I don’t think crayons are particularly bad for the environment (although all that scribbled on paper might not be ideal), but every time I’ve tried using the ones that some restaurants provide for kids to colour their menus, I’ve ended up breaking at least one. All those broken fragments of crayons likely end up in the landfill, which is a terrible waste.

Recycled Crayons
Crazy Crayons have solved this by offering recycled crayons. They have three different shapes to choose from too. My favourite is the simple, double ended stick crayon with the word recycled written down its length.

Better still, you can send your used crayons to Crazy Crayons and have them recycled. They take their own as well as other makes (although there are some limits for crayons that may contain lead or plastics).

This morning I was sent a link to an amazing collection of art by Chris Jordan called Running The Numbers. The thumbnail of the detail view to the right really doesn’t do it justice either – you have to see the full size image to understand exactly what this image is. What it represents is 28,000 42-gallon oil drum: the amount of oil consumed in the US every 2 minutes.

And then keep looking at the other images in the collection. Others that stood out for me were:

• One hundred million toothpicks, representing the number of trees cut down to support the junk mail business (what a total waste);
• One million plastic cups: the number used on US airlines every 6 hours;
• Two million plastic bottles: the number used in the US every 5 minutes (that’s an amazing 576 million bottles a day!);
• 426,000 cell phones being “retired” every day in the US (most probably still working perfectly);
• 1.14 million brown paper bags: the number used every hour in the US;
• And finally, 60,000 plastic bags: the number used every 5 seconds in the US (that is over 1 billion every day).

In addition to the environmental issues represented by these numbers I’ve highlighted, there are also other social issues in the collection, including an image representing smoking, healthcare and even the issue of prisoners, both in the US and in US run detention facilities outside the US.

Light Bulbs

One image though I have a slight disagreement with: the image of 320,000 light bulbs floating in space. Said to be equal to the number of kilowatt hours of electricity wasted in the United States every minute from inefficient residential electricity usage (inefficient wiring, computers in sleep mode, etc.). The issue I have with this statement is that it is missing the real solution to this problem. The solution is not for consumers to unplug everything. The solution requires two parts:

1. More equipment designed to really use a lot less power when in sleep mode;
2. More electricity being generated from clean and renewable sources.

The second of those is perhaps the most important. Once we can produce enough electricity from clean renewable resources, why shouldn’t we use it to make our quality of life better? Sure, cutting consumption helps keep the bills low, and in the short term, while the world still depends heavily on dirty coal, and other non-renewable resources for our electricity, will help reduce emissions. But the logical extrapolation of that argument is to say that we should just stop using electricity completely. That’s a stupid argument. Much better to talk about how we can use technology to bring our clean generation levels in line with our consumption needs. Sure, don’t waste electricity unnecessarily, but the Vertography position is one of moderation. Sleep mode, done correctly, is a useful compromise, and better than just leaving the kit on all the time!

A few companies are using cards made of a corn-based material called Mirel, from Metabolix. These cards are actually biodegradable, so when they’re all used up just throw them in your green composting bin! Major retailers using this include Target, REI, Borders and Wal*Mart. Hopefully others will join this list and use bio-degradable plastics (it would be nice to see banks doing the same with their cards too).

Unfortunately, most of the plastic cards out there are made of PVC (polyvinyl chloride) a toxic chemical that is not usually accepted in your recycling bin. They’re pretty small though, so throwing them in the garbage can’t cause much harm can it? Well, you’re right, individually each card is pretty small, but there’s a lot of them out there. Each year 75 million pounds of PVC finds its way into US landfills. That’s a lot of PVC, so read on after the jump to find out what you can do to avoid adding to that mountain of toxic waste.

Recycling Options
While your local municipal recycler may not accept PVC cards in their collection bins, there is a company out there that takes PVC cards (including bank cards, driving licenses etc) and will grind them up and recycle them into new sheets of PVC ready to be used to make new cards. That company is Earthworks System.

They really want banks and stores to send them the used cards in bulk, but they will also accept cards mailed in by individuals. If you’d like to mail your cards in to be recycled, simply put them in an envelope and mail them here:

Earthworks System, LLC
33200 Bainbridge Road, Suite E
Solon, OH 44139

You might also like to suggest that your local stores collect them and mail them in as well rather than just throwing them into the trash can under the cashier’s desk.

[Via Yahoo! Green]

Sound too good to be true? Well, it gets better. The amount of energy that can be generated from the fuel produced is actually greater than the amount of energy it takes for the machine to process the garbage. So, not only does this prevent waste from going into landfills, and provide fuel and raw materials for construction, if used to produce electricity, it generates more energy than the process uses.

The Process
The trash to be processed first processed to remove anything that can be easily recycled (e.g. cans and bottles). Things like batteries which have been thrown in the trash rather the recycled correctly, can also be removed at this stage by centrifuge sorting. The remainder is then shredded ready to be added to the plasma gasification system.

As it enters the first stage of the machine, the pre-gasifier, steam and oxygen are injected into the shredded waste resulting in some gasification. The partially processed waste then drops through to the next step: the plasma chamber. At the bottom of the plasma chamber is a molten glass bath. In the plasma chamber, the waste is heated by a plasma arc, which reach temperatures hotter than 10,000°C. At that temperature, the bonds between the molecules break and the elements can be recombined into useful materials. Inorganic compounds are dissolved into the glass bath; metals can be drained off at the bottom for recycling, the remainder stay in the glass, which is ejected from the machine slowly while it works and can be used to create a range of construction products.

Most of the material fed into the system though is converted into synthesis gas. That gas is cleaned and can then be converted to hydrogen, ethanol or other fuels.

