Reduce, Reuse, Recycle
From AdlerGreenTeam
Contents |
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Understanding the situation
An average person in the United States generates over 4 pounds of trash in a day without even considering sewage. The United States accounts for 5% or the world population, yet it generates 30% of the world's trash.
The same way trash, in the form of disposables and overpackaging, was designed into the system, now it needs to be designed out. Check out this animation for a comprehensive picture: The Story of Stuff
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Reduce
Manufacturing, transportation and trashing of disposables wastes valuable resources, so reducing consumption is the most important thing one can do to be sustainable. If waste is not there in the first place, there is no need for containers or trucks for manufacturing, hauling it to and away, and sort it, compact it or reprocess it, including the energy needed to do all of that.
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Reduce waste when working
- Avoid printing memos or lists for office meetings. Instead, send them through email, use a projector to read the document, or request people print them if they need them for the meeting.
- Set your computer default setting for printing double-sided copies: Media:green_tips.pdf
- Print to black and white if color is not needed.
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Reduce waste when eating
- Avoid plastic water bottles. There are two water filters downstairs that provide cold and hot water all day long. Glass, ceramic and metal are better for serving water than plastic. Read more >>
- Choosing finger food like wraps or sandwiches that do not require cutlery or disposable plastic cutlery and container can help save resources. See Greening serviceware.
- Actively refuse disposable serviceware such as cups, plates, forks, spoons and knives, and sauce sachets, when ordering food from anywhere.
- Avoid plastic sandwich bags, cling wrap or aluminum foil to pack food. Unless you recycle the alluminum, these materials are wasteful for this purpose. Use reusable containers, napkins or waxed paper instead.
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Reduce waste when shopping
- Wherever and whatever you shop, even inside the museum, bring your own bag. Bringing your own bag is not harder than bringing back plastic or paper ones for recycling. Read more>>
- Avoid overly packaged or single serving, so called convenience foods (they are certainly not convenient for the environment!)
- Avoid unrecyclable containers.
- Seek quality. Watch out for cheap stuff that will break soon and force you to go shopping again.
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Reduce waste when cleaning
- Avoid using paper towels for drying your hands in the bathroom. Our hand dryers may be slow, but they do waste less than the paper towel system. Read more >>
- The museum provides safe biodegradable cleaners and soaps. Avoid antibacterial soaps because their cleaning effect is insignificant when compared to regular soaps, they leach dangerous chemicals and pollution, and cause stronger strains of bacteria to strive.
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Reduce junk mail waste
- Avoid junk mail: Every time you buy or order something, make sure you ask to not placed in any mailing list, and that the company you are purchasing from understands you don't want any junk mail.
- Refuse junk mail
- Call the company who sent you the junk mail and ask them to stop. They will warn you that it may take up to 4 months because catalogs get postmarked in advance. Make a note of the date so you know if you need to call again.
- Look in the back of credit card offers and read the small print: there is an address there where you can stop credit card offers based on your credit history. Companies are required to have this by law, and they do it right away if you ask, so easy!!
- Write a postcard with your name and address to Mail Preference Service, Direct Marketing Association, PO Box 643, Carmel, NY 15012-0643, and ask them to block your name in their mailing lists. This reduces at least 50% of junk mail.
- ADVO (Mail comes with pictures of missing children with your name, Shopwise, etc). This one is tough, but persistence pays off. Call 1-860-285-6100 to get off the list. You may have to send a postcard to "ADVO Consumer Assistance, POB 249, Windsor CT 06095-4176". If you continue receiving unadressed junk mail from them, write to the Policy and Program Development, USPS Headquarters, 475 L’Enfant Plaza SW, Washington DC 20260-0004 letting them know you have written to ADVO and should not be receiving their junk mail. Write to your local postmaster enclosing a copy of the letter that ADVO sent you and request that they put a signed note in your mailbox instructing mailmen to stop delivering ADVO flyers.
- Junk Mail addressed to "Postal Customer": write to the United States Postal Service and complain about it. Consumer Advocate, 475 L’Enfant Plaza SW, Washington DC 20260-2200.
- Do a google search for more tips. The USPS, DMA and ADVO keep changing addresses to avoid responding to consumer concerns, and they will spend a fair amount of time trying to convince you to accept the junk mail because they are making a profit out of it. Be persistent. USPS is having a brisk business out of online shopping, so they should not be using anybody's house as a dumpster and treating you as their garbage processing unpaid employee. Most junk mail goes to landfills unopened, and resources are wasted on your time, trees, paper manufacturing, toxic ways of printing, transportation and landfill or recycling.
