1) http://www.cpmfg.com/2012/04/11/the-best-recycling-programs-in-the-us-around-the-world-infographic/
2) 11 Facts About Recycling
1. The average person
generates over 4 pounds of trash every day and about 1.5 tons of solid waste
per year.
2. In 2009, Americans
produced enough trash to circle the Earth 24 times.
3. Over 75% of waste is
recyclable, but we only recycle about 30% of it.
4. We generate 21.5 million
tons of food waste each year. If we composted that food, it would reduce the
same amount of greenhouse gas as taking 2 million cars off the road.
5. Recycling one aluminum can
saves enough energy to listen to a full album on your iPod.
6. Recycling 100 cans could
light your bedroom for two whole weeks.
7. Recycling aluminum cans
saves 95% of the energy used to make alum cans from new material.
8.Americans throw away
25,000,000 plastic bottles every hour.
9..Over 87% of Americans have
access to curbside or drop-off paper recycling programs.
10. In 2009, Americans threw
away almost 9 million tons of glass. That could fill enough tractor trailers to
stretch from NYC to LA (and back!).
11. In 2010, paper recycling
had increased over 89% since 1990.If every American recycled just one-tenth of
their newspapers, we could save about 25 million trees each year.
3) How Do Japanese Dump Trash? Let Us Count the Myriad Ways
By NORIMITSU ONISHI
Published: May 12, 2005
Ko Sasaki for The New York
Times
In Yokohama ,
trash that escapes recycling is put in transparent bags and loaded into trucks
for incineration.
Everything in Its Place
Ko Sasaki for The New York
TimesSocks? If only one, it is burnable; a pair goes into used cloth, though only if the socks "are not torn, and the left and right sock match." Throw neckties into used cloth, but only after they have been "washed and dried."
"It was so hard at first," said Sumie Uchiki, 65, whose ward began wrestling with the 10 categories last October as part of an early trial. "We were just not used to it. I even needed to wear my reading glasses to sort out things correctly."
To Americans struggling with sorting trash into a few categories,
Indeed,
In
The environmentally friendlier process of sorting and recycling may be more expensive than dumping, experts say, but it is comparable in cost to incineration.
"Sorting trash is not necessarily more expensive than incineration," said Hideki Kidohshi, a garbage researcher at the Center for the Strategy of Emergence at the Japan Research Institute. "In
For
In the last four years, Kamikatsu has halved the amount of incinerator-bound garbage and raised its recycled waste to 80 percent, town officials said. Each household now has a subsidized garbage disposal unit that recycles raw garbage into compost.
At the single Garbage Station where residents must take their trash, 44 bins collect everything from tofu containers to egg cartons, plastic bottle caps to disposable chopsticks, fluorescent tubes to futons.
On a recent morning, Masaharu Tokimoto, 76, drove his pick-up truck to the station and expertly put brown bottles in their proper bin, clear bottles in theirs. He looked at the labels on cans to determine whether they were aluminum or steel. Flummoxed about one item, he stood paralyzed for a minute before mumbling to himself, "This must be inside."
Some 15 minutes later, Mr. Tokimoto was done. The town had gotten much cleaner with the new garbage policy, he said, though he added: "It's a bother, but I can't throw away the trash in the mountains. It would be a violation."
In towns and villages where everybody knows one another, not sorting may be unthinkable. In cities, though, not everybody complies, and perhaps more than any other act, sorting out the trash properly is regarded as proof that one is a grown-up, responsible citizen. The young, especially bachelors, are notorious for not sorting. And landlords reluctant to rent to non-Japanese will often explain that foreigners just cannot - or will not - sort their trash.
In
"So we stopped putting garbage bins in the parks," said Masaki Fujihira, who oversees the promotion of trash sorting at
Enter the garbage guardians, the army of hawk-eyed volunteers across
One of the most tenacious around here is Mitsuharu Taniyama, 60, the owner of a small insurance business who drives around his ward every morning and evening, looking for missorted trash. He leaves notices at collection sites: "Mr. So-and-so, your practice of sorting out garbage is wrong. Please correct it."
"I checked inside bags and took especially lousy ones back to the owners' front doors," Mr. Taniyama said.
He stopped in front of one messy location where five bags were scattered about, and crows had picked out orange peels from one.
