The Compulsive Recycler

Ethical E-waste Recycling

2010-05-19T09:28:00.000-07:00

The proliferation of obsolete electronic equipment and gadgets has become the largest toxic waste problem of our time. E-waste contains very toxic substances such as the heavy metals mercury, lead, cadmium, arsenic, and beryllium; as well as brominated flame retardants and more. Up to fifty million tons of e-waste are generated worldwide each year according to the United Nations Environment Program. This is enough to fill a line of garbage collection trucks stretching halfway around the world, and this line is expanding by eight percent per year.

When our televisions, computers, cell phones, and wide assortment of personal electronic gizmos rapidly become outdated and are replaced it is time to think about what will happen to these items in the next phase of their lives. California law restricts disposal of e-waste in landfills and requires that these materials be recycled. But how do you know a television you recycle in Humboldt County is not being transported to a landfill in Arkansas or a burn pile stoked by children in China? To answer this question the Basel Action Network (BAN) has developed a standard for the ethical recycling of e-waste: The e-Stewards Certification (www.e-stewards.org ). BAN has designed and developed a system by which recyclers, refurbishers, and processors may obtain independent third-party certification of their conformance with the e-Stewards Standard and therefore combat unscrupulous e-waste handlers who may be undercutting the market. The e-Stewards Certification is the only electronics recycler certification that has the backing of the global environmental community. In the US that backing includes an endorsement from Greenpeace USA, the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Sierra Club.

The Arcata Community Recycling Center (ACRC) is the only e-waste recycler within 200 miles of Humboldt County qualified by BAN under the Electronic Recyclers Pledge of True Stewardship Program. Pledged e-Stewards recyclers track the path of toxic e-waste materials and keep it out of developing countries, prisons, landfills and incinerators. E-waste is accepted at ACRC’s Center for Hard to Recycle Materials (CHaRM) at Tenth and “N” Street, 10:00 a.m. to 3:30 p.m., Monday through Saturday. For a list of accepted materials and applicable fees visit www.arcatarecycling.org or call (707) 445-4321.

The Story of a Plastic Bag

2010-03-25T08:09:00.000-07:00

This is a must watch film -- inspiring, depressing, thought provoking. Free to view in its entirety (just under 20 minutes long).

The synopsis:
"This short film by American director Ramin Bahrani traces the epic, existential journey of a plastic bag (voiced by Werner Herzog) searching for its lost maker, the woman who took it home from the store and eventually discarded it. Along the way, it encounters strange creatures, experiences love in the sky, grieves the loss of its beloved maker, and tries to grasp its purpose in the world.

In the end, the wayward plastic bag wafts its way to the ocean, into the tides, and out into the Pacific Ocean trash vortex — a promised nirvana where it will settle among its own kind and gradually let the memories of its maker slip away."

Is ACRC closing?

2010-02-12T11:59:00.000-08:00

Is ACRC closing?
This seems to be a common question these days among conscientious and casual recyclers alike. The answer is, well, No.

Here are the facts:

On April 30th Arcata Community Recycling Center (ACRC) will remove the recycling dumpsters for mixed papers and containers from Arcata’s 9th & N St. drop off yard. Unless additional funding is secured, the drop off of these “everyday recyclables” will no longer be an option at this site.

Why?
On February 1st ACRC received notice from the City of Arcata that our contract to provide this service would be terminated in 90 days. Contracts with the City of Arcata have paid for the operation of this service since 1994. Without funding, this drop off recycling service is not sustainable for ACRC.

Why did the City of Arcata terminate the contract?
Arcata Environmental Services staff anticipate that by April 30th the rollout of the new curbside recycling program for Arcata residents will be complete. Once this is the case Arcatans will be able to recycle their “everyday recyclables” conveniently at their curb and will not need the drop off option.

How will I recycle if I don’t have curbside?
I’ve heard from many people who live just outside the city limits of Arcata (as well as Blue Lake and Eureka for that matter) who are concerned that they still need to use the drop off for their everyday recyclables. If this is your situation do not fret. Instead call your service provider for garbage collection and ask if collection of recyclables is available in your area. If service is unavailable at your address, let your waste hauler know you want curb collection of recyclables at your residence. Requirements for recycling are being discussed by the County and waste haulers serving the unincorporated areas of Humboldt County – contact your County Supervisor’s office as well and let them know that you want this service.

