Packaging That Grows Native Trees: Sustainable Brands 2010

Packing products in boxes and shipping them long distances gets a big rap as "unsustainable" because of its triple whammy of using cardboard that comes from trees, generating heat-trapping carbon emissions via shipping, and generating waste if the cardboard isn't recycled or composted properly.

The Life Box™ offers companies and consumers alike a sustainable solution to all three of the above problems.  Best of all, you know it's a solution you can trust because it was invented by mycologist, author and founder of Fungi Perfecti®, LLC, Paul Stamets, along with co-conspirators David Censi and Katie Birkhauser.  As an environmental scientist, Stamets knows what it takes for products to offer credible reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, deforestation and waste.  According to the company's web site:

The Life Box™ suite of products builds upon the synergy of fungi and plants by infusing spores and seeds together inside of packaging materials that can be planted.

How does it work, and how do Life Boxes address shipping's triple-whammy of unsustainability?

First, each box comes from 100% recycled paper, and is therefore tree-free to produce.  Second, to offset the heat-trapping carbon pollution generated by shipping, each box contains 200-400 different seeds of 10 different tree species, which are dusted with mycorrhizal fungi -- symbiotic organisms that boost the young tree's ability to take up nutrients and water in exchange for carbohydrates (produced by CO2-absorbing photosynthesis) provided by the tree.

To eliminate the waste created by improper disposal of cardboard boxes, you can literally plant the box to create trees!  When you're done with the box, you have two options.  The easiest is the "let nature take its course" option: between October and January, simply tear up the box into approximately 6x6" bits, moisten them to stimulate the seeds to germinate, plant them, and let nature take its course.  Keep the seeds watered and you should start to see seedlings after a couple of months.  The other is a bit more complicated, but is also more fun since you get to watch your planted Life Box seeds germinate in a tray during their first year and transfer them into individual pots for their second year.  After two years, simply transfer the potted trees to the place of your choice -- for example near your office, in your yard, or in a neighborhood park.

To track the beneficial impacts of Life Box™ trees, the company asks users for their email addresses and locations:

When you plant your trees outside in their permanent home, send us an email with the address—or better yet, the GPS coordinates—of your planted Life Box™. We will collect this data and eventually post the locations on a map of the United States. In the future, we hope to create an interactive Web site so customers can share their experiences. Stay tuned!

How do you know the trees won't become ecologically harmful invasive species?  To start, the company chose a continental mix of tree species that is acceptable to all Departments of Agriculture in every state in the U.S.  (for now, Life Box™ products are only available in the continental U.S. -- not yet Hawaii)  The introductory seed mix includes white birch and sweetgum from the eastern U.S.; lodgepole pine, water birch, sycamore and blue spruce native to the Rocky Mountains; mountain hemlock native to the Pacific Northwest; and northern white cedar (arborvitae) native to Europe.  If the company can grow the business to a sufficient level, Life Box™ plans for its products to become zip code-specific -- to provide customers with trees that are native to their bioregion.  For example, if you're in the New York City area, your Life Box™ products may contain familiar species such as red and sugar maple, eastern hemlock and white birch. However, customers in the Bay Area of California might receive giant redwood, coast live oak, and bay laurel.

No matter where you are located, each tree that grows to be 30 years old will suck an average of 1 ton of CO2 from the atmosphere during its lifetime (more on moist and fertile soils, less on dry, rocky or otherwise infertile soils):

Each Tree Life Box™ may some day qualify for up to one ton of carbon credits!

Why?

We estimate that 1 tree in 100 will survive to 30 years. On average, a 30-year-old tree can sequester 1 ton of carbon.

Still more exciting: Life Box™ plans not only cardboard products for shipping (click here to view currently available boxes, which come in three sizes).  The technology is also being used to make tree-generating custom wine boxes, CD and DVD covers, pizza boxes and sleeves for coffee cups -- all coming soon.  Don't live in a place with a lot of native trees?  Planned future Life Box™ products will contain native grassland and meadow wildflower species.  Don't live in the continental U.S., but want Life Box™ products?  The company is working to offer products world-wide.

