The Earth Is Not a Trash Can

Reported by: Sara Noel Email: sara@frugalvillage.com Last Update: 11/03 10:53 am

Paper is often wasted. Maybe you use both sides of a sheet of paper, use the backs of your mail envelopes for grocery lists or reuse newspaper to wrap gifts. All are good ways to waste less paper. Many households put their mail and paper through a shredder to protect against identity theft or to follow state and federal laws. An average home can accumulate quite a bit. In some areas, it’s not accepted in curbside recycling. So what do you do with the shredded paper? Here are a few suggestions. COMPOST: Avoid glossy paper, but the rest can be mixed into your compost pile and used in your garden. Birds will use some for building their nests, too. One reader, Meg in Missouri, shares: “I use it for bedding in my worm composter. I put it in the compost pile. And my husband brings home HUGE bags of shredded checks from work. I mulch my tomatoes, and it works great.” PETS: You can use it as kitty litter (especially helpful after your kitty has any type of surgery). You can simply add the shredded paper into the litter box or make litter that’s more like pebbles by soaking the shredded paper in warm water with a couple of squirts of dish soap, sprinkling in some baking soda, squeezing out the water and crumbling onto a screen to dry. Visit www.thegreenists.com/tip-of-the-day/tip-of-the-day-make-your-own-kitty-litter/1044 for complete instructions. It seems like a lot of work, but it takes only about 45 minutes for two to three weeks worth of litter. You can use shredded paper for hamster or guinea-pig bedding, nesting material for hens or in a whelping box for dogs. Use it to stuff a pillow to make a pet bed. Call your local pet-rescue center/humane society and see if they want any for their animals, too.

By Tina Susman

October 15, 2009

Reporting from New York – The chain-saw killer struck in the dead of night, targeting young victims in a public park. Locals out for a Sunday walk found the remains the next morning: 12 oak and cherry saplings, their slender trunks sawed through, their delicate branches dangling like broken limbs above the freshly tilled soil.

It was the fourth tree-killing this year in Juniper Valley Park in Queens. Police went door to door looking for clues. Civic leaders offered a $2,500 reward for information leading to the culprit in the Sept. 13 attack. The case remains unresolved, as do seven other tree-slaying incidents across New York City this year.

In February, a huge cottonwood was found with a basketball-sized hole gouged in its trunk in Manhattan’s Inwood Hill Park. In June, nearly 60 young trees were yanked from the soil and left for dead in the same park, two months after being planted on Earth Day.

London, October 5 (ANI): People behind the wheels of Ford are most likely to throw litter from their vehicles in the UK, suggests a survey.

Keep Britain Tidy found over 1,000 instances of people, especially those in the South East, creating litter from a Ford followed by just over 300 sightings from a BMW.

Phil Barton, Chief Executive of Keep Britain Tidy, thinks that littering from a car should be treated as a motoring offence.

“Car littering is disgusting, detrimental to the environment and dangerous,” the Telegraph quoted him as saying.

“Through campaigning on this issue, we now have information that is valuable and important to our goal of influencing the law makers and the manufacturers to make a positive change towards ending this problem,” he added. (ANI)

By KEN MURCHISON

Starting Thursday, it will be illegal to put plastic soda or water bottles in the trash in North Carolina.

Beginning Oct. 1, all plastic bottles must be recycled. The state is also banning oil filters and wooden pallets from landfills.

North Carolina recovers less than one out of every five plastic bottles generated in the state, despite having some of the largest processors of the bottles.

The new ban is intended to boost the recovery of bottles, in large part to meet the growing demand for the materials.

“Widespread compliance with the plastic bottle disposal ban will ensure a flow of plastic bottles to meet market demand for the materials and will result in additional job creation through the expansion of recycling collection companies,” said Scott Mouw, environmental supervisor for the state Division of Pollution Prevention and Environmental Assistance.”

The Town of Spring Hope is asking residents to make as better effort of recycling plastic bottles. Residents who do not have recycling bins should call the town at 478-5186 to request one. Only about 25 percent of residents currently recycle.

The Town of Bailey is starting a recycling program on Thursday. Bailey attempted to have a recycling program a couple of years ago, but residents did not use the service in sufficient numbers to keep the program going.

By James Murray Published August 25, 2009

EDINBURGH, — [Editor's note: this article originally appeard on BusinessGreen and is reprinted with permission.]

The Scottish government could ban recyclable materials such as glass, metals, textiles and wood from being sent to landfill, under new plans designed to help Scotland meet its goal of becoming one of the world’s first “zero-waste societies.”

The proposals, which would effectively extend the ban on sending hazardous waste to landfill to cover several new materials, feature in a new draft plan that was published yesterday and is now subject to a 12-week consultation period.

The plan also includes proposals for new incentives to encourage businesses to increase recycling rates, increased investment in recycling facilities and collection facilities, the creation of 2,000 new jobs in the waste and recycling industries, and the introduction of new targets for material re-use as well as recycling.

Environment secretary Richard Lochhead said the new plan would require a shift in the way that businesses and households regard waste. “This is a positive step in tackling Scotland’s waste — viewing it as a resource rather than a problem,” he said. “There are major economic benefits, as well as environmental gains, to be had, including creating thousands of jobs and new business opportunities.”

In Denmark, The Danes Recycle You by Brad Warbiany

There’s the oft-repeated factoid that the Indians used every part of a buffalo when they killed it. The Danes are learning from their example:

But in one area, greenery might be taken to excess. Denmark’s crematorium association has revealed its profitable sideline in recycling metal parts salvaged from the dead. Burnt bodies leave knee or hip replacements that can be recycled as scrap metal, says Allan Vest, the association’s chairman. Since 2006 the country’s 31 crematoriums have earned DKr 77,762 ($15,000) from 4,810kg of salvaged metal sold to a Dutch recycler.

When the ecclesiastical ministry changed the law to allow such recycling in 2005, it barred the reuse of such spare parts in works of art. But it did not say anything about telling relatives about the fate of a deceased. This is not a problem, says Mr Vest; recycling is good for the environment.

That principle underlies a second practice: recycling crematorium heat. Earlier this year, 15 crematoriums said they favoured sending waste heat into district-heating systems. This is because new regulations, due to come into force in 2011, will require crematoriums to filter out toxic substances such as dioxins and mercury from waste gases. To do this the crematoriums must use water to cool chimney gases from around 800°C to 180°C. It is the excess energy from the cooling process that crematoriums want to capture.

August 17, 2009 · Published By Editor  

Phoenix, AZ – Phoenix residents who properly recycle their discarded waste could be in line for gift cards, groceries and other rewards thanks to a new partnership with RecycleBank®.

RecycleBank is a national, nonprofit program that rewards households for recycling and other positive environmental contributions.

The city selected 110,000 households for Phase I of the RecycleBank rewards program, which is set to begin Nov. 30.

RecycleBank measures the amount of material recycled and then converts that amount into RecycleBank points that can be redeemed for rewards.

“We’ve set many goals in our 17-point plan to be the greenest city in America,” said Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon. “RecycleBank will allow us to increase our recycling and lower our waste output, and at no cost to the city or our residents.”