively eliminate plastic landfill waste from that household.

Harvesting Energy

Energy harvesting from organic sources is nothing new; water treatment facilities frequently harvest methane from solid waste extracted from sewage supply, for re-sale to the energy industry. But the methods used to harvest energy from organic processes are only getting more efficient.

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The result is a concerted effort to create renewable energy from organic waste sites, through the creation of bioenergy-producing waste disposal locations that receive biodegradable waste to transform into energy.

E-Waste

But, even with real leaps forward in sustainable waste measures and new technological implementations, there are new challenges on the horizon when it comes to waste management. The key challenge relates to the safe disposal of ‘e-waste’, a.k.a. disposed items of electronics – of which there is a steady-growing volume.

Electronic waste items contain dangerous materials, from toxic rare-earth minerals to corrosive substances that toxify the local environment. Recycling efforts are ongoing, but there is no easy way out for recycling circuitry. This illustrates the ongoing need for urgency in the fight against unsustainable waste.

Waste Minimisation – Role of Public, Private and Community Sector

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When it comes to waste minimisation and moving material up the waste hierarchy you will find partisan advocates for the roles of the public, private and community sectors. Each will tell you the reasons why their sector’s approach is the best. The private sector will extol their virtues as the only ones capable of efficiently and effectively doing the job.  They rightly note that they are the providers on the front lines who actually recover the vast majority of material, that the private sector approach drives innovation and efficiency, and that if waste minimisation is to be sustainable this must include economic sustainability.

 

The community sector on the other hand will make a strong case to say that their model, because it commonly encompasses social, environmental, and economic outcomes, is able to leverage value from recovered materials to dig deeper into the waste stream, to optimise recovered material quality, and to maximise employment and local economic benefit.

Before recycling and composting were economically viable prospects, community sector organisations led the way, developing many of the techniques now widely used. They remain the leaders in marginal areas such as furniture reuse, running projects that deliver environmental outcomes while providing wider community benefits such as rehabilitation and training for marginalised groups.

Finally, in the public sector corner, advocates will point out that the profit-driven private sector will only ever recover those materials that are able to generate positive revenues, and so cannot maximise waste minimisation, while social outcomes are strictly a secondary consideration. The community sector, on the other hand, while encompassing non-monetary values and capable of effective action on a local scale, is not set up to deliver these benefits on a larger scale and can sometimes struggle to deliver consistent, professional levels of service.

The public sector can point to government’s role in legislating to promote consistent environmental and social outcomes, while councils are major providers and commissioners of recycling services and instrumental in shaping public perceptions around waste issues. The public sector often leads in directing activity towards non-monetary but otherwise valuable outcomes, and provides the framework and funding for equity of service levels.

So who is right? Each sector has good arguments in its favour, and each has its weaknesses. Does one approach carry the day?  Should we just mix and match according to our personal taste or based on what is convenient?

Perhaps we are asking the wrong question. Maybe the issue is not “which approach is better?” but instead “how might the different models help us get to where we ultimately want to go?”

Smells Like Waste Minimisation

So where do we want to go?  What is the waste minimisation end game?

If we think about things from a zero waste perspective, the ideal is that we should move from linear processes of extraction, processing, consumption and disposal, to cyclical processes that mimic nature and that re-integrate materials into economic and natural systems.  This is the nirvana – where nothing is ‘thrown away’ because everything has a further beneficial use.  In other words what we have is not waste but resources.  Or to put it another way – everything has value.

Assuming that we continue to operate in an essentially capitalist system, value has to be translated into economic terms.  Imagine if every single thing that we now discard was worth enough money to motivate its recovery.  We would throw nothing away: why would we if there was money to be made from it?

So in a zero waste nirvana the private sector and the community sector would take care of recovery almost automatically.  There might evolve a community and private sector mix, with each occupying different niches depending on desired local outcomes. There would be no need for the public sector to intervene to promote waste minimisation.  All it would need to do would be to set some ground rules and monitor the industry to ensure a level playing field and appropriate health and safety.

Sectoral Healing

Returning to reality, we are a long way from that zero waste nirvana.  As things stand, a bunch of materials do have economic value, and are widely recycled. Another layer of materials have marginal value, and the remainder have no value in practical terms (or even a negative value in the case of hazardous wastes).

The suggested shift in perspective is most obvious in terms of how we think about the role of the public sector. To bring us closer to our goal, the public sector needs to intervene in the market to support those materials of marginal value so that they join the group that has genuine value.

