Starting an Office Recycling Program: How I Did It & How You Can Too

I recently took a full-time writing job and was surprised to learn there was no recycling program in place -- not only for my own office of 12 people, but for the dozens of offices in our building complex. When I brought it up during a weekly meeting, I was tasked with making it happen, which turned out to be no easy task at all.

Getting Started

My first step was contacting the City of Phoenix. As I learned, they do not provide recycling pick-up (or any waste services) to businesses. My contact there suggested my best bet was to go through whatever company currently picks up our trash. To find that out, I had to contact the management company of our office complex. That's when I really started to get a clear picture of just how challenging the implementation of an office recycling program could be.

There's only room for 4 bins in our office complex parking lot. So to install a recycling bin would mean getting rid of a regular trash bin. And since the management company operates at what she called a "zero operating budget" it may be something that would have to be put off until next year. It was a decision that would be up to the board of directors, and as luck would have it, a board meeting was coming up -- not just any board meeting, but one of four they have throughout the year when represenatives from each office are invited to come.

The Memo

Rather than rely solely on my oral persuasion skills at the meeting, I did what I do best -- wrote my thoughts down. In memo form, I submitted my "argument" to my contact with the management company and she promised to make copies and put it in each packet that would be distributed during the meeting -- to board members and everyone else.

Essentially, I said it was hard for us to come to terms with the fact that we take such care in recycling at home, and yet do not have the same opportunity to do so at work. Even if adding a recycling bin meant getting rid of a trash bin, it should all even out, as much of what is thrown away as "trash" in our office complex is actually recyclable materials, like cardboard boxes, paper and water bottles. Finally, I pointed out that whatever nominal fee for recycling would be passed on to us and other businesses in the complex would be well worth the priceless impact of helping to protect the environment.

The Board Meeting

I guess I was expecting a big room filled with "audience" members sitting in front of an intimidating panel of board members, sort of like what Kevin Bacon faces in Footloose when he's trying to convince the town its high school students are responsible enough to handle a senior prom. But as it turns out, this board of directors was almost equally suspicious of our ability to handle a recycling program.

Apparently, us "owners" (i.e., businesses in the complex) don't do a very good job of following directions when it comes to waste disposal. Many of the offices are doing inner construction and disposing of the materials in the trash bins, a big no-no. We're also apparently really bad about remembering to keep the gates to the trash bins closed. The board members worried we'd really screw things up if we had another set of directions to follow, questioning our ability or commitment to properly keeping recyclables and trash in their respective bins.

One of the meeting attendees (not sure if he is a board member or not) actually questioned the importance of recycling at all, pointing to the "fact" that recycling requires three times as much energy as simply sending it to a landfill. Fortunately, one of the board members runs an environmental services company. Considering the fact that these recyclables go toward producing new products, he explained, the carbon footprint does not even compare -- recycling is definitely the more eco-friendly option.

I wish I could say all of that were enough to convince the board to "get on board" with office recycling. But what it came down to is this -- instead of costing them more money to implement, a recycling program actually costs them about fifty bucks less per month. (As the environmental guy explained, that's because the waste company is reselling it.)

That said, it was decided to give the recycling program a try and review its progress in three months time.

Office Recycling in Action

That was a little over a week ago. In my office we've already purchased two recycling cans -- one for upstairs, another for downstairs, each with a sign above them detailing what is okay to put in them. There's only 12 of us, so two is plenty, though we are talking about getting individual smaller ones for each of our desks. As for the big recycling bin in the parking lot, it's expected to replace a trash bin any day now.

I never imagined I'd be responsible for instigating such eco-friendly change at work, but it just goes to show that it just takes one person's expression of interest to influence the behavior of many.

Click the following link for more info to start an office recycling program of your own.

IKEA Gives Green a Bad Name: Solar Panels Made in China?

A few months ago I took my first trip to IKEA. I wasn't looking for anything in particular -- just tagging along with my family. I think my mom was looking for lamps. We got there before it opened, and I was shocked at the grand opening-sized crowd, even though I'm certain that store had opened months before.

