Imagine going on vacation and walking on a beautiful, warm Caribbean beach. All seems serene and calm, until a huge patch of plastic waste is found, only for an endless amount of plastic water bottles, plastic bags, straws and other plastic waste to be found as further investigation is taken. Unfortunately, this tragic occurrence is a reality that has become increasingly common along the shores of the Caribbean islands. As stated by the British Broadcasting Company, the United Kingdom alone uses approximately 13 billion plastic water bottles each year, of which only over 3 billion are recycled. That leaves a whopping 10 billion plastic water bottles placed either directly into landfills or discarded as litter which affects local habitats. According to Marine Insight, people around the world throw away a total of 4 million tons of trash a day, of which 12.8 percent is plastic. This number adds up to approximately 186 million tons of plastic simply thrown away each year — a staggering amount of plastic that ends up in landfills and damages entire ecosystems. Unfortunately, the damage of plastic not only affects the Caribbean, but also our local beaches and other natural environments. Plastic water bottles, bags and straws are just a fraction of the waste that washes up on our shores. When asked how plastic affects local ecosystems around Rider,  Jordan Dreyer, a sophomore film, TV and radio major said, “Although it may not be thought of by everyone, the plastic that is thrown away ends up somewhere on earth. The pollution that plastic creates ends up destroying the habitats of the plants and animals around us, all of which are important in keeping the balance of the ecosystem.” While it does seem rather grim sometimes with the rapid increase of plastic waste around the world, there are a plethora of organizations that have been created to not only help recycle more plastic, but to make people more aware of the harmful effects of plastic. One of these organizations is RecycleMania, an eight-week competition with colleges from around the country who compete to see which institutions can to recycle the most. Rider’s very own office of sustainability is doing its part in this competition. When asked how people could become more conscientious with their plastic use, Brennan Zelenski, a junior accounting major, said, “People should be sure to recycle not only their plastic water bottles, but their everyday items such as body wash and shampoo containers. If everyone were to encourage recycling, plastic pollution would not be as much of a problem as it is today.” Thankfully, Rider’s Office of Sustainability also works with local recycling company Terracycle. The Terracycle Beauty Brigade was implemented to take students’ empty beauty and shower products so they could be recycled and transformed into entirely new products, creating zero waste in the process. While plastic pollution is a problem that affects all of the earth, there are so many organizations doing their parts to reduce plastic waste. All it takes is a bit of effort and care from everyone to preserve this beautiful planet that we call home and save it for many generations to come.

Concurso dará bônus para as instituições que mais coletarem instrumentos de escrita.

Além de premiar uma escola pública com centenas de materiais escolares, o concurso dará bônus para as instituições que mais coletarem instrumentos de escrita e enviarem gratuitamente para a reciclagem

Visitors to Middleburg might notice streets that aren’t as littered with cigarette butts as there were in previous years. Since last year, the town has encouraged smokers to dispose of their cigarette butts in special receptacles that it installed on the sides of trashcans along Washington, Federal and Marshall streets. The town’s maintenance department collects the butts and hands them over to the Go Green Committee to be shipped to TerraCycle, an international waste management company that has recycled nearly 58 tons of cigarette waste since 2012. Councilman Peter Leonard-Morgan, the committee’s Town Council liaison, said the initiative to clean the town’s streets of cigarette butts kicked off in spring 2017, after volunteers for the town’s bi-annual cleanup event reported finding hundreds of them in the roads, sidewalks, parking lots, bushes and storm drains. “By the time I was done picking all those up, I was kind of thoroughly grossed out,” said Lynne Kaye, the town’s sustainability consultant and a Go Green Committee volunteer. Kaye said that after that experience, she went online to find out more about the hazards of littered cigarette butts and came across TerraCycle’s recycling program. Following a trip to Niagara-on-the-Lake, Canada, where she noticed cigarette-recycling receptacles attached to trashcans, Kaye proposed a town partnership with TerraCycle—something George Mason University and Northern Virginia Community College are also doing. Last spring, the Town Council approved that partnership and the $2,135 purchase of 13tube-shaped receptacles, which measure a little more than a foot in height, attach to the sides of trashcans across town and were halfway funded by a Virginia Department of Environmental Quality Litter Prevention and Recycling Grant. Almost a year later, Middleburg’s cigarette butt recycling program is a well-oiled process that’s working to rid the town of potentially toxic cigarette filters, which are made of a non-biodegradable plastic that can contaminate the water system when washed into storm drains. According to the Clean Virginia Waterways nonprofit, one cigarette butt is enough to contaminate two gallons of water. “Once those cigarette butts get littered, they sort of never go away,” Kaye said. Twice a month, Maintenance Superintendent Tim Cole collects the butts from the receptacles and hands them to Leonard-Morgan, who sends them off to TerraCycle every few months. The company then separates the components. The paper and tobacco are composted into soil or fertilizer. The filters are melted into a hard plastic, which is distributed to different manufacturers to turn into products like shipping pallets, ashtrays and park benches. “It’s amazing what they can pull out of these little filters,” Leonard-Morgan said. TerraCycle publicist Alex Payne said that the town has sent in 7 pounds of cigarette butts. “This may not sound like much, but it’s fairly significant considering Middleburg’s size,” he said. Moving forward, Leonard-Morgan said that aside from the committee posting about the initiative on its Facebook and Instagram profiles, there’s not too much it can do to encourage smokers to stop snuffing their cigarette butts out on the ground, since the practice has virtually always been accepted in most societies. “It’s been happening for a hundred years,” he said. “It’s very hard to get people to stop doing that.” Kaye said that the town would work to attract more attention to the initiative and discuss with business owners the possibility of installing their own cigarette butt recycling receptacles. “The biggest challenge is getting people to use the receptacles,” she said. “We really want people to know they’re there and to use them.” pszabo@loudounnow.com  

