Disposing of batteries properly

Someone gave me a published list of all the ways to properly dispose of batteries. There was so much data on it I couldn't possibly use it. I had no idea we had so many different types of batteries and disposal methods. I am going to try and make the rules simple.

We have regular throw away, regular recycle and hazardous waste. California is always different but I am excluding them.

This list has nine (9!) battery types.

Throw away -

• Carbon Zinc, (old style standard household battery).
• Alkaline, or rechargeable alkaline. None can be recycled, none are hazardous waste.
• Alkaline Manganese - rechargeable, non-recyclable, non-hazardous
  

Recycle -

• Lithium Ion. They are non-hazardous waste and can be recycled.
  
• Nickel - Cadmium (Ni-cad) rechargeable, they are hazardous waste but recyclable.
• Nickel Metal Hydride (Ni-li or Ni Hydride) - rechargeable, non-hazardous, recyclable

Note: These batteries are generally in your consumer electronics that use special batteries.

Hazardous Waste disposal -

• Button Batteries (yep all those little batteries that are round and flat)
• Sealed Lead Acid - used in scooters, some power tools, UPS's etc.
• Silver Oxide - Consumers can throw away but non-consumers must dispose of them as hazardous waste??? These are in greeting cards!

Bottom Line - Little ones are bad, big ones are bad, the regular household batteries are either recyclable or not. Probably ought to avoid Ni-cad, as cadmium is a highly toxic and carcinogenic. Avoiding the throw aways' seems prudent (the carbon Zinc ones are the most likely to leak anyway) but the alkalines' are what we all buy in 9v, AA, AAA, D, C, etc. The Lithium Ion are also available in those sizes as "higher performance batteries" but keep them in the fridge.

The Story of Stuff

If you are conscious about sustainability issues you become aware of all of these areas where our system needs work. Usually in discrete pockets like recycling, pollution etc.

This video tells the whole story. http://web.1.c3.audiovideoweb.com/1c3web3536/StoryOfStuff.mov

It's 20 minutes, so take a break from the daily routine, you won't feel guilty at the end for taking the time...I promise.

It's compostable!

I see more and more products claiming compostability. I wandered through a local "green" store recently and found a few items worth looking at...

First were these cool, really thin bamboo plates. They were designed to be used one time and composted, for $12.00 per pack of eight! A $1.50 a plate! I don't really have any "compostable money" but this sure looks like the equivalent.

Then there are more practical compostable plates made from "bagasse", in this case, sugar cane stalks. They look and feel like thick paper and are a nice shade of a creamy grey color. These seem infinately more practical that bamboo throwaways, so I ask about them.

The idea is, because the plates aren't recycled, (because they will be dirty), they are thrown away! They should go to the landfill where in theory they will quickly decompose. Or, they advised, they have a friend who runs his used plates through the lawnmower and then composts them???

There are so many things wrong with this I dont know where to start.

First, assuming that a plate will decompose anerobically in a landfill is a stretch. If it does in fact decompose, it will produce methane, a virulent greenhouse gas.

If you want to start up that two cycle lawn mower to mulch up your plates you're contributing black carbon and regular CO2 to the atmosphere. Then, if you or any guests have had meat on their plates (this person referenced could easily be a vegetarian), then adding that to your compost heap would in fact attract critters in droves. The plates are compostable but maybe not digestable.

I do have a "plastic" fork made from corn that is advertised as compostable...so far its been in my compost heap for seven months and looks brand new. It may eventually break down but a bunch of those in my pile would have made the rest of the compost useless unless I picked out all this so called "compostable" stuff.

Bottom Line - I feel sorry for the companies making these items, and the purveyors of such goods. It's not sustainable. You would be better off using reusable plates...and cleaning them, or just buying the cheap paper ones and throwing them away. If they were made from recycled paper, that would be better still.

Recycling - clarity in the big picture

I have the answers to my questions! It turns out that if someone is willing to take the time and explain it, almost all of it makes sense.

First a little background. Here in Dallas we have a contractor "the processor" who handles all our recycling. They have a seven year contract. That means they are stuck with whatever we put in our bins and stuck with however the city oversees them.

