Celestial Triangle of Venus, the moon, and Jupiter

A beautiful sight in the sky in early evening tonight, with Venus right next to the crescent moon in the west after sunset, with Jupiter some distance below.

Recycling #5 Plastics, Corks, Brita Filters

A friend told me some weeks ago that Whole Foods accepts some items for recycling. I called Whole Foods out on Route 1, took careful notes and then promptly misplaced them. The woman mentioned yogurt containers and other #5 plastics, and corks from wine bottles. She also said that Brita filters are #5 and can be returned there.

This past Saturday, there was an article in the NY Times about companies taking responsibility for recycling the packaging that comes with their products. It provided good context for that phone call to the local Whole Foods, and had information about PreserveProducts.com:

"Finally, in 2008, the company struck a deal to put collection bins in Whole Foods stores, and the effort took off. Customers can take any No. 5 container to Whole Foods stores — margarine tubs, other brands’ yogurt containers — where they are collected, taken to a plant for processing, and then turned into toothbrushes and razors by Preserve."

For Brita filter info, click here.
Click here and scroll down for a pictorial list of items made of #5 plastic.

As mentioned in previous posts, everything I've been able to learn about our curbside recyclables suggests that Princeton's hauler and recycling facility accept and market #5 and other plastics, but Mercer County is resisting adding plastics 3-7 to its official list of accepted curbside recyclables. In the meantime, the Whole Foods/PreserveProducts option at least provides more certainty about where the recyclables will end up.

Another option is to make yogurt at home, which I've heard is quite easy to do.

A Ceremonial Welcome

 An air of expectancy filled the space surrounding township hall yesterday morning as I passed by. A grand entryway had been improvised on Valley Road, and mayors, people in uniform and citizens gathered in front of the fire station,

while a bagpiper played in the courtyard. Something was up, something was coming, and it turned out to be a piece of steel from the World Trade Center. Where the section of beam will be displayed was not clear.

I didn't stay to witness the arrival, but thought the magnolia blossoms mixing with stones offered a fitting tribute to go along with the town's welcome.

Journey of the Recyclables--Mercer County's Electronics Day

The semi-annual journey to the Mercer County electronics recycling event on March 10 went even more smoothly than usual, thanks to some luck of the Irish.

There was no line to wait in, apparently due to a St. Patrick's Day parade in Hamilton that had drawn many wouldbe recyclers away. I was tempted to head over to the parade with my green pickup and join in, my payload of vintage electronics serving as a makeshift float. All I would have needed was someone to sit on top of the computer monitors and wave proudly to the crowds. Few people know that St. Patrick was one of the great recyclers of his day. Of course, in the pre-industrial age, just about everyone was a great recycler without thinking twice about it.

With a combination of contributions from friends and curbside rescues, our contribution to the county's haul for the day added up to

Five computer monitors
Four televisions
Three lazer printers
Two printer/scanners
One toaster oven
And a harddrive in a pear tree.


I forget where they said the electronics are taken for recycling, but it sounded like somewhere in NJ.

A Shuttered Observatory--FitzRandolph in Princeton

A post about vines, an unused Princeton observatory, stainless steel tigers, geese, and uncertain futures in general, at another website of mine, princetonnaturenotes.org.

Winter Gives Way To Yardwaste Season

Southern Michigan, where I used to live, was said to have two seasons: winter and road construction. It was a gloomy assessment, but sometimes seemed all too accurate.

Thankfully, Princeton lacks the interminably grey winters of southern Michigan, and is bikeable enough that road construction is less often an obstruction. But for those who walk borough streets, it feels more and more like the town's two seasons are winter and yardwaste. Winter lasts roughly from January through February, during which one can enjoy clean streets if it doesn't snow. With March comes the first modest dumpings at the curb,

which continue through the summer and into fall, climaxing with the blitz of leaves that threaten to obscure the pavement altogether.

I try to imagine that this tradition reflects a dogged effort to do away with pavement and turn Princeton into one large greenspace, but the reality is that a whole bunch of soft, rainwater-absorbing material is being exported, making Princeton's yards less absorptive of rainwater, and more apt to amplify flooding.

It's not that hard for most homeowners to make a little spot in a back corner, screened by some shrubs if desired, where leaves and even some brush can be tossed. Take advantage of nature's onsite recycling services, and make a spot this year where a little dk is ok.

Free Compost for Princetonians

Another of Princeton government's stealth services is free compost for residents. Word of mouth has worked pretty well on this one, but it hasn't always been easy to find info online, in part because the name of the composting center is the Lawrenceville Ecological Center or, even more correctly than that the Joseph H. Maher, Jr. Ecological Center.

There are two kinds of compost: composted leaves and thrice-ground woodchips. It's free if you shovel your own, otherwise something like $8/yd3 if they load it in your truck. They take checks, no cash. Drive out Mercer St past the Princeton Battlefield. It turns into Princeton Pike. If you reach I-95, you've gone too far. Address is 3701 Princeton Pike. This link provides more info.  


I used to go out there, but now I just find an arborist taking a tree down in the neighborhood, ask if they want to dump their woodchips in my driveway, and usually end up with a free load of chips. That way, I save myself, and the arborist, a trip out of town, and the chips last much longer as mulch than the already pretty decomposed product they give away at the compost center.

Note: A few caveats with the raw woodchips. They aren't as pretty as the dark, composted mulch, they may borrow some nitrogen from the soil during decomposition, and they may even host an "artillery fungus" that shoots tiny black blobs at your house. But it's still highly convenient and long-lasting stuff to use away from the house, in informal areas. 