The big crowd only fueled my excitement. I'd been meaning to check out these Swedish designs for a long time, but up to this point had only seen them in ads. The store displays did not disappoint. From the furniture to the prints to the bamboo plants, I wanted everything ... that is until I saw the sticker my family and I were trying so hard to avoid -- "Made in China."

For one, we were tired of giving China all our manufacturing jobs and money. For another, the quality of their products is generally inferior to those in made in the USA. And most importantly, I'm just not interested in the manufacture of a product I buy contributing to the greenhouse gases in the most polluted place on earth!

So I couldn't help but shake my head when I read this:

"[IKEA] plans to invest some $75 million in a handful of cleantech startups, focusing on the areas of solar energy, lighting, sustainable materials, energy efficiency, and water conservation."

Apparently, they want to offer affordable solar panels in their stores, among other green things.

This kind of hypocrisy is reminiscent of Wal-Mart, a company that boasts about its record sales of compact fluorescent light bulbs so it can illuminate aisle after aisle of products mostly made in China, not to mention the monstrous meat case (the livestock industry emits more greenhouse gases than all forms of transportation combined).

So next time you buy "Made in China," consider this -- exports from China contribute to one-third of its annual greenhouse gas emissions. For those "affordable" products we're buying at IKEA, Wal-Mart and countless other stores around the world, we're costing ourselves the future.

Every week, a new coal plant gets built in China just to meet global demand for manufacturing -- the same kind of coal plants that are being denied left and right here in the States. We don't want coal emissions dirtying up American air, but we PAY to do the same to the air over China -- air that our Olympic athletes are breathing today.

Why do we have so much trouble connecting the dots?

Related posts:

Beijing's Olympic Facade of Greenery: Killing Cats & Kicking Migrant Recyclers Out of Town

Why Gas Costs More: Demand Rising Among China's Middle Class

Beijing's Olympic Facade of Greenery: Killing Cats & Kicking Migrant Recyclers Out of Town

We all know how hard China is working to "sanitize" and "green" Beijing for its summer Olympics. Problem is, China's idea of sanitizing is anything but green.

I was haunted for weeks by the Chinese government's rounding up of stray cats from city streets -- not to humanely euthanize them, but to stack them in tiny cages in a warehouse, one on top of another, and leave them to die. It's their way of "sanitizing" the city of cat diseases that it says could spread disease to humans, but there's nothing humane or "green" about China confining cats with no food or water to die a slow, painful death.

Now Beijing is engaged in a similarly hypocritical, though non-lethal, behavior.

Migrant workers recycle one-quarter of Beijing's trash. But apparently the image of tens of thousands of people rummaging through trash for recyclable items isn't "sanitary." So the Chinese government is kicking these migrant worker recyclers out of town.

In other words, China is eliminating probably the only "green" thing that comes naturally to the most polluted city on earth.

Related posts:

Petition For Media Coverage of Cat Killings In Beijing
Killing Cats In Beijing: The Lies, The Fear, The Olympics

Save On Gas and CO2 Emissions With the Moletech Fuel Saver

"You don't have a hybrid, do you?" my boss asked the other day. I told her no and she pulled out this little yellow box. "This can save you 20 percent on gas," she said -- something I've been desperate to do since starting full-time and going through a tank of gas a week at $40 to $50 a pop.

So she opens up this box and shows me the Moletech Fuel Saver. It's four small metal tubes with little holes in them -- two that you drop into the gas tank, one that you install in the air intake tubing, and another that gets clamped on to the outside of the top radiator hose. "And it only costs around 200 bucks," she added.

The reason she was show-and-telling this around the office instead of installing it into her own vehicle is that after ordering it she learned that it won't work for her Hummer. Well, it will but installing the fuel sensors would mean a BIG bill from the mechanic for installing it in her Hummer -- presumably a much more complex procedure than Moletech installation in regular cars, like my Toyota Corolla.

This Hummer of hers is currently costing around $135 to fill up the tank, and she goes through a about a tank every single week. Trading it in would mean paying someone to take it off her hands since no one is beating down any doors for these gas guzzlers. So she's planning on parking it and hoping the technology is developed soon for for converting Hummers into my eco-friendly means of transport (eco-logically and eco-nomically).

