trash

Horse Drawn Trash for Good Collection

- Adam Clare

Before automobiles horse drawn buggies were used for trash collection and it looks like we’re going back to that classic solution. Garbage trucks have a hard time negotiating smaller streets and a benefit of the horses is less exhaust in the city.

For Jean Baptiste, mayor of medieval Peyrestortes, near Perpignan and one of 60 towns now using horses to collect waste, the benefit above all is practical. “You can’t turn a waste collection vehicle around here. We used to block streets to traffic and keep waste in open skips.” He sold off a dustbin lorry and acquired two Breton carthorses instead. Asked whether the changes are saving money, he says: “It’s too early. But money isn’t the only reason. The exhaust smells have gone, the noise has gone, and instead we have the clip-clop of horses’ hooves.”

In Saint Prix, however, in Greater Paris, Mayor Jean-Pierre Enjalbert is certain he is saving money as the novelty of the horses has increased recycling rates. “By using the horse for garden waste collection, we have raised awareness. People are composting more. Incineration used to cost us €107 a tonne, ridiculous for burning wet matter, now we only pay €37 to collect and compost the waste.”

Read the full article at the Guardian.

One Trashcan Per Year: You Can Too!

- Adam Clare

Living and not producing any waste is pretty impressive. A family in the UK set out to demonstrate that they can easily live life and only make a trashcan’s worth of rubbish in a year. Guess what? They did it.

“Our vision is for a zero waste UK; a country where we rethink our rubbish and start to view it as a resource rather than a waste product,” the Strausses write on their website, MyZeroWaste. “Our belief is that a zero waste Britain is possible if more energy, money and care is put into education, innovative product design and recycling facilities.”

OK, so that’s the why. But what about the how? How does a three-person household cuts its trash footprint so dramatically while still keeping up a typical British living standard?

The Strausses go into great detail on their website. Step one, obviously: Reduce, for which they recommend everything from buying in bulk to simply removing the kitchen bin (“The out of sight out of mind approach … “). Step two: Reuse (turning used coffee grounds into snail and slug repellant, taking their own food containers to the butcher’s shop, wrapping gifts with junk mail). Step three: Recycle (even sending their empty crisp packets to a Philippine charity that turns them into wallets, bags and purses).

Keep reading at greenbang

The Race is On! Speed Composting is a Go!

- Adam Clare

One person’s trash is another person’s treasure. Or in reality, our waste from consuming can be repurposed and turned into useful resources.

If anyone knows that there’s value in trash, it’s Waste Management — the big waste hauler collects 66 million tons of it every year. So the company has teamed up with a small venture-backed company that has developed a system that can break down some of that trash fast and turn it into natural gas, electricity, compost or all of the above, making some of that trash even more valuable.

Waste Management announced today it has invested in Harvest Power and will develop projects with the company. Harvest builds giant digesters — think of them as cow stomachs — that speed up the composting process. By creating conditions that the bugs that break down organic matter thrive in — a little warmth, a little moisture — and mixing it up to keep the process going, Havest can speed the natural composting process to six to eight weeks from double that. The output? No hamburgers, milk or leather, but otherwise the same as what you’d get from a cow: natural gas and good fertilizer.

Keep reading at Forbes.

A Successful Rubbish Free Year

- Adam Clare

A couple in New Zealand successfully completed a rubbish free year (Google cache). I’m a little late on this since they finished in February, but it’s always inspirational to read that people can live trash free.

We celebrated the end of Rubbish Free Year with a 100% rubbish free event at our house on February the 1st. No rubbish was created during preparations apart from one piece of gladwrap (I thought the cheese monger at the local farmers market sold their rounds with out plastic around them but unfortunatly they don’t). At the party there was a rubbish ‘incident’ when someone attempted to bring a packet of chips. Apart from that though we hosted well over 100 people without a drop of rubbish.

Thanks Shea!

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