Month: December 2014

Make Recycling Part of Your New Year’s Resolutions!

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Yup, it’s that time of year again when we all make resolutions, ranging from pledges to eat healthier, work out more, or spend less time watching Internet videos about cute animals. Why not add living a greener life to your list? It’s so easy to do, it might just be the one resolution you keep past Valentine’s Day. Here are some ideas to get you started:

Start at Home: Get your family involved. Come up with a plan with your spouse and kids, and make sure everyone’s educated on which materials are recyclable, and the best practices.

Don’t Waste at Work or School: The simplest way to start recycling is to place recycling bins in every office, break room, and conference room making it easy and convenient to recycle. Since paper is the most common recyclable found in an office or school, make sure there are surplus recycling bins on display for it.

Upcycle: Upcycling simply means to change the way to you see trash or waste. You can find plenty of examples of upcycled art that are certain to inspire you to give a second life to something like plastic bottles. When you upcycle, you are keeping waste out of landfills and giving it some practicality.

Try a little DIY: There’s no greater joy than doing something yourself, and being able to show it off. Now more than ever, people are enjoying DIY crafts because they are cost effective. Reduce waste and treat yourself to a unique light fixture or holiday decoration crafted out of something you normally wouldn’t think twice about.

Electronic Waste:  E-waste is a major issue globally, and in the United States the numbers are staggering. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, this country alone generated more than 2.44 million tons and 3.4 million tons of e-waste in 2010 and 2011, respectively. In 2010, 19.6 percent of that year’s total e-waste was recycled while in 2011 the number increased to 24.6 percent. Mobile devices offer a similarly gargantuan challenge. In 2010, 152 million units were disposed of in the United States, and these units can be the source of precious minerals such as gold, silver, palladium and, in even larger quantities, copper. Recycling is more energy-efficient than mining for new metals besides being a more sustainable way to access resources. It also creates new jobs: computer reuse creates 296 more jobs for every 10,000 tons of material disposed each year.​ Look for a local drop-off site where you live.

Switch to High-Efficiency Light Bulbs: It’s not news that Light-Emitting Diode (LED) and Compact Fluorescent Light (CFL) bulbs use 75-80% less electricity than incandescent bulbs – so why aren’t more people using them?   Sure you have to pay more for them up front, but since they use less energy your electricity bill will be lower and they will last much longer than incandescent bulbs.

Once you start these few changes in your life it simply becomes more of a habit rather than something you have to do. So this year do your part in helping the environment and sticking to your New Year’s resolution to recycle more!

 

Over Five Trillion Pieces of Plastic Are in Our Oceans, Says Recent Report

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A new, comprehensive study has shown just how much plastic is bobbing in our planet’s oceans.

On December 10, The Guardian reported that “more than five trillion pieces of plastic, collectively weighing nearly 269,000 tonnes, are floating in the world’s oceans, causing damage throughout the food chain, new research has found.”

The piece went on to note that “Data collected by scientists from the US, France, Chile, Australia and New Zealand suggests a minimum of 5.25tn plastic particles in the oceans, most of them “micro plastics” measuring less than 5mm.”

The volume of plastic pieces, largely deriving from products such as food and drink packaging and clothing, was calculated from data taken from 24 expeditions over a six-year period to 2013. The research, published in the journal PLOS One, is the first study to look at plastics of all sizes in the world’s oceans.

Large pieces of plastic can strangle animals such as seals, while smaller pieces are ingested by fish and then fed up the food chain, all the way to humans.

This is problematic due to the chemicals contained within plastics, as well as the pollutants that plastic attract once they are in the marine environment.

“We saw turtles that ate plastic bags and fish that ingested fishing lines,” said Julia Reisser, a researcher based at the University of Western Australia. “But there are also chemical impacts. When plastic gets into the water it acts like a magnet for oily pollutants.

“Bigger fish eat the little fish and then they end up on our plates. It’s hard to tell how much pollution is being ingested but certainly plastics are providing some of it.”

The researchers collected small plastic fragments in nets, while larger pieces were observed from boats. The northern and southern sections of the Pacific and Atlantic oceans were surveyed, as well as the Indian ocean, the coast of Australia and the Bay of Bengal.

The vast amount of plastic, weighing 268,940 tonnes, includes everything from plastic bags to fishing gear debris.

While spread out around the globe, much of this rubbish accumulates in five large ocean gyres, which are circular currents that churn up plastics in a set area. Each of the major oceans have plastic-filled gyres, including the well-known ‘great Pacific garbage patch’ that covers an area roughly equivalent to Texas.