If you'd like to learn more about Life Box™ products, come to their break-out event: the upcoming Sustainable Brands 2010 Conference, happening June 7-10 in Monterey, CA.  Founder, Paul Stamets, will be on hand for a presentation titled, "Rethinking the Box".  Stamets' lecture is just one of literally dozens of presentations by a superb line-up of sustainability innovators who are advancing business practices that benefit both the earth and their bottom line.

Please join me in beautiful Monterey (where I'll definitely sneak off one evening for a hike to visit the otters, sea lions and seals at Pt. Lobos State Natural Reserve).  I'll be at Sustainable Brands 2010 as both an ecologist and a sustainable business maven, excited to learn more about emerging products and practices that help stop climate change and reverse the destruction of our natural heritage.

The Sustainable Brands 2010 Conference is hosted by Sustainable Life Media.  It is located in Monterey, California this year and will run from June 7th -10th.  To register for the Conference, please visit the Sustainable Life Media website.

Converting Garbage to Gas: Landfill Energy Projects On the Rise Across U.S.

The only thing worse than getting stuck behind a stinky garbage truck at a traffic light is when the light turns green and you're left in a dark cloud of choking diesel exhaust.

It's disgusting.

Fortunately, as the Seattle Times reports, that experience is on the decline, as companies such as Waste Management convert their garbage dumps into landfill methane plants, which can produce thousands of gallons of liquid natural gas per day.

Since natural gas burns much cleaner than diesel fuel, the result is a classic sustainability win-win: garbage trucks that burn cleaner, powered by fuel that's cheaper and created from garbage-produced methane, which otherwise would seep from the landfill as a potent heat-trapping (greenhouse) gas!  

Almost 500 Waste Management Inc. garbage and recycling trucks run on this new source of environmentally friendly fuel instead of dirty diesel.

In a state that has passed the most stringent greenhouse-gas-reduction goals in the United States, the climate change benefits of this plant are twofold — methane from the trash heap is captured before entering the environment and use of the fuel produces less carbon dioxide than conventional gasoline.

"We've built the largest landfill-to-LNG plant in the world; this plant produces 13,000 gallons a day of LNG," said Jessica Jones, a landfill manager for Houston-based Waste Management. "It will take 30,000 tons a year of CO2 from the environment."

In 2009, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency counted 517 active landfill energy projects in the nation's approximately 1,800 operational municipal landfills. That was up almost 50 percent from 2000, and 28 percent from 2004.

I'd love to learn more about the ROI of these landfill methane production systems -- how long it takes for the investments of companies such as Waste Management to pay off.  After they are paid off, of course, the gas is extremely low cost, increasing profits for the owner of the landfill.

Does anyone happen to know more about the infrastructure and operating costs of these systems, as well as their ROI?

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Turning Commercial Food Waste Into Valuable Compost

A northern California town is launching a compost collection program that includes all commercial food wastes -- including meat and bones, which currently cannot go into backyard-type compost bins.

The new program will essentially pay for itself since the fees that the city has to pay to dump its garbage will be sufficiently reduced (a result of having less garbage to dump) to leave them with the cash needed to cover the cost of the composting effort.  Since the environmental benefits of the program include reduced landfill emissions of the heat trapping gas, methane, as well as creation of free fertilizer that can be sold to the region's citizens and wineries, it's got strong prospects to be a winner.

Reports the Santa Rosa Press Democrat:

Officials estimate 30 percent of the current waste going to landfills is compostable food scraps. Sealed in a landfill, the food emits methane, a toxic gas and a contributor to global warming.

A better choice, officials say, is composting. In a mixture of micro-organisms, air and heat, food scraps can be turned into soil in a matter of weeks, a more sustainable solution than the landfill.

“I believe in it,” said Nick Peyton, manager of Healdsburg Bar and Grill and a principal owner of Cyrus. “Restaurants turn out a tremendous amount of waste. This cuts down the waste by a huge amount. Instead of having just a whole ton of garbage, you have a lot of compost and a lot less garbage.”

The cost of the food waste recycling should not impact garbage rates, according to North Bay Corp. That's because start-up expenses should be offset by the decrease in the amount of garbage — and cumulative dumping fees — at the landfills.

We compost all the food scraps we can in our backyard bin.  It's quick and easy, but I sure do wish there was something I could do with meat scraps (which fortunately, we don't have many of).

I look forward to watching this type of win-win program expand to homes and businesses across the state and country.

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Does Compostable Foodware Really Decompose In Landfills?

