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Sixstepstosavingmoneyandred
Seattle Public Utilities’ Resource Venture program provides free assistance to help Seattle-area businesses lower utility costs, obtain rebates, comply with regulations and receive public recognition, all while protecting the environment. Contact us today for assistance! Email: [email protected] Phone: (206) 343-8505 The Seattle Business Recycling Guide is designed to lead your business through six easy steps that save money by reducing waste. This guide provides information about regulations, free resources, helpful links, and success stories from area businesses. Read on to get started today! Recycling is good business Cost savings and efficiency: Commercial recycling and compost services can save you 30-50 percent on your garbage service bill. Reducing garbage service immediately saves your business money. Customer/employee demand: Customers increasingly want to support ‘green’ businesses, and 82 percent of American adults say they are aware of a business’s green practices.1 Recycling and waste reduction practices are some of the most visible ways to demonstrate your commitment to green practices. Compliance: The City of Seattle prohibits businesses from putting recyclables such as cardboard, paper, yard debris, and selected construction materials in the garbage.2 The City also bans certain materials, such as Styrofoam™ and single-use plastic bags, from being given out to customers. Creating effective recycling programs for these materials will help ensure your business is in compliance and avoids fines. Environment: Businesses have a substantial impact on climate change through everyday activities. The U.S. EPA has estimated that the full life cycle of materials – from sourcing to use and disposal – makes up nearly half of our collective carbon footprint.3 By adopting waste reduction practices, business can lower their greenhouse gas emissions, create less pollution, and support a healthier community.4 Economy and jobs: Recycling protects and expands U.S. -
A Guide to Recycling, Waste Management and Resource Productivity for Business CONTENTS
LIFTING THE LID ON WASTE A guide to recycling, waste management and resource productivity for business CONTENTS • FOREWORDS 4 • SETTING THE SCENE 6 • FROM CLIMATE CHANGE TO EMPLOYMENT –THE IMPORTANCE OF TURNING WASTE INTO WEALTH 11 • HOW WILL YOU BENEFIT FROM TURNING WASTE INTO WEALTH? 12 • TURNING YOUR WASTE INTO WEALTH: QUESTIONS, ACTIONS AND STORIES 19 • A BUSINESS GUIDE FOR GREATER RESOURCE PRODUCTIVITY AND RESPONSIBLE WASTE MANAGEMENT 23 • CONCLUSION 33 • ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 35 • ENDNOTES 36 LIFTING THE LID ON WASTE: A GUIDE TO RECYCLING, WASTE MANAGEMENT AND RESOURCE PRODUCTIVITY FOR BUSINESS This guide sets out the opportunities that rethinking resource and waste transformation can bring, explaining how to eliminate avoidable waste and turn ‘waste’ into ‘wealth’. For any business that recognises its responsibility to change, this is the starting place. CAMPAIGNING TO ELIMINATE WASTE The Lifting the Lid on Waste Guide aims to help everyone involved with material resources and Business in the Community’s Waste to Wealth waste – landlords, tenants, property managers, campaign brings together business, facilities managers, procurement teams and government, academia and civil society to employees – to understand how to eliminate unlock opportunities to double the nation’s avoidable waste and turn any ‘waste’ created resource productivity and eliminate avoidable by your business into ‘wealth’ through waste by 2030. Over 160 organisations have reduction, reuse and recycling. It focuses already joined the campaign by signing up to specifically on reducing and better managing the Waste to Wealth Commitment1 or becoming waste as part of a wider circular economy our Waste to Wealth Partners. strategy, recognising that waste is value leaking from our economy. -
Workplace Recycling
SETTING UP Workplace Recycling 1 Form a Enlist a group of employees interested in recycling and waste prevention to set up and monitor collection systems Recycling Team to ensure ongoing success. This is a great team-building exercise and can positively impact employee morale as well as the environment. 2 Determine Customize your recycling program based on your business. Consider performing a waste audit or take inventory of materials the kinds of materials in your trash & recycling. to recycle Commonly recycled business items: Single-Stream Recycling • Aluminum & tin cans; plastic & glass bottles • Office paper, newspaper, cardboard • Magazines, catalogs, file folders, shredded paper 3 Contact Find out if recycling services are already in place. If not, ask the facility or property manager to set them up. Point your facility out that in today’s environment, employees expect to recycle at work and that recycling can potentially reduce costs. If recycling is currently provided, check with the manager to make sure good recycling education materials or property are available to all employees. This will help employees to recycle right, improve the quality of recyclable materials, manager and increase recycling participation. 4 Coordinate Work station recycling containers – Provide durable work station recycling containers or re-use existing training containers like copy paper boxes. Make recycling available at each work station. with the Click: Get-Started-Recycling-w_glass or Get-Started-Recycling-without-glass to print recycling container labels. Label your trash containers as well: Get-Started-Trash-with-food waste or janitorial crew Get-Started-Trash -no-food waste. and/or staff Central area containers – Evaluate the type and size of containers for common areas like conference rooms, hallways, reception areas, and cafes, based on volume, location, and usage. -