Kerbside (or curbside) collection of certain materials, such as glass and lower value plastics, is an example of an activity that is in effect subsidised by public money. These subsidies enable the private sector to achieve environmental outcomes that we deem sufficiently worthwhile to fund.

However, the public sector should not just be plugging a gap in the market (as it largely does now), but be working towards largely doing itself out of a job. If we are to progress towards a cyclical economy, the role of the public sector should not be to subsidise marginal materials in perpetuity, but to progressively move them from marginal to genuinely economic, so that they no longer require support.

At the same time new materials would be progressively targeted and brought through so that the range and quantity requiring disposal constantly shrinks.  This suggests a vital role for the public sector that encompasses research, funding for development of new technologies and processes, and setting appropriate policy and price structures (such as through taxes, levies, or product stewardship programmes).

Similarly, the community sector, because it is able to ‘dig deeper’ into the waste stream, has a unique and ongoing role to play in terms of being able to more effectively address those materials of marginal value as they begin to move up the hierarchy.  The community sector’s unique value is its ability to work at the frontiers.

Meanwhile, the private sector’s resources and creativity will be needed to enable efficient systems to be developed to manage collection, processing and recycling of materials that reach the threshold of economic viability – and to create new, more sustainable products that fit more readily into a waste minimising world.

In the end, then, perhaps the answer is to stop seeing the three models as being in competition. Instead, we should consciously be utilising the unique characteristics of each so that we can evolve our practices towards a future that is more functional and capable of delivering the circular economy that must eventuate if we are to sustain ourselves on this planet.

Note: The article is being republished with the kind permission of our collaborative partner Isonomia. The original article can be viewed at this link

Waste Management in Olive Oil Industry

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The olive oil industry offers valuable opportunities to farmers in terms of seasonal employment as well as significant employment to the off-farm milling and processing industry.  While this industry has significant economic benefits in regards to profit and jobs; the downside is it leads to severe environmental harm and degradation. In 2012, an estimated 2,903,676 tons of olive oil was produced worldwide, the largest olive oil producers being Spain, Italy, and Greece followed by Turkey and Tunisia and to a lesser extent Portugal, Morocco and Algeria. Within the European Union’s olive sector alone, there are roughly 2.5 million producers, who make up roughly one-third of all EU farmers.

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Types of Wastes

Currently, there are two processes that are used for the extraction of olive oil, the three-phase and the two-phase. Both systems generate large amounts of byproducts.  The two byproducts  produced by the three-phase system are a solid residue known as olive press cake (OPC) and large amounts of aqueous liquid known as olive-mill wastewater (OMW).  The three-phase process usually yields 20% olive oil, 30% OPC waste, and 50% OMW.  This equates to 80% more waste being produced than actual product.

Regardless of system used, the effluents produced from olive oil production exhibit highly phytotoxic and antimicrobial properties, mainly due to phenols.  Phenols are a poisonous caustic crystalline compound.  These effluents unless disposed of properly can result in serious environmental damage.  There is no general policy for waste management in the olive oil producing nations around the world.  This results in inconsistent monitoring and non-uniform application of guidelines across these regions.

State of Affairs

Around 30 million m3 of olive mill wastewater is produced annually in the Mediterranean area.  This wastewater cannot be sent to ordinary wastewater treatment systems, thus, safe disposal of this waste is of serious environmental concern.  Moreover, due to its complex compounds, olive processing waste (OPW) is not easily biodegradable and needs to be detoxified before it can properly be used in agricultural and other industrial processes.

This poses a serious problem when the sophisticated treatment and detoxification solutions needed are too expensive for developing countries in North Africa, such as Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia, where it is common for OMW to be dumped into rivers and lakes or used for farming irrigation.  This results in the contamination of ground water and eutrophication of lakes, rivers and canals.  Eutrophication results in reductions in aquatic plants, fish and other animal populations as it promotes excessive growth of algae. As the algae die and decompose, high levels of organic matter and the decomposing organisms deplete the water of oxygen, causing aquatic populations to plummet.

Another common tactic for disposal of olive mill wastewater is to collect and retain it in large evaporation basins or ponds.  It is then dried to a semi-solid fraction. In less developed countries where olive processing wastes is disposed of, this waste, as well as olive processing cake and SOR waste is commonly unloaded and spread across the surrounding lands where it sits building up throughout the olive oil production season.  Over time these toxic compounds accumulate in the soil, saturating it, and are often transported by rain water to other nearby areas, causing serious hazardous runoff. Because these effluents are generally untreated it leads to land degradation, soil contamination as well as contamination of groundwater and of the water table itself.

