PET depolymerization - a chemical recycling process!

Plastics are ubiquitous. They are in our clothes, coffee mugs, and car batteries just to name a few examples. As the world population continues to grow so does our consumption of plastics. Polyethylene terephthalate or PET, better known as recycling plastic #1 is one particular plastic we encounter daily. If you have ever consumed a soda from a plastic bottle, chances are this plastic bottle had a recycling #1 stamped on the bottom of it. Unfortunately, PET bottles don't get recycled the same way as cardboard or metal does. Meaning the soda bottle you tossed into the recycling bin doesn't get washed out and refilled and then restocked at your local grocery store or vending machine. Nope, they usually will get filtered out the waste stream and crushed, ground up and then reused into a product that doesn't require high purity PET plastic material.

But what if we could actually recycle PET plastic back to a form where it is highly pure? After many years of research, scientists at IBM and Stanford have found an organic catalyst that would do just that. Dubbed as a chemical recycling process or depolymerizing plastic, PET bottles are heated in ethylene glycol in the presence of an organocatalyst. The end result is the isolation of bis terephthalate (BHET) in high yield with minimum waste products. BHET can then be transformed back into PET plastic.

A Youtube video about this process can be viewed below:

What will this mean for the future of plastics? Maybe we will be able to recycle and reuse PET plastics rather than burying them our landfill.  Now that's pretty awesome.

NY city's Soda "Ban"

This post isn't quite environmental, but anyone in New York City or heading to NYC will be affected by the soda "ban".  I put ban in "quotes" because nowhere in the measure does it ban the sale or consumption of soda itself, just the size of the cup that is sold in.

According to the Centers of Disease and Prevention, about 1/3 of Americans are considered obese (obesity = body mass index (BMI) greater than or equal to 30 - calculate your BMI here). Obesity causes numerous health issues such as type 2 diabetes, heart disease, stroke, and some cancers just to name a few. Obesity is preventable and providing healthcare is costly. In the wake of America's fight against obesity, Mayor Michael Bloomberg's plan to ban the sale of soda's that are 16 ounces or more is passed by the New York City's Board of Health, the first law of its kind in the country.

What does this law entail?

1) The law does not allow restaurants, fast-food joints, delis, movie theaters, sports stadiums, or food carts from selling sugary drinks in amounts larger than 16 ounces (~0.5 liters). Most places won't be allowed to stock cups that are larger than 16 ounces.

Picture taken from http://www.sovereignman.com/expat/brainwashing-starts-with-this-two-letter-word-7035/

2) It's not a ban on soda, it's a cap on the size of soda that you will be allowed to purchase. You are still allowed to drink as much soda you wish, the catch here is that you'll need to get a refill.

3) Fruit juices, beverages that are over 50% dairy-based, alcohol, and diet sodas won't be affected.

4) The law goes into effect in six months, March 12, 2013

I understand how people are against this measure because it oversteps our ability to make free choices for ourselves i.e. Big Brother is yanking our 16 ounce soda off the shelves! Who is to say that we can or cannot consume over 16 ounces of soda? On the other side of the argument, should we have to pay for other people's healthcare because so many are sick because of their inability to lose weight. And by putting a cap on how much soda one can purchase may deter them from drinking an excessive amount of sugar? I am going to remain politically neutral for this blog, so that argument is for you to decide and brew over.

More articles about the soda measure can be read here, here, and here.

*** Update 3/11/13

New York State Supreme Court Justice Milton Tingling puts a block on the sugary drink ban in New York!!!! The soda ban would have went into effect tomorrow if passed.

Read more about it on CNN here

Composting Toilet Update: A Winning Way to Deal With Waste - ScienceInsider

An update on the first prize winner of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation sponsored "Reinvent the Toilet Challenge!! The winning toilet design goes to Michael Hoffmann and colleagues of Caltech in Pasadena. You can read about the details in this awesome article here: A Winning Way to Deal With Waste - ScienceInsider.

This state of the art toilet is equipped with an electrochemical reactor powered by solar energy. The waste is decomposed to make hydrogen gas that can be stored and reused to power the reactor.

