Teru Talk Newsletter
Volume III, Issue
45, November 11,
2013
Teru Talk by Michael
Theroux (pronounced
"Terú")
Teru's Trash Talk
Congratulations
are due to the City of Los
Angeles for reducing the
amount of crud going into
its landfills by a pound
and a half per person in
the last ten year! No
kidding now, that's huge:
the City has added over a
hundred thousand people in
the last a decade and more
folks move in every day.
But as the numbers of
people, jobs and sales have
increased and the amount of
trash generated has risen,
so has the amount diverted
from disposal through the
City's public-private
cooperative effort. In Y2K,
trash going into the
regional landfills from the
City amounted to 5.7 pounds
for every man, woman, and
tot ever to toss a dirty
diaper, flip a bottle into
the kitchen trash can, or
fill a dumpster with
Business Discards. By 2011,
that "generation rate"
dropped to 4.2 pounds per
person, diverting better
than 75% of all waste
generated by its good
citizens.
That
claim recently received the
royal treatment. This year,
the City gathered all their
notes and commissioned
UCLA's Engineering
Extension Recycling and
Municipal Solid Waste
Management Certification
Program to develop an
independent Zero Waste
Progress Report, completed
earlier this year and just
now really starting to get
the attention it deserves.
No easy task, documenting
what is actually happening
between the toss and the
recovery that California
off-handedly calls
"diversion." Everybody
generates numbers, and
numbers can be made to
support whatever result is
politically expedient.
Turning a boast into
documented fact has taken a
lot of effort. But stemming
the head-long rush to Dump
Everything - that's where
the Real Work
happens.
Half-way
through the decade in 2006,
the City adopted the RENEW
LA policy calling for
development of seven
conversion technology
facilities, with one
facility located in each of
Sanitation’s six
wastesheds, and the seventh
conversion technology
facility to be located
within the local region.
The City Council was clear:
"The goal of Zero Waste as
defined in this plan is to
reduce, reuse, recycle, or
convert to energy the
resource now going to
disposal so as to achieve
an overall diversion level
of 90% or more by 2025; and
to leave for disposal only
a small inert
residual."
The City
of Los Angeles has adopted
this science and
data-backed policy to guide
how Diversion can cleanly
and safely take place. When
you are faced with a
veritable Tsunami of Trash,
you need an All of the
Above approach to
effectively intercept and
recover. Unlike the
state-wide dictates of
CalRecycle, the City's
Waste Management Hierarchy
slips waste treatment by
“Alternative Technologies”
in just below Recycling /
Composting, and above
Landfilling. This includes
"alternative municipal
solid waste processing
technologies that will
increase landfill diversion
in an environmentally sound
manner, while emphasizing
options that are energy
efficient, socially
acceptable, and economical.
Alt Tech includes advanced
thermal recycling (ATR),
pyrolysis/gasification,
anaerobic digestion,
composting, autoclaving,
fermentation" and whatever
clean and green approach
comes along
next.
The Zero
Waste Progress Report shows
that this progressive,
highly integrated approach
can and does work,
providing a number of case
studies. No brag, just
fact: 75% diversion. But as
the report's Final Note
emphasizes, that remaining
25% is going to be the most
difficult to achieve. City
of Los Angeles: stand up
and take a bow - OK, that's
enough dilly-dallying, now
get back to
work.
Hey
Rube!
Around the
globe, communities big and tiny
are finding ways to put
Alternative Technologies to
work, reclaiming the stuff we
get done using. Look at what
you buy, consider what you
actually need, watch what you
throw away, and ask your
Leaders what they actually DO
with all that crud. You might
be surprised at the wildly
differing answers you
get.
The
Week's Extra Reading
UCLA's Zero Waste
Progress Report for the
City of LA and the Summary
Appendix (warning: 35MB
file) have been added to our
References for easy access.
Dig in: lots of encouraging
sanity contained in a
colorful 50 page
presentation, backed by over
500 pages of data-packed
Appendices.