Even a small quantity of olive wastewater in contact with groundwater has the potential to cause significant pollution to drinking water sources. The problem is more serious where chlorine is used to disinfect drinking water. Chlorine in contact with phenol reacts to form chlorophenol which is even more dangerous to human health than phenol alone.

Remedial Measures

The problems associated with olive processing wastes have been extensively studied for the past 50 years.  Unfortunately, research has continued to fall short on discovering a technologically feasible, economically viable, and socially acceptable solution to OPW.  The most common solutions to date have been strategies of detoxification, production system modification, and recycling and recovery of valuable components.  Because the latter results in reductions in the pollution and transformation of OPW into valuable products, it has gained popularity over the past decade. Weed control is a common example of reusing OPW; due to its plant inhibiting characteristics OPW once properly treated can be used as an alternative to chemical weed control.

Research has also been done on using the semisolid waste generated from olive oil production to absorb oil from hazardous oil spills.  Finally, in terms of health, studies are suggesting that due to OPW containing high amounts of phenolic compounds, which have high in antioxidant rates, OPW may be an affordable source of natural antioxidants. Still, none of these techniques on an individual basis solve the problem of disposal of OMW to a complete and exhaustive extent.

At the present state of olive mill wastewater treatment technology, industry has shown little interest in supporting any traditional process (physical, chemical, thermal or biological) on a wide scale.This is because of the high investment and operational costs, the short duration of the production period (3-5 months) and the small size of the olive mills.

Conclusion

Overall, the problems associated with olive processing wastes are further exemplified by lack of common policy among the olive oil producing regions, funding and infrastructure for proper treatment and disposal, and a general lack of education on the environmental and health effects caused by olive processing wastes.

While some progress has been made with regards to methods of treatment and detoxification of OPW there is still significant scope for further research.  Given the severity of environmental impact of olive processing wastes, it is imperative on policy-makers and industry leaders to undertake more concrete initiatives to develop a sustainable framework to tackle the problem of olive oil waste disposal.

Different Strategies in Composting

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Composting can be categorized into different categories depending on the nature of decomposition process. The three major segments of composting are anaerobic composting, aerobic composting, and vermicomposting. In anaerobic composting, the organic matter is decomposed in the absence of air. Organic matter may be collected in pits and covered with a thick layer of soil and left undisturbed six to eight months. Anaerobic microorganisms dominate and develop intermediate compounds including methane, organic acids, hydrogen sulphide and other substances. The process is low-temperature, slow and the compost formed may not be completely converted and may include aggregated masses and phytotoxic compounds.

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Aerobic Composting

Aerobic composting is the process by which organic wastes are converted into compost or manure in presence of air. In this process, aerobic microorganisms break down organic matter and produce carbon dioxide, ammonia, water, heat and humus, the relatively stable organic end-product. Although aerobic composting may produce intermediate compounds such as organic acids, aerobic microorganisms decompose them further. The resultant compost, with its relatively unstable form of organic matter, has little risk of phytotoxicity. The heat generated accelerates the breakdown of proteins, fats and complex carbohydrates such as cellulose and hemicellulose. Hence, the processing time is shorter. Moreover, this process destroys many micro-organisms that are human or plant pathogens, as well as weed seeds, provided it undergoes sufficiently high temperature. Although more nutrients are lost from the materials by aerobic composting, it is considered more efficient and useful than anaerobic composting for agricultural production.

There are a variety of methods for aerobic composting, the most common being the Heap Method, where organic matter needs to be divided into three different types and to be placed in a heap one over the other, covered by a thin layer of soil or dry leaves. This heap needs to be mixed every week, and it takes about three weeks for conversion to take place. The process is same in the Pit Method, but carried out in specially constructed pits. Mixing has to be done every 15 days, and there is no fixed time in which the compost may be ready. Berkley Method uses a labor-intensive technique and has precise requirements of the material to be composted. Easily biodegradable materials, such as grass, vegetable matter, etc., are mixed with animal matter in the ratio of 2:1. Compost is usually ready in 15 days.