Credit goes to Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and Science Insider

And a Youtube video mentioned in the article's comment section can be watched here:

Harnessing the motion of the ocean for electricity

I literally just heard this interview with Jason Busch, the executive director of the non-profit Oregon Wave Energy Trust, (OWET) on NPR's show Talk of the Nation.  He describes their wave apparatus which is the first to be built on commercial scale and placed in the shores of Oregon. I'm not doing much justice to the interview and you should listen to it. Marine energy capturing is a hot topic in renewable energy, but is not a new thought for the renewable energy field.

These two videos are brought to you by the Green Economy.

A quick summary of the first video:
The coastal region of Oregon is a prime area for a wave energy farm because it has good electrical infrastructure built by retired timber mills and has reliable wave energy potential. What Oregon Wave Energy Trust has done is to build a devise that converts wave motion into energy. OWET has likened it's harnessing apparatus to an upright submarine. A floating portion sits stationary on top of the water and moves up and down on the spar via a ballast.  The whole apparatus is fixed on a buoy keeping it upright. The relative motion caused by the wave can be converted into electricity using turbines or by good old fashioned magnet and coil.

This second video describes how they built the apparatus. The thing is huge and heavy! It is about 150 ft long, 40 ft in diameter, and weighs 220 tons. Wow!

Very cool technology!!

HowStuffWorks also has a list of other methods for harnessing wave energy that you can read about here. 

Doggy Doo or Don't?

My apologizes for continuing the poop talk. :)  As I researched this topic I found that where our waste goes is a major issue. It's fascinating and disturbing. There are many issues with our current waste management system and one of them is the disposal of doggie waste. 

Don't mind me if I doo-doo! Max @ Crissy Field. Don't ask me why I took this picture... 

I will be the first to admit that I have an unnatural attachment to my dogs, especially my Max whom I've renamed affectionately as Mr. Myax. I've adopted Max from the Sacramento Pound and have had him for 3 years now. Snow, my shepherd/basenji mix, was adopted from a Bay area non-profit association AHAN 2 years ago. They are both great dogs, but Max and I are attached by the hip.

Myax and I at San Francisco <3

My childhood dog Lucky, who at 17 yrs old passed away early last month, was also a small white dog. My mom took ownership of him when I moved out for college (He loved her way more anyway). We lived in a large house with a large yard so Lucky could go outside and freely do his business on the lawn. When we were out and about, my mom would use the plastic bags, the ones that held our newspapers, to pick up after him. It occurred to me that a lot of people use plastic bags. And it also occurred to me (and this is kind of gross) that Lucky's business would be festering in that plastic bag for a long time. 

Lucky at 11 years old. R.I.P.

Later after college I was off in California picking out the newest addition to our family. I didn't want to have Max or Snowy's poop decaying in a plastic bag. So we found these BioBags. These bags are made of a patented bio-polymer called Mater-Bi, a product of an Italian company Novamont. Mater-Bi is a mixture of cornstarch and cellulose. These bags meet the ASTM D6400 specifications, a standard for compostable plastics that requires a 60% biodegradation within 180 days. You can read a quick summary of ASTM D6400 specifications here. BioBag was even selected as the bag of choice to collect the residents of San Francisco's food waste for their citywide composting program!! 

I have not attempted putting BioBag in my compost because we have not been able to find anyone that carried BioBag in stores here in Chicago. I have tried to compost this biodegradable poop bag from Greenbone that I bought at Target and so far it doesn't look like much is happening. But from the looks of the ASTM D6400 specs, I should see how the bag is after at least 180 days.

Flipping the argument.

Surprisingly, biodegradable poop bags can be harmful to the environment. In an article by Sciencedaily, researchers from North Carolina State University found that biodegradable products in our municipal solid waste (aka trash or garbage) were degrading too quickly releasing methane into the environment. The US Environmental Protection Agency estimates that roughly 31% of municipal solid waste goes to a landfill where the methane is allowed to escapes back into the environment. The other 69% of landfills capture the methane gas, but many do not put in the gas collection systems for at least two years after the trash has been buried because they are not required to do so. This allows enough time for the biodegradable products to breakdown and release methane. The researchers recommend coming up with biodegradable products that will degrade much slower...

Why not just change the guidelines so gas collection systems get installed right away??

Counter argument.

In another article from SFgate.com, Darby Hoover from the NRDC explains that biodegradable bags do not break down fast enough in landfills. The landfills today have been designed to prevent leakages from occurring which in turn prevents any circulation of air or liquids that help breakdown biodegradable bags.

