The Truth About Recycling in "Cradle to Cradle"

During the past week, I've been reading the book "Cradle to Cradle" by William McDonough and Michael Braungart. This book encourages mankind to design products in ways that make them completely reusable and toxin-free. This book also helped me to better understand the current "Cradle to Grave" design practices, where products are created only to be disposed without repurposing valuable planetary resources.

Cradle to Cradle by William McDonough and Michael Braungart

 The book itself is made from materials that can be completely reclaimed and made into a new book, right down to the inks (unlike the typical books that are made from paper and other stuff). This book is a metaphor for how we can be creative in designing products that leave zero footprint on this planet.

One thing I learned is that current recycling practices are not necessary safe for us. For example, the plastics and paper that I dutifully place in the recycling bin are "down-cycled" into a mish-mash of low quality material that will never be "as good as new." Furthermore, the recycling process itself releases chemicals that are harmful to us.

I used to think that plastic is, well, plastic - and that it all gets recycled and reused en mass. Now I understand there are many different kinds of plastics that cannot be mixed without detracting from the quality of the original materials. In fact, only soda and water bottles are currently made into new soda and water bottles.

Much of the material we "recycle" is not reused at all. For example, most of our plastic is ground into pellets, which we then throw away to be eaten by animals. "Cradle to Cradle" says that this happens because designers don't think about a product in terms of the next product that can be made from it.

Imagine a world where each thing we use can seamlessly flow into the next creation, inspiring creativity, fun, health, and wealth. Why not take the opportunity to design our intelligence and infinite potential into each product and manufacturing process?

Mainstream Information Doesn't Help Us to Make Informed Choices

It  may surprise you that we do not live in a democracy,  which requires that each citizen is informed. We live in an era when information flows erratically, overflows, and makes it increasingly difficult to vote and to make day-to-day decisions about which products to purchase. It's a really important time to question everything and exercise your intuition about what's right.

For example, remember the BPA in plastic bottles (polycarbonate #7)? You may not, because now water bottles are BPA free. Until the very last minute, the chemical companies claimed that BPA was safe, but the data showed otherwise. Someone had to speak up so that babies and adults could stop ingesting this chemical while drinking from plastic bottles and getting sick. During the time when the BPA story hit the news, I was giving birth to my second child. A doctor noticed that my bottle wasn't BPA-free and cautioned me to buy one that was.

The truth is that most research about chemicals on the planet is published in independent scientific journals that never make it to the public eye. Meanwhile, industries continue to funnel money into the media and press to reassure the public that their products are safe. If it weren't for certain journalist, we may not know half the things we do. And there are plenty of things we probably still don't know about how various environmental factors impact our lives.

Did you notice that conflicting information - safe vs. not safe - is essentially disinformation. At this time, the industries want our money and will, unfortunately, go to any length to get it. That makes it challenging to trust. Naomi Oresekes and Erik Conway wrote a great book called "Merchants of Doubt", which describes the well established tactic of disinformation by industries to cast doubt on the truth and continue to make money at the expense of our welfare.

At this time, our society is in doubt about who really runs this country, what the deficit really means, whether our food and water is safe and healthy, and whether the basic materials we buy are going to make us sick. That is the state of the state, and that's a lot to stomach.

So lets start small:

1. Buy produce from local, organic farms. I have a great store that buys fruits and veggies from local farmers. The food is fresh and tastes better!
2. Use glass or metal to reheat your food.
3. Avoid canned foods, which are lined with plastics.
4. Use a faucet-installed water filter, like Brita.
5. Read the labels of the products you use and ask lots of questions about ingredients you don't understand. However, many companies have found various ways to avoid labeling true ingredients.

If we were handed the truth, we would be in a much better position to make informed decisions. It is time for lobbyists to do something more fulfilling with their lives, and stop promoting government and industrial practices that silence the  truth. It is time for us to be in the  know about our lives so that we can respond and act, and not simply react.

Humor and Hope Can Be Our Contribution to the Planet

Humor and Hope are the two important "H"s in our vocabulary. There is a lot of talk about how man has polluted the Earth, and some men and women continue to do so in the face of overwhelming evidence that the ecosystem is crumbling around us. Well, it doesn't have to be this way. We can make a positive contribution on the planet and experience a better life in the process.

Image Source

You might say "Where is the humor in environmental issues?" "Who's laughing?" Well, have you seen the movie "Bag It!" (it's currently streaming on NETFLIX). This is a great example of bringing Humor into the very serious issue of plastic production and distribution. Check it out if you have a chance. Let's not take ourselves and our problems too seriously. Instead, let's look for creative solutions with a light heart.