Bioplastics are nice because they don't come from petrochemicals, and if taken to a compost facility, they can be composted.

However, as this paper points out, they do NOT decompose faster than regular plastics in the landfill, so tossing them into the garbage isn't going to make too much of a difference in terms of landfill space:

The Degradability Myth
Why Diversion Makes More Sense

The Environment and Plastics Industry Council (EPIC) does not pull any punches in their paper "Biodegradation Won't Solve the Landfill Crunch".

EPIC has graciously allowed us to reprint this paper that explains why evidence from North American landfills supports their case that biodegradable anything in a landfill does not extend landfill space or ever go away.

The bottom line here is that if you really want to reduce waste in the landfill, you need to divert as much as possible from the garbage bin.

Make sure your compostable food waste makes it into your compost bin.  If you use bioplastics (e.g., cups, utensils, plates), remember that they decompose at higher temperatures than food waste, so need to go to a compost facility if you want them to be truly composted.

Read the full paper>>
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America Wastes 40% of Its Food Supply Every Year

A new study suggests that Americans waste 40% of our food supply every year.  This number does NOT actually represent the amount of food that makes it into our refrigerators and pantries, says Treehugger -- that number is more like 27%, which is still obscene.

America, a new study suggests, wastes 40% of its food supply annually. Published in the Public Library of Science, the research indicates a dramatic increase over the last decades, up from 28% in 1974.

(T)he PLoS study's 40% is an estimate of waste in the entire food system. This means that all the waste that occurs between the field and processing plant, that plant and the store, the store and our homes, and our refrigerators and our mouths is included.

Researchers found that this wasted food represented an incredible cost in resources. According to their calculations, one quarter of the United States' annual consumption of freshwater and an estimated 300 million barrels of oil are used to produce food that is eventually wasted.

Wasted food is contributing to climate change too. The report notes that food left to rot in landfills contributes methane, a potent greenhouse gas, to the atmosphere.

Like solving our energy challenges, our challenge in reforming the food system involve eliminating lots and lots of waste, which will end up meaning improving efficiencies and thus cutting costs.

CV Notes readers know that humanity's unsustainable food production systems are causing environmental, economic and health problems such as the crisis in global land use and humanity's doubling of the global nitrogen cycle.

To see evidence that the abuse of land, water, fertilizer and toxic pesticides used to produce all this food is not necessary -- that as the article states, "we produce more than we can eat, but we eat far more than we need" -- falls into the 'friggin' silly humans!' department.

Is there a silver lining to this cloud?  Actually, yes: these findings indicate that as with upgrading our energy systems, improving efficiency of both food production and food consumption are key low-hanging fruits for reducing humanity's footprint on the biosphere.

What do we do to eliminate food waste, and how do we benefit from our efforts?

• First off, we don't overbuy foods, so don't get much spoilage in our refrigerator (which saves us plenty of money -- very important in this economy).  
• Second of all, we save our leftovers in tupperware and are very frugal about finishing them off (which also helps us cut our food costs). 
• Third, what food waste is left from our meals goes into the compost, which becomes FREE fertilizer for the garden, which helps us grow...our own fresh, tasty, organic, ultimately local and FREE vegetables, fruit and herbs!

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Bottled Water Sucks

A new documentary film illustrates the environmental, economic and health damage caused by the proliferation of bottled water:

With style, verve and righteous anger, the film exposes the bottled water industry's role in suckering the public, harming our health, accelerating climate change, contributing to overall pollution, and increasing America's dependence on fossil fuels. All while gouging consumers with exorbitant and indefensible prices.

Claire Thompson summed up the problem well in her post on the movie at Grist:

"Not only is it [bottled water] a clear waste of resources (only 20 percent of plastic water bottles used in the United States are recycled, and far too many of the rest probably end up in the Pacific Garbage Patch), it's an incredible waste of money for consumers, who pay more than the price of gasoline for water that's marketed as "pure," but in reality is largely unregulated, full of harmful toxins like BPA, and far less safe for drinking than free tap water. (In fact, 40 percent of the time, bottled water is nothing but municipal tap water, freed from the government oversight that keeps it safe.)"

The main excuse that I hear from people who abuse bottled water is convenience.  For example, in my martial arts dojo, they offer bottled water for $1, and almost every student uses it.  I bring my own stainless steel water bottle, and have never had to purchase a single plastic bottle. So to me, the 'convenience' line doesn't hold water (no pun intended).