Given that, we do have restrictions on what goes into our bins. The city publishes a list that I copied into my previous post. But more importantly, we have do be diligent about a few unstated or unclear things for our "processor".

First is no plastic bags, none, zero. The processor already has problems because they gum up the machines and create downtime. That means we need to strip the bag off of newspapers, out of cereal boxes, off of door hangers, etc. (The blue bags are of course, okay.)

Second is that they want clean recycling. If it can't be cleaned, or you don't want to clean it, it's trash. It's important because single stream recycling allows everything to be transported together and cross contamination is the issue. If your plastic bottle of motor oil isn't clean it will leak on paper and make it unusable. They would prefer you threw away a mayo jar rather than send it all greasy and dirty. So you have to judge whether using that much water for cleaning is better than throwing it away. (I tried to make the point that the processor cleaning it with recycled water might be better than us cleaning them, but no go, we still have cross contamination).

Third, our recycling program is targeted at household waste. So containers that are found in your house are fine as long as they are clean. Containers found in your garage or garden shed are not. You don't want to try and rinse out pesticide bottles, paint cans, etc. They are bad for the water system and bad for you to be messing with. These items are recycled or disposed of in a different manner.

Bottom Line #1 - Our recycling processor is a business partner with our city. The better we make it for them the better it is for our program. The better our program does the better we can add items to the list (plastic bags and Styrofoam), and expand it's reach in our city.

Now some more details:

Plastic - Containers only! It's not written clearly but that's what they mean. Everything else that's plastic is a no. Remember, household products only. They must be clean and you can leave the labels on.

Glass - Again they mean containers, clean containers. Labels are fine. Anything else that is glass is a no.

Metal - Again, household containers. They don't want any other metal. Clean only, labels are fine.

Paper - Shiny, dull, printed or not. Clean paper only, no food or other contamination.

Cardboard - Clean only, (no pizza boxes) and any that is foil coated for freshness or wax coated to hold liquid is a no. No juice boxes, milk cartons etc. Printed cardboard is fine. Remember, you have to take out any bags inside the boxes (cereal).

Bottom Line #2 - Giving me a long lists of do's and don'ts was hard to remember. Now that I know what we are really doing and why, it's easy. Household containers, non coated paper and cardboard...all clean, anything else is garbage.

We are working on recycling plastic bags and Styrofoam just like everyone else in the US. It just requires another step (or two) by our contractor to pre-sort etc. Your batteries, electronics, paint etc are all best held for the quarterly city drop offs.

One recycling issue that has yet to be addressed is paper money recycling. But I am an official drop off location...

Recycling - I'm confused

As much as I love "single stream" recycling, I have lots of items that I am not sure about. I also have a friend who has the same concern. So we end up standing between the two garbage and recycling bins and choosing based on some vague past recollection. Newspaper bag? The plastic bag from Target? The plastic bubble wrap? What about other metal? You're standing there with hangers? Aluminum foil? Wire?

There must be a way to figure this out or make a cheat sheet to post somewhere as a quick reference.

First, here are some City of Dallas residential recycling figures, seems pretty good until you see the last one. 50%, that's all? It's also worth noting we are excluding commercial...hmmmm

• Dallas continues to increase their recycling volume from 9,680 tons in FY 2005-06 to 20,149 tons in FY 2006-07 and to 29,664 tons in FY 2007-08!
• The City’s goal is to increase that figure to 35,000 tons in FY 2007-08 and 45,000 tons by 2011, with a residential participation rate of at least 50 percent of households.

Here is the Dallas list of items on their website. I have paraphrased where necessary for clarity.

Glass:

• Yes - Bottles and jars of any color.
• No - Window glass, light bulbs, ceramics, mirrors, Pyrex, fiberglass.

I think that means nothing other than jars and bottles. Can we leave the labels on? Do we need to rinse these? Old glasses? Old light fixture glass? Old table top? Glass tile? If we all change to CFLs, wont we fill the landfills with old incandescent bulbs?

Plastics:

• Yes - Containers labeled #1 through #7 in the recycling triangle. If in doubt, put it in the cart - we'll sort it out, if need be.
• No - Plastic grocery bags (regardless of number in recycle symbol). Styrofoam or peanuts. Chemical containers. Toys.

