Bee My Lovebug set by John & Kira’s

Bee My Lovebug gift set by John & Kira's

These stylish, hand-painted chocolates are almost too cute to eat – almost. Each Bee My Lovebug set is filled with mouth-watering salted caramel touched with fragrant basswood honey from the family-owned Draper’s Apiary.

To create these adorable Honey Caramel bees, John & Kira’s combines 64 percent organic Valrhona chocolate with fresh cream and a touch of sugar for a tasty ganache that’s perfect for love bugs. Choose from nine or 16-piece sets or their massive 27-piece tower.

Price: $26.10 for a 9-piece set

BUY IT HERE

But other companies are finding that dealing with waste smartly can add to their business portfolio and generate new revenue streams. What was once thrown away can now even become transformed into a consulting business. The following are eight companies that find profit in trash, either from collecting or incorporating recycled and upcycled materials into their products.

Green Power-Player #4: GM produces eco rides like the Chevy Volt, but did you know the company also makes $1 billion per year selling scrap? Photo: General Motors

1. DHL

Within its Envirosolutions division in the United Kingdom, DHL not only makes money accumulating and recycling waste, but also advises companies on how they can more effectively and sustainably package their products.

Customers can access DHL’s packaging knowledge database and gain details on more than 4 million different types of packaging. But Envirosolutions also works closely with a bevy of clients from a large British pub chain (hauling away recyclables) to British Airways (reprocessing food waste). The company is also a master of efficiency: trucks that make deliveries to clients do not leave empty, but instead carry away used cardboard and shrink wrap to recycling facilities.

2. eBay

Give eBay credit for its aggressive electronics recycling program. Long known as the company that helps you empty your closets and find treasures in your basement, its Instant Sale program tackles the problem of tangled electronic waste supply chains. Users can mail in that unwanted iPhone or laptop and rest assured that any forgotten naughty texts or pictures will be erased before resale.

EBay also makes its fair share of revenues from all the used packaging, equipment and yes, even horse manure for your garden. Its breadth of waste management solutions, dare we say, give the company Waste Management a run for its money.

READ: eBay Debuts E-waste Trade-in Program

3. Ford

From its base in Motor City, Ford Motor Company works with partners like REPREVE to divert items like plastic bottles from landfills. The fabrics that REPREVE manufactures from these bottles will end up in the electric model of the Ford Focus.

As many as 2 million bottles will be collected at two large trade shows in January and will be combined with other post-industrial waste to create polyester. An average of 22 PET bottles will end up in each Focus Electric that will soon roll off the company’s assembly lines. With the American auto industry revitalized, look for other companies to take Ford’s lead in making money from having parts and interiors manufactured from recycled materials.

READ: Ford’s New Cars Cut Water Use, Recycle Bottles

4. GM

While Ford boasts about using recycled materials, GM shines as an avid recycling machine. The once-again world’s largest automaker makes $20,000 a month off of cardboard recycling, a pittance on its balance sheet but impressive nonetheless.

A much bigger number is the $1 billion per year that GM generates from selling scrap. Its 92 percent recycling rate is not a liability, but a profitable asset.

READ: Chevy’s New Eco Labels Show Cars’ Impact

5. Ingram Micro

The world’s largest technology distributor with operations on six continents, this $36 billion company is now starting to tackle the mounting problem of e-waste. Partnering with a major information technology recycler, Ingram Micro just launched a program that will help clients throughout its distribution networks dispose of obsolete technology safely and prevent it from entering landfills.

6. Nucor

The largest steel producer in North America has its origins in building small furnaces near junkyards across the United States and now stakes a claim as one of the world’s largest scrap recyclers. About one ton of steel per second are recycled at Nucor facilities, including 9 million cars annually.

7. UPS

The 3,300 UPS stores across the United States offer a one-stop repair service for customers who want their damaged laptops repaired. Unwanted laptops are refurbished and resold; the rest are sold to e-waste recyclers.

