Garbage Revolution

I gotta tell you, since starting this blog I have noticed that a disproportionate percentage of the innovative trash solutions projects on this planet originate in Toronto. Ah, Canadians. Check out the Web site to this new documentary that chronicles one family who, instead of throwing their trash away, keep it in the garage and allow it to be filmed to show the world just how much waste one family produces.

I’m headed out of town again for a few weeks (warning, posts will be few and far between until mid-December), but when I return I plan to host a screening. Happy Thanksgiving, everyone.

Weekly Compactor

This week in trash news:

• The Brooklyn Papers spread the word about everydaytrash;
• Orillia, Canada considers garbage tags in a pay-as-you-throw plan;
• A Japanese man is knifed over a neighborhood trash dispute; and
• Uganda will start composting trash and selling it to farmers for fertilizer to increase government coffers.

Corn and potato cups

This morning, I came across this Edmonton Journal article on biodegradable corn cups as an alternative to PETE plastic, which few people make the effort to recycle. A Green Bug Blog has compiled some more facts on compostable utensils. It’s a mind blowing concept, if you ask me, corn and potato starch knives, forks and bowls! I tried some out at Blue Hill Cafe upstate this Winter. I don’t know why more places don’t make the switch.

Weekly Compactor

  This week in trash news:

• The EPA announced that federal prisons in five states will undergo environmental audits;
• A trash strike in Vancouver entices Canada’s rat population;
• A settlement outside Cape Town, South Africa, gets some much needed media attention for its trash woes; and
• A rubbish collector in Malasia is fined for not taking out the trash (pictured).

Photo via The Star

Weekly Compactor

This week in trash news:

• The Washington Post’s first person singular piece this week features a man who scoops trash out of the Patomic;
• Young garbage collectors risk life and limb in Baghdad;
• A clash between the Teamsters and Waste Management has San Francisco looking a lot like Naples;
• A new study from Greenpeace shows 6.5 million tons of trash floating in the Mediterranean;
• A couple in India discover a discarded grandmother at the local garbage dump;
• A city in California proposes restrictions on curbside trash scavenging;
• The BigBelly solar trash bin gets a little press in the UK; and
• Regional officials in Canada visit Europe to learn more about trash.

Photo by Walter P. Calahan via the Washington Post

Trash City

  As someone who reads a lot of garbage headlines, I can say with authority that Toronto is way into trash.  Media stories about how to green a community, waste export policy debates and grassroots organizing around reducing waste quite often carry Toronto datelines.  So, I wasn’t that surprised to see the local weekly, Eye Weekly focus on trash for an Earth Day special in a stellar compilation of blogworthy articles (thanks for the link, mom).

My favorite piece is an overview of the publications recent design challenge to build a better trash can.  Check out what the judges had to say about the three most innovative contenders.  The idea behind the contest was to build a vessel that would allow consumers to separate their waste, recognizing the diversity of what we throw away and the various places it should go.  Too cool.
I’m torn between the “JUSTDESIGN” and “TRASHIE” models.

Weekly Compactor

Happy first day of Spring!

This week in trash news:

• As punishment for throwing her cell phone at her maid, Naomi Campbell must spend the week working for the department of sanitation;
• Also in New York, Polytechnic U develops ‘bioplastic’;
• The U.S.-Canadian trash war continues as a potential new law regulating Canuck dumping in Michegan clears committee; and
• South Africa opens its first rubbish-powered plant.

Weekly Compactor

  This week in trash news: 

• If passed, a new energy bill would offer Americans tax incentives for using solar power;
• Toronto gussies up recycle bins for a public art project;
• North Reading, Mass., comtemplates an unforseen jump in trash created by residents;
• The Asian Development Bank predicts that, if current rates hold, the continent will create 1.8 million tons of trash per day by 2025; and
• Locals in Nepal continue to block dumping in a landfill outside of Kathmandu.

