Posts Tagged ‘waste’
Garage Trail Sale 2011
Posted in Events, Movements by Kate Archdeacon on March 31st, 2011
What if all the garage sales in your area were held on the same day? You could plan your route and visit heaps of different sales easily – maybe even with a bike and a trailer.
The Garage Sale Trail is about sustainability, community and fun. By getting people together to turn their old stuff into someone else’s new stuff, the day not only proves that second hand items can still have value, it keeps rubbish off the street, removes clutter from cupboards, stops a bunch of new things being brought into the world (along with the environmental impact that creates) and gives everyone good reason to meet the neighbours and have a good natter at the same time.
The Garage Sale Trail is on Sunday April 10 all around Australia – check out the map to see sales in your area or add your own. The site also has a free app to let you navigate easily on the day using your phone.
http://www.garagesaletrail.com.au/
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Using Price to Improve Recycling Rates
Posted in Models by Kate Archdeacon on March 30th, 2011
Source: guardian.co.uk via Awake
What’s “rubbish”? Image: haemengine via flickr CC
From “A small town in Germany where recycling pays” by Leo Hickman:
A car towing a trailer full of construction waste pulls up at the weigh-station by the entrance gate. Weiss wanders over to inspect the contents. “This weighs about half of tonne. If will cost €270 to dump it as it is. Or if the car owner sorts it into separate types of waste — timber, paper, plasterboard etc — it will cost him just €17. That, in summary, is our system. We provide a major incentive to recycle.”
The citizens of Neustadt an der Weinstrasse take their recycling very seriously. So much so that there is even a collection point at the recycling depot for dead animals. “People bring their dead dogs here,” says Stefan Weiss, one of the town’s waste managers, as he steps into a refrigerated shed and opens the lid on a wheelie bin containing a deer’s head recently deposited by a local hunter. “All these animals get rendered down at a nearby facility for their fat. It then gets used to produce things like this.” Weiss pulls a tube of lip balm from his pocket.
Located in the south-western state of Rheinland-Pfalz and set in the heart of Palatinate wine-growing region, the predominantly middle-class, medieval town of Neustadt boasts the best recycling rates in Germany. Over the past 30 years, the town has nurtured and refined a system that means it now recycles about 70% of its waste – 16% higher than the state target. By comparison, UK recycling rates average about 40% – up from just 5% in the mid-1990s.
The reason for Neustadt’s success is simple, says Weiss. “It’s all about providing financial incentives and education. We don’t charge citizens anything for the recycled waste they leave out. And the less waste you put out for incineration – we’ve had no landfill in Germany since 2005 – the less you pay. Having no incentive to reduce waste is poisonous to your aims. We have a separate, visible fee that is intentionally not embedded within a local tax.”
For example, the majority of Neustadt’s 28,000 households opt for a 60-litre bin for their non-recycled waste. This is collected once a fortnight and costs the household €6.60 in collection fees. If a household opts for a 40l bin, the fee falls to €5.30. Conversely, if they opt for a 240l bin (the standard wheelie bin volume in the UK), the fee rises to €24, or €48 if they want it collected weekly. If they produce higher than expected waste due to, say, having a party, they can buy special 60l plastic sacks for €3 and leave them out by their bins for collection.
“Green Demolition”: Localised Redistribution of Materials
Posted in Models by Kate Archdeacon on March 21st, 2011
Source: Change Observer
From D-Build: A sustainable model for the second life of buildings by Maria Popova:
Materials science has been one of the fastest-growing frontiers of innovation, particularly in the realm of sustainable design. Yet there seems to be an odd disconnect between our desire to reinvent tomorrow’s materials and our failure to intelligently address the life-cycle of today’s. This is precisely what Syracuse-based project D-Build is trying to change through a new model for materials reuse and upcycling in building deconstruction, using principles of design thinking to change the afterlife of architecture. An alternative to both traditional demolition, which can be costly and dangerous, and traditional deconstruction, which is time-consuming and requires a large workforce, D-Build uses a hybrid process called “green demolition.” A building is cut into pieces of manageable size and processed on the ground by a tight, efficient local crew. The site then serves as a hub for connecting buildings, people and businesses, offering a peer-to-peer marketplace for users to exchange materials salvaged from deconstructed buildings and sell industrial design products made with these upcycled materials.
