Teru Talk Newsletter
Volume III, Issue
16, April 22,
2013
Teru Talk by Michael
Theroux (pronounced
"Terú")
Teru's Trash Talk
Forty-three
years ago today
Gaylord Nelson, the
Honorable Senator from
Wisconsin, announced a
"national teach-in on
the environment" and
stirred up 20 million
Americans to really
think about the filth
they were creating and
wallowing in, all in
the name of
prosperity: Thus Earth
Day was born on April
22, 1970. This humble
beginning signaled the
socio-political
movement that created
the Environmental
Protection Agency and
the passage of the
Clean Air, Clean
Water, and Endangered
Species Acts. Twenty
years later, Earth Day
went
global.
Shifting
the global mid-set away
from use and toss to adopt
the habit of Recycling
seems to have been
kick-started that day in
1970, re-invigorated in
1990, and continually
bumped toward sanity once a
year since then. From the
continuing swell of trash,
Humans began to selectively
sort out bottles, cans,
newspaper, cardboard, and
anything that really looked
like it should and could be
Recycled. Even today, you
can ask just about anybody
what is "recyclable" and
what is not, what they now
drop in the blue bin
instead of the black, and
you invariably get
different answers. Is this
a recyclable piece of
waste? Well … it certainly
Should be!
Recycling
may have begun with the
global desire to help and
has been maintained by
often misguided
self-sorting decisions, but
that's just the front end
of the beast. It wasn't
long before this trash
sorting generated huge
moldering piles of
collected used newspapers,
and dump trucks full of
Recyclables going into
landfill. There was no
infrastructure in place to
adequately and
cost-effectively reprocess
the "recyclates" into raw
materials for new
manufacturing. Forty years
since Senator Nelson set
things in motion, Humans
are just beginning to
wonder what happens with
the Back End of that
recycling beast does, and
believe me, it ain't
purty.
China's
new president Xi Jinping
has tightened the ports
where recyclate-laden
tankers dock to reduce the
amount of low-value
'foreign waste' entering
the country. Depending on
China to provide the global
Recycling Solution isn't
working out very well
anymore; it seems the
country is tired of being
dumped on. As with any
pipeline, a plug at the far
end will eventually back
things up. It might be a
really good idea to make
sure whatever we sort out
as Recyclable from the
trash flow has someplace
useful to go. To do that,
we MUST know where they are
actually going.
Understandably, the global
Brokers of Recyclates don't
really want to turn over
their books to any
governmental body, but what
isn't measured can't be
controlled.
There is
an alternative to
nationalizing Recycling:
Let's start the next phase
of the Recycling Movement,
and focus on building the
recyclate reprocessing
infrastructure right near
where the wastes are
generated. Call it: Earth
Day 2013!
Hey Rube!
Take a good
look at California's new waste
management web portal, Data
Central, a nice attempt to make
all the data are publicly
accessible. The state is as big
as many countries, and
certainly out-does itself in
generating Trash. We should be
able to use the California
efforts as a global model. Now
try to figure out where the
Recyclables go. If you don't
find the information, ask where
the detail is hidden. That
information
should be
there, especially with the new
Mandatory Commercial Recycling
laws now being implemented. You
can bet Somebody
knows.
The Week's Extra
Reading
See our new
article by guest author Melvin
W. Cook. "Existence
Hypothesis: Resource
Recovery Plant"
looks at how a different
technological approach can
extract maximum energy from
municipal
wastewater.
The Week's
News
Virginia Tech
Team Turns Cellulose to
Starch and Sugar for Food
and
Biofuels
The Virginia Polytechnic
Institute and State University
(Virginia Tech) has announced a
breakthrough in conversion of
cellulosic wastes and other
non-food biomass into amylose
starch and glucose.
04/20/2013
International
Research Team Identifies
Fate of Charcoal and Biochar
in
Soil
The National Science
Foundation (NSF) has reported
that an international research
team has determined key
elements of the fate of
charcoal once it enters the
soil, part of the global carbon
cycle crucial where highly
porous charcoal and biochar
forms of carbon are
incorporated to effect carbon
sequestration.
