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Latest Posts in green

Keeping packing material out of the waste stream

Marilyn Lauderdale had been working at an IKEA store in Renton, Washington, for 15 years when she transferred to their in-house furniture assembly team.

In her new position, she quickly noticed that cardboard and plastic packing materials were recycled, but other packaging – including copious amounts of expanded polystyrene foam – was not.

An innocent question about whether it could be recycled led her, she says, “down...


Let Them Eat Plastic

The city of Seattle's ban on plastic bags has been in effect since July 1, 2012, and yet if you walk down any grocery aisle you will encounter the seven basic types of plastic. Every sandwich, vegetable (frozen or fresh), sack of fruit, snack, beverage (pop, water, juice), is...


Using Manure to Tame the Energy Hog

Pigs are a big deal. Four in 10 pounds of meat eaten worldwide is pork and, in the United States alone, there are as many as 75 million or more pigs being grown for food. Since each pig can produce half to three-quarters of a ton of manure on its way to market, their wastes are a big deal, too.

Collected in open-air pits as they used to be on the 10 Murphy Brown hog farms in southwest Utah, the waste can be a smelly threat to...