Green News

Can You Compost Dirty Diapers?

Thu, 17 Mar 2011 20:35:00 GMT

Disposable diapers are one of those things that most greenies love to hate. But they're still a common element in many people's household waste—even many reusable diaper advocates will occasionally use disposables for the sake of convenience. To add to the complication, every now and then somebody trots out a statistic to argue that disposables are as green as reusables, once you factor in energy and water use for washing, drying and manufacture. This got me wondering, what if there is a better way to dispose of disposables?

Cloth vs. Disposable Diapers
I can't pretend to have a complete answer to the argument, outlined in this ABC News story, that disposable diapers have comparable impact to reusables—and I know that cloth advocates argue vehemently that reusable diapers still come out on top. As I noted in my post about claims that plastic bags are greenest after all, Life Cycle Analysis is an immensely complex and imperfect science—and many commenters to that same piece reminded me that you can't distill all environmental questions to a mathematical equation.

Reusables Offer More Opportunity for Improvement
In general, as a parent myself, I have made the assumption that even if the current impact is the same—because reusables can be washed using renewable energy, in efficient machines, using minimal water, and because they can be line-dried and passed on to others when your child is done with them—as an imperfect solution they have more potential for improvement than their counterpart. Landfill just stays in landfill, whichever way you look at it—and the idea of recycling disposable diapers for their paper and plastic content always seemed bizarre. (I should note that despite my pre-baby enthusiasm for diaper-free babies and elimination communication, it never quite took hold in our house...)

Can You Compost Diapers?
But discussing the matter last night, it did occur to me that disposable diapers could have one key advantage from an environmental point of view—because in some ways they are the ideal accessory for composting human waste. Now, before I get a chorus of disgust, I'm not suggesting anyone go out and start putting dirty diapers into their regular compost—most compost bins carry a warning to not do exactly that.

But given the fact that successful composting is about creating the right balance of carbon to nitrogen, and given the fact that dirty disposable diapers are essentially a large bundle of carbon (paper product), containing a much smaller deposit of nitrogen (poop and pee), I wondered if anyone has created a "baby composting toilet"—essentially a separate compost pile for the disposal of disposables.

Municipal Diaper Composting
Granted, this is probably an unlikely scenario. Anyone keen enough on going green to be composting their diapers is most likely using reusables and/or going diaper free. But it does seem like there could be a community-scale effort to at least keep dirty diapers out of landfill. A quick Google search brings me to a New York Times article about Toronto's program to compost diapers, animal waste, kitty litter and sanitary products:

Toronto collects diapers and other organic items and sends them to a processing facility. The resultant compost gets distributed to farmland and parks. That's right: Canada's babies and toddlers, for all their messes, are helping Canadian crops to grow. The program, called "Green Bin," also accepts animal waste, kitty litter and sanitary products.

Safety Remains a Concern
Of course questions remain about safety and sustainability. The high temperatures achieved in municipal composting almost certainly mean that fecal matter is rendered safe (a home-scale composting effort would do well to read up on general humanure guidelines), but what about bleaches and other chemicals in the products themselves? Either way, this seems like one step in the right direction—and given that disposables are likely to be around for some time to come (I'm not just talking about their inability to decompose in landfill), it seems sensible to figure out what to do with them. In the meantime, I need to figure out this potty training thing.

Article found on treehugger.com

10 Essential Tools to ReMake Trash Into Treasure

Thu, 17 Mar 2011 20:30:00 GMT

Have you ever used an empty glass jar as a drinking glass or turned an old tin can into a pencil holder? If the answer is yes, then you've already had fun ReMaking It!

Upcycling proves that one person's trash is truly another person's treasure waiting to happen and ReMake It! features dozens of great projects using the stuff you usually scrap. Getting started is simple, but these few important tools will make the process even easier.

10. Markers

Markers are great for decorating and personalizing a project. You can turn a soda bottle into a toothbrush holder (project 37) colored in the same colors as your bathroom, or a cereal box and some magazine pages into a game of travel bingo (project 16).

9. Ribbon

Ribbon is the perfect decorative element to add some color to any scrap. Tie it onto a yogurt tub luggage tag (project 33), or tie it to the top of the CD trinket box (project 42).

8. Binder Clips

Photo credit: JD Hancock/Creative Commons

These are great tools for holding things together while you're working on them. Whether it's a greeting card ornament (project 21), or the wrapping paper basket (project 17).