READ: UPS Tests Super-Efficient Truck

8. Valvoline

The motor oil giant, part of a $7 billion conglomerate, is dependent on other companies for its petroleum supplies and is therefore susceptible to price fluctuations. To that end, the company is revamping its supply chain and last year rolled out its new NextGen motor oil product that is 50 percent recycled.

With this NextGen’s acceptance taking hold at huge racing events like NASCAR, watch for more recycled motor oil and similar automotive products to enter the market.

READ: Valvoline Debuts Groundbreaking Re-Refined Oil

What are Recyclebank Points?

Recyclebank Points are earned through various green actions such as pledging to use less water, taking quizzes, making eco-friendlier purchases, and learning how to live a sustainable life. Check out Recyclebank.com for a full list of ways to earn points.

These points can be redeemed at hundreds of local and national retailers for discounts on groceries, a night out, or hundreds of other perks. Check out the Get Rewards page to see where you can use your points.

Please note: You need a Recyclebank Account to earn and use points. If you do not have an account, you will have the opportunity to create one on Earth911.com. It’s free and easy to join.

How do I get Recyclebank Points?

Currently, there are two ways:

1. Registering for the Earth911 Instant Expert Newsletter.
2. Reading stories on Earth911.com, with a maximum of 3 opportunities to earn each day. Simply read an article and click the “Get My Points” button at the end of the story, or on the last page of articles that contain more than one page.

In the future, we hope to offer you more ways to get points for making better choices!

I just signed up for the newsletter or read an article. Where are my points?
Newsletter: You must fully complete the signup process by verifying your email to claim your points. When you click the link to verify your email, you will be brought to a landing page where a Recyclebank banner that features the words “Get My Points” is located.

Click “Get My Points.” (example on right)

Articles: You must read to the bottom of an article or reach the last page of an article that contains multiple pages to reach the “Get My Points” button.

You also must have pop-ups enabled for this function to work. Then, follow the instructions by logging into your current Recyclebank Account or signing up to create one for the first time.

What’s next?

Make sure to add greentips@earth911.com to your safe sender list, and stay tuned for our emails that make you an expert in one green topic each week! We’ll announce future growth in our partnership with Recyclebank via the Instant Expert Newsletter as well. ]]> http://earth911.com/recyclebank/feed/ 0 http://earth911.com/news/2012/01/30/spring-back-mattress-recycling-nashville-tennessee/ http://earth911.com/news/2012/01/30/spring-back-mattress-recycling-nashville-tennessee/#comments Mon, 30 Jan 2012 13:14:59 +0000 Alexis Petru http://earth911.com/?p=66948

Although mattresses contain recyclable materials like metal and wood, the process of dismantling them is so labor intensive and cost prohibitive that most mattresses end up in the landfill.

But Nashville-based nonprofit Spring Back Recycling is not only diverting unwanted mattresses from the dump, it’s also providing jobs and job training for men and women who were formerly incarcerated or are currently homeless.

The mattress recycling venture was launched in March 2011 as a partnership between Nashville’s Belmont University and the local Belmont Church: College students run the business side of the operation, handling marketing and accounting, while the church secured a local warehouse and recruited employees from the homeless community.

Spring Back employees separate mattresses into their material streams – including cotton, metal, wood and foam – and then sell the material to local scrap buyers for recycling. Rather than rely on donations, the nonprofit is trying to make its operations self-sufficient, using revenue from selling recyclables to pay employee salaries and warehouse rent.

Belmont University finance Professor John Gonas, who oversees the operation, recently told NPR that he hopes to license Spring Back’s model to encourage similar job training and mattress recycling programs in cities across the U.S.

READ: Eco-Friendly Mattresses: Do Labels Matter?

