Greenversations

Hey Pick 5ers, it’s time again for you to share what you’ve done, how you did it, etc.  If you haven’t done it yet, Pick 5 for the Environment and then come back to comment. Today we cover action #4: reduce, reuse, recycle. Please share your stories as comments below.

In my house, we try to recycle everything. For example, I use newspapers instead of paper towels to clean windows, glass tables and mirrors. Afterward, I shred them to be placed in my compost. We save our cans to take them to a collection facility once a month. Money made from the cans is used to buy gas for our next recycling trip to the collection facility.

When making my trips to the grocery store, I bring my own canvas bags instead of getting plastic bags at the counter. Canvas bags are offered at the grocery store, are very inexpensive, and using them helps to save our landfills from filling up.

I also have a compost box in my backyard. All of my kitchen waste is placed in there along with my yard waste and other items. I use this soil in the spring to plant my garden. It’s amazing how little changes in your life can help save the environment. It’s been a lot of fun seeing what I have done to help.

Now it’s your turn: How do you reduce, reuse, and recycle? If you’re not sure what you can do, learn more on our site.

You can also still share how you save water, , commute without polluting, and save electricity.

Note: to ward off advertisers using our blog as a platform, we don’t allow specific product endorsements.  But feel free to suggest Web sites that review products, suggest types of products, and share your experiences using them!

About the author: Denise Owens has worked at EPA for over twenty years. She is currently working in the Office of Public Affairs in Washington, DC.

One of my closest friends, Stephanie Davis, did pioneering work in the early days of green health care. As she battled cancer, we often laughed and cried about the unhealthy hospitals and medical practices she endured.

So I really appreciate Kaiser Permanente’s recognition that healthy communities and a healthy environment are critical to the health and wellness. Kaiser Permanente received an EPA Pacific Southwest Environmental Award for their green ways. Here are a few examples, Kaiser –

• Recycled 100% (WOW –- 100%!) of the building materials generated during the demolition of two warehouses in San Leandro, California.
• Opened a green medical center in Modesto, California, with solar panels, energy-conserving technology, permeable pavement, and safer materials.
• Hosted 28 farmers markets at facilities in six states, delivered produce “farm boxes” to employees without close access to farmers markets, and served milk from cows not treated with artificial hormones.
• Resold and recycled 74,000 pieces of electronic equipment and ensured that no hazardous e-waste was exported outside of the U.S.
• Used 107,143 gallons of water per bed per year in California hospitals — 40% less than the average hospital water consumption nationally.
• Telemonitored heart patients remotely to improve the quality of care and reduce car trips.

Kaiser Permanente has also worked on changing employee behavior. Their “Reduce Your Use” campaign that encouraged employees to reduce waste by providing tips on ways to be more environmentally responsible with specific participation goals. The campaign resulted in employee pledges that eliminated the use of over 240,000 sheets of paper and 20,000 disposable bags.

Kaiser is definitely leading the way on greening heath care. I wish Stephanie was able to see the great progress Kaiser has made to improve the health of the health care system. Do you have green health care ideas you’d like to share?

About the author: Timonie Hood has worked on EPA Region 9’s Resource Conservation Team promoting waste reduction, recycling, and green building for 10 years in EPA’s Pacific Southwest Office.

I’ve been fortunate to work with some amazing environmentalists in government and business, but some people really stand out as extreme environmental leaders.

Each year our senior managers locked themselves in a conference room with hundreds of award nominations to find the most cutting edge, innovative, and inspirational people and groups working towards environmental protection. Ryan McMullen and his colleagues at Toyota Motor Sales were recognized by EPA’s Pacific Southwest award winners.  They are my heroes — they are living the dream of zero waste.

Ryan, an enthusiastic Toyota environmental expert in Torrance, CA, spearheaded efforts to eliminate waste through upstream thinking and complex lifecycle analysis. As a result, Toyota’s vehicle distribution centers send less than 4 ounces of waste to the landfill for each vehicle processed.

Toyota Motor Sales started using returnable shipping containers to conserve 17.6 million pounds of wood and cardboard in 2008.  And, there’s more –

• Toyota’s Headquarters and nine facilities are sending Zero Waste to landfill,
• Ten plants are achieving 95% waste reduction, and
• Twelve distribution centers achieving over 90% recycling rates.

These efforts have kept 118,990 trees from being cut down and conserved the energy equivalent of 1.6 million gallons of gasoline by providing recycled materials to industry.