Over time bundled refuse and curbside recycling service may continue to expand beyond the official city limits of Arcata, Eureka and Blue Lake. Recycology (formerly City Garbage of Eureka) has already expanded curbside recycling service into areas surrounding Eureka (including Myrtletown, Cutten, Humboldt Hill, and other neighborhoods) and is looking at further expansion of service from Ryan Slough through the Freshwater area.

For 39 years ACRC (in partnership with countless community members) has strived to bring an ever growing list of recycling and reuse opportunities to North Coast residents. With the increasingly widespread use of curbside recycling to handle everyday recyclables, ACRC is necessarily changing with the times. Please bear with us in the interim and know that we are still here for you.

What is the plan for ACRC once the drop off bins for papers and containers are removed?
This change will actually provide the Resusables Depot Thrift Store with much needed space to expand. In particular, freed up space will allow for the variety and supply of building materials to be greatly improved. Other services ACRC provides at this site, such as the Buyback for CRV materials, will continue. The CHaRM (Center for Hard to Recycle Materials) will continue to serve as the compliment to curbside recycling by offering recycling and safe disposal for items requiring special handling and therefore not accepted in curbside collection bins. This includes electronic waste, motor oil and antifreeze, medical sharps, CFLs, batteries, and appliances. Please visit www.arcatarecycling.org for a complete list of materials accepted at the CHaRM.

Needles Are a No No

2010-02-08T10:18:00.000-08:00

Frightening quantities of medical sharps (needles and syringes) continue to be found in recyclables picked up through curbside collection in Arcata and Eureka. Not only are these items banned from disposal in the trash or recycling, they are also a hazard for our community members who haul and process these materials.

At ACRC's Somoa Processing Facility strict handling procedures are in place to protect employees who sort recyclables. When a hazard, such as a medical sharp, is spotted materials traveling on multiple conveyor belts through the sort lines screech to a halt. The hazardous item is safely removed and processing continues. There are two problems with this situations:

1) To work this procedure requires that an employee visually locates the needle to stop the sort line. The phrase "needle in a haystack" comes to mind here. Amazingly most needles are spotted -- but not all. This hidden hazard can understandably be anxiety inducing for sort line staff.

And 2) Each instance when the sort line stops adds to the amount of time needed to process a ton of recyclables. At times the sort line could be stopped for up to 20% of the work day to handle hazards. This inefficiency directly increases the cost of processing recyclables. A cost that is ultimately passed on to rate payers in our community.

So how does one properly dispose of medical sharps? There are several collection locations throughout Humboldt County. Just be sure to collect your sharps in a designated container available at your pharmacy.

Good Questions From a Conscientious Recycler

2010-02-05T10:19:00.000-08:00

This question came to us recently from a Eureka resident. I think these same questions are on the mind of many conscientious recyclers.

“Just curious; I've noticed, checking the home recycling bins in Eureka, that a lot of people are throwing stuff in with the paper and plastic that isn't recyclable. For example, after the earthquake I saw where one lady threw broken window glass in with the containers. I also see a lot of packaging used for frozen foods routinely thrown in along with milk cartons and such.

I also notice one household routinely throws in food containers like peanut butter jars and salad dressing containers without washing them out first.

How bad a problem is the trash mixed in with recyclables? Would you be able to give a percentage of trash received vs. recyclables?

How much a problem are the dirty food containers?

Just wondering, [I figure] that if it gets too out of hand you're also gonna have to charge more for recycling because you'll be having to get rid of so much trash.”

Thank you conscientious recycler… here are detailed answers for you:

Thank You for paying attention, and being concerned about proper recycling. You are absolutely right, items such as tempered glass (window pane), frozen food containers (which have a wet strength coating that inhibits recyclability), and milk cartons (which have a wax coating which also inhibits recyclability) are not recyclable and therefore are considered trash in Eureka’s system. The appropriate placement for these items once discarded is the trash can – where the ultimate destination is the landfill not the recycling factory. The reality is not all containers and packagings are recyclable. It can be very confusing for people because certain labels on packaging can be misleading. For example, most people have come to recognize the triangular chasing arrows symbol to be equated with recyclability. There are several variations on the chasing arrows that actually have many meanings depending on the way it is depicted. The plastic industry uses the chasing arrows with a resin identifier code (usually a number) in the center of the loop; it does not mean the item is recyclable. Styrofoam is an excellent example of this. It can often be found marked with the resin ID code (the chasing arrows) and the #6 in the center; as a consequence the community is lead to believe Styrofoam is recyclable, unfortunately in our region it is not.