So what's better? Using a plastic bag which won't breakdown or using a biodegradable one which will breakdown but creates greenhouse gases (GHG). Hmmm....

Here are some alternatives as well: 

1) Leave the poop there to degrade on its own.  

This is by far my least favorable alternative. It might be feasible on your own property, but dog poop is not only an eye sore but causes the area to look/smell/be dirty. Dog poop has a host of pathogens and bacteria that have the potential to contaminate and pollute watersheds. I will admit that we were guilty of this with Lucky, but we did pick up after him when he did his business off our lawn. 

2) Flush it down the toilet. 

There are some cities that do not allow you to flush dog poop down the toilet, but there are many cities that do. If this is something that you can do without getting a gag reflex, then check to see if your city allows it because the wastewater will get treated. You should also make sure your toilet can handle it and your septic tank will not clog. There are bags online that will allow you to pick up after your pet and flush it down the toilet such as Flush Doggy and Flush Puppies. There is a video about Flush Puppies here. In the SFgate.com article, flushing is considered the more greener option compared to bagging it. 

3) Compost it. 

Like composting humanure, animal feces has pathogens and bacteria that will need to have its own separate compost pile. Since dog waste compost still contains pathogens after it has been completed it is not safe to put the finished compost on any food crops. Here is a really good video on making a DIY pet waste composter for your backyard. The only downfall here is that you will need a backyard for this, so not recommended for cities. And you will have to dig a deep hole to install the system to keep the stench at bay.

4) Digest it.

A digester is like a pet septic tank. Unlike a compost, you won't need to empty it because the poop is liquified and allowed to return to the soil. Similar to a composter, you will need a large bin or garbage can for collection and some digestion enzymes you can buy from a hardware store. Here is a link of a DIY pet waste digester. You can also purchase them like the Doggie Dooley In-Ground Waste System. Again, like the composter, you will need a backyard to dig the hole for installation, so not recommended for cities.

5) Hire a cleaning service. 

Depending on where you live, there are dog waste management companies that will come by your home to do the dirty work for you. Here is one in Aurora/Naperville IL that charges $10/week for one dog. What they do with the dog poop is unclear, but this option is good for someone who has a backyard in a suburban neighborhood. 

Whichever option you decide to choose is entirely up to you. I've begun to entertain the option of using a doggy digester. And we completely support the use of cornstarch-based biodegradable poop bags because, greenhouse gases or not, at the end of the day the poop+bag will go away. In contrast, our petroleum based plastic bags have a life span of 15-1000 years, woof that's a long time...

In addition to enjoying cornstarch-based biodegradable poop bags, we also really enjoy a good corn maze! It's corn-tastic!

A corn-tastic family photo at Dixon Corn maze

Composting Toilets?

To keep up with my previous theme on composting, I've decided to talk about composting toilets after reading this great article in Science magazine (by Gretchen Vogel). Unfortunately, I can't link the full article because it requires the reader (you) to have a membership to Science, but you can read about the summary here. There is a short video about composting toilets as well that you can watch here. The purpose for this post is just awareness. If you already have extensive knowledge of composting toilets, then why haven't you gotten one yet?! I kid, I kid. But, honestly, it sounds pretty gross when you think about it. The first thing that came to my mind was, "Who is going to want to collect their own poop and compost it themselves??" If you're like me, then we probably both share the same "flush it and forget it" mentality that every person with indoor plumbing holds. 

Composting toilets has been around since the 1970's. It now seems to be getting the press that it needs since the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has began the "Reinvent the Toilet Challenge" to research and develop a toilet that can compost human waste for less than 5 cents per user per day. According to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, 1.1 billion people don't use a conventional Western toilet and 200 million latrines (communal toilets) are emptied by hand. This is a huge endeavor that will change the quality of life for many people in developing countries.

Images taken from
http://twistedsifter.com/2012/08/bill-gates-reinvent-the-toilet-challeng/

I'm going to put a small disclaimer here: This post is about composting toilets so the mentioning of poop is inevitable. In any case, I should talk about a few disadvantages with our current toilets. 

Our toilets:

• Use clean, drinkable water - this is especially bad for arid countries. 
• Generate lots of wastewater which is expensive to treat - again, this is bad for arid countries and especially for developing ones. Phosphorous is one of the main chemicals that is difficult and expensive to remove from wastewater.
• Combine feces+urine in a lot of water = stanky combination - separating the poop from the pee makes the poop less stinky. Drying the poop is apparently a good way to disinfect it and this way the waste also takes up less space and doesn't need to be treated with any chemicals. 