One through seven are all the recyclable plastic types. There are many others, but #7 is the "other" category. If it has a number, in theory they take it...

Number 6 is polystyrene. It's the stuff they make takeout food containers from but...if it's expanded polystyrene, that's Styrofoam and verboten.

Metals:

• Yes - Steel, tin, and aluminum (labels do not need to be removed). Empty aerosol (non-hazardous) cans are OK too.
• No aluminum foil, pie plates, parts, toys, electronics, appliances.

I guess steel includes stainless. What is a non-hazardous aerosol? Hairspray? Paint? WD-40? Bug spray? I cant think of anything that's completely non-hazardous and in an aerosol can. Oh ya, Cheese Wiz and whipped cream.

Paper products & Cardboard:

• Yes - Newspapers and inserts, window envelopes, magazines, catalogs, paperback books, phone books, food and detergent boxes, paper egg cartons, 12-pack drink cartons, folded corrugated boxes, cardboard boxes, cereal boxes.
• No - Rubber bands, plastic wrapping, hardback books, waxed cardboard, plastic or foil-lined cereal or cracker boxes, pizza delivery boxes or food contaminated boxes.

What's a paper egg carton? What's the difference between a folded corrugated box and a cardboard one? What's plastic wrapping, that's a very broad term, no? What does waxed cardboard look like? Is that like paper plates? If I have emptied a cereal box, it still has the internal plastic bag, can I throw it in? Or do I need to separate the two, then throw it in? Or just throw it away?

And what does food contaminated mean? I have a feeling 90% of what goes in that bin comes from the kitchen and it's all food related. If we have a picnic, what about the plastic utensils? The paper plates? Are they "contaminated"?

Bottom Line - It's not confusing if you don't care, it is if you do. I will get to the bottom of this.

Styrofoam, cant live with it...

I cant live without it. There is no other product out there that performs for the money like a Styrofoam cup. It handles heat and cold, protects your hand, doesn't sweat, keeps the temperature of your drink better than anything, is cheap and easy to store. What's not to love?

Oh ya, it's really bad for the environment and we cant recycle it!

The Starbucks cup with a sleeve is their answer to the problem. I haven't found mine yet. Replacing water bottles with a reusable one was easy, but how do I get a green alternative to Styrofoam?

Let me let you in on a dirty little secret. Styrofoam is very recyclable. It's just that we don't because the economics don't work. It turns out that Styrofoam is too light yet bulky making shipping it way too expensive. So if you have a Styrofoam recycler close by it may be included in your recycling program. Otherwise, Styrofoam is verboten so it goes into the landfill to last, well...forever.

Here in Dallas we have some drop off opportunities for big chunks, packing and even peanuts, but no cups or food containers. (Metro Foam). So my cups remain homeless. We do wash them if they aren't stained but eventually they go in the trash.

I was willing to live with this issue as is until my latest walk at the lake after a big rain. The usual ton of plastic bottles were there but interspersed among them was Styrofoam! Huge amounts of little bits! It was even more of an eyesore than the bottles....it's everywhere!

Now what do I do? I can't live with them and I don't want to live without them.

Giving it away

If I take something out of service because it's not environmentally sound, can I then give it away?

We think that someone else using it is better than it ending up in the dump. But what about this pile of incandescent light bulbs? I may be saving energy with the swirly bulbs but if I give the incandescent to somebody, isn't the result that the same amount of energy will be used and carbon produced? But that's only true if they use my bulbs instead of buying a fluorescent right? Or if they would have just purchased an incandescent bulb...isn't reuse better than recycling?

If I have a 10 year old refrigerator that uses twice the energy of today's model, can I sell it when I replace it with a new one? We don't want it in the dump either. What's worse?

Maybe we shouldn't be taking anything out of service until it's dead. If every American suddenly got rid of every 10 year or older appliance, we would be swimming in them. Should we ship them to poor countries?

Bottom Line - I have no idea... Why hasn't the question come up before?

Landfills - imby

Imby = in my back yard.

When we lived in Carrollton there was a large Waste Management landfill within a couple miles of our home as the crow flies (or as stink drifts).

