This short documentary identifies how e-waste is handled by workers in India. Circuit boards are melted over open burners and copper cables are cleaned in vats of acid while workers handle the toxic materials without any protective gloves or masks. Piles of PVC wiring are burned in public fields while nearby children play under the noxious fumes.

It’s proven that exposure to such materials causes devastating affects on the workers’ health. Heavy metals like Lead and Mercury affect the nervous system and are especially dangerous to children. Cadmium affects kidneys, while other organic chemical byproducts can affect hormones and the neurological system.

Piles of e-waste are sent to India because the reclamation costs are so low there. While recycling a computer in the United States or Europe costs around $20, the same process in India costs only a couple dollars. Low labor costs and high profit margins in India attract hazardous materials from around the world. However, the enormous cost savings is tragically jeopardizing the health of those handling the materials.

This video demonstrates why such reclamation processes need to be better regulated. Here at eCycleGroup, our products are processed domestically by reputable companies dedicated to high-quality re-fabrication procedures. We create merchandise that is comparable with original equipment while keeping e-waste out of landfills. (please click the MORE link to watch the video). (more…)

According to the Natural Resources Defense Council, Americans throw away more than 30 million Christmas trees at the end of the Christmas season.

If you want to make sure your cut tree finds an organic end, recycle it! In the weeks after Christmas, many communities offer curbside pick-up of trees, while others offer drop-off locations or wood chipping services. Make sure you know when these services will be offered, or your tree will wind up in a landfill where even the most natural trash is unlikely to decompose.

These services will usually chop and mulch your tree so that it can be used for weed control and water conservation in public areas and parks; sunk in lakes to provide habitat for fish; or turned into fuel at biomass plants.

Be sure to remove any tinsel, lights, and ornaments. Unfortunately, trees with artificial snow or flocking can’t be mulched, so next year, make your tree more earth friendly by avoiding such decorations. (more…)

When you want to find the phone number of a local residence, where do you look for the information? Do you haul out the white pages to “let your fingers do the walking” through the entries, or do you search online using one of the internet’s free directory services?

According to banthephonebook.org, as many as 5 million trees are cut down to create the white pages phone books that are dropped on our doorsteps each year. Additionally, taxpayers spend $17 million per annum to have these books recycled.

In rebuttal, a detailed Yellow Pages’ blog demonstrates the process of making paper for the Yellow Pages industry uses mainly woodchips and saw mill byproducts as well as recycled newspaper and directories.

Regardless of which data is more accurate, when you consider that today’s consumers most likely use online directories, social networks, and mobile phone applications to find the contact information they need, banthephonebook.org some feel it simply does not make sense to have the white pages phone books automatically delivered to us every year. (more…)

If there is one thing that Americans do a lot of, each year between Thanksgiving and Christmas, it is spend money. Last year, according to an recent report by the U.S. Census Bureau, 19 billion cards, letters, and packages were delivered during that period. The Census Bureau also reports that, during December 2008 alone, $28.2 billion was spent in department stores. While all that spending, giving, and receiving may be good for the economy, it wreaks havoc on the environment.

“A lot of resources are being used, and a lot of trash is being produced,” explains Gary Null, an award-winning talk show host, notable author, and the founder of Progressive Radio Network (PRN). “We know the devastating effect that this has on our planet. It is important to do our part to try to keep the holidays as environmentally friendly as possible.”

With a population of 308 million in America alone, if each person tossed one extra piece of garbage, this holiday season, the additional waste would be quite alarming. There are things that we can do to achieve an eco-friendly holiday. Start by keeping the following tips in mind: (more…)

Have you ever wondered why most plastics are marked with a number from 1 to 7 inside a recycling symbol? The simple answer is that each number represents the type of resin made to produce the plastic. Because each resin is different, these numbers influence how that product can be recycled, though the most popular today are clear plastic drinking bottles made of polyethylene terephthalate (PET) #1 or milkjugs and soap bottles made of high-density polyethylene (HDPE) #2 plastic. Plastics with codes #3 through #7 might be accepted as part of your recycling program, but these products are not easily recycled, and are often sorted out and incinerated. (An excellent chart explaining the differences between the types of plastics can be downloaded from earth911.com)

The first PET bottles were recycled in 1977, and since then, plastic bottle recycling has increased to more than 2.4 billion pounds annually. In fact, according to earth911.com,  more than 80 percent of communities across the nation collect and recycle plastic bottles, and in recent years, the number of U.S. plastic recycling businesses has nearly tripled. More than 1,600 businesses are now involved in recycling post-consumer plastics.

