recycling

Trash talk, and the Internet

January 11, 2011

Incentives work. Every economist knows that, as do most parents (“clean your room and I’ll buy you an ice cream”).

Until recently, there have been few incentives to recycle. So recycling rates have been more or less steady for years.

That’s changing, largely because of the Internet and its power to efficiently collect, manage and distribute information.

In a column called The Internet of Trash for the News@Cisco website, I write about the ways a company called RecycleBank and a unit of Waste Management called Greenopolis are using data, the Internet and social media to  reward people who recycle.

Here’s how the story begins:

“Garbage,” says the character played by Andie MacDowell in the 1989 movie, Sex, Lies, and Videotape. “All I’ve been thinking about all week is garbage. We’ve got so much of it, you know? I mean, we have to run out of places to put this stuff eventually.”

Uh, no. Trash may have piled up in the late 1980s—this was the time when a barge called the Mobro carried 3,000 tons of solid waste from New York to Belize and back because there was no place to put it—but Americans lately have been throwing away less stuff, and recycling more.

Perhaps surprisingly, the Internet is a big reason why.  Digital music, for example, means fewer CD cases wind up in the trash. Email and online shopping, meanwhile, reduce the flow of letters and catalogs; mail volumes in the U.S. have fallen from 211 billion pieces in 2005 to 170 million in 2010, according to the annual reports issued by the U.S. Postal Service [PDF, downloads].

The Internet is also enabling innovation around recycling. Two ventures–a startup company called RecycleBank and a new division of Waste Management, America’s largest trash hauler, called Greenopolis – are using digital technology to give people economic incentives to recycle. Both are pay dividends—literally and for the planet, by extracting value from waste that would otherwise be buried in a landfill.

Big companies like Coca-Cola and PepsiCo that have reputational issues tied to litter  are working with RecycleBank and Greenopolis to promote recycling. You can read the rest of the story here.

Now if only local governments would find ways to either (1) penalize people who throw away lots of stuff by charging them more or (2) reward people who recycle more, we’d drive up recycling rates further. That would move us just a bit closer to a zero-waste economy where nothing is thrown away and everything is made into somethings else. The idea here isn’t merely to eliminate waste, but to eliminate the concept of waste. Kind of like nature.

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From the Gulf to the Volt

December 20, 2010

When trying to save the planet, every litter bit helps.

But let’s not lose sight of the forest when we’re saving a tree–or when General Motors is recycling “plastic boom material used to soak up oil in the Gulf of Mexico” into auto parts in the Chevrolet Volt.

Recycling is laudable–indeed, it points the way to a sustainable, zero-waste future where nothing is thrown away, and everything is made into something else. The Chevy Volt, meanwhile, is an innovative and efficient car–the “car of the year” according to Motor Trend. So the people at GM deserve kudos for developing the car and, now, for turning waste into auto parts, as illustrated in the photo below, which shows some of the materials that go into “underhood parts” of the car:

These materials (l to r): recovered boom material, shredded and densified boom material, post consumer plastic and recycled tires from GM's Milford Proving Ground are combined to create airflow management components for the Volt.

Nor is this effort to reuse and recycle an isolated effort. Just last week, according to Automotive News, GM reported that more than half the waste generated at its 145 plants worldwide is now “landfill free,” meaning the waste gets reused, recycled or converted into energy. Those plants employ more than 70,000 people–all of whom, presumably, are learning that it’s possible to reduce and reuse waste.

What’s more, GM last month announced that it was adding 1,000 jobs in Michigan to develop more hybrid and electric cars similar to the Volt, said The New York Times. GM’s chief executive, Daniel Akerson, said then that “electrification is critical to the global automotive industry.”

But a little perspective is required.

Chevrolet expects to sell about 10,000 Volts in 2010, and up to 45,000 more in 2011.

But GM is selling more than 8,000 cars and light trucks every day, according to Ward’sAuto.com, and most of those are SUVs and light trucks. [click to continue…]

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Quiznos: Green enough?

February 23, 2010

People sometimes say we need to save the planet for our kids. I sometimes think our kids are going to save us.

If you doubt it, ask Rick Schaden. Schaden is CEO of Quiznos, the fast-food chain best known for its toasted subs, and the father of five children, aged three to 19. Today, Quiznos is rolling out new packaging (“Eat Toasty, Be Green”) made from renewable or recycled content that will reduce the chain’s environmental footprint. When we spoke by phone yesterday, I asked what led him to make the changes.

“Believe it or not, I was home watching a movie called Wall-E with my kids,” Schaden said. “You think about LEED-certified buildings and hybrid electric cars and all these really high-tech things, and then you watch Wall-E and the world is buried in trash.” The Disney-Pixar animated movie is the story of a robot named Wall-E, who is designed to clean up a Earth that has been overwhelmed by garbage.

Quiznos green packaging

Quiznos green packaging

His kids had always pushed Schaden to be more green at home. “My kids make sure everything is sorted and separated. If anyone in my house would dare to put a plastic bottle in the trash, my 14-year-old would give him a smack,” he said. “It’s the culture of the new generation. It tells you that’s where consumers are heading.”

So, he figured, why not see what could be done at Quiznos, where he is a large shareholder, and where he returned as CEO, after some time away, just about a year ago. [click to continue…]

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Now that’s green tea!

October 7, 2009

Nothing is more wasteful than, er, waste. Companies pay for the raw materials that they don’t use. Then they pay again to have it trucked to the landfill. That’s why zero waste is an exciting idea. Reducing or eliminating waste is not only good for  the planet, it’s good for  business, as companies like Toyota and Wal-Mart have learned.

Smart companies that pursue zero waste are also taking us closer to an industrial system inspired by nature, where there’s no such thing as garbage. Think about a tree or plant, where this fall’s dead leaves become next spring’s food.

Lipton Green OPJToday’s zero waste story comes from Lipton, the world’s largest tea company. Lipton is a unit of London-based consumer-products giant Unilever (40 billion euros in 2008 revenues), whose brands include Dove soap, Ben & Jerry ice cream, and Hellmann’s mayonnaise. Unilever’s an environmental leader—it helped start the Marine Stewardship Council which certifies the world’s fisheries as sustainable, it’s working with Greenpeace to develop environmentally preferable refrigerants and it led the laundry industry to concentrate detergent and reduce packaging when it came up with Small and Mighty All.

It turns out that virtually all the Lipton Tea sold in the U.S. comes from a plant in Suffolk, Virginia, which brings in tea from more than 20 countries, runs its production line around-the-clock and produces about 1 million tea bags per hour. Last month, the Suffolk facility became a zero waste operation. Credit goes not just to the managers but to the plant’s 400 workers, who got the ball rolling. [click to continue…]

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