A garbage truck on Tuesday morning picked up food scraps from seven grocery stores around San Diego and chugged to
Miramar Landfill in what normally would have been an
unremarkable moment.
But instead of turning into the zone for dumping trash, it delivered the
mash of fruit, pastries and similar items to the
composting yard and launched what many around the region hope is a new era of waste-reduction.

The deposit marked the start of Waste Management’s
first dedicated food-waste route in the county. The pilot program is poised
to expand such that city waste officials predict food collections will
double over the next few years and eventually reach into residential
neighborhoods much like blue bins for recycling bottles
and cans slowly became the norm.

“It’s a fantastic moment,” said Ana Carvalho, food
waste expert for
San Diego’s Environmental Services Department. “It’s going to go
well and that will open other doors for growth.”

Food might seem inconsequential in the vast stream of garbage but it’s the
second-largest category of municipal solid waste generated nationwide, with
some 34 million tons a year. Only about 3 percent of it is recycled,
creating the largest single segment of discarded goods in the nation and
what the U.S. Environmental Protection
Agency<http://topics.signonsandiego.com/topics/United_States_Environmental_Protection_Agency>calls
a “staggering” problem.

Locally, an estimated 140,000 tons of food waste reaches Miramar Landfill
annually, generating greenhouse gases and taking up valuable space. Roughly
one-third of that is from commercial kitchens and the rest is from homes.

“We don’t want to run out of space in the landfill because we’re burying
materials that can be reused,” Carvalho said.

San Diego city diverts about 66 percent of its overall waste stream of
residential and commercial garbage, well above the state mandate of 50
percent and a major increase from the early 2000s. While the city isn’t on
the front edge of food-waste composting — San
Francisco<http://topics.signonsandiego.com/topics/San_Francisco>already
has residential food waste collection — the new alliance between
Waste Management and Albertsons is a sign of progress, said Pauline
Martinson, head of the environmental group I Love a Clean San Diego.

“We are getting there, and it’s a good step in the right direction, but I
think we have to target the residents” with food waste collection, Martinson
said.

There are no immediate plans for that, but the Albertsons route begins
building the kind of infrastructure that will allow the industry to add more
mid-sized customers who don’t create enough food waste to warrant
stand-alone collections.

To date, it’s been the realm of the very big — such as the San Diego
Convention Center and Petco
Park<http://topics.signonsandiego.com/topics/Petco_Park>— and the very
small — such as backyard gardners who do it themselves.
That’s changing now that Waste Management is buying a specialized
food-hauling truck for the county and testing a food-to-energy plant in
Orange County.
[image: The Sheraton Hotel on Harbor Island is joining the small group of
large-scale facilities that compost food waste in San Diego. After years of
work, the idea is starting to catch on will smaller sites such as grocery
stores.] <http://www.signonsandiego.com/photos/2011/aug/24/433753/> Isadora
Velarde seperates vegetable discards from her salads in order for them to be
recycled in the kitchens of the Sheraton San Diego Hotel and Marina on
Harbor Island. The hotel just adopted a major food waste recycling program
that can dramatically reduce the amount of food waste going to a landfill in
Miramar. Now, the clean food waste is sent to a recycling center where it is
turned into compost. — Earnie Grafton /

Other companies are looking to create food-only routes as well. And San
Diego, which runs the only licensed commercial food-waste composting site in
the county, two years ago tripled the footprint of its composting areas for
green waste and food waste, giving it plenty of room to grow.

“Many green customers have maximized their recycling programs and they’re
looking for that next incremental step to reach zero waste,” said Charissa
McAfee <http://topics.signonsandiego.com/topics/McAfee>, local community
affairs manager for Waste Management. “Food waste is really the next logical
step and something we are really focused on.”

So is John Ford,
manager at Sheraton San Diego Hotel & Marina on Harbor Island. Five weeks
after launching a new food waste program, it’s on pace to divert about 200
tons of trimmings and scrapings away from the landfill each year.
COMPOSTING

Instead of taking up space in the city’s Miramar Landfill, food waste and
yard trimmings are deposited in a special area known as The Greenery.

• The yard trimmings and food scraps are placed in long piles called
windrows.

• The rows is turned and watered for 70 days.

• Microorganisms digest the carbon- and nitrogen-rich mixture, causing the
rows to reach temperatures over 140 degrees. Cooking eliminates most weed
seeds and pathogens while breaking down the organic material into soil
nutrients.

• Finished compost is screened to a particle size of one-half inch or less
which also removes film plastic from the final product.

• The product is given to city residents in small batches and sold in larger
quantities to city residents and others who want it for their gardens.

Source: San Diego city

The program started with a mishap; the hotel’s aged machine for dehydrating
excess food — water adds enormous weight and therefore cost — broke down
early this summer. Waste Management officials connected Ford with Carvalho,
and that led to a major reorganization of the hotel’s entire waste-diversion
process.

“We thought we were doing more than we were,” Ford said. “We realized we
were only doing a so-so job.”

That’s changed since the staff of about 500 was trained on the new
initiatives, including separating food waste in specially marked kitchen
bins. Ford said it’s been challenging to meet the city’s goals for 99
percent pure food waste, a target designed to ensure top-quality compost.

Less than two months into it, the Sheraton is capturing more than five tons
a week of trimmings from the kitchens and scrapings from plates. The
initiative has pushed the hotel’s overall waste-diversion rate from about 15
percent to about 80 percent and Ford is pressing for 90 percent.