With that, let me answer your question about the problem of trash contamination in the recyclable stream. There are two major considerations, people and money. All of the recyclable material picked up at Eureka curb-side is brought to our processing facility in Samoa for sorting, baling and shipping. The recyclable material is sorted by machinery and people. With the dual stream system the material is spread onto two separate conveyor belts, paper and containers. The paper fibers are sorted by material (cardboard, newspaper/magazines, office pack) entirely by hand. It takes additional time for the sort line personnel to have to constantly pull non-recyclable papers (trash) from this line such as milk cartons and wet strength cardboard packaging. I realize this may be hard to visualize. The conveyor belt is moving at a fairly fast clip; anytime attention is pulled away to remove trash there is the potential to miss quality recyclables. We have begun to market an additional paper grade – a super mixed paper – to help mitigate this situation. Because of the substantial mixed content we have to sell it at a much reduced cost. The situation on the container line is a bit different. It contains tumblers and magnets that assist with the sorting but ultimately it requires people to sort plastic by type and glass by color. It is on the container side that we find the majority of the trash. We have three staff positions dedicated to trash removal before the material is sent through the mechanical system, one at the bottom of the conveyor belt and two at the top in an area affectionately referred to as the “Trash Shack”. This is where the Styrofoam is pulled out… big wheels, Christmas lights… I think you get the idea. The final stage of the container system also supports a receptacle for missed trash. So far I have only mentioned material that residents may have misunderstood to be recyclable. Unfortunately, we also receive items that are banned by law for disposal in either the trash or recycling: sharps (needles), biohazard materials, toxic chemicals (pesticides, corrosive cleaners). These materials pose a significant hazard to sort line staff and therefore we have strict protocols in place for safely removing and containing these hazards. Each time a hazardous material is spotted the sort line shuts down. On some days this down time can be up to 20% of the work day – this represents a huge additional cost through loss of productivity and added fees for safe disposal of the hazardous materials.

On to the numbers…. For the last quarter of 2009, we had an average residual rate (percentage of tonnage processed that was not recycled) of 3.78% (85.52 out of 2,264.68 tons). December was a particularly high month with 37.99 tons of residual trash representing 5.1% of our processed volume. At the Humboldt Waste Management Authority’s tip rate of $155.56/ton, this translates to an additional cost of $5909.72 for ACRC to dispose of trash in December alone. Pretty appalling.
You also asked about dirty food containers. Washing a container before it is recycled through ACRC is not necessary. However, thoroughly scraping it of any food debris is. As I mentioned above containers are sorted partially by machinery where heavy items are separated from lighter ones. For this step in the process to work plastics need to behave like lightweight material. If, for example, a plastic jar with a few tablespoons of peanut butter left inside is sent through the container sort line it will behave more like glass, be segregated to the glass line where, because it is not glass, it will be fed to the “trash” conveyor belt and ultimately landfilled. The same effect is seen with water bottles that have not been emptied and so on. Naturally, we are also interested in not attracting vermin, either to the processing facility or residents’ recycling carts.

We anticipate a certain amount of trash to come through the system. It would be unrealistic not to. However, we need to continue to educate the community to keep trash contamination out of the recycling stream. I appreciate your help with this! I would like to invite you to come see the process in Samoa.

"Garbage Dreams" at the Morris Graves Museum

2010-01-04T08:36:00.000-08:00

Eureka's Morris Graves Museum of Art partners with KEET TV for First Thursday Film Night. Each month they offer a FREE screening of a film from the Emmy Award-winning PBS series Independent Lens.

This Thursday (1/7) from 6:00 to 7:30 come see "Garbage Dreams":

"Welcome to the world’s largest garbage village located on the outskirts of Cairo, Egypt. The Zaballeen (Arabic for garbage people) recycle 80 percent of the trash they collect—far more than other recycling initiatives. But now a multi-national corporation threatens their livelihood. Follow three teenage boys born into the business who are forced to make choices that will impact the survival of their community."

Hope to see you there!

