Teru Talk Newsletter
Volume VI, Issue 11, March
14,
2016
Teru Talk by Michael
Theroux (pronounced
"Terú")
Teru's Trash Talk
Confessions of a
Sometime-Food-Scrap-Waster: ya
know, it ain’t easy to be
sustainable. In a month or two,
my compost system out back will
be actively munching up
anything I feed it. But right
now, anything I put in just
sits there, starts to smell,
and attracts vermin and
varmints. So
sometimes
, those
kitchen food scraps go straight
to the trash can and bypass my
compost. No big thing, right, I
mean how important could one
family’s organic residuals be
in the grand scheme of things?
Let’s break it down, size up
the problem and think about the
options. There’s a whole lotta
households who only contribute
a small amount each, but
together we continually
generate quite a mountain of
reclaimable
rottables.
There are just two of us on our
home; we eat fresh food as much
as possible. That means a lot
of trimmings and peelings, but
much less packaging and
wrappers than the average busy
family generates. If you add in
the green waste, the yard
trimmings, most of our
discarded residuals are in that
‘putrescible’ category: a
little warmth and water, and
it’s a microbe feast. As little
as possible of our yard waste
leaves the property and just
sits out there in low piles
until worked back into the
dirt. But in the kitchen, we
have maybe three to five days
to do something
with the
scraps in the bucket under the
sink. During a week we fill
that gallon bucket two to three
times with wet, quickly
degrading kitchen scraps.
That’s about five pounds a
bucket, or fifteen pounds a
week, sixty pounds a month,
over a quarter ton a year for a
two-person family unit. Whew;
who knew?
Some of the rottables that go
to the Materials Recovery
Facility get composted,
municipal green waste and food
processing waste, for example.
Not much can realistically be
picked out of the trash, once
mixed in. That goo ends up as
‘contaminant’ on the
newspapers, cans, bottles, and
other recyclables, which in
turn lowers the quality and the
marketable price. Our local
waste management doesn’t charge
me any more when I add fifteen
gallons of wet food scraps to
that 90 + gallon trash bin each
week, but some municipalities
make it a crime to mix food
waste in with the rest of the
trash; that’s certainly one way
to get the public’s attention.
The market’s tight for selling
any recyclables lately and
lower quality means some stuff
won’t sell at all so off to the
dump it all goes, despite all
of our best
intentions.
Most
municipalities still simply
ignore the problem; that’s
probably a short-lived
approach. Some areas hand out
and collect smaller cans for
household food scraps. Some
say, Grind it and Flush it -
letting the sewer system and
wastewater treatment plant deal
with the goo. There’s an
entirely different set of
solutions and problems in those
less ‘civilized’ countries
where common sense and some
outside help builds
community-scale anaerobic
digesters. Everyone globally is
trying to figure this one out;
some methods work better
than others in different parts
of the world. Folks are focused
on best management practices;
the best we can say about
broad-scale programs for
recovering critical resources
from food waste is: ‘We’re
working on
it’.
Hey Rube!
Keep an
eye on southern Canada these
days; lots of waste conversion
and circular economy activity
with our northern neighbors.
There has also been some
serious progress in
coordinating US and Canadian
management of programs that
provide crucial support for
waste conversion and resource
recovery. Delve into the
SDTC
in
particular, then check your
own roll-a-dex and refresh
your Canadian
contacts.
This Week's Top Story
Honeywell
UOP Technology Powers
California Commercial-Scale
Biorefinery
Honeywell UOP has announced
that AltAir Paramount LLC is
using Honeywell UOP’s
proprietary renewable jet fuel
process technology to convert a
variety of sustainable
feedstocks into Honeywell Green
Jet Fuelâ„¢ at the world’s first
dedicated commercial-scale
renewable jet fuel production
facility.
03/11/2016
The Week's News
ReFED
Releases Roadmap to Solve
the Food Waste
Dilemma
Rethink Food Waste Through
Economics and Data (ReFED) has
created "Roadmap to Reduce U.S.
Food Waste" that details 27
ways to cut food waste
nationwide.
03/12/2016
InSinkErator
and City of Philadelphia
Pilot Reduces Food Waste to
Landfill
The City of Philadelphia has
completed a pilot project with
InSinkErator® that demonstrated
the potential of food waste
disposers to reduce the amount
of food waste sent to
landfills.
03/11/2016
ESA Calls
for Next Scottish Parliament
to Realize Circular Economy
Potential
The Scottish Environmental
Services Association (ESA) has
released a short Manifesto,
"Making a Success of the
Circular Economy", in advance
of the upcoming Scottish
Parliament elections.
03/10/2016
California
Releases Plan to Guide the
State’s Climate Change
Adaptation
Following the California
Governor’s executive order last
year establishing an
ambitious
greenhouse gas reduction
target, the state's Natural
Resources Agency released a
final plan for how California
will prepare for the extreme
effects of climate change,
including increasingly extreme
weather and sea level rise.
03/10/2016
Emerson Will
Automate Hitachi Zozen
Inova's Energy from Waste
Projects
Emerson Process Management will
provide process automation
technologies and services for
current and future
waste-to-energy projects of
Hitachi Zosen Inova under a
global framework agreement.
03/09/2016
Lakeshore to
Hold Ribbon Cutting for New
$8.5M Machinex® Recycling
System
Chicago, Illinois company
Lakeshore Recycling Systems
(LRS) and Closed Loop Fund have
announced a ribbon cutting
ceremony and tour of the new
$8.5M Machinex® single-stream
recycling system at LRS'
Heartland Material Recovery
Facility on Wednesday, March
16, 2016.
03/09/2016
Comet
Biorefining Awarded $10.9M
SDTC Grant for Bio-Based
Chemicals
Plant
Sustainable Development
Technology Canada (SDTC) has
awarded a grant of CA$10.9
million to Comet Biorefining,
Inc for the construction of its
first-of-a-kind advanced
bio-based chemicals plant in
Sarnia, Ontario.
03/07/2016
CRS Develops
Green-e International Energy
Standard and
Certification
The San Francisco based
nonprofit Center for Resource
Solutions (CRS) has announced
the development of the Green-e
Energy International Standard
for renewable electricity.
03/07/2016
The Week's Action
Items
Due
03/31/2016: Applications for
Summer Internships with
Biodico
Santa Barbara based Biodico,
Inc is seeking up to 10 interns
for the summer of 2016 in
Fresno and Ventura Counties,
California.
03/09/2016
Due
04/10/2016: Round 2
Proposals to DOE's Small
Business Voucher
Pilot
The US Department of Energy
(DOE) awarded nearly $7M in
Small Business Vouchers (SBVs)
in Round 1.
03/12/2016
Due
05/10/2016: Proposals to
NRCS for 2016 Conservation
Innovation
Grants
The US Natural Resources
Conservation Service (NRCS) has
announced the availability of
Conservation Innovation Grants
(CIG) to stimulate the
development and adoption of
innovative conservation
approaches and technologies.
03/10/2016
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