Our Neighborhood

Earth

Keeping It Green

Recycling

• Recent News Stories

• Of Interest

Page Updated:
February 3, 2022

• • A Proud Ship Turned Into a Giant Recycling Problem

  Brazil Plans to Sink It
  
  

  Feb. 2, 2023 -A decommissioned aircraft carrier, packed with an undetermined amount of asbestos, is being towed in circles off the coast of Brazil after it was refused permission to dock in Turkey for recycling. The problem? No government wants anything to do with it.

  Now, the Brazilian Navy says it plans to just sink the ship, the São Paulo, a Clemenceau-class carrier purchased from France in 2000 for $12 million, planes and helicopters not included.

• • A New Way to Hand-Me-Down

  Helping to Reduce Clothing Waste
  
  

  Jan. 22, 2023 -In a San Antonio garage, two millennial mothers spend hours with the garage door open, soaking up the Texas air and sorting through small mountains of children’s clothes.

  This is how Kara Livingston, 36, and Nicole Boynton, 35, describe a typical scene in their lives as the founders of Hand Me Up, a small business aimed at helping parents shop more responsibly to cut down on children’s clothing waste.

• • How Out-Of-Service Wind Turbines
  Are Giving New Life to Children’s Playgrounds

  Old Turbine Blades Cannot Be Recycled For Energy Production, But They Can Be Reused For Fun and Aesthetics
  
  

  Jan. 19, 2023 -Like many human inventions, wind turbines also come with an expiration date. They usually last up to 25 years and after that, they become a serious headache.

  A turbine blade cannot be recycled because of its size; therefore, it is cut down into pieces and sent to wind turbine graveyards, like the ones in Texas and Wyoming. At these sites, thousands of turbine blades are just lying there out in the Sun like a massive pile of waste, and that pile keeps on growing every year.

• • Old Batteries Will Help Power Tomorrow’s EVs

  Recycling Lithium-Ion
  Batteries is Taking Off
  
  

  Jan. 17, 2023 -To Redwood Materials, the rows of cardboard boxes in its gravel parking lot represent both the past and the future of electric vehicles. The makeshift storage space stretches for over 10 acres at Redwood’s new battery recycling site just outside Reno, Nevada. Most of the boxes are about the size of a washing machine and are wrapped in white plastic. But some lie open, revealing their contents: wirelesss keyboards, discarded toys, chunks of used Honda Civic batteries.

• • Discarded Electronics Could Become a Huge Source of Gold

  See How a National E-Waste Recycling Strategy Might Pan Out
  
  

  Straits'TimesDec. 6, 2022 -Over 1 billion electronic devices could be discarded annually in the United States a decade from now, according to a new study. But the analysis also shows these electronics could become a source of roughly half the amount of gold as is currently mined anew in the United States.

   

• • The End of a Battery’s Life Matters

  As Much as Its Beginning
  
  

  Oct. 24, 2022 -Right now, the last stop in the US for many of the giant lithium batteries that power electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles is a plant in a town near Phoenix, Arizona.

  There, the Toronto-based company Li-Cycle breaks the batteries down into “black mass” — a dark, shredded mess of copper, cobalt, nickel, and lithium that without further processing is as useful as shiny dirt. That is, until most of it is shipped to factories in other countries to separate it into the valuable raw materials that both auto and electronics manufacturers need to build new batteries.

• • A Way to Recycle Plastic Indefinitely

  Scientists Just Discovered How
  
  

  Sep. 26, 2022 -Remember that plastic bottle you just disposed of in the recycling bin? By the most recent statistics, there is less than a one in three chance it will be recycled. If it does get recycled, there’s only a one in five chance it will be turned into a fresh plastic bottle used for food or beverages. And if that bottle is lucky enough to see a second life, there won’t be a third because the recycling process damages the plastic’s properties, and this is something that is true for all plastic-containing products.

  But what if there was a way to recycle plastic a third, tenth, or even one-hundredth time? Researchers at the University of Colorado Boulder believe this is indeed possible. They just published a new study describing how they broke down a type of hard plastic commonly used in aerospace and microelectronics into its basic building blocks, which they used to forge the same exact type of plastic without it losing its desirable properties.

• • How Sustainable Is Recycling?

