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Friday, June 25, 2010
Recycling Cell Phones: From Old to New
By: Brad Roderick
Have you ever wondered about the process that goes into recycling old cell phones? I would like to share a video from HowStuffWorks.com about how a cell phone can be reused.
Tuesday, June 22, 2010
E-Waste: How to Recycle Ink and Toner Cartridges
Brad Roderick, executive vice president of InkCycle in Lenexa, Kansas, reviews the process of recycling ink and toner cartridges at InkCycle to help eliminate e-waste from landfills.
Roderick explains that the first steps include taking the toners apart to see what’s inside of them, replacing the critical wear components, cleaning out excess toner and getting them back to a state where they are ready for repair and refurbishment.
Roderick discusses the final step of recycling an ink and toner cartridge after one is placed into a live printer and prints a series of pages to ensure that when it’s taken out of the box that the print performance at the end of the production process is up to the standards that will satisfy the consumer.
InkCycle produces a recycled ink and toner cartridge called grenk. Grenk is designed to leave the smallest environmental footprint possible.
Friday, June 18, 2010
Earth911 Named Official Recycling Partner of the Consumer Electronics Association
Posted by: Brad Roderick
Here is an article from Earth911.com about their announcement to be the recycling partner of the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA). Through the partnership, both the CEA and Earth911 hope to make electronic information more accessible.
Earth911 Named Official Recycling Partner of the Consumer Electronics Association
(Scottsdale, AZ and Arlington, VA) – The Consumer Electronics Association (CEA)® and Earth911 today announced a partnership to make information about electronics recycling easier to access than ever. The largest trade association promoting growth in the consumer electronics industry, CEA will work with Earth911 as the official recycling partner of CEA and the International CES® to bring new e-cycling resources to both mobile and web platforms.
“CEA has worked diligently over many years to increase consumer awareness of the importance of recycling their electronics products,” said Gary Shapiro, president and CEO of CEA. “We’re pleased to expand that effort through the resources available from Earth911.”
“Earth911 is thrilled to have the opportunity to continue to educate consumers about electronics recycling, in tandem with the leading industry association,” said Corey Lambrecht, president of Earth911. “Additionally, we look forward to working with the forward-thinking members of CEA to enhance the availability of electronics recycling resources for their customers.”
Friday, June 18, 2010
6 Ways to Reuse Scraps
Posted by: Brad Roderick
I would like to share an article from yahoo.com, by Ronnie Citron-Fink, about how these six items, made from scraps, can help reduce landfill waste.
Six ingenious things to make from scraps
Breathe new life into old objects and reduce landfill waste by diverting leftover odds and ends that would be relegated to the dumpster into useful items.
Call it repurposing, call it recrafting, call it creative reuse, or call it trash transformed. No matter what you call it, this concept of “cradle to cradle” is one of the tenants of green living. It means that a product’s lifecycle doesn’t have to end up forever rotting away in a landfill. It can be endlessly reincarnated into useful items.
We EcoNesters talk a lot about purging clutter, living slower, donating and thrifting, and living minimally. So, this post is going to take a different tact. It isn’t going to tell you that hording some things isn’t such a bad idea. In fact, hold onto those scraps.
But, wait a minute … scraps are junk, right? Not so fast. Scrap items can be put to use and given a “life after waste.” In fact, the end products of materials are often called salvage. That’s a great word for things that are “saved from the ruins” and eventually end up in dumpsters.
If you’re like me, you’ve got all sorts of scraps hanging around just ready for a new practical renaissance of sorts. Think of it as part of the transformation of renewal for living a more resourceful life.
Scrap renewal projects using…
1. Yarn
If you read my posts with any regularity, you know that knitting is my number one DIY project of choice. Yarn scraps abound in the needle world, and this pin cushion from Craft Leftovers via the Craftzine blog is perhaps one of the best uses I’ve seen for small amounts of yarn scraps.
2. Wood
Keep those wood scraps out of the burn pile and make a beautiful and unique scrap wood cutting board from instructables.
Thursday, June 10, 2010
New York Passes Strict Electronic Waste Management Law
Posted by: Brad Roderick
I would like to share an article written by Amanda Willis at earth911.com about the innitiative New York has taken to combat the issue of electronic waste.
New York Passes Strict E-waste Law
It has been hailed as “the most progressive, best researched e-waste bill in the country” by the Natural Resources Defense Council.
While New York is the 23rd state to pass an e-waste law, this new legislation is more stringent, holding both manufacturers and consumers responsible for disposing electronic waste.
Starting in April 2011, manufacturers across the state must offer free programs allowing consumers to drop of their items for proper disposal. Manufacturers will also be prohibited from dumping e-waste in landfills. That same rule will go into effect for consumers starting Jan. 15, 2015.
According to The New York Times, the state will mandate the amount of electronic waste each company is required to recycle or reuse annually. This number is based on each manufacturer’s market share of electronics sales in New York.
Thursday, June 10, 2010
Computer Recycling: Hazardous Waste Recycled
Posted by: Brad Roderick
I would like to share a refreshing article from emagazine.com, written by Sven G. Simonsen, about Norway and its efforts to cut down on electronic waste.
Electronic Recycling Done Right
Norway Leads the World in Collecting and Recycling E-Waste
While consumers across the world increasingly recycle their old batteries, coffee makers and MP3 players, most electric and electronic waste from offices and factories still ends up in landfills. But in Norway, an industry-run program now collects 98% of such waste.
Industrial machines, high voltage equipment, escalators, pumps, generators and other machinery often pack more environmentally harmful materials than consumer goods. But governments have so far mostly failed to establish systems to take care of such waste. As a result, enormous amounts of hazardous materials and greenhouse gases are released into nature.
