The dog days of summer will be a little bit greener this year, at least in Chicago at Wrigley Field.
Cubs fans have a lot to be proud of. Their team has taken on recycling in a big way.
Their new “Real Fans Recycle” campaign asks fans to help divert aaround 165,000 pounds of plastic and cardboard from landfills. This season, vendors at Wrigley Field will use compostable plates and cutlery, and plastic drink cups and napkins that are made from recycled content
Fans will see ushers nd event staff sporting cool “Real Fans Recycle” shirts made from 100% recycled material, including recycled PET plastic from which Wrigley Field beverage cups are made.
The emblazoned shirts are sponsored by Solo [...]
Chicago Cubs to fans: let’s recycle!
Two eco-friendly ways to keep baby comfortable
Chafing and diaper rash are par for the course with babies. Moms deal with these using whatever ointments and powders were available.
With growing concerns about harmful chemicals and toxins in baby products, it’s nice to know there are eco-friendly choices that help keep babies dry and comfortable.
In 2009, Elements Naturals introduced their 100% Natural & Compostable Baby Wipes. They’re made from a man-made plant-based fiber called Ingeo, a patented product developed by Nature Works.
Linda Naerheim, CEO and co-founder of Elements Naturals LLC, says she was shocked to discover that what was considered “natural” out there in baby wipes really wasn’t. Those “natural” products used latex and petroleum by-products, the same materials [...]
Wal-Mart teams up with TerraCycle for Earth Month
Wal-Mart has been moving to make their stores – and their suppliers – more green.
Now, for the month of April to honor the 40th anniversary of Earth Month, they’ve partnered with TerraCycle to create an “Earth Zone” in stores across the country.
TerraCycle, a New Jersey-based company, collects waste packaging from over 60,000 schools and community groups nationwide and “upcycles” them into new, useful products.
A “zone” at the front of each participating store will have displays filled with eco-friendly products. They’ll feature around 40 of TerraCycle’s repurposed products alongside the original products they were made from.
These products include:
tote bags made from Frito-Lay wrappers displayed alongside bags of Frito-Lay chips
backpacks made from Capri [...]
Millions of pounds of commercial flooring diverted from landfills
Last year Resource Commercial Flooring Network members diverted an astonishing 6.8 million pounds of carpet and carpet waste from landfills.
By reducing and sometimes eliminating waste in carpet projects, through their ReSource initiative, Ecolect™ (their national material collection and recycle program), members promote sustainable business practices. They recommend effective, sustainable methods for reclaiming material, diverting it from landfills across the country.
ReSource members diverted 1.7 million pounds of carpet waste from landfills in 2008. This year´s goal is 5 million pounds. Given what they accomplished in 2009, that goal definitely needs to be raised!
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New kit will help keep pharmaceuticals out of our water
On March 10, 2008, MSNBC’s website read:
“Pharmaceuticals lurking in U.S. drinking water … AP probe found traces of meds in water supplies of 41 million Americans”
More stories have since revealed how extensive the problem’s become. The real ramifications of prescription drugs in the water we drink hasn’t been fully determined but this news is certainly enough to scare the heck out of most of us.
Leave it to the ingenuity of a pharmacist and an engineer to come up with a viable solution.
Chemical engineer John Heaton and pharmacist Brian Deryck have formed start-up company RXDisposal Solutions LLC in Uniontown, Ohio. Its pharmaceutical disposal system turns discarded drugs into an insoluble solid mass that Heaton says will prevent chemical leaching into groundwater supplies.
Wastewater facilities have no way of [...]
Website helps schools (and teachers) help kids
In this economy, everyone’s belt tightening. Education’s been squeezed to a choking point, with teachers getting creative to find resources for students.
In 2007, teachers’ out-of-pocket expenses totaled $1,7 billion a year. Nationally, the the average teacher spends around $500 out of pocket annually. An American Federation of Teachers survey found that out of 4,618 teachers, first-year teachers personally spent about $700 for students’ school supplies.
Any other employee in a company doesn’t do that, says Jerry Hall, Executive Director of iLoveSchools.com, which matches teachers, schools and school districts with individual, group and corporate donors.
They’re the only national website that handles new, used & in-kind stuff, he says. “In-kind” means anything a [...]
Scotland Yard recycles weapons for the London Olympics
Scotland Yard is giving the biblical phrase “swords into plowshares” a new twist.
Usng a unique recycling method, the famed British constabulary is turning the metal from unwanted weaponry into something useful. 52 tons of scrap metal from guns, knives, keys and other assorted metal objects will be melted to be used to make steel girders for bridges and buildings, and used in cars and trains. Another 3.3 million used bullets have been collected by the metropolitan police force which will be used as part of London’s 2012 Olympic site in East London.
All told, the force collected 3,182 tons of waste in 2009. Bullet casings made up of lead, brass and aluminum have been used to make jewelry and photo frames.
The staff of Scotland Yard has [...]
TerraCycle to recycle diaper packaging
The company that created a world-famous organic fertilizer from worm poop and has ”re-purposed” discarded product packaging is at it again.
TerraCycle created their Drink Brigade program two years ago, Since then, they’ve taken product packaging waste like candy and cookie wrappers and used drink pouches that would have ended up in landfills and given them a second life as lunchboxes, binders and portable speakers. They recently partnered with Kraft Foods UK to turn Kenco brand product packaging into frames, book covers and satchels.
Now TerraCycle has expanded again, this time partnering with paper goods company Kimberly-Clark- maker of Huggies brand diapers – to turn that product’s plastic waste into something useful. TerraCycle will”upcycle” the discarded plastic, creating new diaper bags. Keeping with their practice of creating [...]
Eli Lilly achieves energy efficiency goals 2 years early
Eli Lilly and Company, a worldwide pharmaceutical company, has reached and surpassed their energy reduction goals two years ahead of schedule.
Although the reductions are modest – cutting absolute greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 4.4 percent, cutting absolute energy use by 5.8 percent from 2004 to 2008 – Lilly did improve their energy use per dollar of sales by 35 percent.
Lilly has set a new goal of reducing GHG emissions by 15 percent by2013, which will cut CO2 emissions by nearly 340,000 metric tons per year.
Lilly’s continuing environmental efforts on a variety of fronts include:
reducing water intake 25 percent by 2013
reducing waste disposed in landfills by 40 percent by 2013
Both are compared to a [...]
State cracks down on plastic in landfills
Tomorrow, it will be illegal to dump plastic bottles into North Carolina landfills. The new law – passed in 2005 - also bans wooden pallets and oil filters from reaching landfills.
A press release from the city of Greensboro, N.C. says almost four of every five plastic soda containers, water bottles, milk jugs and detergent bottles — almost 288 million pounds of plastic — are thrown away in North Carolina every year. Recycling all the plastic bottles used in the state would keep more than 2.4 billion plastic bottles out of landfills annually.
Seems like North Carolina’s ahead of the crowd. They already ban scrap rubber and aluminum cans from the solid waste stream. This new law is designed to promote increased recycling and to [...]