Comment

Comment by Terry and Patrica Kok on March 31, 2010 at 12:23pm

Ellen, We give our bags to Goodwill for reuse there but I'm very interested in where one might drop off plastic bags (especially bread bags) so that they will be turned into the products you mention.

Comment by Terry and Patrica Kok on March 31, 2010 at 12:20pm

Very interested in the high wheel bicycle plows Green Giant. Do you have plans/pictures available?

Comment by ephraim smiley on March 31, 2010 at 9:25am

We are the Garden Angels of Fort Wayne ,Indiana.We are 25 elementary school age children and parents who operate a two acre intensive organic garden.We donate 75% of our crop to senior citizens.We upcycle discarded waste stream items into useful garden tools. Bicycles ,exercise bikes, garden tractors , clothes dryers all are redesigned to serve a new unique role in our garden.We call our high wheel bicycle plows, Earth Boards. E.Smiley The Jolly Green Giant

Comment by Ellen on March 30, 2010 at 11:38pm

Plastic bags are up-cycled into floor coverings, wall coverings, beach mats, handbags, hats, or be recycled at second hand shops such as St. Vincent DePaul, and others.

Comment by Terry and Patrica Kok on March 30, 2010 at 11:44am

Walls can be built from bottles mortared together like stained glass. Styrofoam can chopped up and added to concrete to make insulating blocks. Paper can be shredded and added to the composter or piled thick on new ground to block the weeds so a garden can be built on top. Organic garbage should be composted. Old tarps make good vapor barriers. Recycled advertising tarps make good pond liners (we have 6 mini-ponds now). I'm not sure what to do with plastic bags and plastic wrap. Any suggestions? Old electronics can be stripped for useful parts. Recovering the heavy metals from them is a job for the experts. Recycling centers should be located next door to remanufacturing centers so that there is no transportation costs between them.

Comment by Michael Lombardi on March 28, 2010 at 4:55pm

Did anyone catch the report (in the Indy Star, I believe) that said the mayor is looking into ways to get recycling increased? The most likely option seemed to be including the recycling fee with the garbage fee.

Comment by Al Bailey on November 13, 2009 at 1:38pm

Quickly reading through the recent posts, I found some wonderful ideas to integrate into my own life and work. But, how do I take this valid information to a greater audience? What resources are out there to provide for others that I see are in dire need of this info??

Comment by Ernest Rando on June 14, 2009 at 4:03pm

I am curious if it is possible to shift from a publicly funded waste disposal system (we pay for our trash via taxes or stickers) to one that requires industry to take back as much of thier trash that they create. If the companies that create the packaging and trash to begin with with were forced to take their trash back or pay for the disposal of it, they may create the trash and design the trash more wisely iin the first place.

I am currently reading a book that is looking at some of the effects that this approach had in Germany in the early 90's. So this is not a new concept.

Comment by Brandon K. Holland on June 10, 2009 at 1:35pm

I saw a commercial on TV a few months ago, but I believe the message is highly effective since I still remember it.

A woman is walking on a treadmill drinking from a bottle of water. The slogan was "30 minutes on a treadmill, forever in a landfill".

Comment by Mathew Standish on March 11, 2009 at 4:58pm

I had the pleasure of listening to Ed Begley Jr. speak at Purdue a few weeks back. He had a simple message that he drove home. Everyone should be recycling - no brainer right? And, we should all follow up with that by buying recycle content goods and products. A simple message that makes a lot of sense. A good example of this is recycled plastic products. A recycled plastic product versus a virgin plastic product has these benefits:
1. Takes up to 4 times less energy to produce
2. Less energy means less greenhouse gasses by 2 1/2 times
3. 1 ton of recycled plastic saves 7.5 cu. ft. of landfill space
4. 1 ton of recycled plastic reduces our need for foreign oil by 3 to 4 barrels (we manufacture over 4 million tons of HDPE alone in this country every year!)
5. Reduces water usage by up to 90% (high heat and lots of water needed to make plastic from crude or natural gas)
6. Reduces sulfur dioxide emissions by 65%
7. Reduces nitrous oxide emissions by 50%

We also generate more money and jobs here for the U.S. economy. It's seems to me to be a winner all the way around. The question is - how can we get this message out to the public at large? Do you purposely buy recycle content products? Finally, how do we get the recycling number system changed to include recycle content, a separate compostable plant-based number, and to divide up the very different types of #1 and #2? (Especially since it's the PLASTIC industry that created the system!)

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