Vermicomposting

Vermicomposting is a type of composting in which certain species of earthworms are used to enhance the process of organic waste conversion and produce a better end-product. It is a mesophilic process utilizing microorganisms and earthworms. Earthworms feeds the organic waste materials and passes it through their digestive system and gives out in a granular form (cocoons) which is known as vermicompost. Earthworms consume organic wastes and reduce the volume by 40–60 percent. Each earthworm weighs about 0.5 to 0.6 gram, eats waste equivalent to its body weight and produces cast equivalent to about 50 percent of the waste it consumes in a day. The moisture content of castings ranges between 32 and 66 percent and the pH is around 7.

The level of nutrients in compost depends upon the source of the raw material and the species of earthworm. Apart from other nutrients, a fine worm cast is rich in NPK which are in readily available form and are released within a month of application. Vermicompost enhances plant growth, suppresses disease in plants, increases porosity and microbial activity in soil, and improves water retention and aeration.

5 Reasons You Need a Commercial Dumpster for Your Business

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Businesses are a leading source of waste, hence the need for management. While waste management on a large scale is still a challenge, businesses can come up with effective management, such as hiring a dumpster. You do not necessarily need a permanent dumpster as a business, but having one is vital to properly managing your waste. A dumpster will significantly benefit your business, whether a cleaning company, restaurant, or office.

Read on for five reasons you need a commercial dumpster rental for your business.

why your business need a commercial dumpster

1. Safe Workplace

A commercial dumpster rental will help create a safe job site, especially if you deal with sharp and hazardous products. You can designate special dumpsters for different kinds of waste to reduce accidents at the workplace. A clean and safe workplace also promotes peace of mind among your employees, improving their performance.

2. Commercial Dumpster Rentals Are Eco Friendly

As a business owner, you should meet the local, federal, state, or international standards to reduce the greenhouse effect. Adding a waste management policy helps you compact your trash for recycling. This way, a small percentage of your waste will find its way into the landfill sites and water bodies, saving the environment in the long run.

3. Create More Space

Compacting your waste saves on space as it reduces the once bulky items. You can, in turn, utilize the extra space in your business for more facilities for optimal performance.

4. Legal Waste Management

Unfortunately, many businesses are unaware that they are illegally throwing trash, which could get them into trouble. Using a commercial dumpster rental service provides your business with a legal waste management option. The company will take responsibility for the waste management and all its regulations, saving you the worry.

skip bins

5. Reduce Operational Costs

Failure to manage your waste could result in workplace injuries in which the affected party sues the organization resulting in hefty compensations. Also, while you may have other disposal mechanisms, they could violate the rules of your locality, which may attract fines. Therefore, investing in a commercial dumpster rental is ideal for reducing such costs.

Get a Commercial Dumpster for Your Business

A waste management system is necessary for any business. This system keeps the business clean, ensures a safe work environment, cuts operational costs, and preserves the environment. Hence, if you are yet to implement such a system, consider linking up with a reputable company, most of which will also set a recycling program for your business.

Foam Packaging: Take the Bull by the Horns

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New York City and Oxford are two prominent examples of local authorities that have tried to restrict the use of foam packaging for takeaway food and drink, arguing that doing so would reduce the environmental impact of waste in a way that alternative approaches could not. In both cases, the intervention of packaging manufacturers has lifted or watered down the rules. Other administrations might well be put off the idea of similar measures – but the argument for cracking down on foam packaging that almost unavoidably gives rise to regional waste management problems, as well as wider environmental degradation through its contribution to litter, remains hard to ignore. Bans, however, may not be the only option.

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Menace of Foam Packaging

A particular target for action has been expanded polystyrene (EPS). It’s rigid and a good insulator, and yet a great deal of it is air, making it very lightweight: it’s little wonder that EPS trays, cups and ‘clamshells’ are staples of the industry. It’s also widely used in pre-moulded form in the packaging of electronics, and as loose fill packaging in the form of ‘peanuts’.

While no-one would deny its convenience, for waste managers, EPS is a challenge, for many of the same reasons that it is popular. It’s light and difficult to compact, so it fills up bins and collection vehicles quickly; and takes up a great deal of space if you try to bulk and haul it for recycling.

It’s easy to see, then, why in 2013 New York City’s council voted unanimously to prohibit the use of EPS by all restaurants, food carts, and stores. Yet from the outset, the ban proposal faced stiff opposition from retailers and manufacturers, with packaging giant Dart Container Corp. and the American Chemistry Council reportedly organising a million dollars’ worth of lobbying against the legislation. Once it took effect, the industry quickly managed to overturn it in the courts last month.

