Sneak Peek of a Green Building

I've been interested in touring a green building for a while now, and I recently had the chance to poke around the county building at 5th and Jefferson.


My favorite feature? Try to guess what it is:




These are two options for flushing a toilet. The wavy-lined button on the left is meant for "liquid only" and the button on the right is industrial-sized flushing. Notice the background tile is a soothing green. Ahhhhhhh. The bathroom also had aerated faucets (which reduce water use by 70% over non-aerated) and a few other features.


The building had useful, descriptive recycling.

And the magnetic key card readers were not made of black plastic with a blinking red light, but an earth-toned picture of a tree. Happiness.

Wednesday Waste-o-Meter Week 3

Quick tally:

A. How many bags of non-recycling garbage did I throw away last week? Two.

B. How many plastic water bottles this week? Three -- major backslide here after two straight weeks of zero water bottles.

C. How many styrofoam containers? Two -- another backlisde after one straight zero water bottle days.

D. How many plastic bags? Zero.

E. How many paper cups? Seven.

F. How many pieces of plastic silverware? -- Four. I only remembered to bring silverware one day.

See all the waste-o-meters.

The Robots will make Seattle Beautiful

Just when you thought Seattle was getting too dirty, the friendly cordless robots will save us. Meet "Bobby" -- the Big Belly Solar Compactor

Here's the story on how I meet Bobby.

I was riding the 27 Monday morning, minding my own business, listening to my antique iPod mini until I arrived at my destination on 3rd and Pike.

I stepped off the bus, only to be confronted by a giant solar-powered, garbage eating robot: The Big Belly Solar Compactor, or as I like to call my new pal, Bobby. Here is a picture of Bobby.

Like an orchid, just give it sunlight (and instead of water, garbage) and Billy will be happy as a clam. If you want to see Bobby in action, here is a link to a Video Demonstration of Bobby in action. I HEART BOBBY.

Wednesday Waste-o-Meter -- Week 2

Joanna Cosgrove's prose in a 2005 article in Private Label Buyer crackles like a white-knuckle sea adventure when gushing over the potential of the private-label plastic cutlery business (emphasis mine):



Plastic cutlery profits enjoyed a 3.2 percent increase to $54 million [in 2004].... In an environment where cost rules the day for private label tabletop goods, Aspen Products' Schaefer challenges the private label tableware industry to remember the value of innovation.

"Absolutely there is a need to buy right, however over time the significant returns of driving out cost diminish and we must refocus on creative ways to grow the top and bottom line," he says.



"New products have always been the life blood of retailing. Don't let new ideas and innovation get lost in ongoing cost-cutting efforts. Without change and innovation in our category we become susceptible solely to price comparisons when the consumer makes the buying decision."



This out-of-the box thinking by the top minds in plastic cutlery has allowed consumers like me the option to now buy plastic cutlery in lavender!!! Thank you!!!

What is scary is how much plastic cutlery one must sell in order to make $54 million in profit, especially when one considers that private-label plastic cutlery is a subset of the overall market.

Albertson's sells plastic cutlery for $2.29 for 50 forks. Assuming 10% margin on the plastic cutlery business and extrapolating fork data, the plastic cutlery business alone creates 12 billion pieces of plastic ware a year. Ok, that is utterly insane.

I've been doing my part to fill the piggy banks of Mr. Plastic's grandkids, mowing through a couple a day while eating my lunch at work so I don't have to lug a reusable eating utensil around with me. Ok, no more.

Without further ado, the weekly tally:

A. How many bags of non-recycling garbage did I throw away last week? Just one. Not bad, but potentially untenable.

B. How many plastic water bottles this week? Zero, although a caveat which I will address in later weeks: I've been using gallon jugs at home instead of tap for some time. A subject for later, but assume I'm leaving these out for now.

C. How many styrofoam containers? Zero. Hooray for me! Last week I had two and I've been eating lunch at a few styrofoam friendly places over the last year.

D. How many plastic bags? Zero here as well, although I've forgotten to bring bags with me a few places and look like an idiot trying to carry 4 wine bottles by hand as I did last night.

E. How many paper cups? 7 -- No improvement here. Still going through one a day with my morning Americano.

F. (New Category) How many pieces of plastic silverware? -- About 10 million. I didn't count, but clearly too many and it I'm going to try and remember to bring steelware with me to work.

G. How much does my garbage weigh? Leaving this off the list from here on out. Too much of a PITA.

Wednesday Waste-o-Meter -- Week 1

I was a plastic water bottle junkie. More on that later.


Apparently, I am also a plastic-bag junkie. Witness a picture of my office desk drawer:




Although I bring my lunch to work quite a bit (today -- Katie's outstanding Pancit), there are many days when I head out for lunch and receive a bag exclusively for carrying said lunch back to my desk. Over the last year, I have probably thrown away more than 100 of these bags just so I have the convenience of carrying my falafel salad back to my desk.


Back to plastic water bottles... my office provides free water in the form of filtered or bottles and I used to be the guy that would take a case of water back to my desk and proceed to destroy it in a couple of days. I was a serious junkie.