Recycling 1 ton of plastic saves 7.4 cubic yards of landfill space. Recycling a single plastic bottle can conserve enough energy to light a 60-watt light bulb for up to six hours. And recycling one pound of PET plastic bottles saves approximately 12,000 BTUs (British thermal unit) of heat energy–that’s enough energy to bring about eight gallons of water 180 degrees from freezing to boiling. And, producing new plastic products from recycled materials uses two-thirds less energy than is required to make products from raw materials! (more…)

I already love to eat Kettle brand chips. Ironically, I never even enjoyed potato chips until earlier this year when I absentmindedly snacked on a bag of Kettle Tuscan Three Cheese chips at a media event I was attending: From that moment on I was hooked. Since then, I’ve sampled many of the flavors in their line, always delighted by their wonderful crunch and delicious flavors.

Only recently, I happened to notice verbage on the packaging that drew my attention to the company’s sustainability efforts and was pleased to discover the company supports a variety of eco-friendly practices. In fact, green building, renewable energy, habitat restoration, recycling, and reuse make up the pillars of Kettle Foods’ environmental initiative! Awesome practices contribute to their awesome chips!

The new 73,000-square-foot Kettle Foods factory in Beloit, Wisconsin, is the first food manufacturing facility in the U.S. to receive Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED)  Gold-level certification for green building. On top, the building features 18 wind turbines that generate enough energy to produce 56,000 bags of Kettle Brand Potato Chips every year – or approximately 28,000 kilowatt hours.

The Kettle Foods headquarters in Salem, Oregon, is home to one of the largest commercial solar power arrays in the Pacific Northwest. As a producer of renewable energy, Kettle Foods’ 616 solar panels generate 120,000 kWh of electricity annually – enough to make 250,000 bags of Kettle Brand Potato Chips each year, and reduce Kettle Foods’ annual CO2 emissions by 65 tons.

When Kettle Foods’ headquarters moved to Oregon in 1999, the company set out to restore a federally designated natural wetlands on the company grounds.  Invasive non-native species including Himalayan blackberry bushes and Scotch Broom were removed and the grounds were replanted with native plants such as Aster, Camas, Red Alder, Lupine, and Sword Fern in addition to aquatic plant species such as Wapato and Marsh Pennywort which enhance biological diversity in the wetland pond. (more…)

Do you change your car’s motor oil? If so, you’re considered a do-it-yourself (DIY) oil changer! According to the American Petroleum Institute, more than 50 percent of all motorists fall into this category. DIY oil changers generate approximately a quarter of all used motor oil that has the potential to be reused or recycled: that’s about 150 million gallons of used motor oil each year!

When you change your own oil, you take responsibility for properly disposing of your used oil, too. Mobil oil wants to help you with that: Just enter your postal zip code here to find the location of the oil recycling or disposal facility nearest you.

With business activities in some 200 countries and territories across six continents, ExxonMobil realizes the potential environmental impact of its operations and desires to maintain the highest standards for environmental stewardship. Because Exxon/Mobil believes protecting the environment is everyone’s responsibility, the company has joined with Earth 911, www.earth911.org a nonprofit network that provides access to local environmental programs in the United States and parts of Canada, to make it easier for consumers to properly dispose of their used motor oil. (more…)

Hope Lake Lodge & Indoor Waterpark at Greek Peak Mountain Resort not only blends with its breathtaking environment aesthetically, but is designed to preserve it as well. This expansive construction project — begun in 2008 and nearly finished — will be one of the largest “green” building projects in Central New York. Being environmentally conscious is vital to both the management and condominium residents of Greek Peak Mountain Resort Hope Lake Lodge & Indoor Waterpark.

“We put a great deal of thought into creating the perfect balance between elegant design and environmental preservation,” says Al Kryger, President of Greek Peak Mountain Resort. “Our commitment to sustainable construction can be found at even the smallest level. From energy efficient building materials to water conserving fixtures, we want our property to represent environmental responsibility. Currently we are working with the New York State Energy Research Development Authority to obtain LEED certification for the project.” Some prominent “green” features include energy efficiency, water conservation, local sustainable furniture, and advanced VRV heating/cooling systems that provide superior indoor air quality. Also, recycling has been a strong priority for 30 years and will continue at all levels of the entire resort.