Reuse for Recycling Bins

2009-12-31T12:55:00.000-08:00

Arcata Garbage Company has recently distributed brand new dual-stream recycling toters for curbside recycling collection to Arcata households. Until this time curbside customers have been using a hodgepodge of bins for containing their recyclables at the curb. It is anticipated that the distribution of new toters will leave behind a wake of now obsolete plastic totes and crates, many of which bear the Arcata Garbage Company logo.

Curbside recycling customers are encouraged to find a new use for their old plastic bins. However if unwanted, the Arcata Community Recycling Center’s (ACRC) 9th and N Street drop-off yard is poised to accept these bins for repurposing.

This winter the rollout of Arcata’s curbside recycling program will continue to include multifamily housing establishments. Space for recycling storage may be minimal in these residential arrangements. ACRC will make clean, repurposed recycling bins available to Arcata residents in such a situation free of charge at the Reusable’s Depot Thrift Store to help alleviate storage issues. Please call 445-4321 for more information about this reuse opportunity.

Minimize Holiday Waste

2009-12-10T13:56:00.000-08:00

ACRC Education Specialist Patti Johnson tells us about the 5 Best Gifts You Can Ever Give

It’s December, which means sharing celebrations and gifts with friends and family. Unfortunately, it can also mean the generation of lots of trash. According the Environmental Protection Agency Americans throw away 25% more trash between Thanksgiving and New Years. This equates to about a million tons a week! Generating more trash translates into more natural resource consumption on a planet that is already over taxed; and more landfilled trash which means the creation of even more methane gas as organics slowly decompose underground. And what’s the problem with methane? It’s a greenhouse gas 20% more volatile than the other climate choking carbon gases. This is not exactly celebratory news. Nonetheless it is a fact. I’m not going to get all eco-humbuggy and tell you not to celebrate or give gifts. Instead I would like to invite you to green up your Holiday. The goal is to give gifts with the least amount of packaging or none at all and to make purchases that meet the 4R gift giving criteria: returnable, refillable, reusable and recyclable.

The Five Best Gifts You Can Ever Give:

1. Give an Experience
Sharing yourself with another human being is one of the best gifts you can ever give. It cost only your time and does not require any packaging! When my kids were young every year one of my girlfriends would give me a coupon for several nights of babysitting in exchange I would give her use of my washer and dryer on those nights. It seemed like such a small thing but it gave us both so much. Here are some more of my favorites:
• A massage
• Music lessons
• A themed hike (count banana slugs, look for salamanders, find the tallest tree)
• Host an evening fire at the beach
• Share a sport or hobby
• Pet sit or Dog walk
• Clean the house
• Prune trees or Roses
• Wash the car
The list is really endless!
Not sure you have time to share yourself; you can still give the gift of an experience. Numerous places offer certificates to purchase or you can create one with the tickets attached. Just be sure to ask the stores for a paper certificate, one that can be recycled once used. Those little gift cards available everywhere this time of year are really colorful & perky but can’t be recycled once used.
• Movie or concert tickets
• A round of bowling
• A pass to a state park
• A certificate for a massage or hot tubing

2. Give a Plant
Plants give us so much compared to the little care they require. Indoor plants help purify the air, and, of course, all plants absorb carbon from the atmosphere. Growing your own food, even the smallest amount, is one of the healthiest things you can do for yourself and the planet. The average American’s annual carbon footprint is around 20 tons. Each year we would each need to plant about 16 trees to offset this. So give a plant because every little thing we can do counts. Of course the size and type of plant will depend on the recipient. Keep in mind that native plants may also help our friends the bees, which ultimately is a gift to us all.
• Fruit Tree
• Seeds and Pots for a window garden
• Indoor air purifiers such as Philodendrons and Dracaenas
• Herbs
• Bird (and bee) friendly native plant such as a Ceanothus (Wild Lilac) or Epilobium (California Fuchsia)

3. Give a Donation
There a several ways to give a donation. You could give a monetary donation to a non-profit or charitable donation on behalf of the recipient. You could invite the recipient to join you in donating your time as a way to support an organization or project. Wrap presents together for Toys for Tots or take the kids to choose a child from their angel tree and together buy the gift donation. If you choose the later pick a quality long-lasting item that also meets the 4R gift giving criteria listed above.