Reisser said traversing the large rubbish-strewn gyres in a boat was like sailing through “plastic soup.”

“You put a net through it for half an hour and there’s more plastic than marine life there,” she said. “It’s hard to visualise the sheer amount, but the weight of it is more than the entire biomass of humans. It’s quite an alarming problem that’s likely to get worse.”

The research found that the gyres themselves are likely to contribute to the problem, acting as “shredders” to the plastic before dispersing it.

“Our findings show that the garbage patches in the middle of the five subtropical gyres are not the final resting places for the world’s floating plastic trash,” said Marcus Eriksen, another of the report’s co-authors. “The endgame for micro-plastic is interactions with entire ocean ecosystems.”

The research, the first of its kind to pull together data on floating plastic from around the world, will be used to chart future trends in the amount of debris in the oceans.

But researchers predict the volume will increase due to rising production of throwaway plastic, with only 5% of the world’s plastic currently recycled.

“Lots of things are used once and then not recycled,” Reisser said. “We need to improve our use of plastic and also monitor plastics in the oceans so we get a better understanding of the issue.

“I’m optimistic but we need to get policy makers to understand the problem. Some are doing that – Germany has changed the policy so that manufacturers are responsible for the waste they produce. If we put more responsibility on to the producer then that would be part of the solution.”

While governments sort out exactly what kind of regulations ought to be written and enforced on manufacturers, remember to do YOUR part, and recycle!

 

 

 

 

 

SECURR’s New Relationship with San Jose Earthquakes

Big news in Major League Soccer – the San Jose Earthquakes recently announced they are building a new state-of-the-art soccer stadium in Silicon Valley. Securr, one of the nation’s leading designers and manufacturers of waste receptacles, is delighted to report that they have created a new product in the Stadium Series just for this new facility. We recently sat down with Steve Thompson, Director of Marketing and Sales at Securr, to learn more.

Stadium Series, 36-gallon

Q: Steve, can you tell me how this unique relationship with the San Jose Earthquakes came about? 

A: Earlier this year we were fortunate enough to work with Levi’s Stadium, the new home of the San Francisco 49ers, and supplied all the waste and recycling receptacles for the stadium. The inaugural Levi’s Stadium event was actually a soccer game between the Seattle Sounders and the San Jose Earthquakes. With the Earthquakes brand new stadium under construction, officials from the team saw our containers, were impressed with the quality of construction and materials and gave us a call.

Q:  How does the design of the Stadium Series, 36-gallon, 2-bin receptacle differ from other receptacles in the Stadium Series line? 

A:  The Earthquakes had a very specific design in mind that would compliment the feel of the new stadium. There were architects involved that wanted the receptacles to have the same characteristics as the stadium details. The colors and hole patterns are very much like the railings you find throughout the stadium. The challenge was to interpret the customer’s vision, since there were no drawings, and give them the custom receptacle they had in mind. It worked out great.

Q:  Securr not only has a wide range of waste receptacles for sale, but I see you also have the ability to custom-create them for your customers, just like you did for the Earthquakes. How does that process work? 

A:  There are a lot questions that need to be asked right up front. Questions like, “What capacity do you need? What are you going to collect and how do you want it separated? What are your recycling requirements? Do you expect to collect more recyclables than trash?  Also, since they are custom, what kind of a design do you want punched into the metal?” It starts with a series of drawings going back and forth until the customer sees on paper exactly what they want. The drawings are full color renderings that show all the detail possible so once the receptacles are manufactured, they come out exactly as expected.

Q:   How does having your own manufacturing facility in Southern California make your products and services different from those of your competitors? 

A: Most all of our competitors are resellers. They buy and sell only and have no idea how these things are actually made. When you buy direct from the manufacturer, which you would in our case, you get to tap directly into our resources to get the custom products you desire. Our engineering staff can make drawings in a short amount of time that the customer can review and critique to ensure they get exactly what they want. With no middleman to interpret the information before conveying it to the manufacturer, there’s nothing to be lost in translation.

Q:  Lastly, what is one thing about Securr you would like your customers to know that they might not already know? 

A: Our customers have the unique opportunity to directly influence the design of the receptacle they need to buy. Even though we have hundreds of products to choose from, the flexibility of our operation and the ability to work directly with us is something our customers really seem to enjoy. There are not many places like us where the customers have a hand in the creative process.

To learn more about Securr’s Stadium Series line of receptacles as well as the wide range of products that are available, please visit them at http://www.trash-cans.com/ or call 1-888-671-7066.