THE TOWPATH'S UNCERTAIN FUTURE

One of Princeton’s beloved and longest running assets is the towpath that borders the DandR Canal. Third among New Jersey’s most popular state parks, the canal and its path are long-running in both space and time. Until recently, an ambitious bicyclist could ride the trail 25 miles towards the Atlantic, or 35 miles over and up the Delaware, avoiding car culture altogether.

As long as I’ve been in town, the towpath has been covered with a sturdy, dependable, well-drained surface of crushed stone, firm enough for pushing a stroller or riding a bike, but easy on joggers.

All that changed last August when the floods from tropical storm Irene washed out some sections of the trail and deposited a thick layer of silt on the rest.

Now, almost seven months later, little has been done to restore the trail. Though portions are passable when dry, it quickly becomes a quagmire after a rain. The DandR Canal State Park website is replete with photos of destruction, including damage to bridges and historic buildings. I called to inquire about prospects for repair, and was told that there are plans to restore and improve the crushed stone surface now buried under silt, but all depends on the eventual arrival of money from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). Repairing even the less damaged sections may cost $10,000 per mile. Meanwhile, the park’s personnel, reportedly reduced to a third of 1980s staffing levels, struggle to find funding for basics like office paper.

There’s a problem here. Storms are getting stronger. Government is getting weaker. And though some may see this as just another natural disaster to deal with, natural disasters aren’t as natural as they used to be. Increasingly, the climate is gaining a human imprint as much as the land, and these two massive, collectively wrought influences--the paving of landscapes and the warming of the atmosphere--merge to powerful effect along our river corridors.

Warmed atmosphere spawns more powerful storms. Meanwhile, we harden the landscape with roads, buildings and not-very-absorbent lawns, all of which convey that rainfall more quickly and destructively into the rivers.

Who’s to blame? No one and everyone. There is safety and peril in numbers. Certainly there’s a long history of inadequate public policy, and changes to policy that could still help, but what intrigues me is the role of the individual in contributing to, and potentially steering us incrementally away from, a dangerous course.

In Princeton, where the hardscape of roads and buildings is largely a given at this point, our main contribution to saving a shared asset like the towpath comes down to individual homeowners’ decisions. The aim is to stop feeding nature’s fury, and to make more absorbent those portions of the landscape we have control over. As owners of cars and other assorted climate-changing machinery, we can find ways to use them less. It’s possible to make a yard more absorbent, by replacing lawns with more deep-rooted plantings, catching runoff in raingardens, and using fall’s harvest of leaves as mulch to absorb water and soften the earth. I’m a bit less sanguine about the role of rainbarrels, though they could help if they were five times larger, on many downspouts, and happened to be empty when the big rains hit.

Even if the towpath is eventually repaired, the chance of future damage continues to increase with changing climate. The towpath may prove a harbinger of things to come--a steady erosion of shared assets if we take no action to protect them. The solution, like the problem, will be a collective endeavor, through what we make of government and the actions we take as individuals far from the towpath itself.

In human interactions, we don’t expect our individual acts of kindness to change the world, and yet we do them anyway. It’s time to view an individual’s impacts on land, river and air in a similar light, and extend acts of kindness to the long shared path, from the comfort of our own homesteads.

This post first appeared March 9 at www.planetprinceton.com.

Southern Comfort--Passing Pleasure, Long Hangover

New Jersey is in its thirteenth warmer than normal month in a row. Averaged over the past three decades, March's high temperatures for Princeton would typically go from 46 at the beginning of the month to 56 at the end. By contrast, the 10-day forecast for the middle of the month this year is for days in the 60s and 70s--ten to twenty degrees above normal.

NJ state climatologist David Robinson posts periodic updates on weather trends. February was about 5 degrees above the average for the past thirty years, and was the fifth warmest February since records began being kept back in 1895.

I'm taking advantage of the warm weather, but also know that this southern comfort could bring with it a very long and beastly hangover come summer, and an even longer, perhaps permanent hangover if we can't find less climate-changing ways to live.

Whale of a Kale Sale

Ask Abigail to let the people know
There's a whale of a kale sale at the Whole Earth Center, so

Buy it all the month by pound or pail,
By and by your health it will avail,

In scrumptious soups from Alice Waters,
With onions, garlic and pataters.

--anonymous

Repairs Long Time Coming For Towpath

For those concerned about the condition of the DR Canal towpath since the Irene flooding last August, I've posted an update on prospects for repair at princetonnaturenotes.org. There's also an upcoming talk by Watershed director Jim Waltman on the Lessons from Hurricane Irene this coming Wednesday, March 14. More info at kingstongreenways.org.

Journey of the Recyclables, Part 3 or 4

Sometimes, if you're unlucky, you can pull out of the borough parking garage next to the public library just in time to be trapped by a truck loading recyclables.

When this happened last week, I decided to make the best of the bad luck and inquire about where the recyclables go. The driver said the foodwaste and plastics were being burned for energy, which sounded questionable, so I later called up Waste Management and eventually was able to get the low down.

Waste Management picks up recyclables from Princeton's public schools and various businesses in town. Plastics 1-7, paper, etc. go to sorting plants in Philadelphia or Newark. A lot of the cardboard is then shipped overseas, probably to make new boxes for all the products headed our way. I asked if there are any particular contaminants that cause problems in the recycling stream, and was told that grease/food on the paper and plastic was not good. (That's why it's important not to recycle the grease-stained portion of pizza boxes, which can either go in the trash or get composted with your foodscraps in the backyard or as part of the township's curbside foodwaste recycling program.) Little bottle tops are not a problem. For foodwaste, which is trucked all the way to the Peninsula Compost plant in Wilmington, Delaware, glass is the main contaminant, since it can't be easily filtered out of the final product.

Princeton's trash, or at least Waste Management's portion of it, heads to a landfill in Tulleytown, PA, 20 miles from us, just past Trenton. Best I can tell from google maps, the landfill has a splendid view of the Delaware River. Waste Management is proud of its closed Patterson Avenue Landfill in Hamilton Township, which is now a wildlife refuge.

