Posts Tagged: recycling

Sustainable lifestyles — No Comments
7
Jan 10

The package deal

October, 2009

For millions of years, human food came in a furry skin, or a patch of dirt. Ancient people developed storage pits, jars and other means to try and keep things fresh, but commercial packaging as we know it today only dates back about 200 years. In 1810 Frenchman Nicolas Appert invented a food storage system using heating and specially sealed glass jars. Two years later England’s Dartford Iron Works began producing hand-made iron cans using this technique. Paper and cardboard cartons emerged at about the same time.

The first screw top jar was invented in 1858. By the 1880s in the United States, paper cartons were being sealed with a thin film of paraffin. The crown cap for bottles, which is still in use in some bar-room sodas, came along in 1898. And not long afterwards the creation of synthetic plastics unleashed a fresh avalanche of ‘disposable’ items onto the planet. In 1951 Ruben Rausing set up Tetrapak, which created specially lined cardboard cartons which now surrounds things like milk, juice and yoghurt all over the world. This has made his son Hans one the richest men in the world, with an estimated fortune of $13bn. And Tinplate steel and aluminium cans have been around since 1960.

Of course, people have reused old items and converted them for other purposes for eons. But the recent exponential increase in packaging production has left us with polluted air and water, and history’s biggest litter problem. Until about 1970, the cost of cleaning up the mess was simply pushed ahead of us to future generations like rubbish in front of a bulldozer. And it’s only in the last 20 years that doing anything about it has become a major mainstream concern.

Moves to reduce the use of packaging are now well underway, mostly driven by sheer market economics. Packaging costs money, so companies are keen to cut down, but consumers in the industrialised countries have acquired a taste for food from all over the world, which only arrives fresh and clean because of the packaging. Packaging is also marketing tool to get your attention and your dollars, and it works, so few firms are ready to abandon it completely.

There’s only so much packaging you can reuse in your home, no matter how keen your kids are on craft, so the next best option is recycling. In 2004 the voluntary New Zealand Packaging Accord was created by The Packaging Council of New Zealand business group and the Ministry for the Environment. It brought together brand owners, retailers, importers, manufacturers, recyclers and local government to negotiate voluntary targets on packaging recovery, by weight.

While the accord’s results are encouraging, and we have used them below, they should be treated with caution. It is extremely difficult to accurately calculate recycling rates, as to do so you would need to track all the packaging materials in the country from creation to disposal. The government uses a baffling array of statistics on the waste going into landfill to try to monitor this, and these suggest that some communities have reduced their waste going to landfill by more than 60 per cent.

Focusing on the percentage of packaging being redirected from landfill or recycled can also hide the scale of the ongoing problem. We are still burying a lot of rubbish under New Zealand’s green and pleasant land. Consumer.org.nz estimates that 8.7 million tonnes of solid waste is produced each year. Of this, we recycle 2.4 million tonnes, the rest ends up buried in the ground. By weight, about 12 percent of the average rubbish bag is estimated to be packaging.

Last year the introduction of the Waste Minimisation Act put efforts to tackle this on a new legal footing.  It introduced a levy on all waste disposed of in landfills to help pay for waste reduction. It also provides the means to force companies to take greater responsibility for the environmental effects of what they produce. But so far it stops short of making this mandatory for packaging; instead the plan is for this to remain voluntary for the time being.

Waste in the recycling process is not bathed in an angelic glow simply because it is not going into New Zealand’s soil. Recycling has become very big business. In New Zealand it employs more than 4,000 people. In July last year Visy Recycling spent $21.9 million on a new recycling plant in Onehunga, Auckland. Acclaimed as the most technologically advanced facility of its type in the southern hemisphere it can sort up to 120,000 tonnes of packaging a year.

Waste’s financial value, and therefore the possible profits to be made in reprocessing it, is determined by the same supply and demand market forces as every other commodity. As recycling has taken off all over the industrialised world, the supply of some of these materials has exploded, forcing prices down, sometimes to the point where there’s not enough of a margin for businesses to bother. Other times fresh technologies for using these materials (recycled clothing, road materials, fencing, you name it) have increased demand, and made previously unviable recycling a money spinner. As you can see from our examples, thousands of tonnes of waste are being shipped from place to place as part of this international trade.