Toyota worked with the University of California - Santa Barbara to develop and apply the Environmental Packaging Impact Calculator (EPIC) to measure and justify shifts in the company’s packaging and logistics.  They even use EPA’s Electronic Product Environmental Assessment Tool to improve green computing.

Toyota certainly deserves the EPA award. Do you have any zero waste tips to share?

About the author: Timonie Hood has worked on EPA Region 9’s Resource Conservation Team promoting waste reduction, recycling, and green building for 10 years in EPA’s Pacific Southwest Office.

I first heard about Paula Allen and the Potawot Health Village in 2008, during a Regional Tribal Operations Committee meeting on green buildings. Paula’s name came up when people began discussing cultural values and a “sense of place” as a guide for sustainable building and land use practices.

These are certainly not new ideas in Indian Country.  However, the notion of local, cultural knowledge is not a major focus of today’s green building movement, so I was curious to learn more about Paula.  From what I’ve learned, she is truly deserving of her recognition as an EPA Southwest Pacific Region Environmental Award winner.

Paula is the traditional resource specialist for United Indian Health Services, Inc (UIHS),  a private, Indian owned, non-profit organization that provides out-patient health care for 15,000 Native Americans and their families in Arcata, CA.

The Potawot Health Village was completed in 2001. Paula ensured that the building and site reflected the cultural values of the local Native communities.  Potawot is located near several historic tribal villages that had been used for hunting, fishing and gathering traditional foods and medicines.  As Paula says, “Not understanding our history or being in connection with our spirituality is where a lot of our sickness comes from. It is rooted in those things.”

The design of Potawot also embodies the culture and values of the communities it serves.  From the outside, the facility looks like the traditional redwood plank houses of coastal tribes. Reclaimed redwood was creatively used on interior walls and regional native art and basketry are featured throughout the building. Restored wetlands and native grasses now grow on the site, along with gardens that provide traditional foods and medicinal herbs.

Stormwater from rooftops and parking surfaces serve as a supplemental water source for the project’s wetlands. Potawot planned their building locations to support and facilitate an optimal array of solar panels. The ultimate goal is to have the entire energy demand supplied by solar energy. The current size of the solar energy system is 42 Kilowatts and the current savings is allocated towards community outreach and educational programs.

Paula’s work is truly a unique and inspiring example of how traditional Native American culture and values can inform sustainable building design and land use decisions.  Her commitment to cultural values and wisdom, and her own sense of place have inspired many people - including me - to recognize cultural knowledge as an invaluable sustainable design resource.

About the Author: Michelle Baker works as the Tribal Green Building Coordinator in EPA’s Pacific Southwest Office. She works with the Tribal Solid Waste Team in the Office of Pollution Prevention and Solid Waste. Michelle primarily works with tribes in northern California on waste and materials management issues.

Last year, I got a call from Dr. Kim Cochran, EPA’s construction and demolition expert in DC. She was going to a Demolition Convention in Las Vegas and wanted to set up a tour with Evergreen Recycling. As the Regional EPA recycling contact, I’d been working with the great folks at Evergreen for many moons.
After the tour, she called me in awe — she’d seen a lot of recycling facilities — but they’d never seen anything like Evergreen, and said “Their facility is probably the most exciting recycling facility I have ever seen! I was really impressed with the numbers and types of materials they are able to recycle.”
Evergreen Recycling was an EPA Pacific Southwest award winner for transforming recycling efforts in Nevada with their state-of-the-art recycling facility.

They partnered with MGM MIRAGE, one of the world’s leading development companies, to divert 50,000 tons or 94.7% of the CityCenter project’s construction debris from landfill disposal in 2008. CityCenter, an 18-million-square-foot multi-use LEED registered project, will be one of the world’s largest sustainable urban communities.

Evergreen’s 85 employees have recycled over 200,000 tons of resources. Evergreen also developed a local market for drywall that removes the paper and makes it back into new drywall. Now that’s real closed-loop recycling — drywall in Las Vegas stays in Las Vegas!

Evergreen’s founder and President, Rob Dorinson, has been invaluable in supporting Nevada’s green building movement and helping Nevada’s recycling rate more than double in the past ten years. Luckily, I was able to tour Evergreen Recycling last year while I was on vacation, and it was the highlight of my visit. Of course, enjoying the Vegas buffets with family and friends was great too! Take a virtual tour and tell me what you think!

About the author: Timonie Hood has worked on EPA Region 9’s Resource Conservation Team for 10 years and is Co-Chair of EPA’s Green Building Workgroup.