04/20/2013
CalRecycle
Launches New State-Wide
Waste Management Data Web
Portal
The California Department
of Resources Recycling and
Recovery (CalRecycle) has
reorganized its voluminous
information into one "Data
Central" web-portal, especially
useful given the Mandatory
Commercial Recycling program
now being implemented under AB
341.
04/20/2013
Sita
Selected for 30-Yr Resource
Recovery Contract with
Meyerside
Authority
The United Kingdom based
Sita UK, a subsidiary of Suez
Environnement, has announced
that the Sita Sembicorp UK
consortium it leads has been
selected as the preferred
bidder on a 30 year waste
management and resource
recovery contract with the
Merseyside Recycling and Waste
Authority (MRWA).
04/19/2013
Carbios
Enters €7MM Public-Private
Collaboration for Plastic
Waste
Conversion
French green chemistry
company Carbios has announced
entering into a public private
partnership focused on
optimizing value from waste
plastics, and developing new
bio-sourced polymer
alternatives.
04/19/2013
LS9 to
Expand Florida Facility
Following Successful
Biobutanol
Trials
South San Francisco based
LS9, Inc has announced plans to
expand its Florida testing and
demonstration facility
following successful biobutanol
production scale-up trials for
Cobalt Technologies.
04/18/2013
US-Israel
Bio-Energy Challenge
Initiates Advanced Biofuels
Collaboration
Two non-profit
organizations have reported
that the winning Israeli
companies from the US-Israel
Bio-Energy Challenge are now
meeting with key US researchers
and program managers to discuss
collaborative biofuels
opportunities.
04/18/2013
ADB
Loans $200MM to Dynagreen
for Waste-to-Energy Plants
in
China
The Asian Development
Bank (ADB) has announced that
it is extending $200 million in
loans to the Dynagreen
Environmental Protection Group
Company (Dynagreen) to help
small and medium-sized cities
in the People’s Republic of
China (PRC) turn their growing
mountains of solid waste into a
sustainable source of renewable
energy.
04/17/2013
ABO
Releases On-Line Interactive
Global Map of Algae
Industry
The Algae Biomass
Organization (ABO) has
announced the release of an
interactive on-line mapping
tool showing the global
location, name, and other key
information for algae
production facilities and
research institutions, national
laboratories, demonstration and
commercial projects, and other
efforts undertaken by ABO
members and non-members.
04/17/2013
Canadian
Collaborative Launches
PowerHaus Clean Tech
Competition
The green technology
investment company GreenAngel
Energy has announced the launch
of its PowerHaus competitive
initiative in collaboration
with Simon Fraser University
and the Canadian National
Research Council's Industrial
Research Assistance Program
(IRAP).
04/17/2013
Cobalt
Technologies Takes Steps
Toward BioButanol
Commercialization
California-based Cobalt
Technologies Inc. has released
two announcements that together
advance the company's biomass
to n-butanol technology
platform. First, Cobalt has
signed an equity investment
based strategic partnership
agreement with two Asian
chemical companies for the
development of a complete
biomass-to-butadiene solution
and construction of a
commercial-scale biorefinery in
Asia.
04/17/2013
EC
Highlights SYNPOL Project
for Biopolymers from Syngas
Fermentation
The European Commission's
(EC) Community Development and
Research Information Service
(CORDIS) has released its first
update on the SYNPOL Project
launched at the beginning of
last year.
04/17/2013
European
Commission Launches 3-Year
€6.2MM BioBase NWE
Project
BioBase Europe has
announced the European
Commission's launch of a new
project focusing support for
bio-based product development
innovation upon the
northwestern European region.
04/16/2013
Sweetwater
Energy Signs $250MM
Cellulosic Sugar Off-take
Agreement
New York based Sweetwater
Energy, Inc has announced
signing a 15-year $250 million
cellulosic sugar off-take
agreement with bioproducts
company Naturally Scientific.
04/16/2013
The Week's Action
Items
Due
6/04/2013: Proposals to City
of Los Angeles for Organic
Waste
Processing
The Los Angeles Business
Assistance Virtual Network
(BAVN) has posted a
newly-opened Request for
Proposals (RFP; BAVN ID 16519))
from experienced contractors to
provide receipt, processing,
and reuse of green material,
food material, and horse manure
collected from the City of Los
Angeles curbside collection
program.
04/18/2013
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