My Sensei agrees that we should try to find a better solution, but the owner of the dojo apparently insists on the disposable plastic water bottles for the convenience of kids classes, in particular.  That's the excuse he received for why the solution I proposed wouldn't work: changing to a water cooler and re-fillable 5-gallon jugs, with compostable plastic cups.  Apparently, the cups would make too much of a mess.  Plus, it wouldn't be as easy to re-coup the costs by charging per cup as it is to charge for a water bottle.

Then again, if she charged $1 per 12 ounce CUP (usually filled to 11 oz), she'd bring in about $58 per 5 gallon jug -- and with bottled water delivery services, these jugs cost about $5-8 each. Even with the added cost of cups and disposal, it would still be a money-making green solution!

Well, I'll keep trying... 

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Recycled Paper Business Booming

Buying recycled -- good for our forests, a boon to our businesses:

For retailers, the "100 percent recycled" label on a product is a badge of honor declaring civic responsibility. For consumers, it's a status symbol showing environmental awareness.

For manufacturers, such as Longview Fibre Paper and Packaging, the label can be a gold mine.

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Rechargeable Batteries Are Saving Us a Ton of Money and Reducing Our Waste

With a new baby, one of our life-savers that she loves is an electronic swing, which for some reason is battery powered.

I sure wish we could just plug it in, as we need to replace the batteries -- 4 D's -- about every 4 or 5 days.

Fortunately, we have a couple of battery chargers -- each several years old -- that work great, and several sets of rechargeable batteries.  So instead of having to run out and buy new batteries every few days, and dispose of dead batteries every few days (into our electronics recycling bin of course), we just recharge 4 at a time and we're good to go.  In this economy, if I had to buy each round of batteries we're using, I'd be crying as much as the baby!

I once read, I think in the Real Goods Solar Living Handbook, that a set of 4 rechargeable AA batteries lasts so many recharges that if you purchased those batteries one pack at a time, you'd be spending something like $1,600 (and that doesn't include the gas, time and parking from trips to the store). 

I haven't been counting, but we rarely have to buy new sets of rechargeables -- so that sounds about right.  As a bonus, of course, we're keeping hazardous waste out of the landfill, and reducing the amount of cardboard and plastic battery packaging that we have to recycle.  Even better, rechargeables are wonderfully convenient -- plunking batteries back into the recharger for a few hours is much easier and less less time-consuming than having to go out to the store.

Using rechargeable batteries is really a no-brainer of a money-saving green practice.  If you haven't gotten yourself a recharger yet, give it a try.  You'll be glad you did.
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Nudging Recycling From Less Waste To None

Recycling and composting is catching on across the country.  The NY Times reports:

At Ecco, a popular restaurant in Atlanta, waiters no longer scrape food scraps into the trash bin. Uneaten morsels are dumped into five-gallon pails and taken to a compost heap out back.

And at eight of its North American plants, Honda is recycling so diligently that the factories have gotten rid of their trash Dumpsters altogether.

Across the nation, an antigarbage strategy known as “zero waste” is moving from the fringes to the mainstream, taking hold in school cafeterias, national parks, restaurants, stadiums and corporations.

One of the key solutions to the crisis in global land use is to use less resources -- and a big key to using less resources is to generate less waste.  Whether it means recycling, composting, and cradle to cradle production (in which products are designed to be returned to the manufacturer so parts can be re-used), or buying recycled and cradle-to-cradle products only, we can and should all get involved.

What do we do? 

In addition to reducing packaging and re-using and recycling compulsively, we buy recycled, and love the fact that instead of buying our laptops from Dell, we can lease them -- and then send 'em back to Dell so they can re-use whatever they can.  We also compost our food scraps, and use fallen leaves from backyard trees as the carbon source that we mix into the green kitchen waste to generate the chemical heat reaction that is key to composting.  Composting provides us with a FREE nutrient-rich, water-retaining dark soil ingredient that I mix with vermiculite and peat to create our garden mix.   So our food scraps provide the nutrients needed to sustain our delicious organic garden!