7. Glue Stick

A glue stick is an easy way to get your projects to stick together. It's great for sticking time-telling numbers onto a vinyl record clock (project 45) and letters onto a magnetic tic tac toe board (project 72).

6. Velcro® Tabs

These are a great way to connect and seal projects like a collapsible dish made out of food wrapper (project 25) or a wallet made out of drink pouches (project 27).

5. Hole Punch

Photo credit: stevendepolo/Creative Commons

So useful in many ways. Like creating a handle in a newspaper gift bag (project 4), or making an empty tissue box into a hanging picture frame (project 15).

4. Ruler

Photo credit: Sterlic/Creative Commons

I took a lot of time measuring when I was making projects for this book. A ruler is a must-have for ReMaking a lot of the projects.

3. Clear Shiny Tape

I like using tape a lot more than messy glues. It's instant satisfaction. The clear, shiny kind of tape blends in to most materials like turning a bag of chips into a wallet (project 26) and turning glossy magazine pages into greeting cards (project 6).

2. A good pair of Scissors

Scissors are essential for cutting into anything. Whether turning a pair of old cargo pants into a yoga mat bag (project 59), a soda bottle into a soap dish (project 36), a cardboard box into a desk (project 19), scissors get the job done.

1. ReMake It! the Book

ReMake It! is loaded with nearly 100 DIY recycling projects from the stuff you usually scrap. This book is to be used as an encyclopedia of projects anyone can make out of all types of common discards.

Grab your tools, pick our your favorite projects, and go ahead—get ready to ReMake It!

Article found on treehugger.com

Backfire! With Cleaner Cars, People Drive More

Tue, 01 Mar 2011 21:27:00 GMT

Sweden, that sustainability superstar, really prides itself on being "green." It is one of the few countries to decouple CO2 emissions from economic growth. It has switched a huge portion of its heating away from fossil fuels (district heating). It's the best recycling nation on Earth. It consistently lands in the top ten of rankings of most sustainable nations. Sweden even has made the audacious claim that it will go fossil-fuel free by 2020. It has green trains, green planes, and designed a car that automatically stop for peds and cyclists. But Sweden also has a dirty little transportation secret.

For the last three years, Sweden has led the world in its per capita sales of so-called green automobiles. Ethanol cars have been a big winner, as have cleaner diesel vehicles.

Swedes love to keep statistics on green car sales, but there's a new statistic that doesn't reflect so well on squeaky-green Sweden. People rushed to buy green cars (there was a generous subsidy) and they are now driving them more.

Emissions from the transport segment rose by 100,000 tons last year in Sweden. Trafikverket, the Swedish Tranport Agency (STA), reported that while purchases of efficient and greener cars decreased carbon dioxide emissions on a per car basis (from 164 to 151 grams of CO2 equivalent per kilometer driven), people's increased driving caused emissions to rise.

This isn't a big surprise - it has happened so many times before that researchers call this the backfire effect - make a service more efficient and cleaner and people can eat up the green gains by using it more.

These numbers don't exactly sit well with the STA, which cautions (my translation):

"It is clear that more effective motors and biofuels are not enough to offset increased traffic - at the most these can only stabilize emissions levels. To achieve cuts will require a change of direction in the development of society and infrastructure. The car must be less important in favor of increased public transport, cycling, rail transport, and shipping."

Article found on treehugger.com

San Francisco Using Facebook to Fix Potholes and Broken Sidewalks

Tue, 01 Mar 2011 21:24:00 GMT

Awhile back, we heard about Fill That Hole, PotholeSnitch, and SeeClickFix, apps that allows city residents to report potholes on city streets. But of course, to report a problem you need a smart phone. San Francisco is opening up not only the platform, but also the types of problems a citizen can report by launching a new Facebook app for reporting 311 service requests.

The new Facebook app was announced earlier this week, and any Facebook user (which is practically everyone in San Francisco) can "like" the page and use the form provided to report issues like potholes, downed trees, broken sidewalks, backed-up sewers and other issues.

"The city and county of San Francisco already has a Facebook page with more than 250,000 fans. Now those fans can use the popular social networking site to pass on complaints about their neighborhood," reports the SF Examiner.

Easy-to-access apps like this are a wonderful idea because it creates a sense of ownership of the city among citizens. There's a sense of pride and responsibility that comes when you take part in keeping your city looking nice. And more importantly, keeping streets and sidewalks pleasant to use encourages more people to get out and cycle and walk, rather than speed through on their cars because they'd rather not linger among the graffiti-spattered walls lining uneven sidewalks.