Since then I decided to buy a Klean Kanteen for a number of reasons -- I'm a little freaked out about plastic leaching from bottles, filtered water is probably better than bottled water from a health standpoint, and I was getting a serious case of the guilties through all my bottled water drinking. I haven't sworn it off entirely... I went through about three litres of bottled water last time I was on a plane, and I drink some carbonated stuff, etc. etc. So instead of a junkie I'm more like a functioning plastic user.


Ok... onto the weekly tallies.


A. How many bags of non-recycling garbage did I throw away last week? 1 -- although it is full right now so far all intents and purposes it should be 2.


B. How many plastic water bottles this week? 0!!!!


C. How many styrofoam containers? 2 -- This one is tough... I love the meze trio at Mediterranean Kitchen at Westlake Center, which comes in styrofoam. (Yes, I'm a foodie of the highest order.)


D. How many plastic bags.? 0!!! I brought a plastic bag with me to Mediterranean Kitchen and took it out of my pocket when they were about to put my styrofoam container in it. I felt like a hobo -- so the next time I just asked for it without a bag. And carrying it without a bag seemed to work just fine.


E. How many paper cups? 8 -- Yikes! I get coffee everyday and I need to get a mug or container. Monorail Espresso and Cupcake Royale single-cup but the "Best" double-cups, hence the 8th, you can read about the "Best" here.


F. How much does my garbage weigh? Didn't get to this one.


New fun fact... I go through a LOT of plastic silverware I realized... need to think this one through. Until next week...

Wednesday Waste-o-Meter

In the 1920's, Seattle garbage was still collected by horse-drawn garbage wagon and started moving to garbage trucks.

Today, it's collected in state of the art garbage collection trucks, and in Leschi it's collected on Wednesday mornings.

According to King County, in 1999 residents threw away about four pounds of garbage per person per day. The City of Seattle recycles about 44% of its garbage today, and is putting together measures and plans to increase this to 72% by 2025 and somewhere around 55% by 2010.

There is also a movement in many parts of the world to simply reduce the amount of plastic used. When I was Ireland this summer, I was shocked (in a good way) to find out that all of Ireland, or at least the county that I was in, had banned plastic bags. We found this out the hard way when checking out of a grocery store to find (horror!) that the store wasn't giving us a free one-time-use bag to carry our items to the car. So we bought a grocery bag for the week, which my parents brought back with them to the States. I was surprised to find that Ireland is more progressive than my all-organic food co-op on Capitol Hill, but I have my head in the sand half the time. In San Francisco, plastic bag bans are starting up and the mayor is front & center of the debate.

So I started thinking... how much garbage do I haul off each Wednesday? And what kind of plastic do I go through on a weekly basis.

So I'm going to count. And post it here, at least for a few weeks.

Think of it as the Wednesday Waste-o-Meter

Specifically:

- how many bags of garbage (non-recycling) per week
- how many plastic water bottles per week
- how many styrofoam containers per week
- how many plastic bags per week
- how many paper cups per week
- maybe I'll figure out how much my garbage weighs, although no promises.

Seattle Times Prop 1 Shocker

The Seattle Times had a shocking revelation in today's paper -- interest groups are distorting facts about Proposition 1!!! Tomorrow's hard-hitting investigative piece: Seahawks fans prefer wins over losses, especially during the playoffs.

For me, each side loses credibility when it goes out of its way to demonize their opponents views or attempts to mislead. Some recent examples in Prop 1:

1. I received one of those recorded messages on my answering machine last week from a local mother of two who urged me to vote for Proposition 1 because it would save the environment. She mentioned the light rail, but not the highway expansion, and did not provide any facts, figures or arguments, but asked me to lock arms with one of my own.

2. The Sierra Club sent me an oversized post-card with a picture of a polar bear cavorting with another polar bear friend on a giant sheet of ice and then proceeded to slam the highway expansion while de-emphasizing the public transportation initiatives. I didn't check if the postcard was made using recycled materials or soy-based ink.

What I've tried to answer for myself on Prop 1 is:

1. Do I agree with what Prop 1 is trying to solve for?
2. Do I believe it will work?
3. Is it worth the cost?

I think Proposition 1 is trying to solve for travel in, out and around Seattle.... making it safer, making it faster, making it more efficient. I agree with that goal.

Do I think it will work? I don't. I think more highway lanes encourage more driving and also make places like downtown Seattle that can't expand it's car capacity worse. Chicago has expanded its highway lanes in the last 40 years while population growth is under 5% over that time, and traffic is terrible there. (I grant that is a broad generalization that includes many factors but interesting to note.) Seattle population today is basically flat with what it was in 1960. 1970, 1980 and 1990 actually had less Seattle residents than in 1960, where it eclipsed 1960 with the 2000 census. And the downtown is the same size... so why would we increase car capacity to downtown?

And I don't think it's worth the cost in increased taxes and pollution. I think we should focus on making our roads and bridges safe and making public transportation a realistic and practical choice for consumers.

[where: 98122]

How much Hazardous Waste in your Community?

Here is a map of all businesses approved for handling hazardous waste in 98122. This map actually goes beyond 98122, I found it interesting how many were directly around Cal Anderson Park, which currently has a reservoir under reconstruction.

It's pretty hard to tell exactly what is being regulated here, but there are 81 total businesses in this zip code that are hazardous waste handlers, one with toxic releases and one with air releases reported. Type in your zip code to see yours.

[where: 98122]