Municipalities are catching on at varying speeds.  I know that while we have a green bin here in El Cerrito, my wife and I's parents -- from New York and Virginia, respectively -- had no idea what it was for when they first saw it.  Business associates from other parts of the country look curiously at "Compost" bins they see in public places like the Ferry Building in San Francisco.  So many parts of America still have a lot of catching up to do on the Zero Waste front.

That said, our system in California is far from perfect.  What we need more of here in the East Bay, for example, is the ability to put not only food waste, but also compostable cutlery, dirty paper towels, etc. into our green bin, which right now only takes lawn waste.  I know things like compostable cups and forks decompose at different temperatures than food and lawn scraps, so I'm watching curiously to see how cutting edge programs like that of the City of San Francisco handle mandatory composting.

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Turning Waste Into Energy (and Other Things)

What to do with all of our trash.  The Triple Pundit talks about the potential for our trash to help meet our energy needs.

Landfill gas-to-energy (LFGTE) facilities turn landfills – and our daily waste – into a source of clean, renewable energy. According to the EPA, there were 480 operational LFGTE programs in the U.S. as of December 2008. These generate about 12 megawatts of electricity per year – for reference, the average power consumption of a typical American household over the course of a year is about 8,900 kilowatt-hours. Waste Management alone hosts LFGTE projects at more than 100 of its landfills, with the goal to develop an additional 60 projects by 2013. In expanding these projects, Waste Management will produce enough landfill gas to generate 700 megawatts of energy, enough to power nearly 700,000 homes.

The more we can do with less, the better, and energy creation is likely just one of many reasons I think this century will find us looking to our landfills for more and more resources.  Right now, America has unfathomable amounts of wood, metals and who knows what else buried away in our landfills.

I remember when precious metals prices were going through the roof last year, and people were stealing the copper caps on top of the wood fence in front of our house, copper wiring from irrigation systems, and other such items that have always been safe in public.

It was at that point that I foresaw landfill mining as a future industry.  Does anybody know of any companies that do this yet?  Does anyone else predict that companies like Waste Management will eventually start to mine their landfills for metals and other resources that become rare outside of landfills?

Read the full 3P post>>
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Bottled Water Sales Down, But Why Are People Still Paying For It?

Treehugger has a good post that reports a small decline in bottled water sales, and then gets into the behavioral question of why people still spend way more per gallon on it than they do on gasoline:

I suspect that convenience and a recently acquired habit are major reasons why most people still buy so much bottled water. The BPA in water bottles thing didn't help. That said, there have been gradual social and political changes which have come to reinforce the convenience factor.

As we've reported here in the past, drinking bottled water is both a wasteful and environmentally destructive habit. If convenience is the motivation, what are other options?  Well, we use our own refillable stainless steel water bottles -- and they're pretty convenient (plus it's comforting to know I'm not drinking any plastic particles).

If your home drinking water isn't safe, the most eco-friendly option is to explore the wide variety of filtration systems.  A secondary option is to explore the re-fillable 5-gallon jug services, which are both cheaper per gallon than bottled water and generate far less waste. 

If you work for a business that insists on selling bottled water, what are your best choices?  The Better World Shopping Guide gives "A"-level grades to Biota and Ethos and "B"-level grades to Trinity, Crystal Geyser, Aquafina and Essentia.

Read the full post>>
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Food Service Providers (and Beyond): Too Often, Still Clueless About Sustainability

Most of the time when I get a cup of coffee at a café, it's no sweat when I ask them to fill my steel mug rather than use their disposable cup. The attendant gladly fills the mug, and just about always gives me some kind of discount of a dime to a quarter (occasionally more).

Sometimes however, usually at places like an airport café, on an airplane, or at any range of coffee-selling places that are not the typical coffee house, the attendant will either refuse to fill my mug, or will do something completely stupid like pour the coffee into a disposable cup, pour it from the cup into my mug, and then throw the disposable cup into the garbage.

What is it with these people?

I’m guessing that their problem is simple lack of education at two levels.

At one level, many of these folks, working in places like an airport Duncin’ Donuts, are not very well-off and have been concerned with just surviving for most of their lives. Sustainability is the last thing to come to the forefront of their attention. They have learned to do what they are told to make sure they get a paycheck. When they see something a little bit out of their norm, such as a green citizen bringing their own mug to save a little paper or plastic, and it doesn’t cleanly fit into the “small”, “medium” or “large” category, they either refuse to do it, or have to make sure they serve the “right” amount of coffee by measuring it out in a disposable cup.