I just checked out the website for more info on how this technology works. I'd try stating it in my own words, but that would take much longer than I'd planned on devoting to this post. So here it is verbatim from the site:

"The Moletech Fuel Saver has the ability to change three areas within the spectrum of gasoline by absorbing the CH (Benzene) of saturated and unsaturated hydrocarbon. According to the university research papers, the ceramics absorb the thermal energy from their surrounding environment then release it in a specific wavelength, breaking the intermolecular van der Waals force (the force that binds molecules) between the gasoline molecules. This results in the change of aggregation of gasoline molecules from 'cluster' to 'single molecule'. This changes several properties of the gasoline, such as surface tension and flash point. The surface tension is decreased, resulting in better atomization (smaller droplets) of the fuel, which provides a greater surface area to make contact with air, leading to far greater fuel efficiency. This in turn increases horsepower, reduces fuel consumption, reduces carbon build-up and reduces toxic and greenhouse exhaust emissions."

Click this link to learn more about Moletech Fuel Saver at moletech.com.

Related Post: Why Gas Costs More: Demand Rising Among China's Middle Class

Why Gas Costs More: Demand Rising Among China's Middle Class

I recently took a full-time writing job 35 miles away from my house. I drive a Toyota Corolla, which gets 32 mpg in the city and 40 mpg on the highway. So far, it looks like getting me there five days a week costs about 40 bucks. But that's paying for gas at less than $3.90. I've heard rumors it could go as high as $6 a gallon before the end of the year! And the way gas prices have been rising so steadily, it doesn't sound too far-fetched.

You can't help but wonder -- what gives?

Today I found out from NPR's interview with Salon.com staff writer Andrew Leonard. In "What Accounts for the Spike in Gas prices," Leonard lays it on the line. (And no, it has nothing to do with George Bush.)

Essentially, four factors are worked into the price of gas:

1) The cost of crude oil
2) The cost of refining crude oil into gasoline
3) The cost of getting the gas from the refinery to the local filling stations
4) The cost of excise and sales taxes

And of these four factors, it's the cost of crude oil that accounts for most -- 75 percent of the total cost of gas!

So why is crude oil so expensive?

It's a simple matter of supply and demand.

In recent years, the middle class in China has reached a point where they can afford cars, and the gas that goes in them. The same is true in Brazil and India, just on a smaller scale. That's billions more people wanting the same gas we do while, at the same time, the supply of gas is stagnant.

What that tells me is that rising gas prices are here to stay. As populations and their economies grow, so will their driving. It's doubtful that the supply of crude oil is going to rise, and even if it does for a time, we all know it's destined to run dry.

I love my Toyota Corolla, but next time I buy a new car, it's going to be electric. My first pick -- the 2009 Tesla Roadster. Sure it's $109,000, but I like to dream big.

The Rising Price of Electricity: Coal, Cost and Conservation

I write fundraising letters for non-profits and for the past few weeks have been drafting pieces explaining to donors about the impact of the rising cost of electricity. These charitable organizations have already been hit hard by the struggling economy. Gifts are down, and they'll fall even further when summer hits, as they always do.

Now with the rising price of coal, electricity is going up. For one domestic violence shelter I write for, that's going to mean several thousand dollars more on their electric bill than for the same time period last year.

Yesterday I received a notice in the mail about the rising cost of electricity. Not from non-profits I support, but from my electric company. The Salt River Project (SRP) here in Arizona sent out letters this week explaining to residents how our electric bills are going to change in the coming months.

"As SRP faces higher costs to continue providing you reliable service," they write, "unfortunely, we need to increase prices, effective May 1."

(Incidentally, I got this notice on the 15th. A letter received before the increase date would seem appropriate, but I guess since I have no other choice for electricity in this area, they feel like they can let me know whenever they please.)

So in May, the price went up by 3.9 percent. In July and August, that increase will jump to 9.5 percent.

SRP did a breakdown for me based on how much electricity I used May through October of last year. Theoretically, if I use the same amount, the increased cost of electricity I'm paying (over that six-month period) will be a total of $99 more.

It doesn't sound like much, but when you have a summer electric bill of close to $300 (quite common here in Arizona), every dollar counts.

