Have you ever gone on vacation, taken a ton of pictures and then didn’t look at them until a month later?  Well, I was in San Francisco just before the elections took place, and I’m just now getting around to the pictures.

I don’t go completely crazy when someone prints something out without thinking (well maybe a little), but election propaganda drives me insane.  I get it, say no to this, yes to that, he said she opposed this and *gasp* voted for that.  Does anyone really follow this stuff?  Who can you really believe?

Anyway, I wanted to share with you some obnoxious examples of leafleting that need to die.  Why not have one stand at each intersection with one equal sized flyer of each candidate, instead of leaving 25 on a single family dwelling’s doorstep?

To have some fun with it, collaborate with an open top dumpster company and make the stands out of scrap lumber and paint them all awesome like the majority of San Francisco.  As much as that reminds me of college campuses with their flyering areas, at least it’s a good start and a substantial reduction in materials.

By the end of my lovely stay, I felt like I knew all the candidates and their positions…well, their positions on waste reduction.

I’m in San Francisco at the moment and just loving it. These people recycle, compost like fiends, and their weather is way better than Philly. While drinking a cup of “Ether” at Philz coffee shop, I started thinking again about bottle cap waste. Even in a wonderful la-la-land city away from home on vacation, I find myself thinking of stuff with lots of bummer potential.  Plastics polluting our waterways and oceans with no end in sight is not something I take lightly.

About a week ago, I went around collecting different bottle caps. What else can be done with these?  Why aren’t these universally recyclable? Why are they all different sizes and thicknesses? For companies to maximize profit on sugar water (or just water), wouldn’t they want to use the least amount of material? Further, it can be easily marketed as being “green” in these “sustainable” times.

Of all the beverage manufacturers, who’s marketing this “green” activity? The bottled water people, of course. If you haven’t seen The Story of Bottled Water by Annie Leonard, I highly recommend checking it out. She highlights how the bottled water businesses are dying out fast…really fast. What’s the difference between your home tap water and your bottled water being collected from the highest snow-covered mountains in the most obscure and pristine places? Nothing. Bottled water is a fancy way of saying that you’re being sold your own tap water for a 2,000% markup.

ANYWAY. I decided to line up a series of caps from shortest to tallest and weigh them. Why? I’m not really sure. Why not? But here’s the results:

Crystal Geyser: 1 g
Generic “Water” brand water (seriously): 1.8 g
Pepsi: 2 g
Coke: 2.1 g
Evian: 2.2 g
Nestea: 2.2 g
Wawa: 2.4 g
Mountain Dew: 2.7 g

I omitted several bottled water caps that were identical to the smallest, lightest one. I’m not surprised at all that bottled water had the thinnest caps. Maybe I’m thinking a little bit too hard about this, but nonetheless I find it extremely interesting and I like to over-think everything anyway.

Why would Pepsi and Mountain Dew have some of the heaviest caps although they’re probably the highest grossing beverage company? Notice their weights are significantly different as well. I also find it funny that Coke is one tenth of a gram heavier than Pepsi. Oh, the competition. Maybe they don’t even know about this. Hey Pepsi, give me the million dollar prize for my “bright idea” of lightening up the weight of your caps by 1g, saving you millions of dollars a year (jokes).

It looks like Aveda is trying to do something about it. They set up a program for recycling the caps to be used for packaging their own product line. Not only are they taking bottle caps, but even stuff like mayonnaise and peanut butter lids…go Aveda. They realize that the number one plastic contaminant washing up on beaches the world over is bottle caps. It’s a shame that they aren’t recyclable by most municipalities, although they are primarily polypropylene, AKA #5 (a common plastic).

How do I wrap this one up?  I’m not really too sure what the best course of action is to take.  And I really don’t want to tell you what to do, either.  I love aluminum cans…maybe buy more of those and less bottles?  They’re fully (and efficiently) recyclable…and consequently you’re consuming less plastic bottles with their leaching phthalates.  What about bottled water?  Drink that tap instead.  Yum yum!  More traces of chlorine, arsenic and pharmaceuticals, please.  Is it avoidable, though?  Nope.  It’s hard to end this post anything but negatively.

2.5 million plastic bottles are thrown away every hour in the U.S…that’s just short of 40 miles of bottle caps, or 936 miles per day.  Sound like a problem?  I think so.

Would having a standardized one-piece beverage container make any sense?  Time to get designing.