When I politely ask them to please not do that and try to help by telling them how many ounces my mug is (or just ask them to “please save yourselves a cup pour it into my mug – everybody else does”), these types of folks usually get angry and refuse to serve me coffee unless they use the disposable cup.

The best solution, I have found, is simply to explain what I’m doing, walk away for a few moments, and then come back and try a different attendant, who is usually fine. It’s usually just that one person’s ignorance (and stubbornness) that is the problem. Sometimes, it’s a bad manager who doesn’t have a clue and holds their employees to these dumb rules. But they’re out there. Those people whose way of doing things is just so far removed from the green revolution, and so stuck to wasteful, inefficient routines, that it makes those of us who take pride in living more sustainably wince.

At a second level, many of these folks are just not receiving the proper (if any) corporate education in (1) how to use efficient sustainable practices and (2) why these practices are important for benefiting the company’s bottom line (and, when used at home, help save money). The company is not adequately (if at all) making sure that efficient green practices – from knowing how to handle somebody who brings their own mug, to recycling, to using materials efficiently (I don’t need a bag for a single pack of gum or 12 napkins for my small fries), to using energy and water efficiently – are properly ingrained in the training of its employees.

Too often, I still find that we have a long way to go before internal corporate sustainability training – of employees in how to live and work and use resources in a smart, efficient manner – becomes ingrained at the mainstream level. Then again, too often, when visiting friends and family outside of my little green bubble, even the most basic of green (and often money-saving) products and practices have yet to be put to use. What will it take for this to change?

Frontiers in Ecology: Plastic Waste in Oceans Poisoning People?

The term "nurdle" may sound cute, but in reality, these cylindrical shaped plastic pellets used in manufacturing and packaging are making a big mess of the health of our oceans -- and probably of people who eat fish.

As Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, Kathy Ellison, reports in the September, 2007 issue of Frontiers in Ecology & the Environment:

For marine life, nurdles can be poison pills. They look like fish eggs, yet soak up and concentrate toxic pollutants such as PCBs. Tokyo University geochemist Hideshige Takada has found that plastic pellets eaten by birds concentrate toxic chemicals to as high as one million times their normal levels in seawater.

Of course, birds aren't the only victims. At the University of Plymouth, marine biologist Richard Thompson points out that nurdles and other plastic trash inevitably break down, through the force of tides and ultraviolet light, into ever-tinier fragments. He has found some pieces as small as 20 microns - smaller than an human hair -- which are easily consumed by some of the sea's most diminutive creatures. He assumes the plastic bits, which decompose but don't ever biodegrade, are eventually ground down into powder, which can be swallowed even by zooplankton. Scientists have yet to pinpoint the impact on the marine food web or on people who eat fish that have eaten nurdles and other nurdle-eaters. But I think it's fair to say that it doesn't look good for those of us at the top of the food chain.

Amazingly, as Ellison reports, a prominent marine biologist reveals that, "the plastic outweighs the plankton 6 to 1 in the central Pacific, and 2.5 to 1 in the surface waters of southern California."

Fortunately, officials are starting to take action to curtail the use of nurdles and nurdle-related materials. In addition to a bill making its way through the California State legislature, Santa Monica and San Francisco have banned Styrofoam for restaurant take-out. San Francisco recently became the first US city to ban plastic bags.

Unfortunately, it turns out that biodegradable plastics (which we've previously gotten excited about and used at Conservation Value Institute's benefit events) aren't even the answer. Reports Ellison:

As Alan Weisman recounts in his new book, The World Without Us...biodegradable plastics...(are) a mixture of cellulose and polymers. Once the cellulose starch breaks down, thousands of clear, nearly invisible plastic particles remain.

So what's the answer?

Ellison notes the recommendation of marine biologist, Thompson, that "reducing, reusing, and recycling is the answer (to keeping all these plastics out of the oceans)," adding that, "he'd support a ban on those billions of plastic bottles with non-recyclable caps."

