Tag Archive for 'Waste Management'

The SuperForest Sundae

april published on August 7, 2010 in celebrity and zeitgeist. 2 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , .

Today’s SuperForest Sundae celebrates the completion of the Plastiki’s voyage from San Fran to Sydney, the power and healing of Restorative Justice, and Amy Krouse Rosenthal’s uplifting video in which she gathers strangers and enlists them to make stuff together.

Plastiki voyage = success!
Back in March, we told you about the incredible Plastiki voyage that had recently set sail. [In case you missed it: Armed with a crazy idea - undoubtedly harder to execute than it sounds - the Plastiki crew fashioned themselves a catamaran using 12,500 plastic bottles and sailed it from San Francisco to Sydney]. Well, I’m happy to say they made it! Their heroic journey across the Pacific lasted 129 days. See the illustration below for a visual and numeric breakdown of the trip.

Brit David de Rothschild came up with idea as a way to get people to see waste, not as waste, but as a resource. Check out the video below of David onboard the Plastiki, talking about his hopes for a new way of looking at plastic.

I’d say all it takes to really change your thought pattern on this one is to pause before you pull out your purse. Look at what you’re buying has been packaged in. Bring your own cup, container, bag or box, and offer a polite and cheery “No, thanks” to unnecessary waste. Oh, if you’d like to pledge (or simply re-affirm) your allegiance to this cause, you can do so here, where every click means you’re committed!

A path to healing

As a young girl, I remember being completely stunned when I’d learned that Pope John Paul II had visited his would-be killer in jail, two years after the assassination attempt. I thought it was a remarkable display of forgiveness and mused on this for a long time afterward. This flashback came to me after I’d read about Restorative Justice programs in the UK, which sees victims and their offenders meet face to face for a chat.

Peter Woolf was a prolific offender, ensconced in a world of violence and depravity, who, by his own reckoning committed about 20,000 crimes. Then he burgled a house, fought with his victim and ended up in prison yet again. This time though it was different. Peter met with his victim, Will, in a restorative justice session that took place in the prison. The meeting changed both their lives for ever.

Will’s experience of meeting the person who attacked him meant he could move on from the trauma. Why Me? was started in 2008 as a way to deliver Restorative Justice to victims who want it.

The Beckoning of Lovely
You might recall catching Amy Krouse Rosenthal‘s Thought Bubble On Kindness on SuperForest recently. In this video, we see her put a call out to strangers, inviting them to meet her at the Bean sculpture in Chicago on 08/08/08 to make pretty things, friends, energetic entrances and more. This one’s the cherry on this week’s sundae.

Oh, and to see what Amy did one year after The Beckoning of Lovely, click here.

Happy Sunday.
April

Do we, at the SF offices, recycle?

niki published on July 23, 2008 in Uncategorized. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

Good Morning!

I don’t know about you, but here at the SuperForest offices, we are obsessed with trash.

Now, this may shock some of you out there, but we have one large garbage can and we throw all of our lovely paper, metal, glass and plastic into it! Can you believe it? We can’t.

We have constantly been questioning this because it goes against everything we’ve been taught, and are trying to convey, with separating our trash. We have asked the building management several times about this and they haven’t been clear about why we do not separate our trash, in this large commercial building in the middle of Manhattan. Some maintenance people said that the building just doesn’t recycle (What??). An elevator operator said that we pay extra to have the garbage company sort our trash for us. Well, which is it? Are we actually breaking the law and not recycling any of our trash?

From NYC.GOV:
“All New York City businesses are required to recycle.

Businesses and buildings that contract directly with a private carter or recycler are mandated to recycle under NYC’s Local Law 87 and Commercial Recycling Regulations, enacted in 1992.”

I decided to do some digging…

Commercial buildings in NYC hire private companies to pick up their trash. Unlike the the sidewalk trashcans, residential buildings, government agencies and public schools which get their trash picked up by the Department of Sanitation. In our building, they use the company, Waste Management.

They are the largest waste collecting company in North America. They own 22,000 collection trucks. They own the largest network of landfills in the industry. They have tons of transfer stations to efficiently manage our waste. They operate several renewable energy plants and yes, they own a bunch of recycling centers. Our good friend, Mario, the elevator operator was right. We use a service called Single-Stream Recycling:

“WM Recycle America is focused on making it easier for people to recycle – whether home or at work. In 2001, Waste Management became the first major solid waste company to focus on residential single-stream recycling, which allows customers to mix recyclable paper, plastic and glass in ONE BIN. Residential single-stream programs have greatly increased the recycling rates, recovering as much as three times the amount of recyclable materials. In fact, we opened our first single-stream plant in the late 1990’s.

Single-stream recycling is made possible through the use of various mechanized screens and optical sorting technologies. With single-stream recycling well under way in residential applications, Waste Management is advancing the same easy recycling programs for other commercial applications”

So we pay a little extra, but it is 3x more effective than separating our recyclables? Is this the future? No more bins?

Waste Managements seems to be an all around, great company. Check out their awesome site, Think Green. They have a great video here, showing their recycling facilities.

I also love this video showing a pear rotting and the gasses being converted to energy.

Great Site. Neat Videos. Very cool.

This has led me to question how the city is managing all it’s waste. Why don’t we have recycling bins on every corner? Do they also sort our trash? If you’ve read my previous post on the Subway trash, you know that is also managed privately through the MTA. So, what is with Department of Sanitation? What are they doing with all our trash?
I’m still digging….details to come shortly.

Until then, keep sorting!
(Unless someone else is doing it for you!)
n