4. Give Something Yummy to Eat
For most people receiving a little gift of food is a nice extra treat during the holidays as long as the food isn’t too excessively sweet, overly rich, or just plain weird! Reach into your own kitchen cupboard to create a small collection of homemade cookies, fresh baked bread, or the recipe and ingredients for a winter soup, though not extravagant, are all nice gifts. Package these food yummies in mason jars and you have met the reusable criteria of the 4R’s of gift giving.

5. Give a Gift that Keeps on Giving
There are lots of ECO gadgets, gizmos and what-cha-ma-call-it’s of all kinds out there for you to buy, but these items keep giving, by saving resources or reducing air pollution, every time they are used. Therefore, they are some of the best items you can purchase.
• A tire pressure gauge (Keeping up on tire pressure saves fuel and air pollution)
• A Refillable Water Bottle (According to research conducted by the Natural Resource Defense Council production of the plastic for the annual American consumption of disposable water bottles produces about 800,000 tons of global warming pollution per year (the amount produced by 8 power plants, or 140,000 cars).
• A Travel Mug or Reusable Coffee To-Go Cup (North Americans consumes 50 million trees a year for paper cups! Trees are elegant and amazing organisms that deserve better than to be pulped into coffee cups.)
• A Reusable Shopping Bag (There is an array of styles and designs to choose from, practical & pretty. But the bottom line is according to research conducted by the Washington Post the U.S. uses 100 billion plastic bags annually, made from an estimated 12 million barrels of oil. Ouch! That is a serious misuse of a very valuable non-renewable resource).

Now that you have the list, and you are conscious of the 4R’s of gift giving get out there and celebrate an excess free Holiday Season. Through a few thoughtful actions we can ease the environmental burden of our holiday consumption.
Greening up your holiday will make this season a merrier one for the environment and that is news always worth celebrating!

Recycling Update on the EcoNews Report

2009-11-05T15:54:00.000-08:00

Did you catch last week's EcoNews Report on KHSU? I was joined in the studio by Mark Loughmiller, ACRC's Executive Director to talk about recent updates in recycling services. With Arcata and Eureka both rolling out their universal curbside recycling programs we had much to discuss -- Intersting stuff!

If you missed the show you can download the podcast. Scroll down the list of shows to "The EcoNews Report" and click on "Previous"". Enjoy!

Eureka Curbside Kicks Off

2009-10-14T10:11:00.000-07:00

September was the first month of collection for the City of Eureka's new curbside recycling program. If you have driven the streets of Eureka lately you have surely seen the blue recycling carts poking out from behind a front hedge, stashed under a garage overhang, or lining the sidewalks on collection day. Assembling and distributing over 8000 of these carts was quite a task. Did you wonder what that late summer swath of bright blue was along the Eureka waterfront? Cart assembly!

Now that Eureka's curbside collection program has been operating for a solid month we can get an idea of how effective it is at diverting discarded material from disposal at the landfill, as this is the big goal after all. So, how's it going?

September Stats:
176.6 = Tons of Papers and Containers collected through Eureka Curbside
110.1 = Tons of Papers and Containers brought into the Eureka Recycling Center drop-off yard

The astounding thing is that these 176.6 tons collected through curbside represent mostly new tonnage, materials that were previously being landfilled. We know this to be true by comparing September's drop-off yard tonnage to preceding months -- this number does not drop-off as we would expect it to if the material was just shifting over to collection at the curb. Well done Eurekans!

The downside to this successful new approach to diversion is that the piles of materials collected through curbside contain many more hazardous items than those collected at the drop-off. The curbside recycling is sorted at ACRC's Samoa Processing Facility using a combination of machine and human power. That's right -- people are handling the recycling, therefore it is incredibly important to keep medical sharps (needles and syringes), bio-hazards, and chemicals out of the recycling stream as these pose a real hazard for processing staff. While ACRC takes every precaution to minimize employee exposure to hazardous items, it increases the inefficiency of a system that strives to be efficient when sorting machinery comes to a standstill each time an individual syringe, I.V. bag, CFL, or even TV shows up in the material. To find out the proper disposal option for materials not accepted though curbside recycling check out www.humboldtrecycling.org, our countywide recycling guide.