Recycling can be seen as just another manufacturing process, and is not without environmental costs. Most packaging is not designed with recycling in mind. It takes energy and resources to recycle things and they can often only be used once more in their new form, and are then not recyclable again. Ex-Greenpeace chemist Michael Braungart and architect William McDonough, authors of the revolutionary Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things call this ‘Cradle to Grave’ kind of recycling ‘down-cycling’. The process saves some resources, but creates products of less value than the original. Their vision is of a world where all products are composed of ‘technical’ recyclable or reusable materials which are simple to remove, separate and remanufacture time and time again, and ‘biological’ materials which can be safely eaten or composted. Then we can all get back to checking out the furry things and the dirt.

Innovation / Sustainable lifestyles — No Comments
7
Jan 10

Beyond Sustainable Design

September, 2008

“What if buildings actually created an abundance of fresh water, fresh air and power? What if it was possible to take your chair or carpet, cut it up small and eat it with your muesli?” When Professor Dr. Michael Braungart started saying things like this at the recent Better by Design CEO Summit jaws were dropping so fast you could almost hear them drum-rolling on the floor. But what does he mean?

Michael Braungart is the principal of McDonough Braungart Design Chemistry, Professor of Process Engineering at Universität Lüneburg (Germany), and co-author of Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way we Make Things with architect William McDonough. But more than that, he is that rare thing – a visionary who understands the details of his subject and maintains a sense of humour.

Michael’s work as an environmental chemist set him on a collision course with many of the materials of modern home design. As a former director of Greenpeace’s chemistry department he uncovered the fact that, as he describes it:

“Most of the materials in furniture, paints and more were never designed to go inside, which means the air quality in most modern buildings is worse than the most polluted city street. Most skin care products were never designed to go on anybody’s skin and most children’s toys should not be played with by children.”

The Cradle to Cradle is a bid to transform these products and more. It also takes us beyond the cradle to grave approach, where our industrial system is still largely based on digging natural resources up, turning them into short-lived poorly designed things, using them, and then burying them in a hole.

It goes beyond reducing or even eliminating waste and pollution. It eliminates the very concepts of waste and pollution. It’s about industrial production and products where the side effects are positive rather than negative. Carpets and chair made of such positive materials that they can be composted (or even eaten!) at the end of their use, factories that produce cheap power or soil as by-products.

And it’s not necessarily about efficiency, it’s about effectiveness. Michael points out that at the moment the industrialised nations are very efficiently destroying the environment, while Mozart, Van Gogh, love and sex are not particularly efficient, but are extremely effective.

Michael believes that what most people consider ‘sustainability’ and ‘green’ today is largely a form of guilt management for the damage we feel we have done to the world. While justifiable, it is far too limited, too negative, and stifles innovation.

This means that recycling, for example tends to be: “Doing things less badly, instead of not doing bad things. It’s like perfecting something which is wrong in the first place, so you are now just being perfectly wrong.”

It turns away from the self-flagellating obsession with just leaving things out, minimising waste, minimising ourselves, or feeling guilty for simply being on the planet.

Michael argues that this guilt at simply being human, the sense that there are just too many of us, is also partly to blame for the mindset which allows the industrialised world to abandon starving people in Africa and elsewhere. If you begin to believe that humanity itself has no real right to be on the planet, how can you believe in human rights?

One of the greatest enemies of genuine development at the moment is what Michael describes as a particularly European fascination for ‘doing as if,’ or acting like you are doing something, rather than actually doing it. For example publicising the banning of one toxic substance while failing to tell people that it has been replaced with something equally or more harmful.

He is also only too happy to slaughter a few of the environmental movement’s sacred cows. “I don’t want to minimise my footprint,” he says triumphantly. “I want a massive footprint, but I want it to be a positive one. Yes we only have one planet, but if we are clever we can use it to produce 50 times what we have now, so it’s as if we have 50 planets. There are not too many of us, we are just being too stupid.”