Of course, that also requires that the city actually fix the reported issues. But at least the reports are easy to make.

Article found on treehugger.com

10 Way To Turn Your House Into A Futuristic Fortress

Tue, 01 Mar 2011 21:17:00 GMT

1. Guard robots
For just a couple hundred bucks, you can keep an eye on your house remotely with a tiny guard robot on treads called Spykee. It has a little camera, and even a speaker so you can follow your pets around and talk to them while you're out of the house. Or you can snap pictures of intruders before informing them that you've just called Robocop.

2. A computer that wakes you up, kicks you out of bed, and makes your breakfast
X10 is a simple protocol that allows devices to communicate over electrical lines - that means it lets a computer tell your appliances to turn on and off. You can buy X10 kits for a few hundred dollars, and control all of your home gizmos via the web - so you could create a program that turns on your coffee pot and starts microwaving your oatmeal ten minutes after your alarm goes off and the actuators under your bed push you up into a sitting position.

3. Atmosphere domes for growing food
If you're living in the future, then you need to plan how you're going to live off the grid - hopefully using a geodesic dome, because that's just cool. Luckily, there are lots of plans online for building a personal geodesic dome greenhouse to feed yourself and your family after peak oil and the collapse of factory farming.

4. Chairs that mold to your ass
Every good spaceship seems to have chairs that magically mold to your ass. So your house is going to need them too. Luckily, we have "memory foam," which molds to all your parts. It's sort of creepy but definitely does the trick.

5. Artificial pets
From Rags the dog in Sleeper, to the replicant owl in Blade Runner, the artificial pet is clearly a sign of living in the world of tomorrow. And of course robot dogs are practically commonplace in the world today - as are robot dinosaurs.

6. Rooms that rearrange themselves
You're one step closer to a house that can morph into something new at the touch of a button with Space Flavor's mobile rooms on wheels. These lightweight rooms can be moved around and rearranged - and if you put them on electrified tracks, you could easily control them remotely with a home network.

7. Self-cleaning floors
Turn on your Roomba or Scooba robot, leave home, and return to a house that's been vacuumed, swept, and/or mopped.

8. Music and lights that follow you from room to room
There are a number of ways to get that futuristic feeling of a house that knows your every whim. One of the easiest is to use RFID chips - usually mounted on a bracelet or pin - that exchange signals with small readers throughout your house, alerting your computer network to your location. And then you can use a simple X10-like system to turn on the lights and the speakers as you enter a room - and turn them off as you leave.

9. Biotech climate control systems
Remember that silly episode of Star Trek: Voyager where the ship's biological systems get infected by some bacteria that comes from a piece of cheese? (I believe somebody utters the line, "Get that cheese to sickbay.") Well, you can't fly a biotech spaceship yet, but many houses today incorporate "living roofs" covered in soil and plants that help regulate temperature and prevent roofs from leaking.

10. A house that changes shape
Once you have a self-cleaning house full of robotic pets and sentries, full of rooms that rearrange themselves and a roof that grows - well, you need a house that can literally change shape. At the push of a button. This house in the English countryside is one such dwelling. It has a shell on wheels that rolls back and exposs a huge living room made entirely of glass. Watch the video to see the awesomeness. Obviously it would be better if the living room were encased in transparent, spun diamond walls, and the mobile shell were armored - but you can't have everything now. You'll have to wait for the future!

Artricle found on treehugger.com

A New Design Movement That Can Help Us Beat Obesity

Thu, 24 Feb 2011 21:10:00 GMT

A primer on Active Design, which creates buildings and environments that fight America's obesity epidemic.

Today, obesity is poised to overtake tobacco as the leading preventable cause of death in America. More than a third of all Americans are obese and an additional third, overweight. Total U.S. health care costs attributable to obesity are expected reach $860 to $960 billion by 2030.

For years, health advocates have been wagging their fingers, telling us to eat more healthy foods and exercise more. But it's not working. Obesity is a public health epidemic and it's a lifestyle that's hard to change. As a recent New York Times headline stated "Told to Eat Its Vegetables, America Orders Fries." We need a public health strategy beyond finger wagging, and the solution just might be design.

Active Design

Active Design can be seen in the guidelines recently released by New York City, which addresses obesity and obesity-related diseases by encouraging physical activity through the design of our environment.