To SRP's credit, they're constantly encouraging us to conserve -- from weather-proofing our homes to replacing incandescent light bulbs with CFL's. And coal isn't the only resource SRP relies on -- solar, wind, geothermal and hydropower are all part their Earthwise Energy program.

If you're concerned about paying higher electricity prices in your part of the world this summer, check out this link on how to conserve.

Go Green Yourself: Green Fatigue & the Myth of Water Conservation in the Desert

I don't usually read the Phoenix New Times, but last month this cover caught my eye, and I knew I'd be blogging about it. Not because it pissed me off, but because I sympathized. I'm the greenest person I know, with two "green" blogs and a "green" website and all the "green" advice my family and friends could ever want (or not want) to know.

Frankly, sometimes I get sick of myself.

But the series of articles in this paper's "Green Fatigue" feature was about more than green-overload. It was about discrediting the Green Movement itself, at least here in Phoenix:

"This week, we made the ultimate sacrifice: Our writers put on their thinking caps, got out their calculators, and told the true stories about what it really means to be green in this corner of the desert....

"The most inconvient truth of all, it turns out, is this: the Green Movement might make you feel warm and fuzzy, but it won't stop global warming."

Of course, I was skeptical that there would be anything within its pages to convince me of such a bold statment. And I was almost right.

As I learned in "Waterlogged" by Megan Irwin, as much water as I try to conserve here in the Phoenix Metropolitan Area, it makes no difference except to my pocketbook.

"Because of the way water rights work, we can't share our water," writes Irwin. "We can use it, or it can sit there until it evaporates."

Problem is, we're not using it fast enough. That's right. I said it. And the leftover water is literally going to waste:

"We had to let water go down the drain this past winter. The system that supplies water to the Valley, run by the Salt River Project [SRP], was actually too full. Throughout the first three months of 2008, SRP released enough water from its reservoir system to supply a Phoenix household for a year."

If only I could have been there with my buckets. But wait -- I don't have to conserve anymore, do I? Old habits do die hard.

What really sucks is that if we were allowed to share our water, other parts of Arizona could have really used it, Strawberry, Pine and Payson among them.

None of this sits well with any of us, which is why the Arizona Department of Revenue and SRP are investing in "water banking." Instead of dumping excess water with nowhere to go, we'd pump it into underground aquifers instead, essentially storing it until we need it.

As I said, old habits die hard. I can't explain the psychology, but since reading this article, I've actually started conserving water even more.

It takes forever for my water to get hot in the bathroom. So I've started sticking a pitcher under the sink and a bucket in the bathtub to catch what would otherwise go down the drain. As it turns it out, my water takes 2.5 gallons to get hot!

I do dump the water, but onto my outdoor plants -- plants that otherwise wouldn't get watered much at all. My water usage is the same. My bill is the same. But at least here in the desert, I have lush, green plants.

My Brush With Greenpeace: Strangers, Secrets & Spies

A few weeks ago I was being considered for a field organizer position for Greenpeace's Project Hot Seat campaign. During the first round of interviews, I spoke by phone with a field organizer from another state.

In sharing with me the mission and background of Greenpeace, my interviewer also alluded to some of their clandestine operations -- specifically the "Wiping away ancient forests" message found by consumers in some Kleenex boxes. Though she didn't admit that Greenpeace was directly involved, that was certainly the implication. And she outright told me that Greenpeace staff members had been able to access a computer of some corporation (it may have been Kimberly-Clark, which makes Kleenex), and replace an existing PowerPoint presentation with one of their own.

I remember feeling excited about these clandestine operations, but also reluctant. I respect Greenpeace for their work, but questioned whether I would personally feel comfortable being involved in those kind of tactics.

Though I debated over whether or not to share this information here in my blog, it occurred to me. If Greenpeace didn't want this notoriety, they wouldn't have shared it with me -- a stranger whose true intentions they had no way of verifying -- a stranger who could have been a spy.

It's been reported in Mother Jones Magazine that in the late 90's through 2000, a group of former Secret Service Agents spied on Greenpeace and other environmental organizations:

"This security outfit [Beckett Brown International (BBI)] collected confidential internal records," writes article author James Ridgeway, including "donor lists, detailed financial statements, the Social Security numbers of staff members [and] strategy memos."