Ban on the Run

The city had found that the recycling of EPS was not, in fact, environmentally effective, economically feasible and safe, and NYC was declared EPS-free in July 2015. But in a widely reported ruling, Justice Margaret Chan deemed the decision “arbitrary and capricious”: the complex case turned on the question of whether there was a recycling market for EPS, and the judge decided that Commissioner Kathryn Garcia of the city’s Department of Sanitation had failed to take account of evidence supplied by the industry that such a market did exist.

Although it lacked the courtroom drama of the New York City case, a similar story played out in Oxford last year. The city council proposed to use its licensing powers to require street traders to use only “biodegradable and recyclable” packaging and utensils. The move was stymied by semantics: the Foodservice Packaging Association lobbied for the phrasing of the proposed licensing rule to be amended to ‘biodegradable or recyclable’. That tiny change allowed continued use of expanded polystyrene, as it is technically recyclable (though certainly not biodegradable).

Oxford’s traders are also required to arrange for the correct disposal of EPS takeaway packaging from their premises. This is an odd requirement given that take-away food is usually – well – taken away, and then disposed of in street bins, household bins, or in no bin at all. Unfortunately, Oxford City Council – like almost every other council in the country – isn’t currently able to send EPS for recycling, so the EPS it collects will in practice end up in the residual stream. The EPS litter that escapes will linger in the environment for centuries to come.

Foam Suit

It seems that both courts and councillors have been impressed by the manufacturers’ argument: ‘Why ban a highly efficient product when you can invest in recycling it instead?’ However, there are three important points that count against this contention.

The first is that, whilst EPS can technically be recycled, the economics of doing so remain tenuous. Zero Waste Scotland’s report on Plastic Recycling Business Opportunities found that polystyrene waste compacting and collection was the only one of five options considered that did not represent a viable business opportunity in Scotland.

In order to make the finances of collecting EPS for recycling stack up in New York, Dart Corporation and Plastics Recycling Inc. had to offer to provide the city with $500,000 of sorting technology; pay for four staff; and guarantee to buy the material at $160 per tonne for five years. Without this (time limited) largesse, New York’s ban would likely have stood.

They also provided a list of 21 buyers, who they claimed would purchase dirty EPS – although when the city did a market test, it could find no realistic market for the material. It’s hard to know whose view of the US market is correct; however, in the UK, the market is definitely weak.

Of the 34 EPS recyclers listed by the BPF Expanded Polystyrene Group, 12 only accept clean EPS – ruling out post-consumer fast food waste. Another dozen will only accept compacted EPS, creating an extra processing cost for anyone attempting to separate EPS for recycling. That leaves a maximum of ten UK outlets: not enough to handle the potential supply, and leaving large tracts of the country out of economic haulage range for such a bulky, lightweight material.

Foam fatale

The second is that it’s difficult to get a high percentage of takeaway food containers into the recycling stream. Food eaten on the go is likely, at best, to go into a litter bin. And if it’s littered, because it’s light, EPS can also easily be blown around the streets, contributing to urban, riverine and ultimately marine litter. It’s also very slow to break down in the natural environment. Polystyrene has been found to make up 8% of marine litter washed up on North East Atlantic beaches; in all, plastics account for three quarters of this litter. The cost, particularly for coastal and island nations, is only beginning to be recognised.

That leads on to the third argument: while EPS undoubtedly works, less damaging alternatives are clearly available. Vegware, for example, allows takeaway boxes to be moved up the waste hierarchy – from disposal to composting. Reducing impacts was clearly a consideration in Oxford: in the words of Councillor Colin Cooke:

“It is about making the waste that we do have to get rid of more user-friendly and sustainable.”

The economic and technical difficulty in recycling EPS, combined with the long-term impacts of its littering and disposal, led Michelle Rose Rubio to conclude, in an Isonomia article last year, that environmentally minded people – and perhaps governments – should perhaps avoid it altogether.

Silver Lining

Despite the discouraging events in New York and Oxford, there’s better news from elsewhere. Bans remain in place in Toronto and Paris (both dating from 2007), while Muntinlupa in the Philippines, and the coastal state of Malaka in Malaysia have imposed charges, fines, and biodegradable replacements for EPS food packaging, eventually leading to bans.

