Posts Tagged ‘waste management’
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
Despite Recycling Efforts, E-waste Creating Problems Worldwide
According to Consumer Reports, electronic waste is the fastest growing category of municipal waste in the United States. Americans alone accounts for 3 million tons of e-waste each year. As landfill space fills up quickly, developed countries are looking for ways to get rid of old electronics. According to greenpeace.org, companies in the U.S. have made e-waste a global challenge and as 60 Minutes shows, “much of this poison is coming out of the homes, schools and offices of America.”
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
E-Waste fastest growing U.S. municipal waste; recycling increase required
The Electronics TakeBack Coalition reports that between 20 and 50 million metric tons of e-waste is thrown away each year worldwide. Americans contribute more than 3 million tons yearly. The coalition also points out that only 13 percent of discarded electronic devices are recycled in the United States. Here, earth911.com reports that e-waste is rapidly becoming more of a problem, increasing at a rate three times greater than other municipal waste.
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
Recycling Ink is Good for the Environment and Charity
Here is an article from FundraisingIP.com giving tips on how ink cartridge recycling fundraisers are popular with non-profit organizations because they are easy and keep millions of useful cartridges out of landfills. There are several things organizations can do to make an ink cartridge recycling program even more successful.
Friday, June 5, 2009
Google Removes Trash Cans to Promote Recycling
According to an article from Mother Nature Network, Google has made several eco-conscious changes at its London office. One of the more creative changes Google implemented is the removal of trash cans from individual employee desks. Instead of simply tossing away garbage without a second thought, employees now have to get up and walk to a centralized disposal and recycling station. This small change has led to an increase in onsite recycling — if the employee is already walking to the disposal center, it is easy to make the decision to recycle the waste.
After an after-hours check of employee computers, Google implemented an educational program to help employees understand the energy benefits of powering down their computers at night. This is a low-cost way to save Google money and reduce the company’s carbon footprint.
Google’s removal of employee trash cans is an ingenious idea. It costs nothing for a business to remove the item and direct employees to a centralized disposal/recycling location. This one little step led to a significant increase in recycling rates at the company, 50 percent, and helps Google meet its green initiative goals.
What do you think? Would this make you more likely to recycle? Is this something you could implement at home?
Wednesday, May 27, 2009
By the Numbers…Carbon Neutronics™ Certified
Of course, it’s one thing to say you’re doing something environmentally responsible. It’s another thing to prove it.
That’s why we created the Carbon Neutronics Index. It’s a proprietary software program that we share with those who purchase and use grenk products. It helps customers calculate the tonnage they’re keeping out of landfills by choosing grenk.
Far too many businesses don’t get the credit they deserve for their exo-initiative. The Carbon Neutronics Index makes it easy to track and record the effect one company can make in reducing landfill waste and keeping cartridges in circulation for reuse.
It’s also a great tool for comparing the cost difference of using remanufactured grenk cartridges over original manufacturer print cartridges, and can provide measurable case studies to help customers build support for other environmental initiatives while improving their bottom line.
Carbon Neutronics™ is made up of three words: Carbon + Neutral + Electronics. CNI makes it easy to track and record the effect one company can make in reducing landfill waste and keeping cartridges in circulation for reuse. The Carbon Neutronics™ Index was created to provide companies with an accurate account of their potential e-waste that has been diverted by using grenk™ products.
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
What really happens to print cartridges…
In the next four years, more than 590 million print cartridges will be consumed in North America. Where will they end up?
Millions will be simply thrown away, where they’ll eventually be dumped in landfills around the country.
Because of their hard plastic and metal materials, discarded cartridges can take hundreds, even thousands of years to decompose, and their unused inks and toners can leach into the surrounding soil and contaminate ground water.
Millions more will be tossed-in good faith- into recycling bins but these are often shipped overseas to less responsible countries. Harmful human labor practices are used to siphon unused toner from the cartridges and waste products are often burned in open ditches. Add this human misery to the pollution and energy drain caused by shipping millions of cartridges overseas and, well, it’s not really a solution.
Even the millions that will be legitimately recycled into other things will impact the environment. Plastics are reprocessed into “regrind” and used in plastic injection to make things like park benches. That’s great, but think of the energy used and the pollutants expelled from those processes, which will be repeated over and over.
grenk takes a different path. We control where every piece of our product ends up, from every metal spring to every plastic housing. We reuse what we can for its original purpose, and then make sure the rest is recycled under our control; using fewer natural resources and creating fewer end-waste cycles.
Friday, May 22, 2009
InkCycle sees profit potential in environmentally friendly product
By James Dornbrook of the Kansas City Business Journal
InkCycle founder and President Rick Krska hopes to create some serious green with the company’s latest product.
The product, called “grenk” (pronounced like a mashing together of green and ink), is a line of remanufactured printer toner and ink cartridges designed to be 100 percent environmentally friendly, including the packaging. The product even includes regular reports that tell customers exactly how much material their purchases have removed from the waste stream.
“The good news for us has always been that we’ve kept ink cartridges from going into the landfill after one use, so there has always been a 50 percent savings,” Krska said. “Now, we’re saying we want to clean up the rest of that waste stream so there is very little coming out the back end. We’re finding there are many companies out there that care about this.”
Krska said he was sitting in a café in California when the idea hit him that he could make a difference with a truly “green” product.
Toner cartridges are mainly plastic, he said, but also contain aluminum and steel parts. Recyclers exist for each part but not for the cartridge as a whole. So his idea was for InkCycle to separate the cartridge components.
“We put these together, so we can take them apart faster than anyone,” Krska said.
Click here for the full article.
Thursday, May 21, 2009
InkCycle in Industry Week: Putting Waste to Work
Putting Waste to Work
Forget the landfill. Manufacturers are getting better at finding ways to reuse their waste.
By Jill Jusko
Print Cartridges Get New Life
For InkCycle, a remanufacturer of toner and print cartridges, one could argue that it is inherently green in that it reuses spent cartridges that might otherwise end up in a landfill. That’s certainly true, at least in part, says Brad Roderick, executive vice president. “At the end of the day, we are rebuilding on somebody else’s trash.” He points out, however, that even remanufactured products at some point reach the end of their usable life.