This Week's Top Story
New
Recyclable Fiberboard Could
Help Solve UK's Waste
Problem
The United Kingdom (UK) based
University of Leicester has
announced that Professor Andrew
Abbott has been awarded the
Royal Society Brian Mercer
Award for Innovation 2013 for
development of a new wood-based
product similar to Medium
Density Fiberboard (MDF)
that uses a starch based resin
from completely natural
sources, such as potatoes.
11/04/2013
The
Week's News
NOTE:
If you are using IE10 and our
website isn't loading as
smoothly as you would like or
the page jumps when you click
on a link to go to a certain
news item, just change to
"compatibility view" and all
will be
fine.
Battelle's
Mobile Catalytic Pyrolysis
Device Turns Waste Biomass
into
Bio-Oil
The Ohio based international
nonprofit Battelle Memorial
Institute has announced a
pilot-scale, mobile catalytic
pyrolysis technology that turns
wood residue or other waste
biomass into bio-oil.
11/08/2013
Zero Waste
Energy Breaks Ground on
Organic Waste to CNG Fuel
Facility
California based Zero Waste
Energy, LLC has announced the
groundbreaking of its latest
project, a SMARTFERM® anaerobic
digestion facility in South San
Francisco, California that will
convert organic waste into
compressed natural gas (CNG)
and compost.
11/08/2013
International
Symposium in Toronto
Endorses Energy from
Waste
The Canadian Plastics Industry
Association has announced that
an international gathering of
scientists, researchers, and
industry experts meeting in
Toronto has endorsed the future
of energy recovery (or
energy-from-waste).
11/07/2013
USDA Awards
$10MM to Develop Bioenergy
from Beetle-Killed
Wood
The US Department of
Agriculture (USDA) has
announced a $10 million grant
to a consortium of academic,
industry, and government
organizations led by Colorado
State University (CSU) and
their partners to research
using insect-killed trees in
the Rockies as a sustainable
feedstock for bioenergy.
11/07/2013
Cory
Environmental Opens Its
First Anaerobic Digestion
Facility in
Somerset
Cory Environmental has
announced that its first
anaerobic digestion facility
has opened in
Weston-super-Mare, Somerset.
11/07/2013
WRAP
Releases Report on 2012
Household Food and Drink
Waste in the
UK
The United Kingdom's (UK) Waste
and Resources Action Programme
(WRAP) has announced release of
its report containing estimates
of the quantity and types of
food and drink waste generated
by UK households in 2012.
11/07/2013
Biome
Bioplastics Helps Develop
Biodegradable Single-Serve
Coffee
Pods
United Kingdom based Biome
Bioplastics has announced
development of a biodegradable
coffee pod, offering one of the
first sustainable packaging
alternatives in the
single-serve market.
11/06/2013
Facility in
China Earns First Ever RSB
Certification for Waste-Gas
to
Biofuels
LanzaTech and the Roundtable on
Sustainable Biomaterials (RSB)
Services Foundation has
announced that joint venture
(JV) Beijing Shougang LanzaTech
New Energy Science &
Technology Co, Ltd has earned
RSB’s sustainability
certification for its facility
that converts waste steel mill
gases to sustainable biofuels.
11/05/2013
New Test for
Enzyme Cocktail Can Speed
Research for Biofuel
Production
The US Department of Energy's
(DOE) Pacific Northwest
National Laboratory (PNNL) has
announced development of a new
test to speed up research to
create a potent blend of
enzymes to transform materials
like corn stalks and wood chips
into biofuels.
11/04/2013
The Week's Action
Items
Due
01/13/2014: Proposals to
PSCo for Forest Biomass
Energy Demo
Project
Public Service Company of
Colorado (PSCo), an operating
company subsidiary of Xcel
Energy Inc, has issued a
Request for Proposals (RFP) to
acquire the capacity and energy
associated with a single forest
biomass gasification generation
project with an electrical
output rating no more than 2
megawatts.
11/04/2013
|
