Monthly Archives: October 2012

Grocery Chain Switches To Paper Gift Cards

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The popular grocery store chain, Whole Foods, has recently made the decision to switch from plastic to paper and wood-made gift cards.

The supermarket chain, which specializes in organic produce, is eliminating its 100% recycled plastic gift certificates and replacing them with cards made of paper and responsibly harvested wood.

The new gift cards are manufactured using 50% post-consumer waste paper material and the Forest Stewardship Council has certified the wood and paper sources. Whole Foods has decided that the paper-made cards contain a lower carbon footprint because they are recyclable, compostable, reusable, and use less energy than the plastic cards to manufacture.

The gift cards are a popular item for sale in Whole Foods stores throughout the country, and the change reflects the Austin, Texas-based organization’s commitment to offer the most environmentally-friendly products available.

The change is expected to result in keeping close to 300,000 plastic gift cards out of landfills. Individual stores will continue to accept and waste recycle the plastic cards as customers use them as the transition takes place.

WasteCare Wants You to Remember: Take a moment to look around your office or place of work. What products might you be able to replace with more cost-effective and environmentally friendly options? With a little research you might find some ways to save green while going green!

Sports Teams Go Green

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The United States Environmental Protection Agency and the Green Sports Alliance group recently signed an agreement to work together on addressing environmental stewardship issued faced by sports teams, organizations, and venues.

Green Sports Alliance is a not-for-profit organization committed to helping athletic teams, leagues, and venues cut-back on their impact in the environment. The two groups will collaborate on concerns surrounding waste disposal and waste recycling management, better conservation of water and energy, and improved sustainability practices. The Environmental Protection Agency will provide athletic groups working with Green Sports Alliance access to their Energy Star Portfolio Manager, an tool that allows building and building managers and owners to track, assess, and manage their energy and water usage.

The Green Sports Alliance currently works with one hundred sports teams and venues from thirteen difference athletic leagues. The group hopes that this partnership with the Environmental Protection Agency will provide their members with additional tools and resources needed to create baselines and support continuous improvement of performance and efficiency.

WasteCare Wants You to Remember: When it comes to reducing your waste disposal and increasing your waste recycling, you don’t have to do it all alone! Finding a partner or establishing a collaboration can help to improve your access to resources and services.

Waste Recycling Pizza Boxes

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For as long as there’s been cardboard box recycling, we’ve been repeatedly warned that cardboard pizza boxes cannot be waste recycled. But all of that is about to change for pizza eaters in Old Orchard Beach, Maine, where they can now drop off used pizza boxes at special recycling points throughout the community.

The common knowledge, until recently, was that it was impossible to recycle pizza boxes as they are covered in grease and leftover cheese and can contaminate the recycling process. There was nothing to be done except to put them in the garbage and send them off to the landfill.

Fortunately for recycling efforts, some industry experts disagree with this belief and are working to include those pizza boxes with all other cardboard. The belief is that food contamination can be removed during the preparation and cleaning process – and while some grease and leftover cheese is ok, pieces of actual pizza are not. More community like Old Orchand Beach are moving to include pizza boxes in the recycling pool – if not for cardboard recycling, then for composting.

According to the Environmental Protection Agency, close to thirty million tons of cardboard was discarded in 2010, with 85% being recycled.

WasteCare Wants You to Remember: What popular assumptions are keeping your business, home, or community from increasing your waste recycling efforts? The recycling marketplace is constantly changing, so what was once called impossible might be reasonable and attainable today!

 

Towns See Profit From Waste Recycling

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The Rhode Island Resource Recovery Corporation is distributing close to two million dollars worth of recycling profits to the state’s towns and cities.

Administrators from the recycling facility at state’s central landfill distributed the funds from recycling profits last month as part of a publicity event and celebration to encourage more communities to participate in the waste recycling initiatives.