As for the driver's mention of using recyclables to generate energy, they have a waste-to-energy plant in south Jersey, but it's for burning trash.

City Streets and Nonpoint Pollution

These photos are from a few weeks ago after a light snow. Winter's a good time to see all the dirt and oil left by cars and trucks passing by. This looks like a lot of oil, but it spreads out so thin that looks can be deceiving--a good thing because this will be swept eventually into the storm drain and into Carnegie Lake, via Harry's Brook.

The sequence of oil droplets headed around the corner to the left. Snow makes visible the dark patina left by car tires, brake linings and drops of oil, all of which come under the heading of nonpoint pollution.

One other benefit of hybrid cars is that their brake pads last much longer, since much of the braking power comes from sending energy back into the battery from the wheels. All of which is to say they contribute less to the nonpoint pollution accumulating on the pavement.

The Struggle To Improve Recycling in Princeton

The following was published in the Princeton Packet "As I See It" series on January 13. The column is no longer easily accessible on the Packet webpage, so I'm posting it here. An update on discussions set in motion by this column can be found here.

THE STRUGGLE TO IMPROVE RECYCLING

Every now and then, forgetting all the pitfalls that await, I set out to improve recycling in Princeton. No other environmental venture involves as much patience, persistence, and willingness to wade through endless layers of complexity.

For inspiration, it helps to look to nature. All of its products, when the time comes, are quickly broken down by myriad organisms into the basic ingredients for new life. The brilliance of creation is balanced by an equal brilliance of decomposition. That’s how our economy would work if it were in balance.

Five years ago, when only one of Princeton’s public schools (Riverside
Elementary) was recycling to any extent, I launched a quiet campaign to get the receptacles and protocols in place at the others. It was particularly successful at the elementary schools, where students developed good recycling habits by being an integral part of the process. Even after a well-designed recycling program is up and running, though, it will continue to prosper only if there is someone in the workplace with the passion and persistence to make sure everyone—students, teachers and custodians--is
following through.

The next year, tired of ripping the cellophane windows off of envelopes before recycling them, I tracked down someone at the state Dept. of Environmental Protection who could confirm that the windows can be left on, and are skimmed off when they float to the top of the vat at the recycling plant.

More recently, when the change to “single stream” recycling made some friends skeptical about whether recyclables actually get recycled, I decided to find out where recyclables go after being picked up at the curb.

Princeton township and borough contract with Mercer County for curbside recycling. The county in turn contracts with Central Jersey Waste and Recycling, which takes the recyclables to Trenton, where they are transferred to large semis and trucked up to the Colgate Paper Stock Co. in New Brunswick. Colgate is what’s called a MRF, short for Materials Recovery Facility. There, recent advances in sorting technology allow the sorting of paper from bottles, aluminum from plastic, and so on.

Recycling can be thought of as a giant, sprawling factory. We homeowners are the suppliers at the front end, in charge of quality control. It makes sense that, to improve our competence and morale, we should be getting feedback on what materials to recycle, and hear word back about all the wonderful products they are made into. The state mandates that municipalities notify us twice annually about what to put in the bin, but at least in the borough, no information has arrived in the mail for years.

If you search the county website, you eventually find a list of recyclables--#’s 1 and 2 plastics, cans, newspaper, etc. But it turns out that the hauler has its own list, and the MRF has yet another. After years of dutifully recycling only plastics 1 and 2, I was surprised to learn that all plastics 1 through 7 are accepted by the MRF. They also accept aerosol cans and cleaned aluminum trays and foil.

I asked the county if they could expand their list, and was told that they don’t include materials that lack stable, longterm markets. Besides, any change to the county’s list requires amending their master plan—a cumbersome process.

Anyone walking the family dog around the block on recycling day will quickly discern that few people have seen any of these lists, and instead fill their recycling bins with whatever they think stands half a chance of being recyclable. The MRF in turn assumes a certain percentage of the recyclables it receives will be contaminants, and pays less accordingly.

Does any of this contamination cause problems in the separation machinery at the MRF? I called them up and finally was forwarded to someone who sounded knowledgeable. Plastic bags, he said, can get caught in the rollers. Plastics 3-7 are accepted, but end up getting shipped overseas, for uses unknown.

I’d encourage anyone who wants to get beyond the Hail Mary approach to curbside recycling to seek out the nicely illustrated list of accepted recyclables at http://www.centraljerseywaste.com/files/CJW_SingleStream.pdf. Links to all the various lists
can be found at princetonprimer.org.

For anyone wishing to improve recycling in Princeton, just about any building you walk into will have some sort of recycling dysfunction in need of intervention. For a primer on how to improve recycling in your workplace, I’ve compiled experience gained from the school recycling project into Ten Tips at
www.recyclingcontainers.blogspot.com. There’s also an upcoming event at the Princeton Public Library on January 24 on recycling in schools.

It’s altogether too easy to find high profile outdoor examples of non-recycling in town. A typical university football game leaves thousands of plastic bottles in its wake, most of which end up in the trash. Where’s a scout troop to leap into action at game’s end? Communiversity and other downtown events also generate lots of recyclables, but lack well-designed recycling containers paired with trashcans.

There is money available to help improve recycling, in the form of annual “tonnage” grants the state sends to municipalities each year. This year, Princeton Borough received $18,000, and the township likely even more. Though money can help, the key ingredient remains individuals with the passion and persistence to cut through layers of complexity, indifference and cynicism, and make recycling an ingrained habit--in our homes, schools, businesses, and on downtown streets.