“It’s hard to believe,” Ford said. “When you look at the numbers, how could
you not be excited?”

He predicts interest in food waste composting will grow rapidly once other
facility managers realize how much money they can save. Disposal fees for
food waste at Miramar Landfill are less than half of the rate for trash.

*Mike Lee: (619)293-2034 ; mike.lee@uniontrib.com. Follow on Twitter
@sdutlee.*

BY CHRISTOPHER MIMS

In the 19th century, there were 150 glaciers in Glacier National Park, and now there are just 25. By 2020, even those will be gone, says Daniel Fagre, coordinator of climate change and glacial geology studies in the park.

In order to see some of the last glaciers left in the lower 48 before they’re gone forever, Stephen P. Nash of The New York Times took to the trails of Glacier National Park, where he had hilarious encounters with the locals, like this one:

I responded [to a group of hikers coming up the trail] in superlatives, and asked whether folks here talk much about what’s happening with the glaciers.

There was a pause and the temperature seemed to decline a degree or two. “God will take care of everything we need,” one said.

“I don’t think man has anything to do with that,” her friend put in.

The lesson is, when engaging in so-called “last-chance” tourism, don’t remind your fellow travelers that they are just as culpable as you are for the eradication of the very beauty they’ve come for.

Copyright © 2011, The Baltimore Sun

BY JESS ZIMMERMAN

Finally, your dream of solar pants can come true! MIT researchers havedevised solar panels that can be printed directly onto fabric, plastic, or paper, as easily as printing from an inkjet. The result is a flexible, malleable solar panel with enough juice to power … well, okay, barely any juice at all right now. But it’s still in the early stages of development! Besides, once you pair your solar pants with a solar shirt, tie, bag, fedora, and shoes, it’ll start to add up, and you will also look very snappy.

Scientists have been toying with solar printing technology for a while, but it generally requires high temperatures and pretreated material. The new process can operate at cooler temperatures, and actually prints with a vapor instead of a liquid ink — scientists compare it to manufacturing the inside lining a bag of chips. The printing is done inside a vacuum, and “cooler” temperatures means “less than 250 degrees,” so you’re probably not going to be doing it at home or anything. But it’s miles easier than any approach that’s been tested so far. And the resulting panels, though they are currently only efficient enough to power “a small gadget,” can be folded and crumpled without losing function. Put that in your pipe and … take it out, unfold it, and power a small gadget with it!

Frances Micklow/The Star-LedgerYvane Romelus, a house keeper at the Renaissance Woodbridge Hotel in Iselin, NJ, separates used soap and lotion to be donated, recycled and given out in places where there is need.

When Shawn Seipler and Paul Till were East Coast salesmen, spending their days in conference rooms and their nights in Holiday Inns, they always wondered what happened to the little bars of soap they left behind.

Being businessmen, they wondered if there might be some way to make a profit out of what they suspected was being thrown away.

After one trip, they decided to each call 15 hotels and ask what they did with their leftover soap.

“Thirty for 30,” Till said. “All of them threw away the stuff.”

One million bars a day was their ballpark figure for North America alone.

Not seeing much hope for a company selling used soap in the United States, they went back to the drawing board.

After Till, 48, read a study about diarrheal illness in rural Bangladesh, they realized they could recycle the soap that hotels throw out and send it to places where people die due to lack of hygiene.

Soon they were melting soap in a pan in Seipler’s kitchen in Orlando.

Now thanks to Clean the World, the nonprofit organization they founded in 2009, hotels around the country are having their soap recycled and distributed to places like Zimbabwe, Nicaragua and Haiti.

As part of a recently announced deal with Starwood Hotels, owner of the Sheraton and Westin chains, Clean the World hopes to gain 1.6 million more pounds of soap per year.

The Orlando-based charity already has distributed more than 8 million bars, free of charge, to 42 countries worldwide.

“We really feel like this is just the tip of the iceberg,” said Seipler, 35.

Through its new for-profit arm, Clean the World hopes to take its soap-recycling mission around the world. It now charges hotels about 65 cents per room each month for its services.

The Starwood deal is changing how the housekeeping staff cleans at the Sheraton in Atlantic City.

“When the guest departs, we do not discard any of the used soaps or shampoos. It all goes into a special box,” said Gabrielle Bruno-Stailey, director of housekeeping of the Sheraton.

The Chauncey Hotel and Conference Center in Princeton, one of 26 Garden State hotels participating in the program, has donated 129 pounds of soap and 119 pounds of shampoo and conditioner over the course of three weeks, said Sara Blivaiss, the general manager.

The Renaissance Woodbridge Hotel in Iselin is expected to provide enough soap for 238 children each year, said Evelin Xavier, the hotel’s director of rooms.

“As the bucket gets half full, we reach out to Clean the World,” said Xavier. “They mail us the shipping labels and we ship them out.”

Once collected, the donated bars are shipped to one of Clean the World’s recycling centers — in Orlando, Las Vegas, Toronto and Vancouver — where they are scraped and soaked in a bleach solution before being ground up. After pressing them into two-ounce bars, volunteers package them for distribution.

“We don’t mix the colors,” said Till, managing director of Clean the World. “White from Disney in the shape of Mickey’s head. Some of Sheraton’s is gold.”

Clean the World said it is now recycling soap from 100,000 hotel rooms a day, but is constantly searching for more partners.

“We’ve got a long way to go in terms of getting every hotel in North America in our program,” said Seipler.