Some additional facts about composting toilets: 

• Feces, along with our fruit and vegetable peels can be composted together and the end product will look the same, like dirt.
• Urine contains less pathogens making it easier to sterilize when not mixed with feces. 
• When the composting process is done correctly the pile should produce enough heat to kill most of the pathogens and should not emit any odors.  - In one video the compost pile reached up to 128 °F! That's pretty freaking hot and it gets that hot without adding any electricity or chemicals. 

I've seen some videos where they have huge outdoor bins of human feces composting manually (here is one on how to start a bin). This way of composting human feces is not something an average American can or will want to do unless they had some remote cottage in the back country with access to copious amounts of sawdust within arms reach. And even then, I think the yuck factor of collecting and removing one's feces to a compost bin is challenging to the stomach even if there was an opportunity to do so. Luckily it seems that the Reinvent the Toilet Challenge has people composting the feces within the tank so that you're only dealing with the end product. Whew.

Anyway, that comes to mind some challenges about toilets with built in composting tanks in an urban setting. 

• Tanks need to be maintained properly, or else it can become unsanitary quickly...
• Where can you dispose of your composted material in an apartment setting?
• How do we fit a composting toilet into homes that are already fitted with sewage pipes?
• How do we change the psychology of people who have had Western toilets ingrained into their lives? (I can honestly say that I would have second thoughts of emptying my own tank of composted of feces even though I know it's not really poop anymore)
• What do we do with feces that have been contaminated by a sick person? 

These questions are starting to make my stomach turn....  

According to the American Water Works Association roughly 25 gallons of water is flushed per day by the average American. That's 9,125 gallons of water flushed a year. Regardless of whether my stomach turns or not, these are questions that we American's are going to eventually need to deal with.

I barely went into any science on composting toilets, but if you're interested there are some great reads all over the internet like this one and this one from TLC. There are many companies that sell composting toilets, even some DIY composting toilets. A quick Google search will bring up several sites including EZ-loo, Envirolet, and Biolet.

With that I'll leave you with a DIY site with awesome videos on outdoor composting of humanure using the Lovable Lou.

On a side note:

South Korea has now opened the first ever Toilet theme park in Suwon, South Korea. Apparently, the mayor there was very fixated on toilet troubles and was even born in his grandmother's bathroom. Interesting story, a video can be viewed here:

Homemade compost

Homemade Compost

Composting my food scraps has been on my mind ever since I was introduced to it 5 years ago when I first moved to California. Before then I had no idea what composting was or how wasteful it was to toss our vegetable scraps into the trash. For those not familiar with composting, fruits and vegetable scraps should only go into the pile from the kitchen. Anything containing meat, butter, dairy products i.e. any animal products should not go in as this will surly attract any vermin/animals that are looking for a quick meal. Yikes and yuck!

My husband made me my first homemade composter out of a plastic trash can we bought from Ace hardware using directions from this website.  Here are some pics of our first homemade compost bin.

Trash bin from Ace hardware

Poking holes to allow the compost to areate

Lining the bottom with newspaper

Finished setting up

The first time we tried it, we failed. On the bright side, there were several things I learned from this experience:

1. Don't add orange peels. Little did we know orange peels take a long time to compost. There are naturally occurring chemical compounds in the rind that kill bacteria and prevent the peel and the compost from decaying. Not only did we add the peels, we didn't bother to chop them up into smaller pieces either, further distressing our compost pile. 
2. There is a fine balance in the brown:green ratio. After reading several internet websites and composting book (How to build, maintain, and use a compost system by Kelly Smith) there is a delicate balance of carbon:nitrogen ratio in a healthy compost pile. A healthy compost pile consists of 25:1 of carbon to nitrogen, but if you want to guestimate the ratio of 3 carbon to 1 nitrogen works well too. You can and should (if you're interested) read more about that here: C:N ratio.
3. If possible, start the compost during the warmer time of year. Everything degrades faster in warmer temperatures. We started our pile during the chilly month of February, not necessarily prime time and was another cause for the demise of our pile. 
4. Composting a pile - from start to finish - can take more than a month. We gave up on our compost way earlier because of the smell. It was a soupy, slimy mess that, in retrospect, could have been salvaged by adding more cardboard or newspaper. 
5. Don't give up, troubleshoot! I guess I kind of freaked at the stank and the sight of our compost, so we did end up chucking it. Again, in retrospect, the pile could have been salvaged. Here are some troubleshooting tips: troubleshoot1

New compost bin!