Heavy Metals & Other Chemicals
What happens if heavy metals like mercury, or toxic chemicals are added to the machine in the mix of trash? Well, according to InEnTec, the high temperatures of the plasma arc are capable of breaking down the bonds in most harmful chemicals rendering them safe. The heavy metals, like cadmium and mercury, that might find their way into the system are drained off so that the glass ejected from the machine contains at most only traces of these elements.

Slate has more information about plasma gasification.

1. Shoes: Nike’s Reuse-a-Shoe Program will turn old athletic shoes into new playgrounds and basketball courts. They do also point out that if the shoes still have some life left in them, then donating them so somebody can use them as shoes is probably a better idea.

2. Glasses: Not the kind you drink out of (although those can also be recycled), but the kind you wear to improve your vision, or just to look cool (sunglasses). Make GREEN Come True gives a couple of places where you can donate old glasses so that they can be reused (so, technically, this is not recycling, but we’ll let them off since it is better).

3. Batteries: This one shouldn’t have been a surprise really by now. At the very least, I hope most people now know not to throw them into the landfill (via their household waste). Many places now take used batteries back for recycling.

I have three more surprising things that can be recycled:

4. Carpet: There are a few places that will take post-consumer carpet (i.e. the stuff you rip up when you’re upgrading to that new plush shag) and recycle it. Most often, into the padding that you’ll be putting under that new carpet you’re fitting. Check out the folks at CARE for more information about carpet recovery.

5. Mattresses and box springs: While many of the places that sell mattresses here will take away your old one, you can make sure that they are recycled if you take them to places like the DR3 Mattress Recycling facility.

6. Denim: When your jeans are finished with, they can be pulled apart and turned into insulation for your loft.

Here’s an amazing idea, and it came from watching sea otters suffering in the 1989 Valdez oil spill! Phil McCory, a hair stylist in Huntsville, Alabama, noticed while watching reports on the environmental impact of the oil spill that the otters’ dense fur sucked up the oil and held on to it. That got him wondering whether human hair would do the same thing, so he set up an experiment using hair cuttings from his salon, a pair of his wife’s pantyhose and his son’s paddling pool to see whether he could remove oil from water using human hair. Miraculously, it worked, and the OttiMat™ was born.

NASA Testing

His idea caught the attention of NASA, and they set up their own experiment using hair from McCory’s salon and a 55 gallon drum setup with a hair mesh filter. 300 pounds of oil-water mix was poured through the human hair filter, and after a single pass (taking almost quarter of an hour), the water tested. A mere 17 parts of oil per million remained; just 2ppm above the EPA standard for discharge.

Reuse and Recycle

Even more amazing, since the hair doesn’t absorb the oil (it remains on the surface), it can actually be recovered from an oil soaked hair mat. Once soaked in oil, the mat can be wrung out and reused, and as much as 98% of the spilled oil can be recovered too. And all of that from something made of waste hair from salons that would normally have been thrown away.

This very technology was used recently right here in the San Francisco bay area to mop up some of the oil spilled from the Cosco Busan container ship when it struck one of the supports of the Bay Bridge on a foggy morning, ripping open one of its fuel bunkers and spilling 58,000 gallons of oil into the bay. In the photo (from Matter of Trust), Byron Cleary holds up oil soaked hairmat.

In addition to the multi-coloured TuttiFrutti shown, they also offer Barcode, Silver and Black for many of the bags and accessories. Need something larger than the tote shown above? Check out the larger overturned tote. Or how about a pocket planner with a unique cover or a cell phone case.

Why?

Some interesting facts from the folks over at reusablebags.com:

• Each year, an estimated 500 billion to 1 trillion plastic bags are consumed worldwide. That comes out to over one million per minute. Billions end up as litter each year.
• According to the EPA, over 380 billion plastic bags, sacks and wraps are consumed in the U.S. each year.
• According to The Wall Street Journal, the U.S. goes through 100 billion plastic shopping bags annually. (Estimated cost to retailers is $4 billion)
• According to the industry publication Modern Plastics, Taiwan consumes 20 billion bags a year—900 per person.

So, all those plastic bags end up somewhere. And that somewhere is often bad for the environment. Plastic bags don’t biodegrade, they photodegrade. Which means that the break down into smaller and smaller bits, and those bits contaminate soil and waterways or enter the food chain when animals accidentally ingest them.

There is a swirling vortex of plastic waste in the north Pacific estimated to be as much as twice the size of Texas already. And it is not just the oceans that are affected. Everywhere from Australia and Africa to Antarctica people are collecting increasing numbers of plastic bags blowing in the wind.

Counter

Here is a counter from reusablebags.com showing an estimate for the number of plastic bags consumed this year alone:

What Can I Do?

Take bags with you to the supermarket, or insist on paper if you forget. If you’re only getting one or two items, don’t use a bag at all (you’d be surprised how many people I see walk out of the supermarket at lunch time carrying a single sandwich in a plastic bag). If you do use a plastic bag, see if you can return it to the supermarket for recycling. At the very least, if all else fails, make sure you dispose of it properly!

One of the big differences I noticed in the UK was that the Starbucks stores (and other coffee chains like Caffe Nero) used china cups and plates when you say that you’re staying in the store to enjoy your coffee and cake. Why isn’t this more common in the US too? Vote for this idea too.

But to be fair, it is not just Starbucks that could do better in this regard. I suspect that the amount of waste generated by McDonald’s customers is just as high, if not higher. McDonald’s has a recycling page on its website, but again all the projects are outside the US.

[Thanks to PlanetGreen for the pointer.]