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Plastic is forever
Plastic litterIt wasn’t until the middle of the nineteenth century that anything like plastic even existed. The manufacture of true plastics began in the early twentieth century and soon became a...
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Waste management from dumps to landfills
Gulls at an open dump. Just imagine the rodents and insects! Humans have always produced a lot of waste. From prehistoric times until fairly recently, people who lived in towns just dumped the waste...
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Hazardous household wastes: Do you know what you can’t throw out?
Imagine you teach an introduction to chemistry. One of your students proposes an experiment: mix together all the used oil, unneeded paint, expired prescription medicines, pesticides, and all the...
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How can we improve recycling rates?
The good news about recycling is that rates of participation have increased over time. The bad news is that they are still not very high. In 1960, the recycling participation rate was 6%. That’s the...
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5 Ways to Reduce Your Contribution to the Landfill
Diagram of a landfill Throw it away? There’s no such place as away. What you throw in the trash usually winds up in a landfill. It might not be local. If your municipality must send trash to a distant...
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Do you still change your car’s oil yourself?
Three new quick oil change services have opened near my house in the past couple of months. You can’t drive very far on any urban major street without passing one. Even so, the Environmental Protection...
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Can you put dead batteries in the trash?
I had long thought it was illegal to put dead batteries in the trash. I said so in a group once and a friend immediately contradicted me. He’s a retired Regulatory Affairs Manager. His professional...
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27 Ways Not to Be Inundated With Trash at Home
Did you know that you generate as much at 5 pound of trash every day? If you live in the US, that’s your share. On average everyone in America (including babies) generates that much. How can that be?...
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The High Cost of Not Recycling
This post is scheduled to appear on Christmas day, so Merry Christmas to all of my first readers. Christmas means many things, and all of the gift-giving also means that we will generate more trash...
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The World’s Largest Paper Wad, Belatedly Recycled
The Minnesota Pollution Control Agency estimated how much paper Minnesotans throw away in 30 seconds and then combined that much into a giant ball to display at the Minnesota State Fair in August 2014....
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Diaper debacle: green diaper basics
Contributed by Tafline Laylin [Editor’s note: Knowaste, a British company recycles diapers and other absorbent hygiene products. If anyone is interested in starting a useful green business, it licenses...
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Waste disposal: there’s no such place as away
If you live in the U.S., then your share of one day’s production of trash is about four and a half pounds. Besides what you throw away personally, everything you buy represents a lot of trash before it...
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Trench composting at home: an infographic
Some rights reserved by Cheryl Infographic contributed by Megan Wilson Do you have a garden? Or even property where you can bury food scraps? Then you can compost. Composting your own food scraps keeps...
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Illegal dumping and communities at risk
Cleaning an illegal dump near Vale, Oregon Do you ever get the feeling that we’ll never solve all our environmental problems? You’re right. We won’t. Nothing will ever be perfect as long as people are...
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The international crisis of high-tech trash
TVs and monitors awaiting recycling. Photo taken in 2008. Who doesn’t have flat screens by now? According to Moore’s Law, computer processing power doubles every two years. As a corollary, every new...
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Ink waste: the environmental impact of printer cartridges
Contributed by Bob Gorman Everything that humans do has an impact on the environment. Manufacturing and using printer cartridges can have serious repercussions, no matter how insignificant those...
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The cost of convenience in careless recycling
It has been hard enough to get people to recycle at all. Too many people put too many wrong items in recycle bins. Recycling problems create expensive headaches. The cost of convenience in careless...
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What does the Chinese crackdown on recycling mean?
Tipping floor at material recovery facility (MRF) Last August, the Chinese government announced new restrictions on importing recyclables. Starting in 2018, it will no longer accept imports of two...
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How to dispose of Christmas lights
So you have strands of Christmas lights that don’t work anymore. Or maybe they’re so tangled you can’t put them up anywhere. Or maybe you’ve finally replaced your strings of large incandescent lights...
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Greening our junk: the hauling and scrap industries
Photographer’s note: “This is going to the curb tonight.” There’s a better way to get rid of it. Americans produce more garbage than any other country in the world. Although Americans account for only...
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