The book titled JUNK SCIENCE: How Politicians, Corporations, and Other Hucksters Betray Us by Dr. Dan Agin was very interesting book. Dr. Agin has a Ph.D. in biological psychology and thirty years of laboratory-research experience in neurobiology and is an associate professor emeritus of molecular genetics and cell biology at the University of Chicago.
The book titled GONE TOMORROW The Hidden Life of Garbage by Heather Rogers was a very informative read. This book is a follow up to the 2002 documentary, also titled Gone Tomorrow: The Hidden Life of Garbage. Heather is a journalist and filmmaker based in Brooklyn, New York.
The United States is the world’s number one producer of garbage: we consume 30 percent of the planet’s resources and produce 30 percent of all its wastes, but we are just 4 percent of the global population. These are staggering numbers which I personally find incomprehensible. I’m guessing that this is one of the reasons why more people do not get involved in this issue. We have implemented over 5,000 recycling programs throughout the country which are more of a means to helping us feel better about the massive amounts of garbage being created. There is no real global plan for stewarding the earth, which is one reason we created the company ENSO Bottles, to address the plastic bottle pollution on the planet.
The book titled MICROBES An Invisible Universe by Howard Gest was one of the most informative and interesting books I have read on the world of microbes. This book is 200 pages crammed full of detailed information about the history and the function of microorganisms, also known as microbes. The author, Dr. Howard Gest is Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Microbiology and Adjunct Professor of History and Philosophy of Science at Indiana University, Bloomington. Dr. Gest is widely recognized for his research on microbial physiology and metabolism.
The Ecology of microbes to one another and their surroundings is extraordinary with respect to the diversity of chemical and physical conditions that can be tolerated. Microbes thrive in extreme environments with regards to temperatures, high concentrations of salts and sugars, relative acidity, and with or without the presence of oxygen.
The book titled Rubbish! The Archaeology of Garbage by William Rathje and Cullen Murphy was a very interesting read. Created in 1973, the archaeology of garbage was a program primarily created as an exercise in archeology for students at the University of Arizona Tucson. The most fascinating aspect of the book is the discoveries of what our garbage tells about us as a society. It was interesting the amount of detailed behavior that can be discovered by going through trash. For example, in times of product scarcity our garbage shows that we waste more of the scarce product. Another major fact Dr. Rathje’s team discovered is that our landfills are not filling up from disposable diapers which is taking up about 1% of a landfills mass.
There have been some in the PLA (corn plastics) industry who use quotes from Dr. Rathje’s book to support an argument that composting biodegradable plastics is better for the environment than landfilling them. Their argument takes some of the data out on context by looking at the hundred year old “poor” environmental designs of landfills. The printing of “RUBBISH!” was in 1991 with most data provided in the book ending in 1988. Most of the data in the book is over 20 years old. As with many things from our past we eventually discover better and more environmentally sound solutions. Yes, it is absolutely true that traditional dry-tomb landfilling is not the best solution for dealing with our garbage. As a society we have made significant improvements to the methods we use for disposing of garbage. Since the writing of the book we have implemented hundreds of recycling programs as well as the EPA requiring methane from the anaerobic biodegradation process happening in landfills to be captured and burned or used to create clean energy. The EPA in the last 5 years has also changed laws with recirculating leachate through a landfill so to accelerate biodegradation by up to 10x.
I often hear “everyone wants to go green, but no one wants to pay more for it.” Personally, I don’t mind paying a bit more for a better product. Don’t get me wrong here – I don’t want to pay $3 to buy a product that would normally cost $1, but I would be willing to pay $1.25-$1.50 without thinking twice.
There are three main categories of degradable plastics: biodegradable plastics, compostable plastics and degradable plastics. One of the biggest contributions to the confusion surrounding the subject of degradable plastics is a combination of the lack of common definitions and the loose usage of these definitions.
The ASTM International, originally known as the American Society for Testing and Materials, is a standards organization, host to committee D20.96 on Environmentally Degradable Plastics and Biobased Products. The ASTM maintains a Standard Terminology Relating to Plastics under their designation: D 883 – 08. The following are the ASTM definitions for degradable plastics:
biodegradable plastics—a degradable plastic in which the degradation results from the action of naturally-occurring micro-organisms such as bacteria, fungi, and algae.
compostable plastic—a plastic that undergoes biological degradation during composting to yield carbon dioxide, water, inorganic compounds, and biomass at a rate consistent with other known compostable materials and leaves no visually distinguishable or toxic residues.
degradable plastic—a plastic designed to undergo a significant change in its chemical structure under specific environmental conditions resulting in a loss of some properties that may vary as measured by standard test methods appropriate to the plastic and the application in a period of time that determines its classification.
How much energy can the off gassed methane from an ENSO bottle generate?
To calculate how much energy can be created from ENSO bottles take the weight of the ENSO bottle multiply it by % carbon, multiply by 1.33 (molecular weight of CH4 16 / molecular weight of carbon 12 – this converts the carbon to methane), then multiply by 22.4 (L/g – ideal gas law).
July, 2009 – ENSO Bottles LLC has been awarded the Green Education Network Seal of Approval because its product makes a needed contribution to the problem of non-recycled plastic, and ENSO has demonstrated a commitment to education. ENSO bottles are 100% biodegradable, decompose in about five years and add little to the cost of a bottled beverage or other product. Like traditional PET bottles, the ENSO bottles also can be recycled along with nonbiodegradable PET bottles without being separated.
Learn how plastic gets recycled with this RecycleBank video. View the entire series here.
By Max
There is a lot of concern about the growing plastic pollution problem, and rightly so. Did you know?
* Plastic bottles take hundred or thousands of years to begin biodegrading
* 150 billion plastic beverage bottles are produced each year
* 70-80% of plastic bottles are not recycled
* 100 billion plastic bottles end up in landfills, roadsides, streams or oceans
* The average American consumes 167 bottles of water a year
* Bottled water is the second most popular beverage in the United States
* A majority of containers today are made from plastic
It seems that a lot of interest is being placed on bottled water, but take a look at the shelves where you shop; almost everything is packaged in plastic. Bottled water has become an easy target; many of us think that because our tap water is safe, it must be safe everywhere else. I wish that were true, most places in the world don’t have safe drinking water. We should be focusing on the pollution caused by all plastics and insist that plastics be designed to be sustainable. Sustainable plastics regardless of what it is made from, petroleum or plants should be biodegradable and designed to meet“Cradle to Cradle,” design criteria. A cradle to cradle product is made from something, used, reused, recycled and when its useful life is over, it returns to the earth as a harmless substance.