Waste Management
Environment Committee Waste management The Environment Committee is investigating aspects of London’s waste generation, handling and disposal, to inform the development of work under the Mayor’s Environment Strategy and other policies. The three aspects for particular focus are: • Waste reduction and the circular economy • Recycling • Energy from waste The investigation will seek to build on past work of the committee and identify recommendations to the Mayor and perhaps other London actors. Background London generates a huge amount of waste (about 20 million tonnes in 20101), of many types from earth and cement to plastics, paper and organic material. The main destinations for London’s bulk waste are recycling, incineration as fuel to generate electricity and/or heat buildings, and landfill. Of course the amount of waste to manage can be reduced by using less material in the first place, or by passing goods on to another user, rather than discarding them with the rubbish. The waste hierarchy The ‘waste hierarchy’ places these alternatives in a preferred order based on their environmental and quality of life impacts. 1 Of which, nearly half was construction, demolition and excavation waste (CDE), nearly a third commercial and industrial waste, with municipal (mainly household) waste only 20%. Most CDE waste is re-used or recycled in some form; municipal waste has the lowest recycling rate and the highest landfill. Data from the (previous) Mayor’s Business Waste Strategy https://www.london.gov.uk/what-we-do/environment/environment-publications/mayors-business-waste-management- strategy (see p25) and Municipal Waste Strategy https://www.london.gov.uk/sites/default/files/municipal_waste_final.pdf (see p26) Page 1 of 11 Environment Committee Waste management Since 2000, landfill (at the bottom of the hierarchy) has reduced considerably, but in recent years waste reduction and recycling (high to medium in the hierarchy) have stagnated and further waste diverted from landfill has instead shifted to incineration (low in the hierarchy). -
What Is Nonpoint Source Pollution?
What is Nonpoint Source Pollution? Nonpoint Source Pollution, or people pollution, is a contamination of our ground water, waterways, and ocean that results from everyday activities such as fertilizing the lawn, walking pets, changing motor oil and littering. With each rainfall, pollutants generated by these activities are washed into storm drains that flow into our waterways and ocean. They also can soak into the ground contaminating the ground water below. Each one of us, whether we know it or not, contributes to nonpoint source pollution through our daily activities. As a result, nonpoint source pollution is the BIGGEST threat to many of our ponds, creeks, lakes, wells, streams, rivers and bays, our ground water and the ocean. The collective impact of nonpoint source pollution threatens aquatic and marine life, recreational water activities, the fishing industry, tourism and our precious drinking water resources. Ultimately, the cost becomes the burden of every New Jersey resident. But there's good news - in our everyday activities we can stop nonpoint source pollution and keep our environment clean. Simple changes in YOUR daily lifestyle can make a tremendous difference in the quality of New Jersey's water resources. Here are just a few ways you can reduce nonpoint source pollution. LITTER: Place litter, including cigarette butts and fast food containers, in trash receptacles. Never throw litter in streets or down storm drains. Recycle as much as possible. FERTILIZERS: Fertilizers contain nitrates and phosphates that, in abundance, cause blooms of algae that can lead to fish kills. Avoid the overuse of fertilizers and do not apply them before a heavy rainfall. -
Chapter 7: Waste LONDON ENVIRONMENT STRATEGY 253
LONDON ENVIRONMENT STRATEGY 251 Chapter 7: Waste LONDON ENVIRONMENT STRATEGY 253 INTRODUCTION Cutting waste and recovering value • once waste reduction and reuse AIM from more of it can provide a number of opportunities have been exhausted Our linear economy (take, make and benefits including jobs, apprenticeships, there must be a focus on maximising London will be dispose) is unsustainable. It produces secondary materials, and affordable the recycling of materials that are left too much waste, with around 7m tonnes low carbon energy. Effective waste a zero waste coming from London’s homes, public management delivering high quality • generating low carbon energy from buildings and businesses each year, materials to market can give local truly residual waste leaving very little city. By 2026 no too much of which goes to landfill and authorities a reliable high value income waste going to landfill incineration. Of this, only 52 per cent is stream. This can help to offset costs biodegradable or currently recycled and performance has associated with service improvements. • ensuring that there is sufficient stagnated. Landfill and incineration are More of London’s reusable items infrastructure to support these recyclable waste undesirable, costly and an inefficient use like furniture, fittings and electrical actions within London helping to of resources. The capacity of landfills appliances need to be kept in use. create opportunities for businesses will be sent to accepting London’s waste is expected Redistributing them to where they developing reuse, repair and to run out by 2026 and London’s waste are needed can create local work, remanufacturing services landfill and by 2030 bill is now in in excess of £2bn a year keep resource costs down and help and rising. -