Teton Valley Community Recycling is proud to announce our new centrally-located Recycling Education Center in the GeoTourism Center in downtown Driggs. Thanks to a generous grant from the Youth Philanthropy program of the Community Foundation of Teton Valley and to volunteers, Lee and Kristie Eggebroton. The new installation has a brochure rack with current events and recycling information and a “Recycling in Teton County” slide show which will always have the most up to date and accurate information for locals and for visitors. For those of you who have watched it, it is indeed true that our county does not recycle plastic food containers, grey board, magazines, and books. All of these items go to the landfill. The small collection bins at the transfer station are there to prevent people from contaminating the recyclable plastic bottles and corrugated cardboard. These other materials either don’t have any buyers or the County doesn’t have enough room to store them in dry bales (magazines.) So, go ahead and throw your plastic food containers and grey board in the trash and bring your books and magazines to neighboring counties. It will save you and the county a lot of unnecessary sorting. At the new Recycling Education Center, you will also find special seasonal recycling collections, including the annual denim drive, holiday light strings, and other specialty items. This mini-recycling center is also home to our popular TerraCycle collections where you can drop off your dental waste (toothpaste tubes, old toothbrushes, floss packaging), clean foil energy bar wrappers, clean cereal bags, contact lenses/blister packs, and other hard to recycle materials. This collection is separate from standard recycling as it gets shipped back to the manufacturers to recycle in bulk instead of ending up in the landfill. Thanks again to the Youth Philanthropy students from Teton High School for funding our Recycling Education Center.

Meanwhile, Subaru of America, Inc. announced this week that its dealerships across the US have recycled one million pieces of waste through the ongoing Subaru Loves the Earth recycling program, created in partnership with TerraCycle, a leader in the collection and repurposing of complex waste streams.   "This milestone means a lot to us at Subaru because it reinforces our belief that loving the environment means more than loving the great outdoors," said Alan Bethke, SVP of Marketing at Subaru of America, Inc. "Through our partnership with TerraCycle, in less than a year, more than 540 participating Subaru retailers located across the country have recycled more than one million pieces of waste. This partnership allows Subaru owners and the communities that our retailers serve to actively participate in preserving the environment and making the world a better place."   Utilizing TerraCycle's Zero Waste Box™ platform, participating Subaru retailers encourage customers, employees and community partners to recycle waste streams that are commonly thought of as hard-to-recycle, including snack wrappers; disposable cups and lids; and coffee, tea and creamer capsules. In addition, Subaru encouraged customers to also collect these waste streams at their home or office and bringing them into a local participating Subaru retailer.   The collected waste is then turned into useful, recycled products such as park benches, picnic tables, and playground materials, and donated to Subaru community partners. Subaru retailers can also view, and order products made from the recycled materials through an exclusive Subaru product-line, produced in conjunction with TerraCycle.   "At TerraCycle, we are committed to ensuring that waste continues to be diverted away from landfills and local communities," said CEO Tom Szaky. "Subaru not only shares that commitment but has taken it to the next level by spearheading a program that collects and recycles waste that they don't manufacture. Subaru is a model for other companies that want to give back and preserve the environment."   The partnership with TerraCycle's Zero Waste Box™ program is part of the larger Subaru Loves the Earth initiative, which is dedicated to preserving the environment. The automaker's commitment to preservation is one part of the Subaru Love Promise.  