Save On Sewer Rates

This is the most timely time of year to trim your water consumption. According to borough staff (likely the same in the township), a residential sewer bill is calculated by 1) totaling up your January through March water consumption and multiplying by four, or 2) your total water consumption for the year, whichever is less. Since water use typically rises in the summer, e.g. for watering the yard, consumption in the first three months of the year tends to determine how much you pay.

The borough will soon be separating the sewer bill from the property tax bill, but the calculation used will remain the same.

Here are some ideas for reducing water use, and developing habits that can be sustained throughout the year:

Despite the antiquated rantings of humorist Dave Barry, toilets on the market today outperform the old water-guzzling varieties while using even less water than the 1.6 gallon low-flow standard. Some, like the American Standard Cadet 3, function as duel-flush even though not advertised as such, increasing efficiency even more. It's easy to research brands by reading reviews on the internet. If you have a house full of wasteful toilets but don't want to replace them all, start with the one that's most used.

Below are some ideas listed on my energy-saving website, frugaline.org:

• Since hot water takes awhile to reach the faucet, wash hands with cold water. Any hot water not hot enough to kill bacteria probably just makes them stronger.
• Imagine the long trip Princeton's tapwater takes from the town's water plant to your faucet, then down the drain to the wastewater treatment plant, and wonder why anyone would want to let water run unused from faucet directly into the drain.
• Navy showers--a niche market, but worth considering, particularly in the summer, when the last thing one wants is more heat and humidity in the house. A similar approach can be used for washing dishes.

State Climatologist on NJ Weather

Today's post explores some factors influencing Princeton's weather. Recaps of 2011's extreme weather, in the Trenton Times and also on a CBS program called "Eye on the Storm", featured interviews with New Jersey's state climatologist, who turns out to be a Rutgers professor by the name of David Robinson. He's been state climatologist for 20 years. In the two interviews below, he describes the various influences that contributed to the extreme weather of 2011. I summarize each interview.

http://watch.njtvonline.org/video/2181588974/

For the past two winters, NJ weather has been influenced by a "la nina" event, which has to do with below average temperatures in the eastern tropical Pacific. Usually this means more mild winters and somewhat less snow than average, but there's another phenomenon called the North Atlantic oscillation that can trump the effect of "la nina". That's what happened last winter, when the North Atlantic oscillation "tanked", i.e. went into a negative phase that dumped snow on central and northern NJ from Christmas through Groundhog Day.

Because NJ is "squeezed in" between a huge continent to the west and the ocean to the east, and is situated halfway between the tropics and the poles, extended forecasts are particularly difficult. In terms of extreme weather, 2011's 18 inch rainfall in August in NJ shattered the previous precipitation record of 12 inches in Oct, 2005.

http://watch.njtvonline.org/video/2181587719/

Weather records for NJ extend back to 1895. 2011 was unprecedented in a number of ways, with the wettest month ever recorded, the wettest summer on record, and a snow storm like no other ever recorded in October. One can't take any one storm or any one year and say it's due to changing climate, but we have to look at human impact on the globe. Because the globe has warmed, we have a more energized atmosphere that can hold more moisture. Not every year will be worse than the last, but we may be coming to a new normal with warmer weather over all and more flooding rains and odd extreme weather events. 

Winter's Souvenir

 With snow on the ground yesterday morning, there was no time to waste. Winter's visits can be as fleeting as snow shadows cast by trees.

A S.W.A.T. family--Snow Division--answered the call to stage a snowball fight on the Westminster Conservatory lawn.

By afternoon, winter had largely melted away, but not before leaving behind a souvenir.

Light Recycling

Finally, some snow! There's been a real drop in light recycling this winter, compared to winters past. Which is to say that snow has been scarce, and instead of light getting bounced around on white surfaces, it's been swallowed by the drab browns and grays of a snowless landscape.

This impacts the earth's energy budget, as well as our light-starved psyches. Energy secretary Steven Chu encourages people to install white roofs so that sunlight will be reflected back into space rather than absorbed and turned into heat energy. Snow serves that purpose well, when it's around.

A light snow also makes an excellent energy detective, telling you where heat is escaping from your house. This roof shows an apparent gap in insulation, where indoor heat escapes and melts the snow on the roof.

Energy Event at Library--Review

As part of an energy event during the Princeton Environmental Film Festival's second weekend, volunteer Lindsey Kayman helped kids roast marshmallows using what was supposed to be a solar heater. Given the clouds, a spotlight served as surrogate for the sun.

 Even on cloudy days, a hand generator can get light bulbs glowing. The compact fluorescent on the right was a lot easier to light up than the incandescent. Some exercise gyms have picked up on the human generator theme and purchased exercise machines that generate electricity.

These are handy devices for exploring how much various electronics use in your home. Knowledge is power, or, rather, knowledge leads to reducing the need for power. Here, the meters compare the energy drain of two different kinds of cell phone chargers. The one on the left is an older design that has a big coil in it that uses 3.4 watts of energy even when it's not recharging anything. The one on the right doesn't draw power except when it's actually being used.

You can buy this sort of meter for $20 online, or hopefully the library still has some available for borrowing--a gift from the Princeton Environmental Commission.

The Kill a Watt meter has limitations for measuring home energy consumption. To track electrical energy use by your A/C, furnace, oven, electric dryer, and other appliances without standard plugs, you need a whole-house energy monitor. One such device that's easy to install is produced by a local business whose website is at wattvision.com. Worth taking a look at.

Public Swimming at JW Middleschool

One stealth service provided by the Princeton regional schools is public access to the swimming pool at JW Middleschool. I went a few times with my daughter a couple years ago. Plenty of open lanes, and though the water is kept cooler than the YMCA pool, one can get used to it. Cost is $40 for ten swims. Hours are 8-9pm, M, W, Th, when school is in session. More info here.