  There's No Simple Answer
  
  

  Aug. 27, 2022 -Recycling has been a key part of sustainability efforts in developed countries for decades. It’s a tried-and-true, effective way to reduce waste and prolong the life of valuable resources — right? Well, it’s not that simple. Let’s see how effective recycling truly is at cutting back on waste and helping the environment.

  To accurately estimate recycling’s effectiveness, we need to see how different countries organize their efforts. Here are three of the largest waste producers in the world: the United States, United Kingdom and Australia.

• • How Batteries Get Recycled

  The Process Explained
  
  

  July 22, 2022 -Batteries are critical to our daily lives. They power everything from our phones and laptops to our bikes and cars. But what happens to batteries when they’re no longer usable?

  Battery recycling is vital for both environmental and economic reasons. When batteries get recycled, valuable metals like lead and cadmium are recovered and used to make new batteries. This recycling process eliminates the need to mine for these metals, which is terrible for the environment.

• • Can the Solar Industry Help
  the Global Aluminum Shortage?

  Let's Learn How
  
  

  July 20, 2022 -Did you know there’s a magic metal used daily in the Solar Industry? That metal is aluminum, and it’s called a magic metal because it can be recycled repeatedly without losing its core quality. This is why about 75% of all aluminum that has ever been put into production is still in use today, actively being recycled back into the system.

  While bauxite mining for virgin aluminum is not ideal, taking used aluminum and recycling it back into the system for new aluminum is a great system that everyone can support.

• • The Truth About Plastics Biodegradability

  Here’s What the Experts Say
  
  

  July 1, 2022 -The world loves to use plastic because it’s cheap and highly durable. But the same appealing properties are a curse when plastic reaches the end of its lifecycle, polluting the soil and ocean for centuries to come. This problem is extremely pervasive and, at first glance, almost impossible to solve. The most plastic-littered place on Earth is actually a remote island in the middle of the Pacific and microplastics — tiny pieces of polymer measuring five millimeters or less — have been found in the lungs and even the blood of humans.

• •  Scottish Facility to Turn Plastic Waste Into Hydrogen

  Will Chemical Recycling Solve
  Our Plastic Waste Problem?
  
  

  June 16, 2022 -Peel NRE, a part of United Kingdom-based Peel L&P, is building a new $24 million (£20 million) plant in West Dunbartonshire, Scotland that will turn plastic waste into hydrogen.

  The company says it will use new tech to "create a local source of sustainable hydrogen from non-recycling plastics otherwise destined for landfill, incineration or export overseas," reports The BBC. The hydrogen will then be utilized to fuel cars, buses, and HGVs. There are plans to build a hydrogen refueling station on the plant's site.

• • Tennessee Trail Is Designed Not to 'Tire' You Out

  Tennessee Officials Say One of the Longest Rubber-Bearing Trails in the U.S. Has Opened at T.O. Fuller State Park
  
  

  June 6, 2022 -According to a news release, Tennessee State Parks, the Department of Transportation and local leader cut the ribbon on the on the new 2.5 miles hard-surface walking biking trail.

  Volunteers and local contractors gathered more than 24,000 tires that had been illegally dumped in the park to make the trail. Patriot Tire Recycling in Bristol transformed the tires into crumbs, which were then returned to the park for trail construction.

• • Oregon's New Recycling Approach

  Other States Are Adopting It
  
  

  May 27, 2022 -After recycling’s failure to appreciably reduce the amount of plastic the U.S. throws away, some states are taking a new approach, transferring the onus of recycling from consumers to product manufacturers.

  In the past 12 months, legislatures in Maine, Oregon and Colorado have passed "extended producer responsibility" laws on packaging. The legislation essentially forces producers of consumer goods — such as beverage-makers, shampoo companies and food corporations — to pay for the disposal of the packages and containers their products come in.

• • Getting the World Clean,
  One Recycled Bar of Soap at a Time

  Nonprofit Recycles Partially
  Used Soap Left Behind From Hotel
  Guests for Those in Need
  
  

  May 17, 2022-When hotel or motel guests check into their rooms, they expect at the very least to be greeted with a clean space, a made-up bed and in the bathroom, soap.

  But what happens when you leave that soap behind?

• • US Plastic Recycling Falls to Abysmal Levels

  Plastics Use is Increasing While
  Recycling Falls Way Short in the US.
  