Active Design is the idea that we can design cities and buildings to encourage people to get more exercise. This is not about encouraging us to go to the gym and working out more, but instead, it's about giving citizens more of a workout through how we interact with our environment on a daily basis. This could include walking instead of driving, taking stairs instead of elevators, and creating parks and other interesting engaging environments to walk through. By attacking obesity through urban design and architecture, governments are beginning to realize that designers might be their best warriors in the battle against obesity and its costs.

A New Strategy

New York City's Active Design Guidelines may represent the beginning of a strategic shift in the battle to get Americans to exercise. Instead of trying to change individual choices by using a moral appeal about what is good for us (you should walk to work because it is better for you), it's about changing the environment to reshape the available choices (you'll want to walk because it is easier, cheaper, faster, or more enjoyable).

This strategy recognizes that the public's underlying motivations are not about health, but rather, about what is convenient and enjoyable.

Walkability

How do you make an environment that makes it so people are more likely to walk? Picture a place you would like to take a walk in; now picture one you would hate to walk in. It's pretty easy to see the difference.

The website WalkScore has attempted to quantify walkability by rating any individual address based on how many basic needs and desires can be met within a walkable distance. This excellent tool, which has become popular in the real estate world, does a great job as far as things that can be quantified. It can tell you if there is a grocery store within walking distance, but it can't tell you what the quality of that walk to the store is like. How busy is the street? Are there sidewalks? Are there trees for shade?

Studies have shown that walkable places have a clear sense of definition or enclosure, are identifiable and memorable, relate to human scale, and have a sense of activity, complexity and visual richness--in short, an environment that feels stimulating and safe.

Environments that are unwalkable are boring, feel vast and scaleless, and present blank unvaried views. Contrast a vast parking lot with a lively café-lined street and it's clear what makes an environment walkable.

Stimulating the Imagination

Variety and stimulation is especially important for the young digerati who have grown up in a wired world that brings a universe of entertainment and social interaction to them through a screen and a keyboard.

To motivate the under-25 crowd to use their legs--instead of their thumbs--to explore the world, the real world must compete with the digital one in terms of stimulation. Dense, multi-use urban environments with a variety of offerings can provide the stimulating surroundings that encourage walking and real-life social interaction.

Biking is another front for Active Design. Building bike trails, bike lanes, and bike racks provide the basic infrastructure, and cities across the country are putting renewed effort into such programs. Washington, D.C., and San Francisco have initiated bike sharing programs. In New York, a 2009 zoning amendment requires that all new buildings over a certain size provide bike storage.

Stairs

Architects have long had a love affair with stairs--from the elegant curves of Garnier's Opera in Paris to the sleek floating glass of Apple stores. But the stairs in most multi-story buildings today are largely functional, emergency-use only environments which take a back seat to elevators for moving people between floors.

Active Design celebrates the stair, encouraging designers to make them visible, accessible, and integrated into a building's primary circulation and orientation. By making stairs enjoyable, and giving them precedence over elevators or escalators, more people will use them. A 1997 study showed that men who climb 20-34 flights of stairs per week have a 20% lower risk of stroke or death from other cardiovascular causes.

An Urban Renaissance

A century ago cities were seen as unhealthy environments--dirty and disease-ridden. But today it is the active urban lifestyle that is proving to be the healthiest model.

If we design all our living environments to be more like stimulating, engaging, and diverse cities, then people will live longer, healthier lives. A 2004 study in Atlanta showed that men in more suburban, purely residential neighborhoods were on average 10 pounds heavier than the same demographic who lived in more urban, mixed-use areas.

And New Yorkers have an average life expectancy 1.5 years longer than the rest of the country. At least part of that is attributable to New Yorkers walking more. And they walk because their environment is designed to encourage them to.

Conclusion

For now, Active Design is just a set of guidelines, not a ban on laziness. And although it has begun to influence building codes and zoning laws, Active Design currently has no real legal bite. Many of the smoking bans of the 1990s were enacted because companies and institutions feared that they would be sued over second hand smoke.

Second-hand obesity has yet to be recognized as a problem, and lawsuits against building owners for not making stairways more attractive are unlikely. But the principle of attacking a public health problem through changes to our environment--using design to change our lifestyle choices and using motivations other than doing it for our own good--is a compelling one.

Active Design isn't a silver bullet to end obesity. But it just might signal a strategic shift that could help turn the obesity tide.