It is a positive vision. It contains the idea that there is no longer the bit of the planet we are responsible for, and then wilderness. We are affecting all of it, so we are responsible for all of it – this human managed Earth. The response is not a retreat from globalisation, capitalism or democracy but a challenge to reinvigorate them, to take on our responsibility.

Instead of making the same old things and trying to minimise their harm by what Michael terms ‘downcycling’ them into lower value items, we should create truly positive products in the first place. These should exist in one of two closed loops of production and re-production.

One is the nutrient cycle, in which everything should be edible, compostable or biodegradable. The other is the technical cycle, in which materials which cannot do these things, for example the precious heavy metals we use for computers and mobile phones, can be easily reclaimed and re-used.

“When you go to buy a product, you should ask yourself, when I am finished with this, can I eat it, burn it safely and cleanly in my fireplace, compost it in the garden, or will the company take it back?” he says. “Otherwise how can you take responsibility for it, and why should you?”

Instead of just selling you things, a Cradle to Cradle economy would be more likely to sell you the use of things. As another speaker at the conference Alex Steffen from Worldchanging.com pointed out at the conference, the average DIY power drill is used for between 6-20 minutes in its entire lifetime. This fixation with ownership of products and not services is a direct creator of waste.

People don’t really need to own their own drill, but they want a convenient way of putting holes in things. A more effective way of providing this than selling you a low quality drill you will hardly use might be to offer you the use of a top quality drill for the time you need it, or the inexpensive services of a well equipped drilling person.

That way the drill itself could be built to last, and its components to be easily re-used. Then nobody has to worry about what to do with all the unwanted drills.

If this all sounds like common sense, that’s because it is. And it’s catching on. Governments are taking notice, and big companies like Ford, Nike, Shaw carpets and BASF have already been given some Cradle to Cradle treatment.

It is early days for these ideas, and they are so far only being applied piecemeal in dispersed places. But how we design our way from cradle to grave to cradle to cradle, and resurrect our civilisation in the process, is now one of the most urgent and exciting questions facing humanity.

Sustainable lifestyles — No Comments
7
Jan 10

As the worm turns

August, 2008

The humble worm is a superhero.

Spiralling food prices and global soil depletion are leaving people to starve abroad and making it harder to make ends meet at home. The industrialised world’s response is to massively over-use petrochemical based fertilisers, ship food products all over the world, and send tonnes of unwanted food to fester in landfills.

This wastes nutrients, causes pollution and drives climate change.  Enter the worms to save the day. By getting to know your worms, recycling your scraps and adding the result to your veggie patch, you can help solve all these problems at a stroke.

So here’s how to help save the world – one mouldy potato at a time.

Building your worm HQ

When you picture worm farms, you may be thinking of a sprawling, evil smelling, squirming heap. But it needn’t be so. A properly maintained farm does not smell, and these days there are indoor and outdoor worm farm designs to match even the most refined designer tastes.

The scale of your worm farm will depend on the space you have available and how much food waste you want it to deal with. The first thing to do is to work out the average amount of scraps your household generates in a day. Collect all your potential worm food (see below) in a container for one week, weigh it, and divide the weight by seven. This irons out those Sunday blow out fluctuations and the times when you might eat out. Allow approximately 2m² surface area (or a volume of 60 litres) for every 200 grams of food waste per day. Don’t be daunted by the size of your scrap heap. It’s not compulsory to worm farm all your food waste, and every bit helps.

Making the farm as easy and convenient to use as possible will radically improve your chances of success. Consider the location of your worm farm carefully. It should be relatively near the kitchen and/or in a spot which you pass often, so you can drop off food easily and check in on the team. Think about how big it can be if you want to be able to move it without unloading it.

Worms like temperatures between 10 – 25ºC. Ideally, your bin should be in a sheltered spot that gets some sun. You will need to ensure it doesn’t get too hot, and insulate it well if it is outside in colder seasons, otherwise the may freeze to death. Old carpet on top of the contents is ideal for this.