The funds distributed to the communities is a percentage of the total profits earned by the Resource Recovery Corporation through the sale of recyclable materials processed at the recycling facility.

A total of thirty-nine cities and towns received funds that ranged from twenty-two thousand dollars to more than two hundred thousand dollars. The profits are determined after subtracting the recycling facilities’ operating and capital expenses from the profits earned through the sale of the recycled materials. This year, the profit came close to four million dollars.

Rhode Island’s recycling rate is close to twenty two percent, and the distribution of profits is used as an incentive to encourage greater recycling as a way to lower taxes and increase community funds.

WasteCare Wants You to Remember: When establishing or improving a recycling program, it always helps to incentivize participants. When those who are responsible for the recycling of materials know they’ll receive rewards for their behavior, there’s a greater chance they’ll embrace recycling!

FedEx Earns Profits For Waste Recycling

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The package transportation company Federal Express didn’t create its waste recycling program overnight, but the business has shown how profits can result from reducing the amount of materials sent to landfills. The company currently estimates that it earns ten dollars for every one spent on recycling or recyclable products.

The company has indicated that they have recycled over ninety three million pounds of waste material since recycling operations began in 2006. Last year alone, close to fifty million pounds of materials were recycled.

In 2004, the company realized that waste recycling and environmental sustainability were concepts that weren’t going to fade away and that they need to start planning how to address them and incorporate them into the business model. The now successful plan started with very humble beginnings:  two balers that were part of a vendor’s “lease-to-buy” offer. Getting the waste materials to a central recycling location was simple, given FedEx’s hauling networks throughout the nation.

Despite the success, the company continues to look for way to be more sustainable. One recent change involves swapping out packing material such as peanuts and plastic air “pillows” for reused shredded cardboard shred that originates from the FedEx recycling center. That change satisfied customers demand and continues to save the company money.

WasteCare Wants You to Remember: From humble beginnings grow great change! If your business is new to recycling, take a page from FedEx’s play book and start small. Control your costs, monitor growth, and take advantage of new recycling and reuse opportunities when they arise. You’ll be surprised what can be accomplished over time!

Southwest Waste Recycling Is Sky High

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Southwest Airlines is using a commingled recycling program with sky high results. The popular airline has waste recycled close to seven thousand tons of materials since starting their recycling program in 2008.

While Southwest appears to have a successful recycling program in place now, that wasn’t always the case. Developing a comprehensive plan and implementing it across the country was a daunting challenge as each airport location has different policies, procedures, contracts, and levels of access to recycling services.

However, it was because of all the differences that prompted Southwest to think creatively about the kind of recycling program it could have and the types of waste materials it could successfully recover.

Realizing that employee buy-in was essential to the success of the recycling program, Southwest went with a commingled recycling program so employees wouldn’t need to sort the recyclables and then selected a national recycling partner who had experience with airlines and was eligible to collect from their twenty-six national locations. Any nay-sayers to the airline’s ability to be successful in this endeavor have certainly been dis-proven. In 2011, the company reported that two thousand six hundred tons of waste materials were sent to recycling facilities around the country – that total amount is equal to the weight of sixty-one Boeing 737 airplanes.

WasteCare Wants You to Remember: Success in transitioning from waste disposal to waste recycling requires creative thinking as well as employee input and buy-in. The best of plans will mean nothing if people don’t act upon them!

 

Company Expands Waste Recycling of Cardboard Boxes

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A small, independent business focusing on cardboard reuse company was recently awarded grant money for expansion through Chase Bank and the popular website, Living Social.

UsedCardboardBoxes.com reclaims used cardboard boxes, re-purposes them, and then makes them available for resale.  Their grant award was $250,000 to help with expansion and outreach. The business purchases substantial quantities of no longer wanted boxes from manufacturers. UsedCardboardBoxes.com then re-sells the boxes to individuals and other businesses for less than the price of new materials. Manufacturers have been eager to sell their unwanted boxes as it reduces waste disposal fees and relives them of the responsibility of recycling the cardboard.