This time instead of building a compost I repurposed an old, plastic hamper. It fortunately had a crack in the bottom of it that I could use for drainage purposes. I liked the idea of using the hamper because it is much wider and not as deep as the trash can, which makes it a lot easier to stir the contents using my garden spade. It conveniently has holes in the sides that I use for aeration so that I didn't need to poke holes. And lastly, the hamper would have went out to the landfill to take up space, so reusing it made it a more greener option.

I first lined the bottom and sides with newspapers to give the pile a base. I added some potting soil and then added my food scraps along with more newspaper. I gave it a little water and mixed the contents and voila! Compost! Here is the top view.

We had a random Ikea bookshelf outside that was used to put plants on top. I ended up using the wooden shelves to cover the top of the laundry bin. It's nice and discreet, hopefully no one will complain about the sight of it. 

It's been about four days since I've started the pile and it looked like my fruit scraps were gathering fruit flies. After reading this site here I was able to get the flies under control by mixing in shredded cardboard and burying the fruit scraps deeper into the pile. Luckily it doesn't smell either, a small victory in my mind. I intend to keep this compost till the end so I'll keep you all posted on my results!

Garbage Island

Welcome and thanks for stopping by!

I have been meaning to start a blog about environmental awareness for a while now. Since I’ve finished graduate school I’ve been unemployed, bored, and intellectually stagnant. Now was a good time as any to get in the habit of writing and sharing. So thanks for reading and I hope you can take something away from this. 

So here goes:

Garbage Island

Not too many people are familiar with the details of Garbage Island, a.k.a. Great Pacific Garbage Patch, let alone it’s existence. My understanding was that it was a solid mass of trash the size of Texas in the middle of the ocean. In reality it is more like small random masses of free-floating debris that is spread out with occasional large patches amassed together – not a single solid mass of garbage the size of Texas. One biological oceanographic student from Scripps compared it to “plastic-confetti”. (Read more about it here). And to make matters worse, scientists have also found a garbage patch in the Atlantic Ocean! (Atlantic Ocean Garbage Patch).

Source: http://greatpacificgarbagepatch.info/

In any case, it’s disturbing to see the amount of waste humans can generate. We mindlessly discard our empty plastic bottles and other items (purposefully or not) on the beach only to have the tides pick them up and carry them off to sea. Ocean and wind currents gradually catch the garbage in these rotating ocean currents known as ocean gyres, thus creating our garbage patch. Amazingly, about 80% of the trash in the Pacific Garbage Patch is from people on shore (Read more about it here).

Another concern is that plastics undergo photo-degradation, meaning the light from the sun breaks them down into tinier and tinier pieces (Read more about it here). Plastics are special because they are made of polymers, long chains of repeating subunits that are extremely strong when bonded together.

A repeating unit of polypropylene; forms plastics with recycling number 5

Photodegradation of plastics make it easier for our fish and aquatic wildlife to consume them, endangering them and endangering anyone who consumes them. Check out this picture below! How awful must it have been for this albatross and what a painful death it must have suffered after consuming our garbage! You can read more about Charles Moore’s encounter with the garbage patch and how he brought the garbage patch to people’s attention here.

Source: http://www.mindfully.org/Plastic/Ocean/Moore-Trashed-PacificNov03.htm

What can we do about this garbage patch?

It takes about a week to get to the patch by boat, so practicing preventative measures is our best bet. First things first is to be responsible stewards, which of course is much easier said than done, but try we must! Look how cute this kid is in the photo below. Second, we should try to reuse plastics or recycle them as much as possible. Third – spread the word! Let people know how destructive dumping garbage and plastic is to our oceans and their critters. It’s OUR earth; let’s give it a little love.

The best way to stem the growth of the patch is to use less plastic and recycle it more often. Photo courtesy California.gov and Howstufworks.com

* I wanted to give a little update, there is a documentary called 'Plastic Paradise' that is being filmed by Angela Sun. You can check it out here!