Scottish Environment Secretary Richard Lochhead has indicated that the Scottish Government is: “considering a number of options in line with the commitment in the national litter strategy to influence product design of frequently littered items to reduce their environmental impact… [W]e note a number of US cities have introduced bans on Styrofoam products, most recently New York City. We are keen to learn from these cities’ experience of introducing and implementing such bans.”

In Wales, a polystyrene ban petition lodged last year by Friends of Barry Beaches has been picking up support. The Foodservice Packaging Association’s pre-emptive opposition to the notion certainly suggests we haven’t heard the last of EPS food packaging bans in the UK.

However, bans are not the only way to deter the use of problem products. England has just joined the ranks of countries to impose a charge for single use plastic bags. Belgium has a tax on disposable cutlery, and Malta taxes numerous products on environmental grounds, including chewing gum and EPS clamshells. Whilst beyond the powers of local authorities, fiscal measures could drive change while being a bit less of a blunt instrument than a ban.

While EPS manufacturers may have scored some recent successes, they haven’t won the overarching argument. As we push towards a more circular economy, the pressure to reduce our reliance on materials that are inherently hard to recycle, which tend to escape into the environment, and which don’t decompose naturally, will grow. For EPS fast food packaging, the chips could soon be well and truly down.

Note: This article is being republished with the permission of our collaborative partner Isonomia. The original article can be found at this link.

What is Tire Recycling and How To Do It?

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The old tires of your Subaru Forester are now worn out and no longer safe to be used on the road, says your mechanic. You’ve started shopping for new tires. But you wonder—what can you do with those old tires?

You can recycle it!

Tire recycling is the most practical and environment-friendly way of disposing of old and worn-out tires. Due to their inherent durability, large volume and environment and health risks, tires are one of the most problematic sources of solid wastes. Around the world, an estimated 2.5 million tires are thrown away yearly. With rubber recycling, tires can be given a new lease of life.

Benefits of tire recycling

Tire recycling can have numerous benefits not only for vehicle owners like you but also for the communities. For one, it can conserve landfill space. Because of their round and hollow shape, tires can take up significant space in landfills. Eliminating bulky items like tires can leave space in landfills for other things that cannot be easily recycled. There are many scientific papers about the benefits of processing, and if you were asked to write an essay, then you can contact this company with a request “buy essay” and a team of professional writers will help you

Tire recycling can also create new, beneficial products. Tire-derived fuel (TDF) is an example which is produced by subject scrap tires to high-temperature pyrolysis. This is reputed to be more energy-efficient than normal fuel. It also releases minimal emissions. Other useful products created from recycled tires are playground turf, railroad ties, and rubberized asphalt.

This process can also help in preventing the spread of diseases. Discarded old tires can provide a nesting place for rodents and mosquitoes. By recycling old tires, those pests can be eliminated. Consequently, diseases brought about by said animals can be prevented.

How to recycle tires

So, how do you recycle your old tires? One is to check with your local government about drop-off depots where you can bring your old tires for recycling. You may also bring those tires to household waste recycling centers.

These tires will then likely be packed and sent to processing plants, where they will be cut into smaller pieces by cut shredders. This is aimed at reducing the tire volume and creating a material that can be easily handled.

The end-product is a raw material that can be utilized for TDF, the most developed market for old tires in the United States. It is widely used in the country as a supplemental fuel by industries cement kilns, paper mills, and electric utilities, among others.

Tire shreds are then processed to remove the tire wire, which adds to the resilience, versatility, and strength of the tire. The wire is removed and recycled; often brought back to steel mills as these can be used in manufacturing new steel.

The remaining rubber is then screened to ensure that it is free from wires and other contamination. Afterward, the rubber is cleaned using water and other cleaning agents. Clean rubber is then packed and brought to other factories in need of rubber as raw material such as rubber shoe manufacturers.

Recycled rubber is also used in other ways such as ground rubber applications such as asphalt rubber, animal bedding, and synthetic sports field underlays. Asphalt rubber is widely used in Arizona, California, and Florida, for instance.

Other rubber by-products can be reused in various shapes and forms. For example, fiber and nylon make up nearly 15% of a tire. When extracted from old tires, these materials can be used in the manufacture of concrete, fiberglass, stucco, caret, and cleanup materials.