Homepage image: Flickr/How can I recycle this

The Isles of Shoals (above) are common patrolling grounds for the plastic hunters of the Rozalia Project. Photo: Flickr/PHOTOPHANATIC1

Off the eastern coast of the U.S., out from the border between New Hampshire and Maine, the Isles of Shoals rest peacefully in the early morning. Underwater, whales feed, schools of fish flutter by, and yellow, remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) clasp old cans, discarded lobster traps and other debris on the ocean floor.

On the American Promise floating overhead, the ship’s crew, who sport accolades including Ivy League degrees, U.S. Coastguard Captain certifications, and a U.S. Sailing Team coach, operate the ROVs using sophisticated imaging systems that allow them to target and remove trash in a non-invasive way. The team from the Rozalia Project has a goal: to remove every, single bit of waste from the ocean that they can through direct action, and to show people what it looks like to see the impact of ocean litter through awareness education.

“We’re connecting people to their underwater world, not the underwater world, not the nameless, faceless ocean they think of,” says Rachael Miller, founder of the Rozalia Project. “Right under anybody’s feet, in any water body, there’s something cool – and probably right next to it, there’s something not cool, like a beer can or a chip bag or somebody’s shoe.”

Named after her great-grandmother, Rozalia Belsky, the Rozalia Project aims to protect the seas that brought Miller’s family to a better life in America almost 90 years ago.

Taking Individual Responsibility

Miller travels around the country with her ROVs, showing everyone from children to yacht club members what their local body of water really looks like, hoping that the reality of the images they see will change behaviors that are trashing the world’s seas, rivers, harbors and lakes.

“I think sometimes the unexpectedness of seeing a cool underwater habitat interrupted by [trash], that is very alarming. We were at one yacht club and showing people the images from the ROV, and someone said ‘Let’s go over to Bob’s boat and see what it looks like.’ His boat was surrounded by forks, plates cups, cans – basically, Bob was busted. I’m willing to bet he hasn’t added anything to the pile since our visit.”

But since there are 13,000 pieces of litter per square kilometer in the world’s oceans, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Miller and her team can’t do it alone.

The UC-Davis Aggies took down the competition in the 2011 Game Day Challenge, diverting a whopping 94 percent of their waste from football games last fall. Photo: Flickr/Monica's Dad

The University of Alabama may have come away with the BCS Championship title. But some lesser-known schools are giving ‘Bama a run for its money when it comes to waste diversion.

The University of California-Davis has been named the diversion rate champion in the EPA’s 2011 Game Day Challenge, a competition to see which schools could reduce, reuse and recycle the most waste at their football games.

READ: EPA Announces College Football Challenge

Last fall, UC-Davis and 74 other participating colleges – along with their 2.7 million fans – diverted nearly 500,000 pounds of waste from football games, which prevented more than 810 metric tons of carbon dioxide from being released into the atmosphere, the EPA said.

The greenhouse gas emissions avoided is equivalent to taking 159 passenger vehicles off the road for one year, the EPA said.

UC-Davis finished out their season with a whopping 94 percent diversion rate. Central Connecticut State also made marks in the challenge, winning the title for the smallest per-capita waste generation with a mere 0.06 pounds of waste per person.

The University of Virginia took away two titles in the challenge – for the highest per-capita greenhouse gas reduction and highest recycling rates, recycling nearly 0.8 pounds of materials per person.

SEE: Last Year’s Game Day Challenge Winners

Want to see how your school stacked up? Head to the EPA’s results calculator, and punch in your school’s state to get the stats.

Through the University of North Dakota's gasification system, coffee residue could be used to heat homes, fuel cars and even produce biofuel. Photo: Flickr/chichacha

If you thought your cup of coffee was only good for giving you a burst of energy, think again. Researchers at the University of North Dakota are developing a process to convert waste from coffee processing plants – from the grains to the packaging – into green energy, according to recent news reports.

The university’s Energy & Environmental Research Center is working with Vermont-based bioenergy firm Wynntryst LLC and Green Mountain Coffee Roasters to develop a gasification power system powered by coffee residue, plastic packaging, textiles and Keurig single-serve plastic cups – a Green Mountain product, reports EcoSeed.