Note, Feb. 21: I went last week, and found lots of free lanes. The life guard says sometimes there are swim team practices, but at least four lanes are always available for public lap swimming. The water was comfortable. It's kept around 78-80 degrees, compared with 85 for a warmer pool. There's very little hint of chlorine, which may have to do with the cooler water and very active ventilation system. Access the pool from the Guyot St. side, next to the newer gym.

Environmental Film Festival's Last Weekend

Highlights this weekend at the Princeton Public Library include two films by Ian Cheney on Saturday at 4 and 7pm, and a presentation by underwater photographer Stan Waterman at 3pm on Sunday.

Sustainability initiatives at local schools will be presented by the students on Saturday. Here's info:

Please come to the Next Generation Environmental Fair Feb. 11, 11am-1pm,
free at the Princeton Public Library, where student delegates from  public
and independent, elementary, middle, and high schools will be sharing
their school's sustainability initiatives.  This fair is sponsored by the
Princeton Environmental Film Festival and organized by the students of the
Environmental Action Club (EnAct) at Princeton Day School.  Please forward
this information to adults and students of all ages.

Full schedule here.

Bus Stop For Bottles

A street drain serves much like a bus stop for trash. This is where bottles, cans and various insundries wait to catch a ride to Harry's Brook, which takes them down to the main line--better known as Carnegie Lake and the Millstone River. I'm sure service is slowed by lots of stops along the way, but eventually they get dropped off at the Atlantic Ocean, for destinations that include the Sargasso Sea.

These newer grate designs prevent bottles from launching on that journey, and for better or worse also make life harder for raccoons.

Recycling Televisions and Other Electronics

The state very quietly passed a law about a year ago banning televisions from the trash, in part because of all the lead and other toxics in them. One still sees TVs put out on the curb, but I've noticed the trash haulers often adhere to the law now and don't take them.

There are several options for recycling televisions and other electronics. One is to drive out to one of three Mercer County recycling events this year, the first one being March 10. A friend sent me a link to Best Buy's offer to take all manner of TVs, whether you bought it there or not. That might be the easiest option, if you're out at the mall anyway.

Princeton Township accepts computers at its location at Witherspoon Street and Valley Road, but by appointment only, and no televisions. The Mercer County recycling website may be of general interest, since they handle all curbside recycling in Princeton.

Note: Here's another friend's suggestion if you're headed up to Ewing. "I confirmed in Jan. 2012 that the Goodwill store in Ewing (1628 N. Olden Ave; 609-392-2865) will take all sorts of electronics for proper recycling, including CRT-based TVs and computer monitors.  The Donation Center is open Mon-Sat, 9am-8pm, and on Sundays (check hours)."

Videos of Recycling Sorting Plants

If you're curious about where Princeton's curbside recyclables go for separation at a Materials Recovery Facility (MRF), there are a few pictures at the Colgate Paper Stock Company's website. For a more dynamic rendering of the very impressive sorting technologies now being deployed, there are many videos on the web that give virtual tours of various recycling processes. They are likely analogous to the Colgate plant.
            
Here's a new sorting plant built by Waste Management in Philadelphia.
            
If you like a tour with a British accent, try this video from Northumberland, UK. 

Environmental Film Festival in progress

In case people don't already know, there are lots of great environmental documentaries over the next three weekends at the Princeton Public Library. Go to www.princetonlibrary.org/peff for a schedule.

Recycling Update

An announcement sent out by Princeton Township, apparently in reference to a column I had published in the Jan. 13 Princeton Packet, has caused considerable confusion. Over the course of a week, I made multiple attempts to reach township staff for a clarification, but heard nothing back. The announcement, sprinkled with capital letters to add emphasis, says that "Plastics marked #3-7 ARE NOT COLLECTED OR RECYCLED through the curbside recycling program." My research showed that these plastics are indeed collected and recycled. What the township announcement probably meant to say is that their official policy is to collect only plastics #1 and 2. Whether its leaf pickup or recycling, policy and realities on the streets of Princeton often part company.

The township announcement goes on to say, "While the facility accepts the materials, they are shipped overseas, which is not environmentally friendly." Experts I've spoken to question these assumptions. In fact, one told me that the availability of plastics 3-7 has prompted businesses to spring up in NJ to make use of them, whether to make plastic timbers or some other use. Even if the plastics are sent overseas, they likely ride in otherwise empty ships that were delivering products to the U.S., and whether they are used in an environmentally friendly way would be hard to determine.

The recycling business is very complex and constantly evolving. The truth, or some semblance thereof, takes a lot of digging, and it's all too easy to speak with an air of great authority and be completely wrong. Years back I was told with conviction by Princeton Township recycling staff that I must keep tearing those annoying cellophane windows out before recycling envelopes. This was contradicted by an expert I tracked down at the NJ Dept. of Environmental Protection. The misinformation remains on the township website to this day.

For years, most residents have been putting all manner of plastics in the curbside bin. I contacted the hauler to ask if they've ever complained to Mercer County (which administers Princeton's curbside recycling service) about the lack of adherence to the list, but got no response. I'm aware of no attempts to enforce the limitations imposed by the county list, which is hard to find both via google and via the county website. The township's concern about people placing plastics beyond #1 and 2 in the bin, then, is coming a bit late in the game.

So, for those who worry about doing the right thing, be happy. You don't have to tear those silly windows off of envelopes, and if you happen to accidentally drop a plastic #3-7 (or aluminum foil and trays, or an empty aerosol can) in the bin, like many of your oblivious neighbors are already doing, the good news is that it will get recycled. Maybe someday policy will catch up with practice.

Of course, the best thing to do is to somehow avoid buying unnecessary packaging, and thus minimize both one's garbage and one's recyclables.