Where is the Hope? Are we beyond Hope? Of course not! So much of what we do everyday matters. The almighty dollar is decision-making power. Spending money is like voting for which practices we choose to support. It's simple, really, to make better choices if our attention rests on the Good of the Whole.

I was talking to a guy this week and told him I wrote a blog about caring for our planet. He was very curious what it was about. "I am just one voice in the sea of voices," I told him. "One voice adding to many about how important and precious our lives are at all points in the eco-chain."

We who care about the environment look like everybody else. I love my family. I love to work. And I love that we have this opportunity to be on the planet, grow, and learn.

I vote with my dollar, first, by trying to buy only the things we absolutely need. My family reuses what we can, and recycles the rest.

I love the fact that I get mailers from the Veterans and other charities who will come by the house and pick stuff up for free. What a great feeling to give someone gently used things that can then be reused. I also love consignment stores where you can sell clothing that's still in great shape. Someone else gets a chance to mix and match!

The more I think about it, the more it makes sense to live with a smaller, gentler footprint on the planet. I believe that by getting in touch with our gentleness, we experience the Humor and Hope that can guide our choices.

When I started writing this blog, I felt powerless to help. I felt like the Earth was under someone else's care. But I can see now that I was wrong. We are all empowered to care, to put our attention on the things that truly matter, and make small choices everyday that add up more than we know.

Pass it on :)

Why Are We Here?

When I was about 10, I started my search for the meaning of life. Why am I here? What I am supposed to do? 

What I've discovered since then, with the help of teachers and friends, is that I am here to grow, learn, and evolve into a person who feels the profound depth of our existence with every cell of my being. I am here to feel the interconnection of all life and to share that feeling wherever I go. I am here to love. Love is not necessarily an emotion, but a sure-felt realization of the interconnection of all. And that evolution is a continuous process.

People, the environment, the planet itself, the Sun are all fundamentally lovable. Our differences are lovable. And that is how I feel now.

There is nothing to fight, nothing to prove, nothing to argue about. There is only the next day of being as true to myself as I possible can, and deepening in the realization that we are all here together. And we must stand up for the truth of a situation with a strong, assertive, heart-felt stance.

So where do war, pollution, man's inhumanity to man, and poverty fit in? Here we are on this small planet, where sometimes the conditions are incredibly harsh and barely livable. What's there to love about that?

If love is the profound web of existence that weaves everything together, then even the harshest conditions can be loved through. Like a burning fire, the heart has the capacity to ignite any situation with love because it recognizes there is no separation. Like-hearted individuals must band together to provide help as much as possible to those who need it. Sometimes it is difficult to discern what the right help action might be, but there is always something each of us can do to help others feel the inherent freedom they have.

I've been excited to find many blogs sharing about Green living, and that is good! We are many voices and growing everyday. Each one saying things just a little bit differently, and adding to the whole of our understanding. We may be drawn to one expression more than another. And we may start to feel our own voice that speaks for the good of all, the love of all, the freedom of all.

All is right when the heart ignites. May your heart ignite with your own feeling of love and inherent freedom.

Sustainable Packaging In An Overpackaged World

Packaging contains, protects, preserves, transports, informs, and sells [1]. There may be different types of packaging for transporting a product to distributors and for selling this product to consumers. There is also a newly emerging field of sustainable packaging that aims to minimize the industrial carbon footprint. I was amazed to learn that here is an entire science around packaging!

Increase in population and the average wealth of people has, in turn, increased the demands of consumers. More people buy more stuff. All of that stuff must be packaged. While packaging may be important to protect, preserve, and sell a product, packaging must ultimately be discarded.

Although we recycle some cardboard, glass, and plastics, recycling, by itself, does not lead to a Greener world. It takes a tremendous amount of energy and water to recycle materials, and these requirements leave another type of carbon footprint as carbon dioxide emissions.

Sustainable packaging can certainly help us reclaim materials and reduce waste. We should do things smarter on our planet that provides limited resources. We should choose companies that use environmentally friendly packaging, and avoid buying from companies that do not.

It would also be nice if companies managed their own recycling by, for example, collecting used products and using the raw materials to make new products. For example, the computer industry is already doing this where Apple will take back an old computer. This is good because the materials in our computers - and cellphones - won't last forever. We need to recycle our existing computers and phones to enable us to evolve and create new technologies.

It would be nice if companies design and developed their products for sustainability, taking into account the entire lifecycle of a product - from creation to sunsetting.