Rubber powder can also be derived from recycled tires. This high-performance but affordable material is used in creating sealing products, plastic, and rubber. It is a sustainable material with no adverse effects on

Other DIY ways to recycle tires

Yet DIY tire recycling can also come in other forms. You can reuse your old, worn-out tires in different ways.  One of the oldest ways to recycle old tires is to use them as tire swings. You can paint it first before hanging the tire on a tree. If you have many trees around your yard, you can hang a couple of old tires to create an entire swing set. This is an old-fashioned way to create a playset for your kids at home.

Tires can also be reused into tire climbers. Instead of spending several hundreds of dollars in a jungle gym, you can use old tires into a tire climber. Again, paint them first with bright colors. Bolt the tires together to make the tire climber safer for kids to play with.

You can also reuse old tires into a sandbox. This is particularly recommended if you have big tires like tractor tires. Put together several tractor tires in your yard and pain them. This is a nice way to thrill the kids during the summer. Check out cheap essay writing service to help your kids in their homework.

An old tire can also serve as a hose caddy. Instead of leaving your garden hose and increasing its chances of getting damaged, you can secure it with a hose caddy made of an old tire. This is simple to do—cut the tire in half and coil the garden hose inside it. You may even paint the tire so that it would match your outdoor décor.

Finally, you can reuse tires into planters. There may be some cutting involved so prepare tools such as saw and hammer. Again, painting the tire may be optional. You can make several planters depending on the number of old tires you have.

There are other creative tire recycling ideas that you may explore such as turning old tires into chairs, welcome mats, dog bed, and see-saws.

Conclusion

As you can see, old tires don’t have to end up in the landfills. Tire recycling is the best and most ecologically-sound way of disposing of old tires.

There are many ways to recycle old tires. You can bring your old tires to a household waste recycling center where these are collected and segregated before being processed into various by-products.

You can also recycle tires through DIY projects. From tire planters to tire climbers, the possibilities are endless as far as recycling and reusing old and worn out tires are concerned.

Top 5 Tips For Reducing Waste in Your Home

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Reducing waste in your home is more important now than ever. As the environment is becoming more in danger because of greenhouse gases, climate change, and pollution, the need for humans to reduce their carbon footprint is imperative. However, even if people want to make an effort to save the environment, many people don’t know where to start and how to go about changing their everyday lives in order to become more eco-friendly.

Starting in your home is a great way to begin working towards an eco-friendly lifestyle. A custom home builder in Cherry Hill New Jersey, said, “Making your home environmentally savvy can mean installing something as large as solar panels or it can mean something much smaller; like using reusable shopping bags at the grocery store and not buying plastic products. Either way, making your home eco-friendly is important.”

Reducing waste in your home is easy and will have an outstanding impact on the environment. Here are some quick and easy tips to keep in mind that will help you reduce waste in your home:

1. Start Composting

Starting a compost pile creates less trash by recycling leftover food that would otherwise go in the trash. The point of a compost pile is to put the leftover, and even expired, food back into the earth rather than letting it sit in the garbage or in landfills.

benefits-composting

 

A compost pile is easy to start, all you need is a bin and some extra space. After you’re done eating something (as long as it isn’t meat, a milk product, or greasy processed food), you can put it in this bin and then incorporate it into your garden or yard every few weeks. Your food won’t go to waste and your garden/yard will get the nutrients it needs.

2. DIY Beauty and Household Products

Buying less plastic products is another great way to reduce waste in your home. However, most beauty and household products are packaged in plastic containers which makes reducing plastic in this way a major obstacle.

A possible solution to this issue is making your own beauty and household products like floor cleaner, and toothpaste. Making your own natural deodorant is also a great way to reduce waste generation.

Though buying the ingredients to make these products may create a small amount of waste, the ingredients are easier to buy in bulk so you will have to buy them less frequently and will be able to create ample amounts of beauty and household products.

office-cleaning

Creating homemade products is also a great way to ensure you aren’t getting chemicals in your products that are damaging to the environment and will create waste or harmful toxins.

3. Meal Plan

Food waste is a huge issue in households. Often, between ¼ to ½  of a household’s weekly produce, meats, and milk products are thrown out at the end of the week. This is preventable with the incorporation of meal planning and meal prepping in your life. By starting a meal plan, you will only buy what you need and will be less likely to waste products because they expired.

food-waste-management

This will generate less waste in terms of food that will end up sitting in a landfill but also in terms of plastic packaging waste that food is packaged in.