They also collected phone records of activists and tried planting spies inside the organizations.

BBI would then put all this information together into "intelligence reports for public relations firms and major corporations involved in environmental controversies. "

I don't know which I'd feel weirder about -- performing clandestine activities or being the subject of them. I guess I'll never know. Though I made it through the first round of interviews, the questions were much tougher in the second round. As a writer, I have all the time in the world to formulate my thoughts. During my phone interview, I didn't have that luxury.

As a Greenpeace field organizer -- whether you're staging a public rally for the cause or a secret mission against the opposition -- you need to be able to think fast on your feet. Maybe I'm just better-suited to thinking leisurely here in my seat, with the luxury of questioning the tactics on both sides.

Greening at the Speed of Light: Phoenix to Unveil METRO Light Rail System

I live in the suburbs of Phoenix and work from home, so I rarely experience the congestion downown. Yet, no matter where you live in the Phoenix Metropolitan Area, if you look off in the distance toward the mountains that surround this valley, you can almost always see a haze in the air. Get close enough to downtown Phoenix, and that haze thickens into a light brown cloud.

We have High Pollution Advisory days now and then, advising limited outdoor activity, especially for those with asthma and other respiratory conditions.

Four years ago, Phoenix began construction on part of the solution.

The Phoenix METRO light rail system is 20 miles of steel rails with cars that will run on electricity from overhead wires, in a lane separated from traffic. It will connect central Phoenix to Tempe (big college town), Mesa (biggest suburb in the country, and also my home) and the airport. They started construction four years ago, and it's scheduled for completion by December 2008.

Though getting around downtown during this construction period has been a real headache for drivers, once it's finished it has the potential to take thousands of cars off the road -- the Phoenix METRO light rail system can carry 3,000 to 5,000 passengers an hour!

Of course, the key to it all is getting the public to ride it. The cost is comparable to riding the bus -- $1.25 per ride. It runs 20 hours a day, 7 days a week -- arriving at each station every 10 minutes during the day, and every 20 minutes nights, weekends and holidays.

The Phoenix METRO light rail system is a smooth, quiet ride, with air-conditioning, tinted windows, security cameras, bike racks, wheelchair accessibility, intercoms for passengers to talk to the light rail operators, and the cars are flush with the street for quick and easy on-and-off access.

There is a downside, though, when it comes to the Phoenix METRO light rail system's carbon footprint. Though more than half of the parts for the light rail vehicles are American-made, they're being manufactured in Japan. That means long, carbon-emitting trips back and forth -- delivering parts to Japan, and them delivering the final product to us.

As part of the public outreach campaign, there's a free-ride weekend on the Phoenix METRO light rail system the weekend of December 27th and 28th. I'll plan a trip and report back on the experience.

Click this link to learn more about light rail. Click this link to learn more about the Phoenix METRO light rail system.

Related blog posts: Essential Skill #36: Decongest Downtown, from Living the Live Earth Pledge's blog series on The Live Earth Global Warming Survival Handbook.

Melting Before Our Eyes: Antarctica, Wilkins Ice Shelf Collapse and Global Warming

It's the fastest warming place on earth, and it's melting before our eyes.

The Antarctic Peninsula is 160-square miles smaller today. A piece of ice seven times the size of Manhattan has fallen off the Wilkins ice shelf in the western Antarctic Peninsula. Scientists first noticed a change in the ice on February 28, and it took less than one month for it to fall off into the ocean.

As explained on Wikipedia, "an ice shelf is a thick, floating platform of ice that forms where a glacier or ice sheet flows down to a coastline and onto the ocean surface." Antarctica is one of only three places in the world where ice shelves exist, the others being Greenland and Canada.

Ice shelves collapse when cracks fill up with water, then slice off and topple into the ocean.

The British Anarctic Survey calls this collapse a sure sign of global warming.

What's worse is that the rest of Wilkins ice sheet is barely holding on, supported by one thin beam of ice. At 5,000-square miles -- or about the size of the state of Connecticutt -- the collapse of the entire ice sheet would be devastating. Scientists predict it though -- some within 15 years, others as soon as 2011.

Click this link for a read the CNN article on the ice shelf collapse in Antarctica.