Through an advanced fixed-bed gasifier system, EERC and its partners will attempt to turn the hodgepodge mixture of processing plant waste into clean synthetic gas, or syngas, reports Environmental Leader. The syngas will then be used in an internal combustion engine or converted into high-value biofuels or chemicals, EL reports.

READ: Coffee-Powered Car Breaks World Record

The research center has already developed small gasifier systems powered by a variety of feedstocks, including forest residues, railroad tie chips, turkey litter and other biomass, Chris Zygarlicke, EERC deputy director for research, told EcoSeed.

EERC and Wynntryst will evaluate how much syngas can be produced from Green Mountain Coffee waste through a series of pilot-scale tests, reports Utility Products and SeeNews.com. The results of the tests will be used to develop a commercial demonstration system for multiple Green Mountain sites.

SEE: How to Green Your Cup of Coffee

What makes up a milk/juice carton

Cartons are a type of packaging for food and beverage products you can purchase at the store. They are easy to recognize and are available in two types – shelf-stable (or aseptic) and refrigerated (gable-top).

Shelf-stable cartons, as the name suggests, are found on store shelves and are used mostly for juice, milk, soy milk, soup and broth and wine. Refrigerated cartons are found in chilled sections of grocery stores and contain products like milk, juice, cream and egg substitutes.

There are other products that are also called cartons – ice cream cartons and take-out cartons. From a recycling standing point, these are not the same as shelf-stable and refrigerated and are not included in the definition of cartons.

READ: Facts about Cartons

Paper, plastic and aluminum are the three materials layered together to make cartons. A typical shelf-stable carton averages 74 percent paper, 22 percent plastic and 4 percent aluminum. The refrigerated cartons skip the aluminum and usually stick to an 80 percent paper, 20 percent plastic combo.

Why should I recycle cartons?

Recycling your cartons is a great way to keep unnecessary waste out of landfills, but your green contribution doesn’t stop there. The paper in cartons comes from a renewable resource that is responsibly replenished – trees! This means you are conserving energy by choosing a sustainable product package in the first place.

On top of that, cartons require fewer natural resources to transport due to their efficient product to packaging ratio. On average, a product sold in a shelf stable carton is 94 percent product and 6 percent packaging. This means fuel consumption and greenhouse gas emissions are reduced since they can be shipped using fewer trucks.

Also, once they have been recycled, the high quality of the materials used in cartons makes them very desirable for remanufacturing into new products. All three materials used to make cartons can be repurposed.

READ: How to Recycling Milk and Juice Cartons

Finally, carton manufacturers are committed to increasing access to carton recycling in the United States, avoiding disposal in landfills and ensuring cartons continue to live on once the contents are gone.

Common misconceptions about cartons

Cartons are not recyclable.
False! Cartons are indeed recyclable. Made from mostly paper, cartons are in high demand to be made into new products. Manufacturers of cartons have joined forces as the Carton Council to increase access to carton recycling across the U.S. So far, carton recycling has increased from 18 percent of households in 2008 to 37 percent in 2011.

How did this happen? The Carton Council worked with all the key players in the recycling world from the recycling facilities to mills to make sure that cartons could be handled properly at recycling facilities and recycled into new products. By investing financial and technical resources, the Carton Council has made cartons a reality in over 2000 programs nationwide. Carton recycling may be coming to your program soon!

READ: Philly Now Offers Curbside Carton Recycling 

I cannot recycle cartons because they don’t have a symbol on them.
False! In order for any packaging to be able to feature the recycle symbol, recycling of that packaging must be available to a majority of households in the United States. This process is regulated by the Federal Trade Commission. While cartons are making progress towards placing the recycle symbol on packages, the goal is to reach that majority by 2015. So for now, many cartons do not feature the recycle symbol. Consumers can determine if cartons are recyclable in their program by visiting www.recyclecartons.com or www.earth911.com.