A few weeks ago, I took some time off for vacation. We traveled from our southern Maryland home to the mountains of West Virginia to visit friends for a few days, and then it was off to the shores of North Carolina. Throughout the trip, I couldn’t help but marvel at the diversity of the landscape and environment even in that little triangle of the world.

Driving through the mountains in West Virginia on our way to Nags Head, we saw what I assumed (and hoped) was a wind farm on the top of a mountain. I was really quite impressed, and thoroughly pleased to see that kind of progress and forward-thinking taking hold. About 20 minutes further on our drive, strip-mining was taking place and I wondered and hoped that the environment would be restored some day.

For the next hour or so on that ride, I was thinking about all of the progress that has been made to save our environment whether it be by recycling, or energy and water conservation, and locally, nationally or even globally.

It really stuck a chord with me that as much progress we have made, we still have so far to go. Many of us wonder what impact can really be made by just our household of say one or two people. It all adds up, and each and every one of us really can make a difference…one recycled bottle or can and reusable grocery bag at a time!

About the author: Kelly Chick has worked at EPA for many years. She currently works in the Office of Public Affairs at EPA Headquarters, and manages the EPA blog, Greenversations.

One of the great things about being an intern at EPA is that I have plenty of opportunities to get away from my desk. Sure, a trip to the Montgomery County (Maryland) Recycling Center – which happened earlier this month – isn’t the most exotic destination I could possibly imagine, but it’s still nice to get a break from staring at a computer screen. And, as it turns out, recycling centers are more interesting than you might think!

Everything about the Montgomery County Recycling Center – the bright colors, the pictures on the wall, and even our tour guide – exude enthusiasm about recycling. “We have a goal of 50 percent recycling for Montgomery County,” our guide told us (they’re currently at 44 percent). The Center is all about helping residents learn what they can do to recycle more; they try to make recycling as efficient and convenient as possible, and they even sort residents’ glass, cans, and plastic bottles (no need for residents to do it themselves!). That’s probably one of the reasons that Montgomery County is inching closer to a 50 percent recycling rate (the national average municipal solid waste recycling rate was 33.4 percent in 2007).

The Center receives about 200 tons of paper a year. Nationwide, 54.5 percent of paper products were recycled in 2007. I ran the numbers and figured that, if Montgomery County is consistent with the national average, then for every 200 tons of paper that come into the Center annually, there are about 167 tons of paper that are go into the trash. That’s not surprising – paper is the single biggest type of trash that we generate.

Right next to the Center is a solid waste transfer station, which accepts materials that the Recycling Center doesn’t, such as oil, point, dirt, electronics, batteries, propane, helium (who has excess helium? Clowns?) tires, scrap metal, and building materials. Just about anything that can be manufactured can be recycled.

In my program, the Industrial Materials Reuse Program, we deal with recycling every day. It was interesting to see where recycled materials actually go, and it was enlightening to look at the tons of materials in the Center – pile after pile of glass, metals, paper, and plastic – and realize that if they hadn’t ended up there, they would have ended up in a landfill.

About the author: Ayende Thomas is an undergraduate Civil Engineering major at Howard University with an interest in environmental engineering. She is currently a summer intern in EPA’s Industrial Materials Reuse Program.

About the Author: Loreal Crumbley, a senior at George Mason University, is an intern with EPA’s Environmental Education Division through EPA’s Student Temporary Employment Program (STEP).

The use of electronics has become a major factor in our everyday life. Sometimes I find myself carrying around three or four electronic devices at a time. Our society has changed into a fast paced electronic friendly culture. In the late 1980’s home computers were introduced to our society and less than 20 years later almost every home has a computer. The advancement in technology has allowed people to carry portable phones, computers and music devices. The manufacturing and use of electronics has dramatically increased. This increase in electronic use has also increased the necessity to recycle old electronics. Recycling electronics helps reduce the pollution that is created when manufacturers create new appliances. There are many ways to reuse and recycle these appliances.

Donating old electronics can be a good way to keep electronics from entering the waste stream. Donating used electronics to charity organizations will benefit low-income families that cannot afford electronic equipment. Electronics can also be donated to schools and other non-profit organizations.

States and local governments have been working with manufacturers on creating places to recycle and reuse old appliances. There are many places that you can take used electronic appliances such as local electronics retailers, repair shops, charitable organizations, and electronics recycling companies. Many manufacturers accept used appliances free of charge. I would suggest contacting the maker of your appliance and see what sort of recycling initiatives that they have. Here is a website that identifies local electronic recycling companies by just typing in your zip code http://www.eiae.org/ .