What does it mean to be LEED certified?
According to the U.S. Green Building Council,  “LEED is an internationally recognized green building certification system, providing third-party verification that a building or community was designed and built using strategies aimed at improving performance across all the metrics that matter most: energy savings, water efficiency, CO2 emissions reduction, improved indoor environmental quality, and stewardship of resources and sensitivity to their impacts.” Being LEED certified means the contractor/owner has taken a whole-building approach to sustainability by recognizing performance in the following key areas: (more…)

There’s a popular adage that says something like “Printer ink is the most expensive liquid on earth.” Go ahead, Google it.

The return shows pages of results proving the theory, including one article from the Financial Times that says that HP ink cost $8000 per gallon (published in 2004). While in truth, most high-end designer perfumes actually cost more,  that’s still a lot of money for a fluid that’s relatively inexpensive to manufacture and hasn’t changed much from what the Chinese invented thousands of years ago.

The good news is that most consumers are not buying ink by the gallon. In fact, most cartridges only contain from 5 to 20 milliliters of the black stuff we rely on to feed our machines. Working backwards from $8000 per gallon, a high-yield black ink cartridge that promises 800 copies contains about $40 worth of ink. The smallest ones contain less than $10 worth of ink.

The bad news is that most ink cartridges do not tell you on the packaging how much ink is actually inside the cartridge: instead they offer suggested page output. Basically, you’re paying for a product, but there is no way to know how much you’re actually getting until you open the box and look inside, where the volume is sometimes printed on the foil wrapper

So, when you’re shopping for cereal or soda, don’t you want to compare the value of your purchase in a way that tells you if the more expensive package is actually a better value? What if you paid more for a box of cereal only to open it and find it contained less product than a similar sized box of a competitive brand? What if your toasty oats came in similar-sized boxes, and you had no way of knowing how many bowls of cereal either box provided? How could you comparison shop one brand of toasty oats between Cereal Company A and Cereal Company B without knowing what’s actually inside the box?

Printer refill cartridges are like that. I happen to own two printers: One is an HP black laser printer, which I use for day-today-printing. The other is an HP color inkjet that I use for my kid’s school projects, maps, printing web pages, and occasional photo printing. Each recommends a specific HP replacement cartridge.

I am holding a brand-new original equipment (OEM) HP Q2612A black toner box: There is nothing on the outside of this box that tells me how much I can expect this cartridge to yield, except for some small type hidden under a label (which I had to tear off) that says “For declared yield see … www.hp.com/go/pageyield.”  Because I am sitting at home while I write this, I can click on the link to discover a long ISO testing page with lots of technical language that basically says they’ve tested the cartridge according to ISO scientific methods and according to those tests, they believe the cartridge will return a specific and consistent yield. But nothing on this box allowed me to comparison-shop it against the remanufactured toner cartridges offered in the store and online. (more…)

Kathy Kelly is a 39-year-old single mother who works as a law librarian for a law firm in Erie, Pennsylvania. The industrious recycler has created a handcrafted line of bags she calls “BookBags“  using  repurposed book covers from outdated lawbooks. We found her and her fabulous bags over at Twitter.

One of her tasks at her firm Knox, McLaughlin, Gornall & Sennett is keeping the legal reference books up-to-date. As laws change, the books are constantly being replaced: Sadly, most of them have no distributional value once removed from the library shelves. As a person with a concern for the environment, she was interested in recycling the old books, but discovered it was difficult to find a recycler who would even take books, especially hard-covered books.  After a great amount of effort she was finally able to convince one of the local recycling companies to take them, but she would have to remove the covers first.

United States Code Annoted

About two years ago, Kathy returned to work after a surgery and came back to discover a giant pile of mail that included volumes of updates.  One update, the United States Code Annoted (pictured here) included nine volumes covered in gorgeous maroon leather-like material.  She knew she would have to remove the covers to recycle the paper of the book, but it still seemed like such a waste of that beautiful fabric to throw it away (not to mention, creating plenty of garbage).  For a few months, she simply collected the book covers; she didn’t know what she was going to do with them, only that she would figure something out.

One day, in one of those “eureka!” moments familiar to many inventors, Kathy envisioned a small purse her mother had given her when she was younger, and started playing with the idea. (more…)