Cartons are wax coated.
False! Cartons do not contain any wax and have not for many years. All cartons are made mainly from paper. Gable-top (or refrigerated) cartons contain additional layers of plastic, while aseptic (or shelf-stable) cartons contain additional layers of plastic and aluminum. Cartons were designed to keep the product inside as fresh as possible, blocking out light and odors that may cause products to spoil. A cool fact about cartons – the colorful labeling on the outside is printed on the thin plastic layer. When recycled, removing that layer leaves behind valuable paper fibers that are used to make new paper products.

Take a deeper look at the anatomy of a carton. Photo: Carton Council

How does it work?

So, what happens to that carton once you empty it out of your recycling bin? Typically, its journey begins at a materials recovery facility where it gets separated from other waste and types of recyclables. From there, the cartons get shipped to paper mills where they are mixed with water in a giant blender called a hydra-pulper. This process separates the paper from the plastic and aluminum. Once this is complete the paper fiber is ready to be transformed into other products such as tissues, office paper and even building materials depending on the area of the country and the mill.

The plastic and aluminum are collected from the hydra-pulping process as well. The plastic, when re-purposed separately, is often used for shipping crates and building materials. However, in North America it is left in a combined state with the aluminum creating a material called a poly/al mix. The poly/al mix has a limited secondary use market, but some mills have been able to use it to generate energy for their facilities.

READ: What Happens Next to Cartons?

What do I need to know?

• Always check your local program for guidelines in your community. Curbside pick up is gaining popularity, but is still not available everywhere.
• Be sure to remove any lids, straws, or fancy extras that come with your packaging.
• Only recycle empty cartons. Rinsing isn’t required for recycling them, but it does help ensure that the container is empty, as well as help reduce potential odor issues if you plan to store your recyclables.
• Flatten your cartons to aide storage and ease of handling.
• When in doubt, keep it out. This rule of thumb is important with all recycling practices. Rather than risk contaminating your local recycling stream, keep materials that you aren’t sure about out.

Editor’s Note: Earth911 partners with many industries, manufacturers and organizations to support its Recycling Directory, the largest in the nation, which is provided to consumers at no cost. The Carton Council is one of these partners.

Photo: Flickr/Sustainable sanitation

1.  Panda poo fertilizes the world’s most expensive tea

An Yanshi, a university lecturer in China, found a way to recycle panda poo this year, securing a patent to use the animal waste as fertilizer for a tea that will sell for as much as $36,000 per pound.

An says that using panda-poo fertilizer has health benefits for tea-drinkers: The excrement is rich in fiber and nutrients, and An claims that its bamboo content contains anti-cancer properties.

READ MORE HERE

2.  San Francisco considers public composting toilets

While the “City by the Bay” debated rolling out composting toilets to homes and businesses citywide, two San Francisco community groups worked with an eco-minded laboratory to design a portable composting toilet that could provide an environmentally-friendly and inexpensive solution to the city’s public defecation problem.

READ MORE HERE

3.  Wanted in Maryland: “Poop power”

Looking to meet its alternative energy goals and reduce fertilizer runoff into the Chesapeake Bay, Maryland’s state government sought proposals to purchase electricity generated from animal waste like poultry litter and livestock manure.

READ MORE HERE

4.  Final space mission recycles urine into drinking water

NASA’s final space shuttle mission was big news this year, but the astronauts onboard the Atlantis also carried out an interesting recycling experiment: converting urine into drinkable water with no power source.

Astronauts at the International Space Station have been drinking from a machine that recycles urine into water for several years, but the machine consumes too much of the lab’s limited energy supply. To solve this problem, astronauts on the final space mission planned to test a recycling kit that uses forward osmosis, rather than a power source, to purify urine.

READ MORE HERE

5.  Dog poop power in Phoenix suburb

The Phoenix suburb of Gilbert considered converting dog waste from a popular dog park into methane to power the park’s street lamp this year. The town is seeking a corporate sponsor for the $25,000 project, and Arizona State University science students would be charged with designing the digester.