This time-lapse footage captures D-Build’s fascinating, nearly ant-like deconstruction process.
Read the full article by Maria Popova on Change Observer.
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Life Cycle Analysis of Fresh Mango Industry: Reducing Waste
Posted in Research by Kate Archdeacon on March 14th, 2011
Source: CSIRO via FoodMag
Image: visualdensity via flickr CC
A study by CSIRO on the carbon and water footprints of the Australian fresh mango industry has identified areas of waste in the supply chain that could apply to other food industries.
CSIRO determined the impact of food waste on the carbon and water footprints of the Australian fresh mango industry using a technique called Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). LCA can also highlight where the greatest opportunities are in the supply chain to help minimise wastage, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, preserve valuable water resources and improve food security. The results show that a staggering 54 per cent of the average yearly production – about 19 000 tonnes of mangoes – are wasted along the way from farm to fork. In this podcast, CSIRO’s Dr Brad Ridoutt explains how and why the LCA on fresh mangos was done and how important Life Cycle Assessment could be in making food systems more sustainable in the future.
“…Probably the bigger issue is how representative is the mango industry of the food industry generally. And that’s where we’d like to expand our future work to understand more broadly, because what we’re really trying to understand is, how can we produce a sustainable food system. The work on mangoes was really just a case study to give us some insights.”
Read the full transcript of the interview or listen to the podcast here.
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Not Far From The Tree: Urban Orchard Network
Posted in Models by Kate Archdeacon on March 9th, 2011
© Not Far From The Tree
Not Far From The Tree puts Toronto’s fruit to good use by picking and sharing the bounty.
When a homeowner can’t keep up with the abundant harvest produced by their tree, they let us know and we mobilize our volunteers to pick the bounty. The harvest is split three ways: 1/3 is offered to the tree owner, 1/3 is shared among the volunteers, and 1/3 is delivered by bicycle to be donated to food banks, shelters, and community kitchens in the neighbourhood so that we’re putting this existing source of fresh fruit to good use. It’s a win-win-win situation! This simple act has profound impact. With an incredible crew of volunteers, we’re making good use of healthy food, addressing climate change with hands-on community action, and building community by sharing the urban abundance.
With our first full season in 2008, Not Far From The Tree has grown quickly:
- We transport all of our equipment and fruit by bicycle, keeping our carbon footprint low.
- We were an official part of Nuit Blanche with our all-night cider-pressing art installation, City Cider.
- We participated in 40+ fairs, festivals, and community events across the city this year.
- We ran 12 preserving workshops to extend the harvest year-round and share local food skills.
- We harvest maple syrup from city trees, too, to demonstrate a local winter crop from Toronto trees (see Syrup in the City)
- We will be starting a public fruit tree mapping initiative to be launched in 2011.
- We helped Toronto’s first community orchard become established.
Visit the website to find out more about this very active project http://www.notfarfromthetree.org/
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Tracking the Impact of Films: “The End of the Line”
Posted in Movements, Research by Kate Archdeacon on February 28th, 2011
Source: The Ecologist
From “The End of the Line: how a film changed the way we eat fish” by Tom Levitt and Ali Thomas:
A new report highlights the lasting impact of The End of the Line in raising awareness of unsustainable fishing practices – and illustrates how radical new film funding models can work.
More than one million people have now watched The End of the Line, a groundbreaking expose of the consequences of overfishing, according to an evaluation of the film’s impact. The film was the first major documentary to look at the impact of overfishing on the world’s oceans with a quarter of the world’s fish stocks being exploited to extinction and a further half at, or close to, their maximum capacity. It highlighted how many of well-known species, including bluefin tuna and cod, are likely to be extinct by 2048.
Although initially watched by less than 10,000 people in the cinema, the film managed to reach a much wider audience of 4.7 million in the UK through a combination of media coverage, strong campaigning – and later – TV screenings. It also inspired a wave of coverage of unsustainable fishing practices, including the recent TV series ‘Hugh’s Fish Fight’.
A new report by the Britdoc Foundation said post-film campaign work around the documentary meant that for each film watcher, a further 510 people had heard about it. A quarter of a million people alone watched the film’s trailer on YouTube.
The team behind the film set up consumer focused websites ‘Seafood Watch Widget’ and ‘Fish to Fork’ to allow people to check on the sustainability of popular supermarket fish species. It also advised on restaurants selling fish species listed as endangered by the Marine Stewardship council (MSC).