Commercial worm contraptions are on the market for around $150, but it’s more creative looking for a container and converting it for the purpose. Old bath tubs are perfect as they are a good size and come complete with drainage. Old recycling bins, where they have been replaced with newer models, are also good, but wooden containers are better as they provide good insulation and have the added benefit of absorbing excess moisture.

Worms need to breathe, and like to work near the surface. Your warm farm needs to remain damp, but not waterlogged. Whatever you use should only be 20 – 40 cm deep with a relatively large surface area (about 40×40 – 60 cm). Also, if your farm is too deep it can prevent the necessary air getting in and make it awkward to work on. A shallow container also allows for better aeration of the bedding.

Depending on size, drill or punch eight – 12 holes about 10mm diameter in the bottom of the container for aeration and drainage. If contents become too wet, drill more holes. Raise your container up on bricks or wooden blocks to aid air circulation and drainage. Place a tray underneath to capture the excess liquid. It can be diluted one part juice to 10 parts water to make an excellent liquid plant fertiliser. Worms do their thing in the dark, so you will also need a cover, but one which does not seal out the air. This preserves moisture and prevents scavenging animals from tearing through your scrap collection. Weighted down corrugated iron is a popular and effective option.

It’s not hard getting the staff these days. Two species are especially suited for worm composting, Tiger Worms (Eisenia fetida) and Red Worms, (Lumbricus rubellus) also known as red wriggler or manure worms. For each 400 grams of food waste you will need between 500 grams – 900 grams of worms. That’s between 1,000 and 2,000 of the little fellas. But don’t worry, you can always start small, and wait for them to breed. In the ideal conditions they will double their number every 40 days or so.

The easiest way to start your crew is to buy worms direct from specialists. You can find them on Trade Me and in the Yellow Pages. 1,000 worms cost about $30, but some council run schemes offer them at a discount. A cheaper, more fun, but more haphazard way is to collect them from mature manure heaps. Or if we want to economise and socialise you can get some from a fellow worm farmer. Members of Permaculture in New Zealand (www.permaculture.org.nz) are good people to try. You can pick up your worms and pick the experts’ brains at the same time.

To bed your worms down, tear or shred paper, make it damp and add it to your container with a little soil until it is 10-15cm deep. This layer shouldn’t be too wet – it is there to help air circulate. Then load in your worms and the appropriate amount of food scraps, and your planet saving work has begun!

Worms prefer their meals crushed up as small as you can be bothered. They ‘don’t do spicey’, garlic or onions. Other than that they will eat most kitchen vegetable/fruit scraps or peelings, shredded paper, tea bags and leaves, coffee grounds and filters, crushed egg shells, bread scraps, leftover cereal, cottage cheese, plate scrapings, biscuit crumbs, even ice cream.

Avoid adding too much left over citrus or acidic fruits, like oranges, lemons, grapefruit and kiwifruit. These make conditions too acid for the worms. Deal with garden waste in a normal composter – otherwise the heat can kill your wriggly friends. Meat/fish scraps can only be included in moderation and should be buried (not too deeply) in the bedding to stop odours and discourage flies. Also avoid adding oils, as they turn things to slime. It can help the process to add a little semi-mature compost once it is past the heating stage, or aged horse manure. The micro-organisms they contain help soften up the waste for the worms, as well as providing additional food.

If your worms end up eating their own castings, they will die. So your worm farm will need refreshing about once every three months. If you have a suitably large container, you can make this easier from the outset by feeding the worms at only one end of the bin for at least a week before clean-out time. Then take the bedding/castings out of the unfed end of the farm and add it to your garden. (This will remove about half to two thirds of the material and some of the worms.) Place the remaining material in a separate container while you clean the bin and add new bedding. Then replace it and add some scraps. The worms will move out of the old bedding in a couple of days, ready for next time.

You can put the castings you remove from your worm farm, and the diluted liquid fertiliser, directly on your garden. Watch it grow, eat the contents, put the scraps in your worm farm. Repeat.