READ MORE HERE

6.  Recycling diapers into green building materials

Can you build a house out of dirty diapers? Canadian recycling company Knowaste announced plans to open five facilities in the U.K. to take the wood pulp and plastic from used diapers and feminine hygiene products and turn them into building materials like roofing shingles and synthetic wood. The organic waste from the absorbent hygiene products will be dried and gasified to create energy.

READ MORE HERE

7.  San Antonio River Walk’s dirty secret

With the Lone Star State in the midst of a historic drought, San Antonio has found a way to keep its popular downtown river flowing in the dry summer months: treating the city’s sewage water to near-drinkable quality and pumping it into the body of water.

The local Toyota manufacturing plant, Microsoft data center and golf courses also use the recycled water, and the water department says the sewage treatment program is saving a billion gallons of water a year.

READ MORE HERE

8.  Cincinnati Zoo composts its animal waste

Rather than send another 1 million pounds of animal waste to the landfill this year, the Cincinnati Zoo decided to start composting the excrement and will apply the resulting nutritious fertilizer on the zoo’s gardens.

READ MORE HERE

9.  Saving lives with a composting toilet

Duke University environmental engineer Marc Deshusses is developing a simple waste disposal system specifically designed for developing countries, where a lack of sanitation allows diseases like hepatitis, dysentery, typhoid and cholera to spread.

The composting toilet system will be simple enough that a single family can construct it in one day, using everyday materials for less than $100. Rather than release the methane the waste emits into the atmosphere, the system captures and burns the gas to kill the bacteria and viruses in the waste.

In November, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation awarded Deshusses with a $100,000 grant to complete the project.

READ MORE HERE

10.  Huggies sponsors diaper composting abroad

In 2009, Kimberly-Clark, maker of Huggies-brand diapers, worked with New Zealand company Envirocomp to establish the country’s first commercial diaper composting facility, which mixed diapers with local green waste to create a compost product suitable for commercial gardening and landscaping.

This year, the manufacturer of health and hygiene products announced that it signed a sponsorship agreement with Envirocomp’s parent company that plans to build diaper composting facilities in the United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia and mainland Europe in 2012.

But when will diaper composting come to the U.S.? Kimberly-Clark told Earth911 that it wants to develop similar initiatives in the U.S. and is currently searching for partners with the best solutions.

READ MORE HERE

Treecycling is the simple act of recycling your Christmas tree, rather than throwing it away, at the end of the season. By doing so, you extend your Christmas tree’s usability by allowing it to be turned into something else.

Recycled trees are most commonly used for mulch, erosion protection, habitat creation and shoreline stabilization. However, the possibilities don’t end there. Every year communities across the country are finding new ways to use treecycling for private projects, as well.

READ: What Happens to the Rockefeller Tree After Christmas?

According the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, about 33 million trees are sold in the U.S. every year. Compared to artificial trees, real Christmas trees are a renewable resource, with 98 percent of them being grown and harvested each year as a crop would be. They are carbon neutral and create organic, biodegradable waste, making them the greener choice for Christmas greenery. However, it is still important to keep them out of landfills where they biodegrade slowly due to low oxygen levels.

READ: Real vs. Artificial Christmas Trees 

More and more communities are offering seasonal treecycling programs, and it has never been easier to participate. Earth911’s Treecycle Program has developed the nation’s largest, most comprehensive treecycling directory and has compiled over 4,000 treecycling resources. Recycling options range from curbside pickup to consumer drop-off and DYI projects.

In addition to the directory, the Treecycle Program has partnered with major retailers such as Walmart and Home Depot as well as many tree farms that support sustainable practices that make their trees environmentally friendly.

READ: A full list of Official Treecycle Partners 

Shoppers can look for trees with the Treecycle logo to help guide them. With so many tools at your fingertips, treecycling will be easier than ever and a great way to kick off the New Year!