I can’t wait to see how this one turns out. Waste haulers are bummed, business owners aren’t bummed yet (for another few weeks at the most), and the City is stoked. They just passed a law that requires all dumpsters, compactors and toters in the City of Philadelphia to have a “medallion” on them. These questionable “Radio Frequency Identification medallions” transmit an identification code to officers strolling around with handheld computers. Everything’s cool though, they say there’s no personal information stored on the devices. Phew! Thanks L&I.

Wait a minute, what are these medallions for? To see if you’ve paid your yearly dumpster tax, of course! These medallions cost anywhere from $75 to $150 for your average dumpster greater than 1 cubic yard, which is basically all of them. If your dumpster is on public property, go ahead and TRIPLE those fees.

I had heard about this about six months ago, but when I did, I laughed it off. How could this possibly pass? I dunno, but it did, and with flying colors. Heck, I didn’t even write about it, that’s how ridiculous it sounded. I predict an uproar from the city’s businesses the day that the grace period expires. Why? Because waste haulers risk GETTING FINED for picking up any waste container that doesn’t have a medallion on it. Customer service down the toilet, lots of smelly trash sitting around screaming to be disposed of.

Here’s another excellent money maker: If your medallion stops transmitting a signal, you’re responsible for replacing it, and you receive a violation. $25 for a replacement plus $75 to have an inspector come out and laugh at you. Do any of you have a compact fluorescent bulb you haven’t had to replace yet? Remember how they all said they’d last ten years no problem? Ugh. I can’t wait to see how high-quality these RF transmitters are.

So for all of you business owners out there reading this (all zero of you), go get your medallions, and make sure to give L&I a piece of your mind about this new bogus law. Oh wait, they don’t list their phone number on the application. And if you call the number that’s posted on their shoddy website, no one ever answers…how convenient. I gotta give it to them.

I admit, I’m not angry about this…but I sure am disappointed. What’s a better solution? Many of you will hate me for it (and that’s because your disposal habits suck), but why not implement a pay-per-throw system? It creates a legitimate incentive to reduce waste and increase your recycling to its highest potential. Heck, maybe it would get more people to start composting.

So if you’d like to help out your boss, ask them if they’ve purchased medallions for the company’s dumpsters, toters and compactors. The restaurant with a 2 yarder in the alley behind Sansom St: instead of $100 a month, now you’re paying $600. Colleges with over 100 waste containers, oh man. I don’t even want to think about that expense. So who’s excited for the chaos to come?

As stated before, If I’m buying something, I love to get it online. I stay at home, read product reviews, and I don’t have to listen to department store music. However, one thing you can never be sure about is how the product is packaged. I’m not referring to how it’s protected against the postal service, but the amount and selection of materials used. Yeah, the thing that no one cares about.

My laptop has a measly two USB ports, so I decided to step it up and get a USB hub. I couldn’t believe it- the thing is half the size of a cigarette pack, yet the box was large enough to fit a VHS tape.

Look at all this crap! In addition to the hub, there’s also a tiny USB cord and an optional power adapter , but they still don’t justify all the material used here. A cardboard box, a cardboard box inside the cardboard box, an obnoxious plastic window, twisty ties, and plastic bags for the cord and adapter.

Why the plastic window to showcase the product? Why doesn’t a picture of the product printed on the box suffice? I was talking about this with my good friend Mark, and he mentioned it could be an anti-theft design. Maybe he’s right. I remember how some stores would put a clunky piece of plastic on CDs to make them really huge so you could only stuff a few in your coat at a time. Are people really stealing USB hubs? I guess so. I thought these were an item that were locked up on the shelves, but I wouldn’t know. Who actually shops at Best Buy anymore? The best buy is always online.

I really do think that brick-and-mortar stores are slowly becoming extinct…their only purpose is to be a showroom for a product you’re thinking about getting, then go home and buy it online for less. Does that make me a jerk? I’d like to think not. I want to save time and money while avoiding getting dumber by listening to salespeople upsell you useless warranties and lie about how they love the product you’re considering.

Anyway, remember kids: Before buying something try Craigslist, ask your friends or check out back of the store. You might be surprised at what you’ll find. Oh, and look for stuff with less packaging.

If I’m going to buy something, I love to get it online. You can always find it cheaper, and you don’t even need to leave your house. For most items, brick and mortar stores are a thing of the past as ebay, amazon, and online warehouses with no physical inventory continue to gobble up the market share.