  

  May 5, 2022 -The rate of plastic waste being recycled in the United States fell below 6% last year, according to a new report based on official data. The figure is explained by a surge in plastic consumption during the pandemic and by the decision of some countries, particularly China, to stop accepting US waste exports, the researchers found.

• • Cement Makers Burn Turbine Blades
  as Wind Power Faces Recycling Headache

  Incinerating Blades In Cement-Factory
  Kilns Instead of Sending them to
  Landfill Reduces Emissions Overall
  
  

  Apr. 26, 2022 -Old wind-turbine blades are getting a new lease on life—in cement.

  Turbines are mostly made of steel, a widely recyclable material. But their blades are constructed of complex composite materials such as fiberglass and balsa wood that are difficult to separate and process, presenting a recycling challenge. As a result, blades that reach the end of their lives often end up in landfill.

• • Trash or Recycling?

  Why Plastic Keeps Us Guessing
  
  

  Apr. 21, 2022 -The universal symbol for recycling, known as the “chasing arrows” logo, is stamped on so many things. But that doesn’t mean they’re recyclable.

  Manufacturers can print the logo on just about any product. That’s because its main purpose isn’t to say whether it’s recyclable, but to identify the type of plastic it’s made from. (For example, if there’s a “3” in the center, it’s PVC, which most curbside recycling programs don’t accept.) The logo is so widely misunderstood that last year California banned its use on things that aren’t recyclable.

• • Used Tires Are Not Recyclable, But...

  Using Old Tires to
  Make More Durable Concrete
  
  

  Apr. 1, 2022 -Every year, over 300 million scrap tires are generated in the United States alone. These tires are very rarely recycled due to their properties, so they end up in landfills where they pose a serious fire hazard. Seeking to turn a problem into an opportunity, researchers at the University of South Australia and RMIT University ground old tires into fine particles, which they used in lieu of sand aggregates for concrete manufacturing.

  Concrete slabs made using the repurposed tires proved economically viable and even more durable than conventional concrete in a real-world setting.

• • The False Promise of Plastic Recycling

  A French Company Has a New
  Solution to the Plastic Problem
  Not Everyone is Buying it

  Mar. 5, 2022, (The Atlantic)-An Attempt to commercialize a type of chemical recycling known as depolymerization, which breaks down polymers—the chainlike molecules that make up a plastic—into their fundamental molecular building blocks, called monomers. Those monomers can then be reassembled into polymers that are, in terms of their physical properties, as good as new. In theory, proponents say, a single plastic bottle could be recycled this way until the end of time.

• • How to Recycle Your Christmas Lights

  Wishing the Earth a
  Merry After Christmas
  
  

  Sep. 2, 2021, - It doesn't feel right to put Christmas lights in a trash can. Maybe they've stopped working, or maybe you're replacing incandescent lights with safer, more energy-efficient LEDs. In any case, after brightening so many holiday seasons over the years, it can seem a little cold and unceremonious to just throw them away.

  Fortunately, we now have several options for recycling old Christmas lights, helping our hard-working bulbs and diodes avoid the landfill while also sparing the environment from their toxic and non-biodegradable components.

• • Don’t Just Recycle - TerraCycle

  Closed-Loop Solutions

  TERRACYCLE - TerraCycle's goal is to focus on hard-to-recycle materials, developing circular solutions for otherwise linear systems. Today they recycle millions of pounds of such material on a weekly basis, diverting it from our landfills and incinerators.

  When looking at a new waste stream we first focus on moving it from a linear disposal system to a circular one, and then over time to a platform that is as closed loop as technically possible.

• • What We Can Recycle?

  13 Household Items You
  You Might Not Know You Could Recycle

  -The recycling basics are pretty easy: put paper, plastic, and glass in their appropriate containers so your local recycling center can process them correctly.

  But what do you with those odd (yet somehow everyday) household items filling up our drawers, closets, and garages? While we don’t want to throw them away in the trash, we’re not sure what to do with them. Thanks to this helpful little infographic, you can now take care of your toothbrushes, toilets, and tennis balls with ease!

  Click now for the Live Brighter blog.