- Support Opt-out of junk mail lists. There are several being pushed at the national level, including an Illinois opt-out list waiting to be passed as legislation that would work the same as the telemarketer opt out one.
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Reuse always
Many things can be reused in different situations or by other people. The main point is to divert resources from landfills, one thing at a time.
Eating for example, doesn't come as surprise three times a day for us humans, specially if we have a defined workplace and are not travelling. Therefore using our own cup and plate as a default is not as hard as one may think and can save lots, specially since we eat and drink so often!
- Bringing your own cup to the cafeteria not only reduces the need for a disposable cup that will be wasted after 10 min, and its plastic lid and straw that will pollute the environment for a thousand years, but you will be awarded a 10% discount for your effort in places like Galileo's, and 10 cents at Starbucks.
- Avoid waste by taking meals downstairs using your own container.
- When ordering carryout from anywhere or packing up leftovers, bring your own container to avoid disposable containers altogether.
- Please keep in mind that reusing disposables, even if done a couple times, does not justify the waste and pollution caused by the manufacturing, transportation and recycling or landfilling of the disposable. Some plastics are not meant to be reused and none should be used over extended periods of time. Best is to avoid using what is not really needed. The next safe and bright green alternative is to always choose the reusable item.
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Recycle at Adler
Items the Adler recycles (thanks Bill for the lists). Most are picked up by Allied Waste and they get taken to the Mixed Environmental Center sorting plant. Many people from the Museum visited the sorting plant and saw recycling firsthand in 2006.
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Desk side recycling
Adler staff should keep paper separate from plastic and glass. If you would like another container, see your department Green Team member.
- All paper except for waxed products or paper stained by food. Please flatten boxes, otherwise the recycling truck will be transporting air.
- Plastic bottles and containers or plastic packing sheeting #1 - #7 As long they have the recycling symbol. In reality, most plastic cannot be recycled, only "downcycled" to products which eventually crack, fall apart and pollute, and this is why it is so important to reduce its use when possible. The recycling symbol is used in such items to merely specify the kind of plastic being used, so it can be downcycled. Plastic #3 is PVC, a highly toxic and hard to recycle material. Plastic #6 is polystyrene (PS), which shows up either as solid, transparent or styrofoam: it is also highly toxic, cancerigenous, hormone disruptor, lasts forever, and is not recycled most of the time. Plastic cutlery is usually PS.
- Glass bottles and jars As long as they are not broken. This is to protect transport recycling workers from cuts because the recycling plant where they are taken is manual. Other recycling plants have systems where even broken glass is recycled. Glass can be reprocessed and cost effectively be used, just like new. Glass does not pollute, and does not leak toxic substances onto the environment like plastic does. Glass does not interact with food, soaps or skin lotions like most plastics do. This is why tomato sauces, jams and the like usually come in glass, or else have a shorter shelf life when packed in plastic because after a while, too many toxins from the plastic would have transferred to the food.
- Aluminum/bi-metal cans, and any metal trays and plates. This includes aluminum foil. Metal is the recyclable material that makes the most profit because it can be reprocessed and used again as if it was new. In cases like alluminum, recycling is not just cheaper to reprocess, but better for the environment than extracting it from the ground.
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Recycling and Reusing Station
The Recycling Station is located by the staff lounge, between the lounge door and the exit stairs. A convenient stop on the way in or out of the building. The table with magazines and board in the staff lounge is also available for used items like clothing that people can take.
- Any kind of batteries (cell phone, radio, pagers, cordless tools, calculators, etc...) They are recycled by Battery Solutions Inc.
- Technotrash is recycled by GreenDisk and includes:
- All forms of electronic media and their cases: diskettes, zip disks, CDs, CD-Rs, CD-RWs, Laser disks, DVDs et al, video tape (i.e. VHS), audio tape, game cartridges, DAT, DLT, Beta or Digibeta, and virtually all other type of computer tapes.
- Hard drives, Zip and Jazz drives, jump drives, etc.
- All forms of printer cartridges including both inkjet and toner.
- Pagers, PDAs and their chargers, cables, and headset accessories.
- All of the small computer accessories such as MP3 players, iPods, digital cameras, hand-held scanners, handheld games and other connected devices.
- All of the cords, cables, boards, chips, etc. attached to or removed from a computer.
- Laptop computers.