"This is a typical example of bad garbage," Mr. Taniyama said, with disgust. "The problem at this location is that there is no community leader. If there is no strong leader, there is chaos."
He touched base with his lieutenants in the field. On the corner of a street with large houses, where the new policy went into effect last October, Yumiko Miyano, 56, was waiting with some neighbors.
Ms. Miyano said she now had 90 percent compliance, adding that, to her surprise, those resisting tended to be "intellectuals," like a certain university professor or an official at Japan Airlines up the block.
"But the husband is the problem - the wife sorts her trash properly," one neighbor said of the airlines family.
Getting used to the new system was not without its embarrassing moments.
Shizuka Gu, 53, said that early on, a community leader sent her a letter reprimanding her for not writing her identification number on the bag with a "thick felt-tip pen." She was chided for using a pen that was "too thin."
"It was a big shock to be told that I had done something wrong," Ms. Gu said. "So I couldn't bring myself to take out the trash here and asked my husband to take it to his office. We did that for one month."
At a 100-family apartment complex not too far away, Sumishi Kawai was keeping his eyes trained on the trash site before pickup. Missorting was easy to spot, given the required use of clear garbage bags with identification numbers. Compliance was perfect - almost.
One young couple consistently failed to properly sort their trash. "Sorry! We'll be careful!" they would say each time Mr. Kawai knocked on their door holding evidence of their transgressions.
At last, even Mr. Kawai - a small 77-year-old man with wispy white hair, an easy smile and a demeanor that can only be described as grandfatherly - could take no more.
"They were renting the apartment, so I asked the owner, 'Well, would it be possible to have them move?' " Mr. Kawai said, recalling, with undisguised satisfaction, that the couple was evicted two months ago.
4) The world's 10 craziest recycling programs
Tuesday, April 22, 2008 - 2:36pm
1. Green Gums: Fake Chompers
Equal Real Pay Day
The Japan Society for the Recycling of Dentures has embarked
on a plan to make your fake chompers pay off after you’ve discarded them.
Inspired by the efforts of 63-year-old Isao Miyoshi, the program is designed to
collect old dentures and extract the embedded silver, gold and palladium
housings, yielding an average of 3,000 yen (about $30) per set. According to
the JSRD, 80% of the proceeds go to the Japan branch of UNICEF. In the first
two months of the program, Miyoshi earned enough to donate over $10,000 to
UNICEF, ultimately proving that mining the old gums of the elderly isn’t just
environmentally green, but could end up putting a heap of green in your pocket
as well.
Via Inventor
Spot
2. Concealed Weapon: Japanese To
Start Packing Chopsticks
A new initiative has emerged from the halls of
3. Asahi Beer: Good For Ails Ya
Believe it or not, the next sip of Japanese beer you take could, in a roundabout way, save a life. Asahi beer isn’t just the most internationally recognizable of
4. Möbius Trash Strip: Faux
Recycling For Show
The
5. Save The Gorilla, Save The
World
A little-known fact about cellphones is that their construction often relies on a metal known as coltan. According to numerous reports, the mining of coltan ore is responsible for the 70% decrease in
6. Sweat And Urine Cocktails
Coming To A Space Station Near You
Anyone dreaming of one day becoming an astronaut should be aware that space flight is not for the squeamish. The Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama has been researching and testing a method that would allow astronauts to obtain their water needs via the recycling of sweat and urine waste (think: the Stillsuits worn by the Fremen in Dune). Yum! But the system isn’t just focused on outer space; the charity organization Concern 4 Kids also hopes to bring the water-recycling technology to impoverished regions of the world. The technology, pushed forward by Hamilton Sundstrand, could turn out to be the most important recycling innovation ever, assuming we can pretend we don’t know where our water has been.
7. Is That A Condom In Your
Hair, Or Are You Just Happy To See Me?
Filed under “recycled items you should never put on your head” comes news that condoms are being recycled in
8. California
9. Crushed Glass Beach
10. Scientist Hopes To Use Poop
To Grow Your Space Food
Masamichi Yamashita, a researcher at Japan’s Institute of Space and Astronautical Science, recently held a lecture directed to his peers on the merits of recycling human waste to feed spacefarers. At the 36th Assembly of the Committee on Space Research (COSPAR) in
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