Ten years ago, that was also the case for Norway. Only 5% of electric and electronic (EE) waste from enterprises was collected. But in 1999, a program negotiated between the industry and the government came into effect, which in four years boosted the ratio to over 80%.
Friday, June 4, 2010
Google Offsetting 45,000 Homes Using Carbon Credits Made from Waste
Posted by: Brad Roderick
I would like to share an article from treehugger.com, written by Jaymi Heimbuch, that looks at Google’s involvement with the Berkeley Green Power Project, which aims to create enough carbon offsets to equal electricity emissions of 45,000 homes annually.
Google Offsetting 45,000 Homes Using Carbon Credits Made from Waste
Google is a big promoter of green energy, from dreaming up possibilities of their own (like using wave power for data centers) to investing in and customizing alternative energy projects (like super efficient and cheap solar panels). Now, the Internet giant is moving into promoting landfill waste-to-energy and gaining ground in its goal to be a carbon neutral company by purchasing carbon offsets in a new project in Berkeley County, South Carolina.
In a joint effort by the Berkeley County Water & Sanitation (BCWS), Blue Source, Google and Santee Cooper, the Berkeley Green Power Project is turning biogas into about 3 MW of electricity, enough to power 15,000 homes in the Southeast. The project will also create roughly 200,000 to 300,000 metric tons of carbon offsets – equal to the emissions from electricity used by approximately 30,000 to 45,0000 US households annually – at least some of which Google is purchasing.
Environmental Leader writes, “Blue Source will quantify and market the emission reductions in the form of voluntary carbon credits. The company plans to register the third-party verified credits created by the project on the Climate Action Reserve’s public registry. The project is said to be the first of its kind to be implemented along South Carolina’s coast. The credits Google purchases will be retired and not allowed to be further sold or traded.”
Friday, June 4, 2010
The 15 Most Toxic Places to Live
Posted by: Brad Roderick
Ever wondered where the most toxic places on Earth are located? Here is a list of the top 15 from mother nature network.
The 15 Most Toxic Places to Live
Apocalypse now?
As the world’s population balloons to almost 7 billion, it’s become more and more difficult to find anywhere on Earth unaffected by man-made pollution and development, and far too often it takes things going really wrong before people take action to keep our planet clean. So here’s a list that might help to motivate: The 15 most polluted places in the world.
Citarum River, Indonesia
The Citarum has been called the world’s most polluted river. Around five million people live in the river’s basin, and most of them rely on its flow for their water supply.
Chernobyl, Ukraine
Chernobyl is the town in northern Ukraine home to the Chernobyl disaster of 1986, the worst nuclear power plant accident in history. Once home to more than 14,000 residents, the town remains mostly uninhabited and unsafe today due to extensive radioactive contamination.
Thursday, May 27, 2010
Decreasing Hazardous Landfill Waste by Recycling Household Electronics
Posted by: Brad Roderick
Here is an article about the importance of recycling old household electronics if we are to cut down on electronic waste in landfills written at wwwgreenloop.blogspot.com.
With the rapidly changing technology for electronic devices and cheap production of electronics a serious issue arises regarding the disposal of them. We are disposing of electronics at a record pace in our modern society. As society becomes more dependent on electronic products to make life more convenient, the stockpile of used, obsolete products grows. Proper electronic disposal and electronic recycling is something each individual and each business needs to participate in if we are going to cut down on electric waste going to dumps and landfills.
Television TV Disposal and Recycling:
LCD and Plasma TVs are becoming very common now. Unfortunately that leaves many of the older television sets more unpopular to the consumer. We end up discarding of them when we no longer want or need them. CRT televisions are no longer worth fixing, so they end up in landfills more frequently. Televisions are one of the main sources of electronic waste. There are several reasons why television recycling is important. Like old computer monitors, televisions have a device inside that enables the viewing of the image. Before LCD screens came to market, the viewing device used inside a monitor was a Cathode Ray Tube or CRT. Contained within the CRT inside your old computer monitors and televisions, there are large quantities of lead, phosphorous, cadmium, barium and mercury. When a computer monitor or TV is land filled, large equipment is commonly used to crush the waste. As a finished product, these hazardous materials are sealed, however, the crushing of such waste causes the hazardous materials to be released into the soil and a leaching process occurs as a result. Eventually, these hazardous materials may find their way into a water supply or our food chain. When monitor glass is crushed by trash facilities, the lead-bearing particles become an airborne hazard.
Thursday, May 27, 2010
Why Computer Recycling Is Important
Posted by:Brad Roderick
I would like to share an article I found at howstuffworks.com, written by Jessika Toothman, that explains the consequences of electronic waste.
Think back for a minute at the procession of computers, TVs, cell phones, radios, game consoles and music players that have passed through your hands over the years. What about the endless stream of products such as vacuum cleaners, microwaves, hair dryers, electric toothbrushes, alarm clocks, lamps, lawn mowers and smoke detectors that have come in and out of your life?
These are just a few examples of devices that are part of the growing phenomenon known as e-waste. E-waste is the term used to describe discarded electronics and electrical products. In the past few decades, the world’s demand for gadgetry has gone through the roof and, inevitably, more waste has started to accumulate. As the bustling economies of China and India modernize and follow more Western trends, the worldwide generation of e-waste has hit astronomical proportions.
So what happens to all that e-waste? E-waste contains a bonanza of toxic and hazardous components that, for the most part, are currently being shunted into landfills. Much of the remaining portion is exported to developing nations, where many laborers, working under unsafe, unregulated conditions, recycle this e-waste. The work these laborers do, while it does provide some raw materials that can be reused, comes with some serious consequences.