Dinky Debate Updates

Press the "The Dinky Debate" tab at the top of the page to see a couple personal updates on the Dinky issue. I assembled information about the proposed move of the Dinky station on the premise that conflicting views might in part be due to misinformation or lack of information. Improve awareness, reduce acrimony. Though people are very busy and distracted, and may sustain misconceptions no matter what, I had two conversations recently in which worry about the proposed move of the station was based on misinformation about where the new station would be located.

Contrasting Recycling in Montgomery and Princeton

A recent newspaper article announced that Montgomery, Princeton's neighbor to the north, accepts plastics #1-5 and 7 curbside and also pizza boxes. Somerset County runs the recycling program for Montgomery and other municipalities and, unlike Mercer County, runs its own separation plant (a Materials Recovery Facility, or MRF). They ask that homeowners take the plastic lids off of containers, but it's okay to put the lids in the bin.

Princeton contracts with Mercer County for curbside recycling service, which by contrast requests that residents recycle only plastics 1 and 2, and throw plastic lids and pizza boxes in the trash (apparently because the tops get caught in machinery and the grease on the boxes is thought of as a contaminant in paper recycling). This limitation to plastics 1 and 2 may have to do with their contract with Central Jersey Waste and Recycling, which hauls the curbside recyclables to a MRF. If you throw plastics 3-7 in the curbside bucket, it will probably get recycled, but Mercer County is only paying to have plastics 1 and 2 picked up. There's also a question as to whether plastics 3-7 are recycled in an environmentally responsible manner.

Hopefully, all this confusion will end when it comes time for Mercer County to sign a new contract with its hauler, which, given the area trend towards expanding recycling of plastics, could well include plastics 1-7.

Event Tuesday: Waste NOT in Schools, 4:30p

Establishing and maintaining effective recycling programs in schools is an extraordinary challenge, given the many pitfalls of low administrative priority, a distracted population, and under-motivated custodians. I certainly encountered these and other impediments in the process of helping Princeton Regional Schools revive its recycling programs. The high school was perhaps the hardest to make any progress with, though with great effort we were able to lift the school's recycling program, at least for awhile, above many others in the area (according to a truck operator who did pickups of recyclables at various businesses and schools.)A list of lessons learned from the effort, applicable to recycling in any building, can be found at www.recyclingcontainers.blogspot.com.

OASIS is making as much progress as anyone in overcoming entropy and apathy. Should be an excellent program. OASIS announcement below:

EVENT IS THIS TUESDAY 1/24 4:30pm  --Great speakers!

OASIS (Organizing Action on Sustainability in Schools) and the Princeton
Public Library

Waste NOT in Schools

Did you know that the average American creates 4.4 lbs of garbage every
day?

What are schools doing to reduce waste, to teach students about waste, to
help us understand that we can't throw it away because there is no "away"?

Learn from some of New Jersey's experts at a panel discussion featuring:

Dr. Kevin Lyons, Rutgers University
Norm Torkelson, Hopewell Valley Regional Schools
Dr. Joy Barnes-Johnson, Princeton High School

Jan. 24 at 4:30 in the Princeton Public Library Community Room.

Refreshments graciously provided by The Bent Spoon.
A prize will be given to the school with the most participants.

Recycling at Jadwin Gym Still Looking For a Win

At Jadwin Gym last night, the Princeton women extended their winning streak to five, beating Cornell by a 2:1 margin.

The cheerleaders look very confident this year as they build themselves into high pyramids and come falling back to earth knowing someone will be there to catch them.

 The audience got an "A" for attendance.

Tigers in the pep band were kept well caged. The band was particularly notable for its unusual instrumentation, with bagpipes (not in  photo), cello and a bizarre brass instrument or two.

But what's this? Looks like someone has dropped the ball with the trash and recycling. Time and again, recycling containers were left unguarded by trash cans, insuring a mixing of trash and recyclables. And the nearly look-alike cans required close inspection to tell which goal was which.

Most of the players were out of position and lacked a winning attitude. Those in the lobby gave mixed signals of the "I know I say recycle but really I'm for trash" variety.

Fundamentals are SO important. Rule number one is pair each recycling bin with a trash can. I know that in basketball the opposing baskets are spread apart, but in the game of recycling, trash and recycling receptacles need to be TOGETHER.

And their best player, clearly labeled and with small holes on the top to discourage trash, was off to the side where no one would use it--a needless waste of talent. You've GOT to recruit more containers like this one and position them in key spots, like at the top of the stairs. People will be going for the hoop with their empty gatorade bottle at the first receptacle they encounter on the way out. By the time they reach the lobby, it's too late. Control the lanes. That's the way to win at recycling.

Here are some ideas for a winning strategy:

• Step #1: paint over those green recycling triangles on the old, poorly designed receptacles. They just confuse people. 
• Use all of those old containers for trash. Buy new recycling containers with attitude, that say recycling from head to foot. The star players, like the blue one in the photo above, are cheaper than the attractive but poorly designed laggards. 
• Put your best players in key spots and, most importantly, pair them with trash cans. For a demonstration, and links to a manufacturer, click here.
• Since the bottles accumulating in the clear plastic bag help show that the receptacle is meant for recyclables, don't empty the bags until they're nearly full (not after each game). 
• Princeton University is an educational institution. When it invites the public to a basketball game (or a football game), it should be showing us how to win at recycling.

Note: Ten recommendations for starting and sustaining a successful recycling program in the workplace can be found here.

Note, 2.25.12: There's also a recycling container that looks like a bottle. The university has, or at least had, one of these at the football stadium. One supplier sells them for about $90 each. From the photos, it looks like companies like Coke and Pepsi might provide these at minimal or no cost, with their logo attached.