"I Love Trash" -- An Interview With the Filmmaker

2009-05-07T08:19:00.000-07:00

Tune into The EcoNews Report on KHSU at 1:30 today to hear my interview with David Brown, filmmaker of the acclaimed documentary I Love Trash. The film documents a challenge David and a friend tackled: Subsist entirely from items they found in dumpsters for 90 days. This means all the food they ate, all of their clothing, entertainment, and utilitarian items (enough to completely furnish an empty apartment they rented for the occasion) came from other people's waste. David provides a fresh point of view on Trash Reallocation, otherwise known as Dumpster Diving.

If you miss the show and would still like to hear this interview, each edition of The EcoNews Report is archived for two weeks by KHSU. Download here.

Plastic Bags -- What's the Deal?

2009-04-30T12:11:00.000-07:00

As many avid recyclers have keenly noticed, as of March 1st Arcata Community Recycling Center stopped accepting film plastic (plastic bags and wraps – the stretchy stuff) at both the Arcata and Eureka drop-off sites for recycling. You may be wondering what this is all about and what to do now with the bags of plastic bags you have saved up.

Film plastic recycling is a complicated issue. It's not that the material is not recyclable. Plastic bags are recycled into all sorts of durable goods including decking, parking curbs, shopping carts, and even new plastic bags. However, with the recent slump in the global economy has come a decrease in demand, and therefore value, of recovered materials. Less recycled plastic decking being made means less plastic bags are needed as feedstock. As a result manufactures can afford to be more particular about the quality of that feedstock. All of the commodity values for materials ACRC processes have dropped sharply since the summer of 2008 -- the value of film plastic has dropped to $0 per ton (actually to a value of negative $800/ton when shipping costs are factored in). But demand does remain for “high quality” materials – those with very little contamination (i.e. trash, non-recyclables) in the mix. ACRC’s film plastic was generally being recycled into decking where any darkly colored plastics are seen as less desirable contaminants.

Have you ever recycled a brown soil bag or black garbage bag at ACRC? I have.

Luckily California, being the progressive state that it is, recognizes that plastic bags pose a significant hazard to our environment when left unattended to blow “away” in a slight breeze as well as their utility as a recyclable material. AB 2449 (Levine) was passed in 2006 and creates a system for recycling plastic bags in the state. This piece of legislation, effective July 1, 2007, requires large grocery stores and pharmacies (over 10,000 sq. ft.) that distribute plastic carryout bags (and sell bagged or plastic stretch wrapped products) to have at-store plastic bag recycling programs. AB 2449 also requires these stores to make reusable bags available to customers for purchase in lieu of paper or plastic bags.

Since this system already exists for plastic bag recycling, ACRC made the economic choice to let stores handle the recycling of their bags and allocate shrinking funds towards the recycling of other valueless materials for which there is no other system. Mixed plastic containers are such an example. Yogurt cups, salsa tubs, to-go plastic clamshell containers, laundry soap scoops, and red plastic “keg” cups are all #1-#7 plastic containers which in today’s market have no value. Factories continue to accept this material from ACRC for recycling but are not paying for it.

Before ACRC ceased to accept plastic bags all of the major grocery and pharmacy retailers in the Humboldt Bay area were contacted to make sure they were informed about the plastic bag recycling regulations. Each store already had bins in place. Additionally, store managers assured ACRC staff that bins would be convenient and visible for customer use and that plastic bags from other retailers would also be accepted.

Of course it’s always best to answer the question “Paper or plastic?” with “Neither, thank you. I brought my own bag.”

Welcome Recyclers!

2009-04-14T13:38:00.000-07:00

Since it's inception in 1971, the Arcata Community Recycling Center has relied on a community of dedicated recyclers to truly make recycling efforts a success. ACRC has been touted as the "oldest continually operational non-profit recycling center" in the country -- a lengthy title that our entire community can be proud of. It really does take all of our individual recycling efforts to add up to a big difference.

The purpose of this blog is to provide interested community members with additional recycling information -- to answer the questions that at some point surface in each conscientious recycler's brain. Topics will vary as questions arise and processes evolve, but will surely include information on best practices, recycling protocol, and the Who-What-When-Where-Why-How's of waste reduction for the North Coast. Writings will also be sprinkled with observations on life from the perspective of a compulsive recycler.

I welcome your recycling questions. Please comment or email allisonp@arcatarecycling.org.

Happy Recycling!