Litter Decomposition on Directly Revegetated Tailings at the Kidston Gold Mine, North Queensland, Australia1
LITTER DECOMPOSITION ON DIRECTLY REVEGETATED TAILINGS AT THE KIDSTON GOLD MINE, NORTH QUEENSLAND, AUSTRALIA1 Andrew H. Grigg2 Abstract. An investigation of litter decomposition was undertaken at the Kidston Gold Mine in north Queensland, Australia with the aim of assessing the status of nutrient cycling capacity on a directly-revegetated tailings dam. Weight losses from leaf litter contained in litterbags placed in a 5-year old revegetated section of the dam were not significantly different from losses observed at two unmined reference sites over the 18 month study period, representing a rapid improvement in nutrient cycling capacity in the reconstructed ecosystem. However, fitted decay curves for each site predicted a slower decay constant and a longer litter half-life on the dam, which indicated that full pre-mining capability had not yet been achieved. Weight loss in the reconstructed system was most constrained by the low build-up of microbial biomass within the surface soil, which is expected to take at least 10 years to achieve pre-mining levels. In contrast, weight losses in the unmined sites appeared more related to the abundance of invertebrate fauna rather than microbial content. The results presented here of a developing system suggest that the importance of different factors affecting decomposition will reflect those that are most limiting over the course of ecosystem recovery. Additional Key Words: nutrient cycling, ecosystem recovery, microbial biomass, invertebrates. _____________________ 1Paper presented at the 2002 National Meeting of the American Society of Mining and Reclamation, Lexington KY, June 9-13, 2002. Published by ASMR, 3134 Montavesta Rd., Lexington, KY 40502. -
ANIMAL AGRICULTURE: Waste Management Practices GAO/RCED-99-205
United States General Accounting Office Report to the Honorable Tom Harkin, GAO Ranking Minority Member, Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry, U.S. Senate July 1999 ANIMAL AGRICULTURE Waste Management Practices GAO/RCED-99-205 United States General Accounting Office GAO Washington, D.C. 20548 Resources, Community, and Economic Development Division B-282871 July 26, 1999 The Honorable Tom Harkin Ranking Minority Member Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry United States Senate Dear Senator Harkin: The production of livestock and poultry animals, also known as animal agriculture, is important to the economic well-being of the nation, producing $98.8 billion per year in farm revenue. This production also contributes to the viability of many rural communities and the sustainability of an adequate food supply for the American public. However, concern over pollution resulting from intensive livestock and poultry production—in which large numbers of animals are held in confined production facilities—has increased in recent years. Nationwide, about 130 times more animal waste1 is produced than human waste—roughly 5 tons for every U.S. citizen—and some operations with hundreds of thousands of animals produce as much waste as a town or a city.2 These large volumes of waste threaten surface water and groundwater quality in the event of waste spills, leakage from waste storage facilities, and runoff from fields on which an excessive amount of waste has been applied as fertilizer. Furthermore, as animal production is increasingly concentrated in larger operations and in certain regions of the country, commonly used animal waste management practices may no longer be adequate for preventing water pollution. -
Marine Litter Legislation: a Toolkit for Policymakers
Marine Litter Legislation: A Toolkit for Policymakers The views expressed in this publication are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations Environment Programme. No use of this publication may be made for resale or any other commercial purpose whatsoever without prior permission in writing from the United Nations Environment Programme. Applications for such permission, with a statement of the purpose and extent of the reproduction, should be addressed to the Director, DCPI, UNEP, P.O. Box 30552, Nairobi, Kenya. Acknowledgments This report was developed by the Environmental Law Institute (ELI) for the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). It was researched, drafted, and produced by Carl Bruch, Kathryn Mengerink, Elana Harrison, Davonne Flanagan, Isabel Carey, Thomas Casey, Meggan Davis, Elizabeth Hessami, Joyce Lombardi, Norka Michel- en, Colin Parts, Lucas Rhodes, Nikita West, and Sofia Yazykova. Within UNEP, Heidi Savelli, Arnold Kreilhuber, and Petter Malvik oversaw the development of the report. The authors express their appreciation to the peer reviewers, including Catherine Ayres, Patricia Beneke, Angela Howe, Ileana Lopez, Lara Ognibene, David Vander Zwaag, and Judith Wehrli. Cover photo: Plastics floating in the ocean The views expressed in this report do not necessarily reflect those of the United Nations Environment Programme. © 2016. United Nations Environment Programme. Marine Litter Legislation: A Toolkit for Policymakers Contents Foreword .................................................................................................. -