High Sierra Music Festival, Local Farmers Partner to Reduce Waste, Save Money

Note: Here is a short press release about a project that I am proud to have both organized and been a part of. - JLG

Compost Effort Keeps Over 2 Tons of Fruit and Vegetable Waste Out of Landfill, Provides Farmers With Free Feed and Fertilizer

Quincy, CA (July 20, 2007) -- High Sierra Music Festival , which took place July 5-8 at Plumas County Fairgrounds in Quincy, today announced the final results of their pilot composting program. The festival partnered with local area farmers to keep organic scrap by-products created by its food vendors out of the landfill.

In total, approximately 850 gallons of fruit and vegetable waste were kept out of the landfill by the composting team. The team included festival officials, along with conservation biologist, Jon Gelbard of Conservation Value, Bob Hollis of the California Resource Recovery Association, farmers Noel Carlson and Jim Holst of the Quincy Grange, Regional Grange Deputy, Ken Donnell, and Nick Aster of The Triple Pundit.

After setting up clearly marked compost bins behind the festival’s food courts, Gelbard informed food vendors of where to dispose of their surplus organic materials (meats excluded – to avoid attracting bears to the farmer’s compost pile). Gelbard, Hollis and Aster then monitored bin levels to see how quickly they were filling up.

Once the bins were close to being full, the team would contact farmers Carlson and Donnell to let them know the team was “on” for their pre-arranged evening pick-up. Upon arriving at the festival, Carlson’s blue truck was escorted to the pick-up site, where the group and festival officials used a fork lift to retrieve the bins and dump the contents into the back of the truck. From there, Carlson transported the mixture of mostly fruit and vegetable materials back to her Quincy-area farm, where it was mixed into the operation’s compost pile. The bounty of resulting compost – whose production saved the festival money on waste disposal – will help improve pasture for the Carlson’s locally-grown Icelandic lamb and wool, marketed under the Holst Station label.

The festival also introduced the use of biodegradable food utensils this year, and hopes to expand the program to all vendors for 2008.

“It’s a wonderful relationship we’ve seeded this year”, said Debbie Crockett of High Sierra Music Festival. “We are deeply grateful for the support of these Quincy area farmers, and look forward to exploring ways to grow this relationship in 2008.”

“This is yet another example of how business and land management practices that are good for the environment can also benefit local farms and communities. We started with organic waste that the festival would have had to pay to send to the landfill. But instead, we worked together to cut these disposal costs, and turn this waste into both free feed for farm animals and free compost that is being used to help restore a farm’s topsoil from historic mining damage.” said conservation biologist, Jon Gelbard of Conservation Value.

"The Grange is thrilled to be involved with this composting program and the High Sierra Music Festival. This composting program fits perfectly with the California Grange's goal of "Helping Farmers, Protecting Consumers™", and is a perfect example of thinking globally, acting locally,” said Regional Grange Deputy, Ken Donnell.

“All of the folks helping with the festival were great to work with! I’m looking forward to meeting up with them again in 2008. For an event of this size, the organization and logistics were fantastic. Our Icelandic sheep and American Guinea hogs thank High Sierra too—they dug for buried treasures in the compost pile and were totally in love with the oranges and cabbages,” said farmer Noel Carlson.

“This was a great project to demonstrate sustainable community practices, which is part of the mission of the Quincy Grange”, said farmer and Quincy Grange member, Jim Holst.

“It’s great that the High Sierra Music Festival took the initiative to implement a composting program this year. I hope that other groups who use the Plumas County Fairgrounds will follow this example. It was wonderful working with the local members of the Quincy Grange in support of sustainable farming,” said recycling expert, Bob Hollis

The festival looks forward to exploring ways to expand the operation in 2008, including by providing recycling bins for bio-degradable food utensils and possibly by providing compost bins for all festival goers.

About High Sierra Music Festival (www.highsierramusic.com): High Sierra Music has been producing world-class music festivals since 1991. An independent production company based in Berkeley, CA, the organization was founded with the first High Sierra Music Festival, its cornerstone event that takes place every July 4th weekend in Northern California, and remains committed to its grassroots origins by drawing support from its loyal community of patrons, staff, volunteers and non-corporate sponsors.