At the time I was heading up our improvement projects in the neighborhood for our association. It became apparent that there might be monies available from Waste Management for improvements to our neighborhood to offset the very occasional (if ever) stink.

To negotiate that, we all took a tour of the landfill facility which included a new one being built. It was fascinating for me...I loved seeing under the covers of this much maligned industry.

What was apparent to me was these guys are under a significant amount of regulation on air quality, adjacent water quality, seepage etc. The new landfill being built allowed us to see what they go through just to keep the pile from leeching. They basically build a giant slope sided swimming pool and line it with these thick geotextile fabrics and rubber. Then they cover that with dirt and start dumping. As they go they also have methane capture systems to in theory, capture the gas produced (stink).

They burned the methane to run a large generator to supply the facility with all of its electricity. (Pretty cool for 1995 or so...) The rest however either went into the air or was burnt off with flares. (Not so cool). Methane is 20 times worse than CO2 as a global warming gas.

As the pile grows higher they are usually limited on the height by local regulation. Either for aesthetic reasons or they don't want planes running into it. It's interesting to note they know exactly how much they add a day and the life of the landfill before its topped out. We do know our collective capacity for garbage before more land must be acquired for another swimming pool.

I have been to Dallas's landfill a number of times. (No wonder Paula married me...I'm so...wordly). You just get in line with all these huge trucks and make your way up the mountain. Giant compactors and bulldozers work the pile right next to where you are dumping your remodeling stuff. And it stinks. Not unbearably, but close.

It's then that it hits you...we waste a HUGE amount of stuff. The scale is massive! The amount of trucks burning fuel, emitting CO2, the methane, the landscape changing mound, the seagulls, (don't ask me - they are like air rats), it's all a bit overwhelming.

Bottom Line - Everything we put into the landfill is not reclaimable. It's too late to do anything useful with it. And, our Earth is a closed system, everything we are ever going to have on this earth is already here. If we use it and then discard it, it's gone. Sure you can get caught up in the environmental issues with landfills, but the bigger picture is more important. We will run out of stuff, your daughter's daughter maybe, but we will run out unless we change how we do this.

Recycling - the easy way out

I guess we have been recycling in some form for 15 years or so. We used to have to separate everything by type and put it in that little blue bin. Inevitably the guys would come around and "separate" all the stuff that isn't supposed to be recycled, no matter how well you hid it, and leave it in the bin. The now lighter bin would blow over and scatter it all out so the neighbors could see your treachery.

Thankfully, we have moved on. Today our recycling program is one of the best in the country. It's called "single stream" meaning you don't have to sort the stuff. You still have some limits, (did you know pizza boxes were verboten?) so you still have to cull (hide) some stuff.

Because we now have a big roll around bin, the same size as our trash bin, it's really easy to compare the percentage of recycled stuff to garbage. Mine runs about 1/4 garbage and 3/4 recycling per week. I always feel good about that...or at least I used to...

It turns out that recycling is passe'. Most green folks call it downcycling. It's where you take something valuable and turn it into something less valuable. Much of our recycling does exactly that. Take your shiny Nieman Marcus catalog and grind it up into cellulose insulation.

It's also not near as eco-friendly as just not acquiring the stuff that needs recycling. Like paying attention to packaging, how many boxes, bags etc come into your home. That's why neither paper nor plastic is green anymore. Water bottles? Just say no, (once you go through withdrawals it's not that bad. Just buy a single bottle and fill it up with filtered water.) Come down to White Rock lake right after a flooding rain, you will be stunned by the number of plastic water bottles all over the banks.

So what was rewarding, filling up my recycling bin, is now a concern...why so much stuff to recycle? Well, I'll tell you why, it's the mailman! His job is to allow other people to send you stuff that goes right from the mailbox to the recycling bin. (I wonder if I could just put the bin next to the mailbox and cut out the middleman...me!)

I seems patently unfair that other people can be so careless with who they send a Restoration Hardware catalog to for the fourth time this month, but they do...you're left with the guilt of recycling it! Given this scenario, I decided to take control!

First I found a web site that lets you stop all those phone books. I pick mine up off the porch walk straight to the bin... I signed up and felt great, right up to part when they came again last month.