The manufacturing process of electronics uses lots of energy and resources. Essential resources like metal, copper, and plastics are always used in the manufacturing of electronics. By recycling electronics we will be able to reduce the amount of valuable resources used and recycle the used resources. For more information on recycling electronics please visit these websites:

http://www.epa.gov/epawaste/conserve/materials/ecycling/index.htm

http://www.epa.gov/epawaste/partnerships/plugin/recycleit.htm

If you know of any other cool places to drop off old electronics fill me in!!!

About the author: Kelly Chick has worked for EPA for many years. She currently works in the Office of Public Affairs at EPA Headquarters, and manages the EPA blog, Greenversations.

I’ve certainly learned a lot managing the Greenversations blog. I’ve worked here at EPA for longer than I’d care to admit, but it seems I learn something new everyday reading the blog posts and moderating each and every comment submitted. We have had several posts about green building in all of its forms, but not too long ago we posted a blog post from someone who had recently purchased a home, and was in the process of renovating it in the greenest way possible. About this time, I heard about Habitat for Humanity ReStores, and lo and behold there was a sign for one put up in my community in Southern Maryland.

I decided to stop in one Saturday morning and WOW were my eyes opened. It is just getting going and is currently operated out of a barn, but what a treasure trove of goodies. As I walked through, I saw lots of appliances, cabinets, fixtures, windows, shelving, sinks and toilets, tile, carpet remnants, 3,000 gallons of paint and so much more. Most were new, although some were gently used. I decided I needed to know more. I found the store manager and asked him about the ReStore. I found out that all of the items for sale are donated by either local home improvement stores, builders, or regular people like you and me, and are sold at 50-70% off of the retail value (the paint was just $3.00 per gallon). Some of the items (for example, five matching 3’ x 5’ windows) were ordered the wrong size and couldn’t be returned. Donating the items to a charity is a great way to recoup some of the lost expense (as a tax donation), helps others keep their renovating expenses down, and a worthy charity reaps the benefits (in the form of sales). This is a win-win situation if I ever saw one. Not to mention the fact that all of these materials are being spared from going into landfills.

There are many stores that use this model of accepting donations and keeping stuff from being thrown away. Do a search on the web for “recycled building materials” and check out what’s available in your area. By the way, during my conversation I also found out that a store in Virginia helped someone build his house entirely from ReStore purchases. Can you just imagine how much he was able to save. Have you used a source like this for renovations or repairs on your home? Share with us your experience and thoughts about this way of saving “green” while renovating “green”.

About the author: Brenda Reyes Tomassini joined EPA in 2002. She is a public affairs specialist in the San Juan, Puerto Rico office and also handles community relations for the Caribbean Environmental Protection Division.

Last night, while shopping with my family, my three year-old son asked an employee for a recycling bin to dispose of a plastic bottle he had been drinking water from. Needless to say, the store clerk was baffled by the request of such a young citizen. Unfortunately, neither the store nor the shopping center had recycling bins, despite the fact that thousands of people visit the mall on a daily basis. I had to take the bottle home with me.

While recycling has increased in various municipalities throughout the island, and outreach efforts by non-profit groups and environmental agencies such as EPA have made an impact on citizens, widespread recycling at public places is still not very common in Puerto Rico. A recent article in The Economist analyzes the fact that while recycling is good for the environment, it is costly due to the meticulous process of manual separation. Some countries and cities, concerned about those costs, are shipping the materials to other parts of the world where manual labor is less expensive.

Materials like aluminum, steel, paper and glass are easy to recycle and cost-effective due to the high cost and damage to the environment caused by mining and refining the raw materials. Recycling aluminum has turned into a profitable business, even for individuals who collect cans. These monetary incentives are having an impact. For example, in recent beach and river cleanups, aluminum cans are not among the commonly found items. Plastic bottles and related items, however, are easily found. While most glass is recyclable and some states provide an incentive for those who return glass items, it is not feasible in every place and I find myself collecting these at every cleanup too.

Even though the plastic industry has developed a series of markers to identify recyclable plastics, not all municipal and state programs recycle them. While researching some information for this blog, I learned that plastic needs to be meticulously separated. Even a small amount of the wrong type of plastic can ruin the melt of recycled plastic.

In our house, we recycle at a rate of 40% (sometimes it can be more) and we try our best to practice the 3 R’s. I think it is time to stress the first R: Reduce more. That way I won’t have to take a plastic bottle home to recycle it anymore.