Note: GreenDisk/Technotrash does not accept CPUs, monitors, printers, or other components. Those get recycled every four months through IS and should be placed on the table by the exit door between Ken Kobus and Sue Harrison's offices. For more information on Green Disk, see small electronics recycling
- Packaging material such as packing peanuts, plastic bags and styrofoam blocks is reused when possible. Styrofoam blocks are taken to places that accept them for recycling because Allied Waste does not take them. Plastic packing peanuts are taken to UPS centers that accept them for reuse. Corn starch peanuts are composted at private homes but they can also be dissolved in water. Plastic bags may be taken to Whole Foods where they are accepted for recycling. Please help us discourage vendors from stuffing the environment with all these toxic materials because biodegradable and recyclable alternatives exist.
- Hard plastic bottle caps are taken to Aveda for recycling. Please note they have to be bottle caps, they have to be hard, and they have to be plastic. If they bend, that means they are not hard. Further, they need to be rinsed (we once found bugs on the box because someone failed to rinse some of the caps, and sugar and oil actually eat away plastic, making it un-recyclable).
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Elsewhere in the building
- Fluorescent light bulbs (you have to recycle them because they contain mercury!) Adler engineers have a collection point in their office, so the bulbs are to be handed to them when disposed. These are recycled through Everlights, a Chicago based company.
- Printer cartridges As of June 1st, 2007, our office supplier WhareHouse Direct is recycling all printer cartridges.
- Chemical drums used in the heating and cooling system. The same company that sells us the chemicals takes them back.
- Oil used in any machinery (escalator, chillers, elevators). The oil is recycled back to the company we purchase it from.
- Electronics: Every four months, all refuse electronics from IS are picked up by a company which dissasembles them locally and recycles the parts. Then they can move on to computer heaven. They should be placed on the table by the exit door between Ken Kobus and Sue Harrison's offices.
- Construction debris: The debris is sorted into metal, concrete, masonry, landscape material, wood and paper for recycling.
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Non-recyclable items
- Facial or toilet tissue
- Window glass, ceramics or crystal
- Hazardous toxic waste: Contact Operations Department for disposal
- Bubble wrap: It is better to use biodegradable alternatives. Some people offer it in Freecycle lists)
- Bubble envelopes. Biodegradable/recyclable alternatives exist, so they are unnecessary. Some people offer them in Freecycle lists to make them less awful.
- Plastic bags: see divert plastic from dumpsters
- Packing peanuts: biodegradable alternatives exist. The plastic ones can be taken to Mailboxes etc for reuse
- Sandwich wrappers, pizza boxes
- Waxed paper products
- Food-stained plastic plates or food containers, even if they have the recycling symbol. To recycle them, they need to be rinsed. See Greening_serviceware
- Plastic cutlery: See Greening_serviceware
- Plastic hangers (they get stuck in the sorting machines or so Allied Waste says...)
- Styrofoam: see Polyestirene Foam Report
- Plastic bottle caps: yet one more reason to avoid plastic bottles! but there are other bottle caps which are unavoidable such as detergent bottles, lotions bottle ones, etc. We take them all to Aveda for recycling but they must be hard plastic, rinsed, bottle caps only.
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Composting
There is no composting program in place at the Adler, and all our organics end up asphixiating in landfills that are so clogged with plastic that decomposing is very difficult or impossible. However, there are simple things one can do to reduce such waste and help recover top soil:
- Eat all your food like your mother told you, or save it for later. Leftovers are better off in the sewer system than landfills.
- If you have a compost pile or worm bin at home, take back any leftovers or fruit peels instead of dumping them in trash cans. Banana peels are particularly good fertilizers, while citrus peels work as disinfectant for the soil.
- Adopt a coffee machine: coffee grounds can be taken home in your used lunch box and spread around plants directly, or they can be added to compost piles, paper filter included. Same with tea bags.
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Links
- Check out REDUCE.ORG An amazing site produced by the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency: When you avoid making garbage in the first place, you don't have to worry about disposing of waste or recycling it later. Changing your habits is the key — think about ways you can reduce your waste when you shop, work and play. There's a ton of ways for you to reduce waste, save yourself some time and money, and be good to the Earth at the same time.
- Reduce, Reuse and Recycle information from the Environmental Protection Agency
- Nationwide, 6% of all discarded plastic was recycled in 2000. 2% of all discarded plastic bottles were recycled. In 2000, Illinois residents and businesses recycled 5 pounds of plastic bottles per person; BUT 20 pounds per person of plastic bottles were still landfilled! Read more at the Illinois Recycling Association site.
- Sometimes recyclables end up going to the trash black hole because of lack of information. Some caring janitors usually rescue them, but not everybody is like that. Here's a sign to prevent people from dumping trash in the office recycling bins: Media:not_a_trash_can.pdf
- Just the perfect 70s poster for planetarium workers.