However, one particular aspect of the online shopping experience can often be skewed and overlooked: Packaging! Have you ever bought an item, and it came packaged in a box three times its size and full of styrofoam peanuts? Of course you have. I’ll give them their five star rating on ebay for being prompt with the shipping, but I’ll write a little note saying that I hope they were reusing those peanuts.

I’ll admit, I have a bit of a problem. I have a hobby of collecting packaging I inherit when buying stuff. Heck, if I’m walking down the street and I see one of those padded mailer envelopes in the trash, I’ll take it. Anyway, my collection box consists of varying sizes of styrofoam, peanuts, bags of air, and bubble wrap. Everyone has a bag of plastic bags in their house (right?), but this is definitely the next level of being a pack rat.

Polystyrene foam (Dow trademark: Styrofoam) is such a bummer. From a recycling standpoint, there is virtually no market. It’s composed almost entirely of air, costs next to nothing to produce, but it costs plenty for a business entity to conduct a specific recycling pickup for it. You would need several hundred pounds to make it even remotely worthwhile to any recycling service, and they’ll laugh at you while charging hefty pickup fees and fuel charges while their truck isn’t being strained in the slightest.

I’m currently on the hunt for a small shredder or wood chipper to turn large polystyrene foam pieces into confetti and give it to the post office or copy centers for reuse. It seems like an unstoppable cycle unless we can find other uses for this stuff. I wish it would just go away. Although it only takes up a tiny fraction of landfill space, I still don’t want it getting trashed. Is this crazy?

Ugh, I have a serious headache now. Next week, I’m going to write about what I originally intended to before getting sidetracked…stay tuned!

The BigBelly Solar: Do you have one of these in your hometown? Or 500 of them like the city of Philadelphia? If you haven’t seen them before, this is the solar powered trash compactor that gobbles 5 times its size in trash. I love these things: sleek, crisp, more or less indestructible. Although I’m not much of a sports fan, I’m pretty sure they all survived when the Phillies won the World Series, and I guess when they lost, too. I think the tops are made of a bulletproof glass of sorts…but why would I hit one of these things?

The container on the inside is made of LDPE, or #4 plastic, known to most people as being responsible for plastic bags, the nation’s tumbleweed. It’s nice to see LDPE used in this application. Those funny city government people like these cans because they are designed to save on labor costs and gas, since they’re hooked up to a grid so we know exactly when they’re full. Pretty brilliant. The claim is that Philly will save $13M over ten years by implementing these, representing a 70% decrease in collection cost, and I believe it. Yes people, it costs several million dollars a year to collect your waste.

I’ve been taking a lot of photos of BigBelly cans in action around the city, just to watch how they degrade over time. They were absolutely immaculate for longer than I ever imagined (a month?), then out of nowhere the taggers started writing on them. As much as I love graffiti, I was pretty bummed to see these cans scribbled on. Then the obnoxious band name/company name bumper stickers started making their way onto them. Nonetheless, I think it’s hard to make them look bad.

My all-time favorite Big Belly I’ve ever seen (which of course I don’t have a picture of, damn it) was completely covered in vomit. Not just a sprinkling on the side of the thing, either…but all over the handle! Hilarious. Which leads to my only critique of them: How many people like to touch a public surface connected to waste disposal? Touching a filthy handle doesn’t bother me, but most people don’t want to grab that nasty thing. Come on Big Belly designers, the solution is right in front of you, think just a little bit harder here…or pay me to design it. On top of that, having to use physical effort to pull open the chute doesn’t fly. People are used to taking basketball shots with their trash, so this is serious culture shock. So where does a lot of trash end up? You guessed it, in the open recycling container next to it.

A friend called me up recently and mentioned he saw one of these being emptied, and said that both the recycling and the compacted trash went in the same garbage truck. Oh, the phone calls I get sometimes. I’m pretty certain that all of this waste goes to our city’s single stream facility. Plus, the compacted trash isn’t an unmovable solid brick, either…it’s still perfectly sortable by a bunch of lasers, gusts of air and magnets. Or some dudes standing at a conveyor belt. I guess it’s time to take a bike ride and follow one of these trucks to see where it ends up.

So why make the end user separate the waste if it’s going to be unsorted and resorted again? Clearly it’s to please the public, and rightfully so. For everyone that doesn’t care to think about what happens to their waste, there’s a pile of people that are concerned about their recycling efforts. Maybe it’s because they really care, or it’s because the city tickets people that don’t sort their recyclables properly. I think sorting is a good thing, unnecessary or not, to get people in the mindset of identifying what’s in their hand and what needs to happen to it.