Press Contacts

High Sierra Music Festival (www.highsierramusic.com): Debbie Crocket 510-420-1529 debbie@highsierramusic.com

Conservation Value (www.ConservationValue.org): Jonathan Gelbard, Ph.D. 510-898-4895 jon@conservationvalue.org

California Resource Recovery Association (www.crra.com): Bob Hollis, (916) 717-8108 rhollis@carnegiepartners.com

Holst Station Farm (www.holststation.com): Noel Carlson & Jim Holst (530) 283-2414 noel_carlson@hotmail.com

California State Grange – (www.californiagrange.org): Ken Donnell, Deputy for Region 6 of the California State Grange: kdd@frontiernet.net
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Oregon Adds Water Bottles to Its Bottle Bill

There are few unsustainable practices dumber than buying bottled water, which usually comes in cardboard cases sealed with plastic.

I love the subhead of this article on the question of whether bottled water is any better than tap water (it usually isn't): Americans are spending billions on a drink that is virtually free.

The sad thing is that only about 23% of those little plastic bottles get recycled. For awhile now, people have been saying that a solution would be to add them to state bottle bills, so there is a financial incentive to recycle them.

Well, Oregon has just stepped up, adding water bottles to its bottle bill (and also establishing a free statewide recycling program for electronics!)

Nick over at The Triple Pundit thinks that there are probably some pretty lucrative business opportunities waiting to be found in uses for all this plastic material that will now be kept out of landfills...

Frontier in Ecology - Using Non-Recyclable Paper Waste for Compost

A tidbit from Frontiers in Ecology:

In "Facing up to our paper addiction", the magazine reports that "new research suggests that non-recyclable paper fibers could be used in compost that is better for plants than current horticultural growth media."

And it reduces several wilt diseases!

"This provides an obvious additional commercial use for the vast amount of paper waste generated by offices and homes," say researchers Ralph Noble and colleagues at Warwick University, UK.

From Zero Waste to Biodiversity Conservation - of Recycling and Still-Undiscovered Species

Two stories in the last few days' environmental news have really struck a chord with me as far as just what it means on the ground - in terms of protecting natural habitats and their biodiversity - when we talk about working toward Zero Waste goals.

First, at a ceremony commemorating the State of California for achieving its goal of diverting over 50 percent (now 52 percent) of the 76 million tons of solid municipal wastes it generates yearly, Marin County was honored for recycling 65% of its garbage. That is both impressive and promising, and hopefully their achievement will guide other counties, cities, and states toward finding ways to achieve zero waste goals.

It is particularly important given the often forgotten linkages between these kinds of accomplishments in recycling and other types of accomplishments in protecting the environment. For achievements in recycling not only mean reduced waste going into landfills, and less space needed to be occupied (and purchased - expensive!) to put our garbage. They not only save us and future generations natural resources - allowing materials such as paper, cans, bottles and plastics to be made from recycled materials instead of raw materials such as trees, freshly mined aluminum, and fossil fuels (and the expansive amounts of water that it takes to operate extractive operations such as mines).

Achievements in recycling mean that we are making strides in protecting our remaining natural habitats - from forests to deserts, from oceans to rivers - and their biodiversity. For example, Conservation Value's brochures and business cards are made from Living Tree's Deja Vu matte paper, made from 40% post-consumer waste and 10% hemp/flax. According to Living Tree, using one ton of this recycled paper saves 12 fully grown trees, 3,466 pounds of wood use, 2,461 kilowatt hours of electricity, 1,049 pounds of greenhouse gases, 541 pounds of solid wastes, and 5,097 gallons of water. With Americans alone using 85 million tons of paper per year, go ahead and calculate the conservation achievement if all of us used this paper! By recycling and buying recycled, Americans can save about a billion trees per year!

The importance of this relationship between recycling and biodiversity conservation was demonstrated yesterday in India, where a new species of bird was discovered!

So what does the discovery of a colorful new bird species in India have to do with achievements in recycling?

The fact that new species of birds are still being discovered provides a reminder of the riches of undiscovered plants, fungi and other species that, likewise, remain to be discovered, and that could provide such societal benefits as cures for cancer, solutions to fossil fuel dependence, and rescue from diseases that attack our food supply. But that could also be whiped off the face of the planet, undiscovered by humanity, their benefits lost, if they are rare or localized species that end up being lost to such extractive forces of habitat destruction as deforestation, mining, and oil and gas development.

The more we recycle and buy recycled, the fewer habitats that could contain such undiscovered natural riches will be destroyed. And the more likely it will be that these riches will be found and used to improve our lives and the lives of our children for generations to come.