• • Recycling For Kids (1)

  Having Children Take
  Respnsibility for a Clean Planet

  Fun Presentation and Game about Recycling - Natural Resource Facts about Paper and Aluminum and How To Recycle for Kids - Green Living Strategies Presented by Children of the Earth United - Environmental Education for Kids of all Ages, Teachers and Families.

• • Recycling For Kids (2)

  Children Learning About Recycling
  and Having Fun at the Same Time

  Nico is on a quest to help save the planet! He’s passionate about sharing his knowledge of recycling with everyone, so join Nico on his journey to reduce, reuse and recycle with tips and fun activities. Once you have the practices down, you can share your recycling knowledge with your family and friends too!

  
  Learn more about Nico by clicking now.
• • Check Out This Recycled "Green" House

  Modern Recycled Container House in South
  Africa Operates 100% Off Grid

  Mar. 10, 2017- Sustainable design has taken longer to get off the ground in South Africa largely due to expensive construction methods.

  When Johannesburg-based Architecture For A Change (A4AC) took on the challenge of building a modern green home in the country, they aimed to make the house not only environmentally friendly but also affordable. They cut costs by using upcycled shipping containers and other repurposed materials to build Cliff House, a lifted flying container house with an economical, energy-efficient design.

• • From Trash to Building Material

  What Is Poly Brick?

  It's a revolutionary building material made from 100% recycled Polyethylene Terephthalate Polymer. It is translucent, naturally insulated, and durable. The modular 3-D honeycomb self-interlocking structure makes it extremely strong without any chemical adhesives, while weights only 1/5 of the standard curtain wall systems.

• • It’s Not Just Trash Anymore

  One Person’s Trash is
  Another's Renewable Energy

  The practical benefits of organic products don't necessarily end when it goes down the drain or into the trash. There is quite a bit of useful energy left in the items we discard.

• • More About Plastic Waste

  Pollution
  (And What We Can Do About It)

  Plastic is literally at our fingertips all day long. Keyboards. framed computer monitor, mice. The amount of plastic we encounter daily doesn\’t end there. Chances are, you can relate. Plastic is an epidemic.

  But where does all this plastic go?

• • Plastic Bottles Become Shoes and More

  Timberland Transforms Recycled Plastic
  Bottles Into Shoes and Bags

  Mar. 3, 2017- For its latest collection, Timberland is turning to the bottle—the plastic bottle, that is. The outdoor-wear maker has teamed up with Thread, a Pittsburgh, Penn.-based manufacturer of sustainable fabrics, to transform plastic bottles from the streets and canals of Haiti into a dapper collection of footwear, bags, and T-shirts.

• • A State-by-State Guide to Landfill Bans

  What’s Banned in Landfills:
  A State-by-State Guide

  Earth91/ Nov. 27, 2017 - In some cases, it’s not about whether you should recycle an item, but instead whether you must.

  That’s because in the U.S., there are no federal laws regarding recycling. There wasn’t even a law regarding waste generation until the Solid Waste Disposal Act in 1965, which eventually became the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) and set procedures for landfills and collection of household waste.

  This means any items banned from landfills are decided at the state (or, in some cases, city) level. Only one U.S. state, Montana, currently does not have any landfill bans.

• • Beer Waste Into Clean Water+

  Microbes Turn Beer Waste
  Into Clean Water, Energy

  November 1, 2015 -Cambrian Innovation is extracting clean water and energy from waste streams at two California breweries with a secret set of microbes.

• • Yes, Pizza Boxes Can Be Recycled After All

  An We Thought
  That We Couldn't

  SIERRA Magazine, July 28, 2020 -When Eric Nelson looks back on his years as a waste reduction manager at the University of Kansas, what stands out are the pizza boxes. "One year, there was a first-week event for all the clubs and organizations," he told me on a phone call from Lawrence. "I think Pizza Hut sent over like 500 medium one-topping pizzas." That was great for the hungry college students, not so much for Nelson, who spent the evening schlepping 500 pizza boxes to the dumpster "because we couldn't recycle pizza boxes."

  It's advice from the dawn of curbside recycling: Don't put your pizza box in the blue bin because the greasy cardboard and cheese scraps make it unrecyclable. For years, conscientious recyclers followed this advice, and tens of billions of pizza boxes were sent to landfills and incinerators. The intentions were good, but it turns out that the advice wasn't.