Now finally, what I wanted to write this article about in the first place: I used this Big Belly picture because the pizza box is in the wrong spot, but obviously the person didn’t feel like ripping the box into pieces to fit in the recycling slot. I decided to call the single stream facility here with some questions and I received some pretty sweet answers. “Several people have asked me if pizza boxes are recyclable…” “They are.” “I was curious how badly weather affects the quality of the recycled material. Between rain, snow, humidity or whatever, our waste is pretty beat up, right?” The answer: “It’s good.”

So there you have it. You heard it here first.

UPDATE: Then just after I wrote this, the City of Philadelphia gets exposed on their BigBelly procurement practices… Come on, people!

So i was staying at a nice hotel for a conference recently, and as I stepped through the revolving door I started scanning for waste cans. Hotels always seem to take the next step with their waste handling, but never quite get it right.

The lobby was laid out quite well, with a commingled container placed next to each trash can, with the exception of the elevator lobby, on both the ground floor and the second floor. I’m not sure why this is. The cans looked like this:

Not too excited about these. They’re crisp, and easy to clean I’m sure. What would I change about them? Well, they’re both the same color and size, and have the same opening on the top! Fail fail fail! If you don’t take the time to read the sign on the can or if you don’t speak English, there’s no distinguishing between either can. The sign is well-detailed for those that care, and for the average person too wordy and may easily defeat the purpose. On top of that, both containers have the same color bag. Depending on the person, this may raise an eyebrow. Some like to see a blue (or green, or sometimes clear) bag for recycling. General waste seems best in a clear bag, as you can see the contents and distinguish it from your colorful recycling bag. Most importantly: whatever you do, avoid using a black bag. What are you hiding in there?

Anyway, I took the elevator to my floor, and noticed there was no recycling container anywhere to be found. Opening the door to my room, the first thing I looked at was how many cans were in the room… as you can guess, there were two: one for the bathroom, and one placed seemingly at random near the window. Before I closed the door, I heard one of my favorite sounds: the crinkling of a heavy trash bag hitting the ground. I looked down the hall and saw a cleaning lady placing a bag outside what looked to be a waste closet, then walking away. So I creeped down the hall and took it, of course. What did I find?

The bag had 8 clear small trash bags in it, most with just one piece of waste in them…I think this bag was comprised of the waste from the entire wing on the left side of the elevator. Unfortunately, I didn’t find anything too exciting to play with. The load was two thirds paper, followed by food scraps (including two yummy bananas) plus a few bottles (all water bottles, ugh) and a handful of coffee cups and styrofoam plates with plastic forks. This bag was as average as waste distributions get. Gotta quit trashing that paper. And basically everything in the bag, for that matter.

The only fun part was that I found a particular person’s prescription drug packaging, who I later saw that night at the conference. I pondered for so long about whether or not I should introduce myself and creep them out by asking how their shopping spree was at Brooks Brothers and Ann Taylor earlier that day. I surprised myself by not going that route. I can hear the booing already. Sorry, people!

E-waste, what a pain in the ass. I would say that I get asked questions about proper disposal of old electronics more frequently than anything else. It seems like everyone always wants to give me their old junk (I love getting floppy disks though). Philly’s collection program is sparse and involves having to wake up early on a Saturday…not many will want to do that, or want to take their junk anywhere. The only way to make it work here would be to have a curbside pickup for old electronics paired up with one of the more reputable recyclers here, such as E-Force Compliance or Elemental. I can see the mess left behind on the street from that one. But it would still work better than having households slowly sneak their stuff out through the trash and into the landfills.

I was reading about Moore’s Law recently, which states that the newest stuff is destined to be obsolete right away…especially with computers. The ugly reality. It goes hand in hand with the ugly reality that the majority of our electronics are being shipped overseas to be smashed apart by little kids dancing with carcinogens. How much money can you get for burning the insulation off of a mountain of wires for strands of copper? A dollar? How much are those tiny lead solder blobs worth? It must be fun to torch huge piles of circuit boards, though. Can you really blame them for hustling? Of course not, It’s not their fault.

I am the last person that wants to point blame, as I think it goes nowhere. However, a rather apparent solution seems to exist here. Hey manufacturers, take on the disposal/recycling costs. Create a no-brainer program to ensure that your electronics can be recycled properly at any of the thousands of legit e-waste recyclers. If you complain it’s not cost effective, greenwash your new product as being made from all recycled components and mark it up a bunch more.