4. Repair Instead of Replace

This is an easy way to create little waste in your home that many people don’t think about. When something in your home breaks, whether it is a small kitchen appliance or something large like a heater or part of a couch, take the time to repair it instead of getting a new one. If you repair an item, the original one won’t make its way to a landfill and you will get more life out of your products.

If an appliance or piece of furniture is unable to be repaired, make an effort to recycle some of the important parts; or, if you are in the market to buy a replacement, look online for used products or go to a secondhand store. This will create less waste and will also save you money.

5. Cancel and/or Recycle Junk Mail

Easy and free, by canceling and recycling junk mail will immediately reduce waste in your home. Most people don’t even look at the junk mail and toss it right in the garbage can. Canceling subscriptions only requires a phone call or email and will significantly cut back the waste that is generated in your home.

If you receive junk mail that is not sent to you via subscription and you are unable to cancel it, make sure to at least recycle it.

Eliminating junk mail will also help with decluttering your coffee tables and countertops, an added benefit to helping the environment.

Bottom Line

There is always room for improvement when trying to improve your lifestyle in terms of creating less waste. These tips are a great way to start making an impact on saving the environment before it’s too late. Reduce the waste in your life with minimal effort and small, simple changes.

11 Ideas for Easier Recycling at Home

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Going green isn’t just meant for Earth Day. Going green is a way of life. However, Earth Day is a day we pause and commemorate, acknowledge and support environmental programs and Earth-saving strategies. It is also a great day to commit or recommit to employ earth-friendly practices in your life, at home and in the office. There are countless things you can do to “go green.” Most of these things are ease to incorporate into your life. Recycling is one of the easiest ways to go green. Recycling is the process of obtaining or retaining waste and converting it into usable, new materials. Some things that can be used to recycle are:

Recycling is actually a great way to conserve raw resources and save energy. Recycling at least one ton of paper can save 7,000 gallons of water and 17 trees, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. Hiring a skip would help recycle that amount of paper and you can click here for ideas for ideas on the size of the skip you could employ.

As you see, recycling is an effective and simple way to help the environment. It is something the entire family can do too. Before recycling, call your local waste management services. Determine how to you need to sort and pack items for recycling. In addition, you want to know what day or days the waste management services collects recycling. Check with them to find out where you safely dispose of light bulbs, hazardous materials and batteries. These cannot be recycled or put in the trash.

Your local waste management recycling service has different rules about how items must be sorted, cleaned and packaged. Metal, cardboard, plastics, aluminum, glass and paper can be recycled.

It can be tricky to recycle plastics because some can break down easier than other plastics. The number located on the plastic item will determine if it can be recycled. It will also determine if the plastic can be picked up for recycling.

Source: Fix.com

Although plastics are trickier to sort and recycle, it’s important to dispose of them properly. One important factor to establishing a recycling a program at work, school or home is to create a system that works for everyone. Here are a few ways to recycle at home:

Source: DIY Swank

Recycling is about convenience, convenience, and more convenience! When incorporating a successful program about which you can read in the essay about recycling, make bins easily accessible. They should be in an area that is easily visible and used like the utility room or kitchen where they can be seen and used

Source: Better Homes and Gardens

Now, if you need a simple recycling system everyone can follow (even kids), use caster and baskets. These are easy to access and use. They slide out of site when not in use.

Source: Family Handyman

Use space by going vertical. You can hook bins on walls to utilize space. It will be easy to sort and store.

Source: Sweet Haute

Another way to make a successful recycling program is to make it fun. Use stylish bins and trash cans to recycle items.

Source: Sweet Haute

Another way to make a successful recycling program is to make it fun. Use stylish bins and trash cans to recycle items.

You may not have time to personally decorate trash cans by spray painting them. How about using printable labels. These labels can go generic bins to help separate recyclables.

Source: Lil Blue Boo

Batteries are not to be recycled. They cannot be put into a trash can for non-recycling either. Instead, they should be properly thrown away at a collection center or a participating auto part store. The same thing should be done with light bulbs.

Make a special area of your home or office to use as a personal sorting center. This is where you can sort and clean recyclables. You may want to look at some personal recycling centers to get an understand of what you need.

Source: I Should Be Mopping the Floor

Many people do not have an area they can keep bulky recycling or trash in the home or office. If this is the case for you, create a dedicated spot in the garage or other area. It won’t take long before your family or co-workers are pitching in to recycle.

Recycling is full of great ideas to help the environment. Find the ones you like. Used them in your successful recycling program.

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