I found another site that lets you stop magazines, credit card offers, coupon circulars etc. Now that one works! My recycling has gone way down!

Bottom Line #1 - Recycling is important but it's still wasteful of earth's resources, and it's up to you to control the waste stream that enters your home. Nothing wrong with using stuff, just cut out the things you don't need or didn't ask for and don't let recycling be a panacea for waste.

Around the country, municipalities are rethinking their recycling program because there is now more recycling materials than there is demand for it. (Recession). Some are even storing the material waiting for prices to go back up. It does illustrate how much stuff we are downcycling when we overrun demand in a downturn.

There are a number of forward thinking manufacturers and retailers looking for ways to reduce packaging or make them out of products that are easier to recycle back to the same use, instead of downcycling.

In Texas we have a very progressive group that got legislation passed to force computer makers to give you free recycling! They are working on TV's right now and other forms of E-waste. They are making the manufacturer's take responsibility for the entire life cycle of their product. That way you don't have to be the one feeling guilty because you let it in your house.

Bottom Line #2 - Recycling is a step in the right direction but making the producers of the waste, rather than the consumer responsible, has a lot of merit. It's the only way they will rethink their products to be cradle to cradle, rather than cradle to grave. That way we can still buy the 14th generation I-phone with a clear conscious.

So besides all that, why else do we care? Plastics are a petroleum product. Care to send another American into battle to protect our supply? Paper used to be a tree. Not a dead tree but a live magnificent tree with a loving family of spotted owls living...(ok a little overboard there). Also, paper mills send a lot of stuff into our water. If I peer into my recycling bin right now there will be mostly plastic and paper.

Aluminum cans would be really easy to recycle except they are two different alloys and the paint messes the whole batch up so they aren't even recycled into cans again!

Besides all that, I care because we will run out of stuff...especially clean stuff like air and water unless we can reign in our wastefulness. I have a brand new niece (#7) that I have to look in the eye. We all know somebody young that needs us to do the right thing.

My yard waste - no verde!

I am talking about grass clippings and leaves, along with weeds, dead annuals, etc etc.

When I embarked on my composting project, I didn't really realize that the largest amount of organic waste was from my yard. But because my office looks out into our street, I see everyone's huge piles of bags for the bulk pickup, including my own.

Having your yard waste hauled away to the dump is a bad idea. It takes up a huge amount of landfill space and quickly begins to ferment into methane, a very potent greenhouse gas.

So what can we do to make this a little easier on the environment? Move into an apartment of course. Yards are a bourgeois relic left over from ancient times. I have a huge one!

Joking aside, it is a pretty serious problem. Yard waste is a huge part of our waste stream. My half acre lot produces more than average so I felt compelled to do something.

My first thought was to just add all this to my new compost pile. I can gather it up, shred it (mulch it?) and throw it on the pile. But why? Why am I once again interrupting natures cycle? Let's talk leaves...

Mother Nature (Mom) fashioned an environment that takes care of itself. Leaves are Mom's fertilizer, mulch, bug food etc etc. When they drop from our deciduous trees we gather them up and put them in non-biodegradable bags...we are interrupting the cycle and adding some nasty plastic to the mix. (But those OPEC nations who sell us the petroleum to make those bags appreciate your business).

So if leaves are supposed to be on the ground why not just leave them? Well, our society doesn't appreciate the mess. Your neighbors will actually end up with your wind blown leaves. I have seen some yards, usually the xeriscape offenders, who just let the leaves lay. A pox on their home.

I have 14 deciduous trees. So here is what I do...

Bottom Line #1 - Have the lawn service...or you do it your-selfers, blow all the leaves from the beds into the grass and/or driveway. Then run over them a couple times with a non-bagging mower. Viola' mulched leaves! In my yard these small bits just filter into the grass. If I have too many I have them bag them and deposit them on my beds that usually take mulch! I have even taken my neighbors bags and dumped them in my driveway, had them mulch them up, and put them on my azalea beds...nothing is sweeter than stolen mulch!

So what I get is a natural fertilizer, moisture retention product and some shredded material for my compost pile just for fun. I buy, and have trucked, mulch and soil amendment to my property every year. Its expensive and the truck isn't very environmentally sound. This year I am hoping to do without most of that expense.

