Echo

No Impact project inspires sustainable living

By |

Imagine if you could cause no environmental impact. I’m not talking about recycling a few bottles here and there. I’m talking about no transportation, no plastic, no trash, no meat, no new things, no take-out food and no electricity. Colin Beavan imagined what it would be like as well, and along with his wife Michelle and 3-year-old daughter, Isabella, he turned it into reality. In the 2009 documentary “No Impact Man,” Beavan and his family lived a “no impact” lifestyle in New York City for a year.

Waste

Planting with printers: Chicago man recycles paper with electronic forestry

By |

In his spare time Chicago resident Joe Miller runs what may be the coolest eco-friendly company with the coolest name ever. Print-A-Forest makes a free computer software that turns your  routine printing projects into a plant-a-tree fundraiser. By getting a small  message from plant-a-tree sponsors across the bottom of your printed pages, you pay for planting trees. An example: “Powered by State Farm” could appear on the bottom of the page if the insurance company sponsored the planting. Pretty simple.

Echo

Recycling booty reported in pounds and Asian carp equivalents

By |

Last week Echo reported that a new event, “Recycle Rama,” recycled thousands of pounds of material in Michigan’s Ingham County. David Smith, an environmental specialist with the city of East Lansing, let us know the event’s finals counts excluding things like mercury thermostats, CFL light bulbs and fluorescent tubes that haven’t yet been weighed. Items recycled (in pounds):

Electronic waste: 78,000

Scrap metal: 5,000

Appliances: 16,700

Bikes: 1,400

Books: 9,400

Miscellaneous re-sale items: 4,200

Clothing: 2,500

Shoes: 1,000

Air conditioners: 2,280

Dehumidifiers: 3,780

Unwanted medications: 548

Cooking oil: 414

Miscellaneous recyclables (mainly cardboard): 440

Holiday lights: 550

That’s 126,212 pounds (about 63 tons) of materials total. That’s about 1,262 Asian carp, assuming they are on the heftier end. If only those could be recycled in mass too.

Echo

VIDEO: Artists use trash to make recycled art

By |

Lansing, Mich. recently hosted a recycled art exhibit and fashion show. Purses created from recycled plastic bags and can tabs, sculptures made from chip bags and fast food cups, and a motorcycle created from washing machine parts lined the lobby of city hall. Watch the video

Waste

Opportunity at the trash dumps

By |

(MI) Detroit Free Press – The stunning 16% drop in trash going into Michigan landfills for the year ending last Sept. 30 is as good a barometer as any of how poorly the state fared during that time. Michigan trash alone dropped 13%; waste from outside the state, including Canadian trash, failed to materialize by an even wider margin. And here’s another way to look at the numbers: Michigan’s household trash dropped 11%; the other categories, mostly industrial and construction waste, dropped 19%. Maybe some people are recycling more, but more likely everyone’s simply producing less trash — nowhere as obviously as at factories and construction sites.

Waste

Lansing on ‘precipice’ of single-stream recycling

By |

(MI) Lansing State Journal – Lansing’s curbside recycling dropped in 2009, but the city’s attempt to collect recyclables should become more efficient, convenient and bountiful in 2010, officials say. After introducing plans more than a year ago to start single-stream recycling, which minimizes the need for separating materials, Lansing plans to debut key aspects of its program next summer. More