[...]
Read the full article (there’s lots more great detail) by Tom Levitt and Ali Thomas
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Refining Technology: Bio-Digester for an Ice Cream Factory
Posted in Models by Kate Archdeacon on January 28th, 2011
Source: FoodMag
Image courtesy of Paques
From Unilever to build bio-digester at Dutch ice cream factory:
Unilever and biotechnology company Paques have started the construction of a bio-digester at the food giant’s Ben & Jerry’s ice cream factory in Hellendoorn, the Netherlands. Paques’ BIOPAQ AFR bio-digester, which will convert waste products from the production of ice cream into clean energy, will cover 40 per cent of the ice cream factory’s green energy requirements.
According to Paques, this bio-digester has been built specifically for applications where the purification of fat-containing wastewater is required. Unlike conventional systems, the bio-digester treats wastewater containing fat and oil in a single compact reactor, together with degradable particles. The installation of the bio-digester is a part of Unilever’s Sustainable Living Plan, which aims at reducing the production of waste and the consumption of water and energy. The bio-digester is expected to become operational mid year.
Source: FoodMag
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Replacing Bottled Water on Campus
Posted in Movements by Kate Archdeacon on January 26th, 2011
Via Cleanfood, the Future Climate newsletter
From the University of Canberra:
21 January 2011: The University of Canberra will discontinue the sale of bottled water on campus, the Vice-Chancellor announced today.
The University is the first in the country to go bottled water free and will immediately begin phasing out on-campus sales. Covering a campus population of almost 13,000 students and staff, the move is the largest of its kind in Australia. It was initiated by students and assisted by action group Do Something!, represented at the launch by founder Jon Dee.
New water bubblers and bottle refill stations, installed with funding from the ACT Chief Minister’s Department, will significantly increase the supply of fresh, healthy, free drinking water on campus.
Students and staff will also be offered a chilled water alternative to bottled water in the form of the Australia’s first WaterVend machines. WaterVend machines dispense filtered, ‘flash-chilled’ still, sparkling or flavoured tap water into the customer’s own refillable container. The WaterVend provides a cheaper alternative to bottled water in campus food outlets and provides those outlets with a commercial income to offset the income lost from bottled water sales.
Read the full press release.
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Ethical and Green Christmas Guide via The Guardian
Posted in Movements by Rob Eales on December 23rd, 2010
Image: sdminor81 via flickr CC
How to be festive and green – from rentable Christmas trees and organic turkeys to original ethical gift ideas and tips on recycling electrical waste… From the Ecologist, part of the Guardian Environment Network
Check out the article for heaps of ideas (and links) for Food, Booze, Christmas Trees, Original Gift Ideas, and Waste: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/nov/18/ethical-living-christmas.
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Zeer Pot Fridge: Low-energy technology
Posted in Models by Kate Archdeacon on December 9th, 2010
Source: Nourishing the Planet: Worldwatch Institute
Practical Action’s Zeer Pot Refrigerator:
In the heat of Sudan, food doesn’t stay fresh for long. Tomatoes go off in just two days. After four days carrots and okra are rotten. For poor families in North Darfur and Blue Nile State, without any means of preserving their crops, this can lead to hunger and even starvation. The situation is especially grave for those most vulnerable like children and elderly family members.
One ingenious solution is the zeer pot: a simple fridge made of local materials. It consists of one earthenware pot set inside another, with a layer of wet sand in between. As the moisture evaporates, it cools the inner pot, keeping up 12kg of produce fresh for up to three weeks.
Fruit, vegetables, water. The zeer pot keeps them all fresher for longer – providing much needed help to starving families.
You can see from the table below the incredible difference that a zeer pot makes to food preservation in Sudan. For many families, it can mean the difference between potential starvation and having enough food to feed themselves.
Visit the website for more details on the Zeer Pot Fridge, including how to make one, and basic information on evaporative cooling. http://practicalaction.org/our-work/ourwork_zeerpotfridge
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What if we didn’t use electricity to store all of our fresh food? Our energy-hungry fridges could be much smaller if we used more passive technology. For other fridge designs, check out these VEIL student works: “Circular“, “Tower of Power” and “Split Fridge“ -KA
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