Posts tagged: recycling

Who’s Greener – Millenials or Boomers?

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recyclingIf you had to guess, which generation would you say was more eco-conscious – the Boomers who created a counter-culture out of living the natural life, or Millenials, who are living the brunt of past generations environmental carelessness.

According to a recent survey, (by marketing firm DDB Worldwide) that questioned more than 6000 American consumers, Boomers edge out Millenials by a slight margin when it comes to things like recycling and using reusable bags.

Per DDB, Boomers are more likely than Millennials to:

  • Say they make a strong effort to recycle everything they possibly can (66% v. 53%)
  • Say they make a strong effort to separate the recyclables from the rest of the trash (64% v. 53%)
  • Say they make a strong effort to use reusable grocery bags as much as possible (54% v. 46%) Continue reading →

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An Industry First, Virgin Airlines Aims to Serve Sustainable Food

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virgin-airlinesVirgin Airlines is leading the way when it comes to buying and serving sustainable foods on its flights. Richard Branson’s Virgin Atlantic Airways is in the process of analyzing its food supply chain with the aim to buy and serve only sustainably-sourced food – the first to do so within the airline industry!

According to Sustainable Business, the UK’s Sustainable Restaurant Association will rate Virgin’s global catering supply chain. After that, the group will work with Virgin to improve on areas of weakness, with the goal to make those improvements by the end of 2013. Suppliers will be judged on where they source food (sustainable seafood, meat and vegetables) and how efficient they are in water and energy use. 

‘We continue to be an industry leading airline on sustainability, driving solutions for the rest of aviation to share. Our adventurous spirit means we’re not afraid to push boundaries in following our sustainability agenda. Value for money and quality of product are of course hugely important factors, but our passengers now rightly demand that we look beyond that, and ensure we are making the most sustainable choices. The SRA ratings will allow us to understand how we and our global suppliers are performing on this front, and how to work closely together to drive improvements,” says Reuben Arnold, Director of Customer Experience at Virgin Atlantic.

Virgin also leads the airline industry when it comes to recycling. Continue reading →

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5 Things You Didn’t Know You Can Recycle – And 1 You Can’t

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There are plenty of clever ways to reduce the amount of things we throw away. While recycling is a big one, we can also upcycle, reuse, and donate. Below are five items  that (most of us didn’t know) can be recycled – and the one item that can’t.

  1. Compact fluorescent bulbs:  Take these to IKEA – they’ll recycle them for you.
  2. Appliances: Goodwill accepts working appliances, www.goodwill.org, or you can contact the Steel Recycling Institute to recycle them. 800/YES-1-CAN, www.recycle-steel.org.
  3. Carpet can be recycled if it is clean and usable.
  4. Old blankets, towels, and sheets can be donated to animal shelters. They can be used as makeshift beds for dogs and cats! Continue reading →

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Just How Clean Must Food Containers Be Before We Toss Them Into the Recycling Bin?

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This is a question we’ve been curious about for a long time. How clean do items that get recycled really need to be? Is it necessary to rinse out every ounce of yogurt from its bin, clean every spec of tomato sauce out of the jar? If these containers aren’t sparkling, will the recycling plant reject them?

Thankfully, Mother Jones has some answers for us.

Continue reading →

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Starbucks to Turn Coffee Grinds & Stale Baked Goods into Detergent

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You can now add one more innovative idea to Starbucks’ efforts towards being an environmentally responsible, sustainable company. In an attempt to both lessen its environmental impact and reduce food waste, Starbucks in Hong Kong is testing out a recycling process that will turn old baked goods and coffee grinds into laundry detergent and bio-plastic.

According to the NY Daily News, the project, led by scientists at the City University of Hong Kong, is being tested at a new food ‘biorefinery,’ that diverts food waste and transforms it into viable, usable products. Biorefineries transform corn, sugar cane, and other plant-based material into bio-based fuels and other products.

Recycled food waste is good for the planet in two essential ways. For one, it keeps tons of food garbage out of landfills and second, it reduces the need to manufacture goods from virgin, raw materials.
Starbucks Hong Kong produces about 5,000 tons of used coffee grounds and unconsumed baked goods that end up in the garbage bin every year. Currently, most of the waste is incinerated, composted or disposed of in landfills.
So how will old coffee grinds and stale banana bread be transformed into something more useful? Continue reading →

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The Great Pacific Garbage Patch Being Used for Recycled Packaging

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The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is slowly being chipped away at. First discovered in 1988, the patch is basically a giant floating mass of plastic debris. Surprisingly, it is not entirely comprised of bottles and bags, but instead billions of tiny pieces of plastic. It is located between California and Hawaii and the LA Times estimates that the giant clump of plastic waste is around twice the size of Texas.

Now however, there is finally some good news to report on the giant plastic mass. Environmentally friendly cleaning product company Method, is doing its part to try and make use of the discarded floating debris. They are utilizing plastic from the Pacific Garbage Patch to use in a plastic soap bottle that will be released in November.

Per the Method blog:

“as a small soap company, we know we can’t clean up the world’s oceans. but we can raise awareness about the issue and use our business to demonstrate smart ways of using and reusing the plastics that are already on the planet.

we think the best way to do that is to prove that solutions exist, even at a small scale. later this year, we will be launching a product in the world’s first packaging made from a blend of PCR plastic and recovered ocean plastic. recovered from beaches by method employees, in fact.” Continue reading →

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