Weekly compactor

  This week in trash news:

• Rich people in Brunei make messes via servants;
• Residents of Des Plains, IL, are worried about wheeling out the trash; 
• Michigan slaps it to Canada with a NIMBY trash bill;
• Solid waste forges post-colonial ties in Mozambique;
• New Canaanites reveal that even the politically correct upper-crust need to do a better job recycling; and
• Corrupt bosses may be allowing some Namibian garbage men to convert vacation days into cash.

Weekly Compactor: tips from readers

This week the compactor focuses on two neat things sent in to me by readers.  The first is an article reposted on a blog.  The second is a program by the WNYC show Radio Lab.  Both are fantastic examples of journalists pursuing stories in trash.  I love it. 

• A little town in Canada with the world’s cleanest water plans to build a dump over it (via Science Notes).
• Oxfordians use ancient trash to solve mysteries (scroll down).

weekly compactor

This week in trash news:

• Cool Hunting reports on woods-inspired work at the London Design Festival; and also in England
• The British experiment with trash-eating homes;
• “Waste-to-watts” programs in Deleware make use of gas from landfills;
• Greenloop sends out the first of a four-part eco-friendly holiday shopping guide;
• Vietnam’s new trash law isn’t solving any problems; and
• A Canadian garbage bag company is cashing in on new sorting regulations.

wine-in-a-box

  My friend, salmon, recently informed me that wine-in-a-box can be purchased in individual portions, like jumbo juice boxes for grown-ups.  I keep meaning to tell my grandmother this.  For a short time after they retired, she and my grandfather had a small vineyard in New Jersey.  They made and bottled their own wine, mostly drunk by our immediate family but also tasted at local get-togethers with other farmers struggling to make grapes happy on the East Coast.  Grandma has told me more than once that wine-in-a-box, or more specifically wine-in-a-bag-in-a-box, is a better way to store wine over a long period of time without losing flavor. 

It appears that vintners in Canada agree with her as several wineries have foregone traditional glass bottles in favor of the box.  Usman Valiante, a contributor to Canada’s Solid Waste and Recycling Magazine, weighs the environmental and viticultural pros and cons of this decision on the blog he keeps off the magazine’s Web site.  Aside from trashing the taste of the wines he sampled, Valiante explains that the materials used to store the drinks aren’t as green as the vineyards imply.  He also points out the irony in the label “Recyclable–where facilities exist.”  I guess I’ll have to stick to sangria in a thermos at picnics. 

amero-canadian trash accord

  The city of Toronto held an emergency meeting on trash today to draft a “contingency plan to handle the city’s garbage and sewage sludge in the event of a border closure.”  You see, the U.S. and Canada have been at war, or at least at skirmish, for years over which country is the other’s dump.  Michiganders in particular are angry that companies like Waste Management can import foreign trash and deposit it in landfills in their state.  In response, the House of Representatives recently passed a bill that would grant states the right to ban garbage from other countries.  The bill is a long way from becoming law and will likely undergo many changes along the way. 

Meanwhile, Michigan’s senators are brokering deals with Ontario officials to slow the flow of trash from our neighbor to the North.

This is a blog about trash.

This is a blog about Oscar the Grouch. It’s about the smoke of burning trash piles wafting through every developing country in the world. It’s about the billions of dollars a year spent exporting garbage from one state to another. It’s about diving into a dumpster and coming up with a still-warm burger and three packets of mustard. It’s about detonating landmines with old truck tires and building bookshelves out of milk crates. It’s about barges. It’s about battery acid. It’s about paying sixty bucks for a change purse made of soda can tabs because the label says a women’s group in Latin America glued them together. It’s about sorting plastics. It’s about beaches built on landfills and landfills built on beaches. It’s about the “away” in throw away and the “out” in toss out and the “rid” in get rid of it. This is a blog about the art, money, power, politics, people and literature of garbage. It’s a subject that shocks and amuses me nearly every day, which is about how often I imagine I’ll be posting. I hope you’ll share in the fascination.