  New research reveals that, so long as you remove all the pizza, the cardboard container that held your Veggie Supreme can be readily recycled into something new.

• • An New Role for Discarded Plastics

  Netherlands: Plastic Roads to
  Be Made From Recycled Ocean Waste

  Sept 16, 2016 - After the floating farm, Rotterdam will be the first city in the world that plans to build roads using plastic waste rescued from the oceans. These are polymer blocks, reminiscent of Lego pieces with which we played as a kid, and presented as the ecological alternative to stop pouring concrete.

• • 3D Printing Our Way Out of Waste

  Is 3D Printing the
  Answer to Plastic Waste?

  January 29, 2015,  -You’ve probably heard a lot about 3D printing in the last few years. "Printing" is sort of a misnomer. Also referred to as "additive manufacturing," it’s the process of creating an object from a digital file by layering filaments to form the finished product. It’s been hyped as a revolution that will make conventional manufacturing obsolete, allowing people to create the products and tools they need in their own homes.

• • Canon™ Cartridge Recycling

  Canon Environmental Technologies, Inc.

  In 1990, Canon introduced a cartridge recycling program for all-in-one laser beam printer toner cartridges through its Clean Earth Campaign Program. The goal of the program is to achieve zero landfill waste by reusing parts, recycling materials, and employing energy recovery. Canon’s all-in-one cartridges have components that can be recycled and reused by Canon.

• • Electronics Recycling

  Recycling Electronic Waste
  Responsibly: Excuses Dwindle

  Maybe you replaced old electronics over the holidays or you’re just sweeping out the old and ushering in the New Year. Either way, you’ll need to do something with your old devices. For everyone’s sake, including Mother Nature’s, try to get rid of your old technology the right way.

  Click now to read how
  and watch the video.

• • Light From Discarded Batteries

  Discarded Laptop Batteries Keep the Lights On

  Millions of discarded batteries have more than enough life to power home lighting for one year, researchers in India say.

  Many of the estimated 50 million lithium-ion laptop batteries discarded every year could provide electricity storage sufficient to light homes in poor countries, researchers at IBM say.

• • The LandfillHarmonic

  There's No Such Thing As Waste

  Click now to watch this entertaining video and see what we mean.

• • Self-Destructing Plastics & Recycling Awareness

  Self-Destructing Plastics and Recycling?

  CleanTecnica , Aug. 15, 2018  - Evian says it will produce all its plastic bottles from 100% recycled plastic by 2025. Starbucks made headlines this summer with its pledge to eliminate plastic straws by 2020. British supermarket Morrisons said it would bring back “traditional” brown paper bags for loose fruit and vegetables, which means that 150 million small plastic bags will be removed from circulation. But is any of this foot-stomping about plastics really enough? Isn’t it time for to ask the world’s scientists to research and develop polymers or plastics with built-in self-destruct mechanisms?

  Interested? Click now for whole story.

• • The Last Straw

  Make the Last Straw You Got From
  a Restaurant Your Last One

  A disposable plastic straw is used on average for a whopping 20 minutes. It’s longer than the four-second lifespan of the plastic stirrer you may use to swizzle your coffee or tea, but 20 minutes is still just a tiny fraction of the several hundred years it could spend in a landfill.

  One straw may seem insignificant, but consider this: someone who uses one straw a day for the next decade will toss 3,650 pieces of plastic into the landfill—and there’s a chance that plastic may get lost along the way and end up in the ocean.

• • Using Bugs to Clean Up Waste

  Dong Energy Funds
  First Power Plant Using
  Bugs to Clean Up Waste

  July 1, 2016- Dong Energy A/S’s REnescience plant in northern England will use enzyme technology to “wash”; organic matter from unsorted waste, creating a slurry that can be turned into a gas for use in power generation or motor fuels, said their VP of commercial bioenergy at Novozymes.

• • CO2 As a Refrigerant

  A Good Use for CO2

  Volkswagen, Daimler, Audi, BMW and Porsche have announced plans to develop CO2 technology as a more climate-friendly refrigerant for air conditioning systems.

  VW says CO2 as a refrigerant — also known as R744 — has lower greenhouse gas effects than conventional refrigerants, with a GWP (Global Warming Potential) value of 1, or 99.3 percent below the European Union-specified GWP limit of 150.