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Beverage container recycling scorecard

Dell to Offer Free Recycling of Old PCs

Consumers Willing to Pay for Greener PCs

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Elected officials MIA; Instead Wal-Mart and Burger King protecting your health

Back to school: Are we ready? Are we non-toxic?

Fire retardants: Disproportionate risk to small children

Lead: Celebrate its ban, but don't cross it off your list

Cheatsheet: Bisphenol A

7 ways to reduce your exposure to PBDEs

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Category Archive

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Real green heroes

By Bill Walker

For a respite from the mainstream media's celebrity-focused environmental coverage, check out the Earth Day edition of Quest from KQED-TV, San Francisco's PBS station. It's an inspiring look back at the "everyday people who helped rescue the Bay Area from environmental disaster." These are the pioneering activists – "environmentalist" wasn't even a word yet – who introduced curbside recycling, halted plans to fill in 70% of the Bay and kept beachfront condos out of West Marin. Notably, many of them were women, the suburban moms once known as "homemakers." Save the Bay's Sylvia McLaughlin talks about how she came to see in that term a responsibility to make the Earth a better home. Their legacy lives on in people like Denny Larson of Global Community Monitor, who is seen giving inner-city kids a toxic tour of their own neighborhood.

Paper or plastic? Never mind

By Bill Walker

It's a question that may soon be irrelevant in Los Angeles and San Francisco.

Last week San Francisco became the first city in the U.S. to ban plastic checkout bags at large grocery and pharmacy chains, starting next year. The stores will have the option of using either recycled paper bags or compostable corn starch bags.

Not to be outdone, this week the LA County supervisors directed the public works department to study the problem of plastic bags and within three months recommend an option, including the possibility of an outright ban.

The San Francisco Chronicle's Charlie Goodyear says:

Fifty years ago, plastic bags -- starting first with the sandwich bag -- were seen in the United States as a more sanitary and environmentally friendly alternative to the deforesting paper bag. Now an estimated 180 million plastic bags are distributed to shoppers each year in San Francisco. Made of filmy plastic, they are hard to recycle and easily blow into trees and waterways, where they are blamed for killing marine life. They also occupy much-needed landfill space.

Continue reading "Paper or plastic? Never mind" »

Experimental Xerox paper erases itself

By Matthew

Feel guilty about those documents you print out, only to be read once and then tossed? Not guilty enough to strain your eyes reading every last word from your computer screen? Xerox Corporation thinks the answer may lie in “erasable paper”—a printing technology still in early R & D, which relies on specific wavelengths of light to print images that fade completely in 16-24 hours leaving blank paper for reuse. If the technology proves commercially viable it should drastically offset the amount of paper going to waste. According to Xerox, two out of every five pages are read only once before being trashed or recycled.

Beverage container recycling scorecard

By Matthew

Today As You Sow and the Container Recycling Institute released a report
card on the performance of major U.S. beverage companies on recycling and
recycled content in their containers. They found that except for Coke and
Pepsi, the industry gets poor or failing grades.

Sales of beverages, especially bottled water, are increasing, while
recycling rates plummet. "Waste and Opportunity: U.S. Beverage Container
Recycling Scorecard and Report," the result of a year of original research,
evaluates use of recycled content in bottles by beverage companies and
demonstrated commitment to container recovery efforts.

Dell to Offer Free Recycling of Old PCs

By Matthew

Dell is expanding its services to include free recycling of any of their computers, regardless of whether its being replaced by a new Dell product. This goes one step beyond the policy of rival manufacturers'--Apple and Hewlett-Packard--policies, which generally leave the burden of shipping (about $30.00) on the customer. Whether the other companies follow suit, and how well they will advertise any new recyling services remains to be seen.

Tell Apple you want free recycling : Tell Hewlett-Packard you demand free recyling of your PC

NYT: Dell Expands Its Computer Recycling Program

Consumers Willing to Pay for Greener PCs

By Matthew

The BBC reports that a study commissioned by Greenpeace reveals consumers want more environmentally friendly PCs. What's so bad about computers? Well--they contain, among other nasty chemicals: lead, arsenic, fire retardants, cadmium, chromium, and mercury. And that's only in the final product--making the machine requires 10 times its weight in chemicals and fossil fuels.

The study reveals that consumers in the UK were prepared to spend an extra $117 while people in China were willing to pay $197 more for a cleaner PC. Could this have something to do with China being a world-wide dumping ground for obsolote electronics?

Related posts: Cell Phone Recycling : That "New Car" Smell :

Is Your Cell Phone Being Recycled Responsibly?

By Matthew

As reported by Knight Ridder, a recent survey of leading U.S. wireless carriers (Verizon, Sprint, T-Mobile and Cingular) found these companies have cell phone recycling programs that are ineffectual at best. The Cell Phone Recycling Report Card shows that the big four, which account for 86 percent of the U.S market, recycle less than two percent of the 130 million cell phones discarded in the U.S. each year.

But my cell phone’s so small. How can it harm the environment?



It’s not just landfill space that consumers need to be aware of. Cell phones and other personal electronic devices contain the known human carcinogens lead, cadmium and arsenic and the brain toxin mercury, which qualify as hazardous according to EPA guidelines.

Continue reading "Is Your Cell Phone Being Recycled Responsibly?" »

Posted at 11:38 AM

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The Green House

By EWG

March 10, 2006

Earlier this week it was eco-furniture -- now here's a green house to put it in. And like the furniture, the new green building is going beyond energy conservation and land use to focus mainly on building materials. Sustainable, non-toxic substitutes for PVC, insulation and piping all made the list. Find out how to build your own green dreamhouse.

Posted at 10:27 AM

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Green Hospitals

By EWG

November 30, 2005

Good Samaritan Regional Medical Center in Corvallis, Ore., is leading the way in getting toxics out of hospital cleaning products – and finding, through the hospital's infection control department's surveillance, that green cleaners work just as well as harsh chemicals. The hospital has also started using recycled paper products, and plans to switch to a safer germicide to disinfect operating rooms, as well as to remove carpet to prevent PCPs and other chemicals from leaching into the air. Their efforts have been helped along by Oregon Natural Step, which has a program that organizations can use to become safer and more sustainable.

The Corvallis Gazette-Times has the article.

Posted at 10:41 AM

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