Executive Summary: Litter in America
executive summary: litter in america 2009 national litter research findings and recommendations EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Litter in America: National Findings and Recommendations P. Wesley Schultz, California State University Steven R. Stein, Environmental Resources Planning LLC Keep America Beautiful (KAB) is a non-profit organization dedicated to community improvement through litter prevention, waste reduction/recycling, and beautification. KAB was founded in 1953 and has grown into the nation’s leading community involvement organization, with more than 1,200 local affiliates and participating organizations. Much of the litter prevention work completed by KAB and its affiliates is based on seminal research conducted in the 1960s and 1970s about the sources and causes of litter. In an effort to update and advance the research foundation for their litter prevention activities, KAB funded a series of studies in 2008 and 2009 with financial support from Philip Morris USA, an Altria Company. These studies focused on two broad topics: litter and littering behavior. With regard to litter, the research team explored the composition of litter across America: its volume, locations and costs to local communities and businesses. With regard to littering behavior, the research team explored how often people litter, the individual and contextual variables that contribute to littering, and the effectiveness of various approaches to reducing littering rates. Technical reports from these two sets of studies are available through the KAB website (www.kab.org/research09). In this integrated executive summary, we summarize the basic methodology and results from the two funded studies, highlight key findings, and offer recommendations for ways to integrate these findings into litter prevention activities. -
III . Waste Management
III. WASTE MANAGEMENT Economic growth, urbanisation and industrialisation result in increasing volumes and varieties of both solid and hazardous wastes. Globalisation can aggravate waste problems through grow ing international waste trade, with developing countries often at the receiving end. Besides negative impacts on health as well as increased pollution of air, land and water, ineffective and inefficient waste management results in greenhouse gas and toxic emissions, and the loss of precious materials and resources. Pollution is nothing but An integrated waste management approach is a crucial part of interna- the resources we are not harvesting. tional and national sustainable development strategies. In a life-cycle per- We allow them to disperse spective, waste prevention and minimization generally have priority. The because we’ve been remaining solid and hazardous wastes need to be managed with effective and efficient measures, including improved reuse, recycling and recovery ignorant of their value. of useful materials and energy. — R. Buckminster Fuller The 3R concept (Reduce, Reuse, Recycle) encapsulates well this life-cycle Scientist (1895–1983) approach to waste. WASTE MANAGEMENT << 26 >> Hazardous waste A growing share of municipal waste contains hazardous electronic or electric products. In Europe ewaste is increasing by 3–5 per Hazardous waste, owing to its toxic, infectious, radioactive or flammable cent per year. properties, poses an actual or potential hazard to the health of humans, other living organisms, or the environment. According to UNEP, some 20 to 50 million metric tonnes of e-waste are generated worldwide every year. Other estimates expect computers, No data on hazardous waste generation are available for most African, mobile telephones and television to contribute 5.5 million tonnes to Middle Eastern and Latin American countries. -
Waste Management
10 Waste Management Coordinating Lead Authors: Jean Bogner (USA) Lead Authors: Mohammed Abdelrafie Ahmed (Sudan), Cristobal Diaz (Cuba), Andre Faaij (The Netherlands), Qingxian Gao (China), Seiji Hashimoto (Japan), Katarina Mareckova (Slovakia), Riitta Pipatti (Finland), Tianzhu Zhang (China) Contributing Authors: Luis Diaz (USA), Peter Kjeldsen (Denmark), Suvi Monni (Finland) Review Editors: Robert Gregory (UK), R.T.M. Sutamihardja (Indonesia) This chapter should be cited as: Bogner, J., M. Abdelrafie Ahmed, C. Diaz, A. Faaij, Q. Gao, S. Hashimoto, K. Mareckova, R. Pipatti, T. Zhang, Waste Management, In Climate Change 2007: Mitigation. Contribution of Working Group III to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [B. Metz, O.R. Davidson, P.R. Bosch, R. Dave, L.A. Meyer (eds)], Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, United Kingdom and New York, NY, USA. Waste Management Chapter 10 Table of Contents Executive Summary ................................................. 587 10.5 Policies and measures: waste management and climate ....................................................... 607 10.1 Introduction .................................................... 588 10.5.1 Reducing landfill CH4 emissions .......................607 10.2 Status of the waste management sector ..... 591 10.5.2 Incineration and other thermal processes for waste-to-energy ...............................................608 10.2.1 Waste generation ............................................591 10.5.3 Waste minimization, re-use and