PU Art Museum Hosts Sustainability Games

The Princeton University Art Museum hung the community's clean laundry out to dry on the campus green last night as part of a "Sustainability Games" event. Given that an electric dryer uses 4000 watts when it's on, air-drying laundry is one of the best ways to reduce your home energy use, so there's considerable substance to go with the symbolism here.

The event, put on by students, was cleverly conceived. We "earned" pieces of pizza by first learning which of its ingredients can be grown locally, and then went on a sustainability scavenger hunt on campus that led us to a key on the steps of Nassau Hall. Take the key back to the museum and you got to open a chest full of free water bottles to take home. Free food, free bottle--my daughter was quite pleased. And she even learned some factoids, like that India is one of the world's leading producers of bananas.

The art museum invites the community in for special events every other Thursday evening, and will be collaborating with the Arts Council of Princeton, Labyrinth Bookstore and other local businesses for a second Art Walk on March 1. My jazz trio, the Sustainable Jazz Ensemble, will be performing at Labyrinth as part of that event, probably starting around 6pm.

Recycling in Princeton

The Princeton Packet published an "As I See It" column I wrote entitled The Struggle To Improve Recycling. For those seeking the lists of accepted curbside recyclables mentioned in the column, here's a link.

Note: Thanks to a reader for notifying me that one of the links here was wrong. It should work now.

Curbside Foodwaste Pickup in the Borough

One of the easier and more satisfying ways to reduce the amount of trash you put out for pickup is to compost food scraps, either by composting in the backyard or by participating in Princeton's curbside pickup program.

For backyard composting, this bucket costs about $20, prevents any odors in the kitchen, and is still like new after 15 years of service.

Backyard composting is the most ecological approach to dealing with foodscraps and yard trimmings, but the other option is the curbside program now available to all Princeton residents. Though pickup of kitchen scraps, often mixed with low-grade paper and garden trimmings, has been practiced in cities like San Francisco and Seattle, Princeton township is reportedly the first town in New Jersey to offer the service. The program has about 250 participants thus far.

This service has recently been extended to borough residents, who can participate for $10/month. Hopefully, consolidation will provide a means to greatly expand the number of people taking advantage of this service. Presumably, after consolidation there would not be an extra charge for the service. Full participation would bring a reduction of 30% in the trash Princeton generates.

Below is some QandA with the township recycling coordinator, Janet Pellichero:

Q: What is the cost for borough residents to participate?
A: It is $20.00 per month (editor's update: recently reduced to $10/month) for weekly collection of organics. Collected every Monday.

Q: Where is the foodwaste taken for composting?
A: It is taken to Peninsula Compost Group, in Wilmington Delaware. It is marketable compost in 80 days. (meat, fish, bones, pizza boxes, waxed cardboard, shellfish, oils etc. anything that grows goes)

Q: I've heard the program would have to be terminated if not enough households participate. How long is it guaranteed to continue?
A: It is a permanent program. (editor's update, 2.28.12: I now hear that the program has to reach 500 participants to remain viable)

Q: What is the best response to people who have worries about flies and odors?
A: There have been NO complaints regarding flies or odors.  The containers have a snap lock lid.


More info and contact info can be found here.

Philadelphia Story, Part 2--Waterworks

The first post entitled Philadelphia Story, as some readers may remember, was a tragicomic tale of the hazards of parking in the historic district. That drama took place on the Liberty Bell, Ben Franklin Bridge, Penn's Landing, Delaware River side of town, where I-95 streams through. That was the only part of Philadelphia I knew until recently, other than WHYY's inauspicious Shadow Traffic reports, which detail the endless permutations of rush hour congestion.

One beautiful fall day last month, some friends introduced me to Philadelphia's flip side, west of the Delaware and just beyond the Art Museum, along the Schuykill River. A google-eyed view of Philadelphia shows the Delaware and Schuykill rivers looking like two sides of a vase, with downtown in the middle. Traveling the I-95 corridor and occasionally straying downtown, one sees only one side of the vase.

To visit the Schuykill River side, then, is akin to getting a glimpse of the far side of the moon.

We owe the lovely vista in this photo to the water pollution that, by the late 1700s, forced Philadelphia to seek a cleaner drinking water supply. The Schuykill River was dammed in 1822, and land upstream was purchased to prevent polluting development.

All that land is now the long and lovely Fairmount Park, with bike trails extending all the way westward to Valley Forge. The impoundment is used for rowing races.

Until 1909, the dammed water passed through a Waterworks, turning big drums that in turn pumped fresh drinking water up the hill to a reservoir. From there it was piped down into the city. All very elegant and sustainable. You can see the whole layout in the photo, just as it once looked, except that the Philadelphia Museum of Art is perched on the hill where the reservoir used to be (upper left), and the downtown in the distance has sprouted skyscrapers.

Inside the Waterworks is a first rate, federally run interpretive center that explores all matters having to do with water. You can learn where wastewater goes after it leaves one's house, how the city is trying to reduce stormwater runoff,

and how the shad that once migrated upstream in enormous numbers each spring to spawn played a critical role in keeping George Washington's troops alive at Valley Forge. (Presumably the dam has fish ladders to allow them access these days.)

Along with the appealing ingenuity and sustainability of 19th century technology was a greater valuing of public spaces, and a belief that beauty and utility can cohabit in architectural design.

All in all there was much to cheer about during this visit--a beautiful public space on a beautiful day, and we found our car just where we had left it.

Are Rollout Bins Right For Princeton?

If New York is the city that never sleeps, Princeton has become the town whose streets are never clean. The dumping of yardwaste in the streets is now year-round. Municipal fear of taxpayer outrage may be the reason that ordinances meant to control the dumping activity, and to bring Princeton in to compliance with state regulations, go unenforced.

There are places in America that have clean streets. I know because sometimes I jump on my horse and ride towards the horizon to see how other people live, and can say definitively that we can rescue ourselves from this self-imposed squalor.