Relying on sustainable packing and development alone does not address the root cause of the problem of the carbon footprint. The root cause of the problem is a rapidly increasing population and an over-emphasis on consumption. In the movie, The Matrix, Agent Smith compares humanity to a virus that finds resources, consumes, and then multiplies until no resources are left. I find this comparison eerie, but not necessarily inaccurate. Our culture sells big families and consumerism to us.

It all comes back to our own choices we make day to day and our level of global awareness. Each of us impacts a greater whole. In a previous article, I summarized 10 simple things immediately that can make a difference. Another thing we can do is use less bottled water, and purify water at the tap source - such as with Brita technology.

Why do we consume so much? Why do we view advertisements as directives to buy, buy, and buy more? What kind of emptiness are we trying to fill? Why are we here as a human race? When you think about it, is it really to consume, or is it to live simply and express ourselves, to feel the Whole of which we are a shiny unique fragment? What "stuff" do we really need?

 Fundamentally, we are here to evolve our souls. And that evolution requires a life that challenges all assumptions about Happiness presented by our culture. Will the next trinket you buy really make you Happy, or will it just satiate you for a moment - only until the next thing to buy comes along?

Image Source: 16 Rounds to Samadhi

References
[1] Soroka (2002) Fundamentals of Packaging Technology, Institute of Packaging Professionals ISBN 1-930268-25-4.

10 Small Choices Every Day for Sustainable Living

I watched a documentary today, "Collapse" - a Michael Rupert monologue about this quest to expose the  imminent collapse of a lifestyle that assumes infinite resources. Of course, we don't have infinite resources on the planet, and a global awakening to this fact is necessary for us to regroup and structure our current strategy for living. I was moved by Michael's care for our life on this planet, his emotion, and his self-sacrifice.

The "Collapse" helped me to realize that what's needed is to help a critical mass of the population reach awareness about a better and simpler way of living - a kind of living that understands the relationship and exchange we have with the Earth. We take from the Earth, and we must give back. In giving back to the Earth, we also give back to each other.

Image Source: Vered's Blog

What does it mean to give back to the Earth? We can make these 10 small choices every day to support the health of all:

1. Bring reusable shopping bags to the store, instead of getting a new plastic or paper bag each  time you shop. Choose paper bags if your forget your reusable bags.
2. Buy more locally grown produce. Often, locally grown produce is also less expensive and tastes better.
3. Buy bulk cereals and other items, and store them in reusable containers.
4. Buy well-built, more expensive products that will last you longer, instead of buying many cheaper products during the same time period. You will actually save money.
5. Repurpose items around your home or buy gently used items from someone else.
6. Recycle items from your home by selling or donating them to others.
7. Make a  few car trips to buy groceries and run errands, and reduce frequent car trips.
8. Walk or bike to places when you can. It's free exercise that will keep you and the planet healthier.
9. Install energy saving light bulbs and energy proof your house, as much as possible.
10. Buy only what you need for your health and your self-expression. Don't give in to the pressure to consume, consume, consume. You yourself are a wealth of creativity and you want to express this creativity in your life. This is what you truly want, and you can't get it through infinite stimulation by the creativity of others.

These 10 basic changes can generate a huge wave of positive change across our country if we all pitch in. I know life can get hectic, and we often do what's easiest and quickest in the moment. However, we need to adopt a new paradigm of energy-saving and health-conscious hygiene as part of our DNA. If we model this behavior, others will adopt it too!

Too simple? While simple, these basic changes are powerful. They operate at the root of "Reduce, Reuse, Recycle," with "Reduce" being the most important of all! "Reduce" is really the only challenge of the three that makes our world a truly greener place.

A New Kind of Chemistry for the Good of All

Imagine if we adopted sustainable chemistry to reuse and recycle chemical compounds - especially compounds we create in bulk. I think "Reuse, Recycle" chemistry is the Holy Grail of chemistry, and is much needed to keep in check the accumulations of carbon dioxide, toxic waste from nuclear reactors, and plastics (to name a few). For the chemistry to be sustainable, the end product must also be useful, or at least harmless.

Many scientist are already thinking this way, and this is encouraging. However, there is also a strong movement toward "capturing" the harmful materials and storing them somewhere - usually inside the Earth. For example, we store nuclear waste in the Earth. There is also a strong movement to capture and store carbon dioxide in the Earth, called Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) - see CCP Project.

However, storing things in the Earth is rather risky because these things can leak out. The CCP Project claims that there needs to be a strong "regulatory framework" with policies for carbon dioxide transfer and storage. However, that's a bit risky too, as such thinking implies potential legal loopholes for maintaining harmful practices.