Article found on treehugger.com

Heinz to Adopt Coca Cola's "PlantBottle"

Thu, 24 Feb 2011 21:13:00 GMT

Coke's PlantBottle, made from up to 30 percent plant-based material, will now be used for Heinz ketchup. Heinz says it will convert all of its 20-ounce bottles in the U.S. this summer.

Heinz explains more about the PlantBottle in the press release:

The plant material is produced through an innovative process that turns natural sugars found in plants into a key component for PET plastic. Currently, PlantBottle™ is made using sugarcane ethanol from Brazil, the only source widely recognized by thought leaders globally for its unique environmental and social performance.

The bottles will feature "talking labels" that ask: "Guess What My Bottle Is Made Of?"

Heinz products packaged in PlantBottles will debut in June, with an expected total of 120 million bottles to be produced with the technology this year—the equivalent of about a fifth of all Heinz bottles sold globally.

The Wall Street Journal reports that Heinz "plans to roll out the packaging globally, part of a broader initiative to cut its greenhouse emissions, solid waste, water consumption and energy usage by at least 20% by 2015."

It's not a perfect solution, but it's a positive step forward.

Article found on treehugger.com

World's New Solution Power Installations Double in 2010

Thu, 17 Feb 2011 21:10:00 GMT

There've been a bunch of stories lately about solar power installations doubling last year (see related links below) and here's another: The European Photovoltaic Industry Association says that global solar power installations more than doubled in 2010, with 16 gigawatts of new solar PV added. 2009 saw 7.2 GW of new installations.

Reuters provides a breakdown of who's installing what:

13 GW of the world's new solar PV was installed in Europe (mostly in Germany and Italy). Outside of that, Japan added about 1 GW, the United States added 0.8 GW, and China added 0.4 GW.

In total, the world's solar PV capacity is about 40 GW, up from 23 GW in 2009

Article found at treehugger.com

Upcycle Leftover Valentine's Day Candy Wrappers and Donate to Charity at the Same Time

Thu, 17 Feb 2011 20:54:00 GMT

Valentine's Day is a wonderful excuse for loving partners, friends, parents, kids and teachers to show they care. And like jelly to peanut butter, candy is an integral part of that. But afterwords, there's a little problem: What do you do with all that packaging the Valentine's candy came in? Most of it is at this point difficult to recycle.

I know you here reading Treehugger would like to take a different route than tossing your Valentine's Day candy wrappers in the trash, while still getting to take part in the fun of giving and receiving candy. I have two suggestions for you.

We've got all you need know about how to make an, um, sweet DIY upcycled chocolate wrapper wallet. All you need is a bit of glue, some scissors, your chocolate bar wrappers, a ruler, and you've got what it takes to make a one of a kind gift.

If you're not feeling so crafty, but still want to play a part in diverting waste from the landfill, Mars (you know, the company that makes candies like M&Ms, Snickers, Milky Way, Starburst and Skittles?) has partnered with us at TerraCycle on the Candy Wrapper Brigade. It goes like this:

You collect the wrappers, send them to us postage paid, then Mars & TerraCycle pays two cents per piece to the charity of your choice. A school or an environmental organization, for example. It's up to you where you spread the Valentine's love.

What happens to those candy wrappers, you ask?

Good question. If we can directly reuse them, they're upcycled into things like kites, tote bags, and backpacks. If a wrapper you send us isn't a useable for these, it can still be put to use in industrial products, like floor tiles and plastic lumber (you know, the decking material that doesn't fade or splinter like tree based wood can?)

Who'd have thought that something as simple as a candy wrapper could be such a beneficial thing, for schools, charities, and the environment?

Article found at treehugger.com

Carpooling Declined 50% Since 1980 in the U.S.A.

Tue, 01 Feb 2011 21:03:00 GMT

If you insist on car-commuting, at least fill it up with people!

Thanks to modern social networking technologies and mobile computing, finding people to carpool with has never been easier. But sadly, that doesn't seem to be enough. The popularity of carpooling is in sharp decline in the US, down about 50% since the 1980s, and corporate efforts to encourage the practice among coworkers is losing steam.

Far more people are driving alone, as companies have spread out, Americans are wealthier and cars have become cheaper to own. The percentage of workers who car-pool dropped by almost half since 1980, the first time the Census Bureau started systematically tracking the numbers, according to new data from the bureau.

How many of you are carpooling? Did you used to but have stopped? What factors are influencing you to carpool or to not?

Article found on treehugger.com