Take San Francisco as an example. Once a week, three rollout bins are placed at the curb. Gray is for trash. Blue is for recyclables. Green is for a combination of foodwaste and yardwaste.

Because the yardwaste is containerized, collection is efficient and the streets remain clean. Of course, this neighborhood has fewer trees than Princeton does and thus less generation of leaves and brush. But there are many tree-packed municipalities that don't allow dumping of leaves on the street, and instead expect residents to compost most of them in the backyard and place the rest in rollout bins and yardwaste bags at the curb.

This sign shows what goes in the green bin: food-soiled paper, food, and yard trimmings. All of this gets composted outside of town. Princeton township began offering this service last year, and recently extended service to anyone in the borough willing to pay $20 a month. (More on this in another post.)

One of the benefits of rollout bins is that their contents are mechanically emptied into the trucks. Princeton's recyclables and the borough's trash are lifted manually into trucks, which puts workers at risk of back injury. The lack of rollout bins also means that residents must do heavy lifting to get their trash and recyclables to the curb.

Some trucks can actually grab the rollout bin at the curb and dump its contents without having a worker on the street.

When in the past I've recommended that Princeton shift over to rollout bins, the idea was reflexively rejected due to concerns about the cost of this sort of truck. Imagine my surprise when I saw one of these trucks collecting trash in Princeton township. Midco, one of the private haulers township residents can contract with, has obviously seen the cost savings in this approach.

Consolidation of Princeton township and borough into one entity offers an opportunity to reshape services. Rollout bins have worked elsewhere and are now being utilized by private haulers in the Princeton area. It's time the municipality look at ways to put them to use.

What's Recyclable and Where Our Recyclables Go

If you live in Princeton, you may occasionally wonder what items are supposed to be going in the green and yellow recycling bins residents put at the curb every other Monday. Though local government websites are useful, they may not for various reasons be able to provide the most up to date information. Here's what I was able to find out recently:

Mercer County: The county, not Princeton township or borough, is in charge of the curbside recycling program. (Note: The county's recycling website was revamped in late Feb/2012. Its list of recycling do's and don't's can now be found here.)

That list is useful to some extent, but the private company that the county contracts with to pick up the recyclables posts its own list, which I've pasted below in quotes. (If you like pictures, here's a downloadable flyer.) The hauler lists several additional items as recyclable, which I've marked in red, that the county does not include on its list.

(The list below is from the Central Jersey Waste and Recycling website)

"The following material can be recyced ONLY if they are clean (free of food waste.) A good rinse should be sufficient for most items!

• Plastics marked with numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 (but not compostable #7)
• Aluminum cans
• Aluminum trays and foil (cleaned)
• Aerosol cans
• Steel and tin cans
• Glass jars and bottles
• Metal lids
• Newspapers and inserts (remove plastic sleeves)
• Magazines, catalogs, phone books
• Office and school paper
• Cardboard
• Boxboard (cereal boxes, etc.)
• Brown paper bags
• Paperback books
• Paper-only junk mail"

Update, Aug/2012: I've adjusted this list to reflect changes on the Central Jersey Waste website. They've added #6 plastic as acceptable, and removed plastic lids from their list.

Why the contradictory lists? It turns out that the county is reluctant to expand its list, in part because any change requires an amendment to the Mercer County Solid Waste Management Plan. The county also wants to make sure there is a longterm market for any item it adds to the list.

Where our recyclables go: The hauler (Central Jersey Waste and Recycling) takes the recyclables down to Trenton, then transfers them to semis to haul them up to the Colgate Paper Stock Company in New Brunswick, where all the various recyclables are separated out. Colgate is a so-called MRF (materials recovery facility) that has its own list of items it accepts or rejects for recycling. That list includes plastics numbered 1-7.

Plastic lids: I always thought that, since there are rings on the plastic bottles that are made of the same material as the lid, then the lid must be recyclable along with the bottle. The Colgate sorting plant, though, makes it clear they don't want plastic lids. What I've been told is that the rings are detached from the bottle by the plant that makes new products from the bottles.

Plastic bags: Many bins put curbside have recyclables in plastic bags. A representative of Colgate told me that plastic bags occasionally gum up their sorting machinery. He also said that though they accept all numbered plastics 1-7, the plastics 3-7 end up getting shipped out of the country, to destinations and fates unknown. 

Styrofoam: Some residents put styrofoam (#6) out for recycling. I've heard contradictory opinions about its recyclability. This link, which has info on what various plastics are used for, says styrofoam is one of the more useful plastics to recycle. But obviously it's so bulky that it's hard to transport efficiently, which may be why the Central Jersey hauler excludes it from its list.

Princeton Township has a web page with lots of links to info on recycling, though its list, like the county's, does not include all the items that are accepted by the private companies actually doing the recycling. 

Cargo Bicycle On Princeton's Streets

Of all the vehicles that parade by my house on busy Harrison Street, this one stood out as distinctly different. Two big rollout bins on a trailer being pulled by a bicyclist. Having long imagined a world in which bicycles are adapted to fill varied transport needs, I decided to head off in pursuit to find out where this one-man sustainable parade was headed. He was moving along at a good clip, but I caught up with him on Valley Road, and learned that the vehicle is owned by the Whole Earth Center grocery store on Nassau Street.

Every year, staff vote on what to buy with the accumulated loose change found on the floors during cleanup. Last year, they bought this bike and trailer.

It often carries their food up to the farmers market in good weather, but on this particular day, it hauled a week's worth of salvaged plastic packaging to the municipality for recycling.

At the same location (corner of Valley Road and Witherspoon Street), the township makes yardwaste bags available for residents, and you may be able to recycle your electronics there as well.