In addition to UsedCardboardBoxes.com receiving cash, twelve other small businesses were also winners. These included EcoScraps, a food waste recycling business focusing on compost and lawn and outdoor products; and PlanetReuse, an online marketplace for reclaimed building and construction materials.

WasteCare Wants You to Remember: Making money from waste recycling requires “out of the box” thinking like UsedCardboardBoxes.com! Whether you’re starting a new business or firmly established take a look for new ways to turn what’s in your waste disposal container into cash! You might be surprised what new ideas you can come up with.

Airline Waste Recycles Aluminum

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The Alaska Air Airline Group is reporting that they diverted over two hundred and thirty tons of aluminum last year. That was enough recovered waste material to construct three new airplanes. This information comes from the carrier’s first corporate sustainability report.

In addition to the aluminum, the organization’s recycling programs are responsible for waste recycling more than eight hundred tons of material waste from landfills, including almost two hundred tons of paper.

The 2012 sustainability report documents the airline’s social responsibility efforts and outlines strategies and goals for improving their environmental stewardship. For the coming year, Alaska Air’s recycling goals are to increase its recycling collection to seventy percent and ensure that recycling is available in all flight kitchens and utilizing Forest Stewardship Council-certified material for juice containers.

Alaska Airlines services over ninety cities in Alaska and Hawaii, the continental United States, Canada, and Mexico.

WasteCare Wants You to Remember: Does your business issue a yearly environmental stewardship and waste recycling goals report? If Alaska Airlines recycled enough aluminum to build three airplanes in one year, what might your business be able to do? You might be surprised how much you money and waste material you can save when you have a yearly report to hold yourself accountable to!

GE Waste Recycles Appliance Materials

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General Electric Appliances, in a partnership with Appliance Recycling Centers of America, has reached a milestone of diverting 5.5 million pounds, equal to roughly 100,000 units, of refrigerators and freezers from landfills. It is estimated that over nine million refrigerators end up as disposed waste in landfills every year.

The two companies recently released a report stating that close to ninety percent of the materials in the appliance has been waste recycled and will be reused in new products. The remaining materials that cannot be reused is being utilized in cement manufacturing. Almost 100% of the foam used to insulate the appliances is being recovered and reused.

The GE appliances are broken apart at a recycling center in Philadelphia using a 40-foot-tall device that dismantles and reduces each unit into smaller pieces. The recycling program is currently available to new GE appliance consumers in a twelve-state region along the eastern coast of the US. When purchasing a new refrigerator or freezer the participating retailer will remove the old appliance for recycling.

WasteCare Wants You to Remember: When your business waste recycles and reuses materials, you cut back on the amount you need to spend on new, raw materials. This allows you to potentially increase profit or reduce prices for consumers. Is your business throwing money away with your trash?

Curbside Food Waste Recycling

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The town of Brattleboro, Vermont is set to begin a compost curbside collection test pilot that will accept everything from left-over food scraps to kitty litter. Approximately one hundred and fifty volunteer residents have agreed to participate in the test run that will last between three and four months.

The test run began in early August and with the goal of identifying strengths and weaknesses in residential pickup of organic waste. The collected organic waste material is being transported to a new Solid Waste Management composting facility in Windham.

The new program is in direct response to the new billed signed into law in June, by Vermont Governor Peter Shumlin banning organic materials from state landfills. By 2014, all Vermont businesses, non-profit organizations, schools, hospitals, and major food producers will be required to recycle and compost. A date of July 1, 2020, has been set for all residents to recycle and compost.

The test program may be extended into the winter months to determine how the colder temperatures and snow impacts the organic waste.

WasteCare Wants You to Remember: Whether you’re a business-owner or a resident, a large population of your waste material is food waste. When you invest time to improve your waste recycling of organic material, you reduce your costs for waste disposal.