If you’ve ever heard your older family members reminisce about days of old when milkmen used to deliver milk in reusable glass bottles every morning, imagining such a thing might seem kind of quaint and old timey. But those old-school milk deliveries were onto something when it comes to minimizing waste. In an effort to revive and update the grocery home delivery model, Loop, a new zero-waste consumer goods delivery platform, is launching this spring in the United States and France. This basically means that, come spring, you can get your groceries delivered in reusable packaging, and nothing gets thrown out. According to Adele Peters writing for Fast Company, once you’ve cleared out all your (super cute) stainless steel containers, you send them back to Loop, where they get cleaned, sterilized, and reused for other customers. According to the brand’s official website, Loop is partnering with a slew of top brands to make “your everyday essentials … available in durable, functional packaging that’s beautiful enough to display.” Instead of getting one box delivered every month, as is typical with delivery subscriptions, Loop will automatically resend items as you return your containers, so your supplies get replenished as you need them. It was not immediately apparent how the prices for these products will be different than buying them conventionally. Courtesy of Loop Given that plastics are filling up our oceans and destroying marine life while adding to massive levels of pollution worldwide, according to Danielle Wiener-Bronner writing for CNN, zero-waste consumer solutions come not a moment too soon. Tom Szaky, CEO and co-founder of Loop partner, TerraCycle, told Peters for Fast Company that “We run what is today the world’s largest supply chain on ocean plastic, collecting it and going into Unilever and Procter & Gamble products and so on. But every day, more and more gets put in the ocean, so no matter how much we clean the ocean, we’re never going to solve the problem. That’s really where Loop emerged: To us, the root cause of waste is not plastic, per se, it’s using things once, and that’s really what Loop tries to change as much as possible.” Courtesy of Loop Each reusable Loop package is designed to last for at least 100 uses, Peters wrote, and product orders can be placed via the Loop website once the platform is launched. Your products will get delivered in a UPS-designed reusable tote, and as you use your stuff up, just toss the canisters back into the tote. You’ll then be able to either drop off your Loop bag at your nearest UPS, or schedule a pick-up from the Loop site. If you’d like to queue up to get on the waitlist for the upcoming rollout, you can sign up on the website’s home page.   About 300 products are slated for launch via the Loop platform, Wiener-Bronner wrote for CNN, including Tide brand laundry detergent, Crest oral health supplies, Häagen-Dazs ice cream, Pantene shampoo, and Nature’s Path Organic items. Peters also wrote that eight out of 10 of the major brands listed by Greenpeace as being primary contributors to the global plastics crisis are on board as part of the new platform.   Given the overwhelming scale of the global plastics crisis, eco-friendly solutions that revamp the way companies do packaging, is long overdue as a mainstream concern.

Além de premiar uma escola pública com centenas de materiais escolares, o concurso dará bônus para as instituições que mais coletarem instrumentos de escrita e enviarem gratuitamente para a reciclagem

Can you imagine a world where the milkman still brings glass bottles of fresh dairy products to your doorstep and takes the empties back to be cleaned and reused? At first I was skeptical. But the more I think about it, the more I think the model can work. It doesn't have to be bad news for plastics processors. But it won't solve the industry's problems. Stay with me on this. Terracycle Inc. brought up the idea last month at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Terracycle is known for setting up recycling schemes for hard-to-recycle products, like cigarette butts and juice boxes. Some of the company's projects strike me as gimmicks, designed to take pressure off brand owners that sell unrecyclable products. At Davos, Terracycle announced a new service called Loop, which promises to use and collect reusable containers for a wide range of products. It's being touted as a replacement for single-use plastics packaging. Unilever plc and Procter & Gamble Co. are already signed up to participate, so expect to see products like refillable stainless steel deodorant sticks in select markets this spring. When I first read about Loop, I wondered how Unilever will sell deodorant packaged in stainless steel for the same price as product packaged in plastic. Not to mention the cost of picking up, cleaning and refilling the sticks. And if the price isn't the same, how many consumers will pay a premium for deodorant in stainless steel? It sounded like a gimmick. I was ready to write a column about the balance between convenience and sustainability and argue that convenience, which favors single-use plastics, will win. But the more I researched, the more I thought that this might be a few years ahead of its time, but it might work. After all, many consumers already get meal kits and groceries delivered to their doors. Why not encourage them to return the packaging through the same delivery system? There's no reason those vehicles have to return to the warehouse empty. Loop says it will use premium, durable packaging made from metal, glass and engineering plastics. If those are the choices, I like plastics' chances. Plastics have the edge when it comes to cost and carbon footprint. And when premium plastics containers have reached the end of their useful life span, they're easily recycled. All that said, Loop isn't going to solve the plastics industry's solid waste crisis. It's not going to collect fast food containers, cigarette butts or tampon applicators, which are among the most common trash items collected in beach cleanups. It's also not going to stop microplastics that come from laundering clothing. But it's a potentially encouraging development in what I expect will be a long effort to make consumers a little less comfortable with the idea of throwing away valuable plastics after only one use.