I urge scientists to combat the "Stuff It and Forget It" strategies with innovative ideas to transform harmful waste products into useful or, at least, harmless substances. Here are some examples of such innovation:

Carbon Dioxide
The evidence is compelling that excess carbon dioxide in our atmosphere is caused primarily by burning carbon-based fuels, such as oil, gas, coal, and biomass. This excess of carbon dioxide contributes to global warming, which holds some unfriendly consequences for life on the planet. Wouldn't it be nice if we could take the excess carbon dioxide and turn it into something else that either we or the planet use?

One way to handle carbon dioxide is to "hire" more trees. Trees are natural "sustainable chemists" that absorb carbon dioxide and, using Sun's energy, turn it into oxygen and other harmless stuff. However, we can't grow enough trees quickly to help us with global warming. Believe it or not, most deforestation occurs because of poverty, where people in developing and undeveloped nations cut down trees for fuel. Until we can secure more tree, is there anything else that can be done?

From the chemists' perspective, carbon dioxide is not likely to react with most substances, and typically requires a lot of energy  for chemical reaction to occur. That's why the carbon dioxide we emitted for the past 100 years of burning carbon fuels continues to sit and accumulate in our atmosphere, contributing to global warming.

However, one group at Michigan Tech found a way to combine carbon dioxide with Li3N to produce a semiconductor, a material that's used to make fertilizers, and energy! (See From Lemons to Lemonade: Reaction Uses Carbon Dioxide to Make Carbon-Based Semiconductor.) Pretty exciting!

The questions I have for the Michigan Tech team and others are:

• How much Li3N do we need, and how readily available is it? Will this process be viable for industrial  scale carbon dioxide transformation?
• How much semiconductor and pre-fertilizer material do we really need? Is there such a thing as too much of these substances?
• What happens to the semiconductor and pre-fertilizer materials after use - do they degrade into useful or, at least, harmless materials?

Gasoline vs. Hydrogen Cars

Gasoline is a carbon-based fuel derived from oil that contributes to carbon dioxide emissions. However, hydrogen is an energy carrier that can be an alternative to gasoline. Hydrogen can react with oxygen and produce water from the tailpipe.

The current drawbacks of hydrogen fuel are "low energy content per unit volume, high tankage weights, very high storage vessel pressures, the storage, transportation and filling of gaseous or liquid hydrogen in vehicles, the large investment in infrastructure that would be required to fuel vehicles, and the inefficiency of production processes." (Wikipedia) Deal breakers? No. Just challenges to overcome in the name of sustainability.

Microbes Hired for Wastewater Cleaning

At Oregon State University, engineers have developed an innovative process that produces electricity directly from wastewater with the help of microbes. Bacteria oxidize the organic matter to produce electrons  within a fuel cell. This process could work for any type of organic waste material can be used to produce electricity, such as grass straw, animal waste, and byproducts from such operations as the wine, beer or dairy industries. In addition, this process could provide necessary electricity in developing countries, where treatment plants for sewage are nonexistent.

Again, the current challenge is to make this process efficient and cost effective on a large scale. Way to go Oregon State University team!

Nuclear Waste Transformation
The Environmental Energy Resources (EER) company, based in Israel, has found a way to transform low-radioactive, medical, and industrial waste to produce water, glass, and clean energy. EER's waste disposal reactor does not harm the environment and leaves no surface water, groundwater, or soil pollution in its wake. The EER reactor combines three processes into one solution: it uses plasma torches to break down the waste; carbon leftovers are then gasified and finally inorganic components are converted to solid waste. The remaining vitrified material is inert and can be cast into molds to produce tiles, blocks or plates for the construction industry.

Thus, instead or burning the waste, which produces harmful by-products, the waste is transformed in biofriendly ways. EER describes their patented PGM technology as "plasma-sizing" huge piles of waste into a pile of black rocks.

According to their website, EER has been working on numerous of projects around the world to provide a solution to dispose of waste while harnessing energy. For example, EER will provide the PGM technology to a Waste to Energy (WtE) project  in the US for the removal of municipal waste. In the UK and Eastern Europe, EER is working with local developers to establish a PGM Waste to Energy processing plant.

Summary
I am very excited about the innovations occurring around the world to help us reduce our carbon (dioxide) and other footprints. I urge our scientific community to think out-of-the-box and holistically about our planet's chemistry to uncover the Holy Grail of

Waste In (+ Energy) = Useful or Harmless Compounds (+ Energy)

When energy IS required to treat waste, can we use clean and renewable input as energy, such as solar or wind? Many scientists still wince at the thought of using more energy to treat waste products. However, the energy we use does not need to leave a carbon footprint!