Bottom Line #2 - The leaves make a great looking and functional mulch that stays where it should. I no longer send any bags to the landfill. Once the grass starts growing we will (and always have) just mulch the cuttings into the yard. Any extra will be added to the compost pile.

Didn't cost me a dime by the way. Just had to educate the landscape crew a little bit. "No mas plastico baggarinos por favor." (I apologize to all my Spanish speaking readers).

Composting????

Composting is an odd concept. The idea that we scorn our trash pickup and dump stuff in a corner of our yard seems, well, survivalist. Soon I will be reloading my own machine gun ammo.

The idea behind composting is sound. But let me describe the highlights for you city folk.

You compost greens and browns in some ratio that I have forgotten. Basically it's your food waste plus garden or yard waste but does not include animal products (except egg shells for some reason). If you put out animal waste, global warming will force dislocated polar bears etc to come to feed on your pile.

So why compost? The answer is it depends on your religion. Are you worried about global warming? Land fills? Artificial fertilizers? or just being wasteful?

Given all that, I decided (at the urging of a neighbor who doesn't really compost???) that I should at least try it...I have a good spot, I do care about the landfill etc...but it took more than that to get me going.

First, I have been enjoying our Dallas recycling program. It's been fun to fill up the recycling can and see how little is in the garbage can. And what's in that can, much of it can be composted. Sweet. I did note however that I was putting out huge amounts of yard waste in the garbage can, or for bulk pickup. More on that later.

When you send your scraps and trimmings to the landfill it is dumped and covered. This means it rots without sufficient oxygen (anaerobic). This produces methane, a greenhouse gas 20 time more potent than CO2. It also interrupts nature's cycle. These "waste" things are tomorrow's fertilizer and nutrients. But we immediately remove them from the cycle so we can buy some soil amendment and chemical fertilizer at Home Depot in the spring???

Bottom Line #1- There are some compelling reasons to compost.

As I started my composting project the first stumbling block I had was how to handle the indoor compostable waste? Did I need a new can? How much is there really? Well for us, a family of two, it's really very small. We keep a gallon sized container on the counter and just throw stuff in. We take it to the pile every couple days (it doesn't smell).

That container gets filled with unused food more than anything. Tomatoes gone soft etc etc. Its just a part of busy lifestyles and having only two people, stuff goes bad. Your mileage may vary.

I read all the literature about how composting works, microbes, a correct mix of greens and browns, moisture, turning etc etc. Whatever. I wouldn't compost if I had to do all that. Sure that makes perfect and faster compost but...I don't need another hobby.

Bottom Line #2- Basically you throw the stuff you have as waste on a pile and mix it every once and a while if you're bored. It rots aerobically, doesn't smell, and is kinda fun.

There are composting bins sold. The idea is you enclose the compost, add the microbes via a "starter kit" and usually they are easy to "turn". This will make compost faster. (Great, another outlet for my type A personality and life!) These "bins" are expensive, they usually are made from unrecycled plastic and potentially end up in the landfill themselves. None of which seems very "natural" and I want nature to work for me, not vice-versa.

Bottom Line #3 - Don't buy a bin unless you have zero space for a "pile". What is it with us, how commercial have we become that we must market some gear to compost? Stuff rots on its own, count on it.

It's important to discuss the size of pile needed. I had a giant space allocated behind my garage. But it's a funny thing about decomposition...it's hard to make the pile grow very fast. We throw stuff in but the pile seems about the same size. After five months its about the size of your trunk, if you have a small car.

That said, I doubt I am extending the life of our landfill much. I am removing my Methane producing material from the mix, and the carbon and pollutants from the trucks to haul it. It isn't spring yet but I do have plans for the finished compost...we are planning a garden! (My wife has an Okra Jones.)

Bottom Line #4 - Composting my way is fun, easy and rewarding. It adds almost zero complexity to my life and does a lot for the planet when measured in individual family terms. It doesn't smell, attract critters or require much of anything. Mother Nature has it handled, she works for me...

There is a part of this story that involves my voluminous yard and tree waste that is a whole "nother" post.