The cleaning excess

“Future generations are going to look at the way we make toilet paper as one of the greatest excesses of our age. Making toilet paper from virgin wood is a lot worse than driving Hummers in terms of global warming pollution,” Allen Hershkowitz, a senior scientist at the Natural Resources Defence Council, told the Guardian.

The average American uses 23.6 rolls of toilet paper a year — that’s about 7 billion rolls for the country. If a single eucalyptus tree yields 1,000 rolls, it amounts to seven million eucalyptus trees to clean Americans. With offices reducing use of paper, it has meant less recyclable paper in general.

Can't the Americans do without tissue? While this may seem simple to most of us in the east, in fact more hygienic to use water, only about 6 percent Americans are willing to reconsider!

Makes one think how simple things taken for granted have big stories behind them. Habits die hard.

Recycle everything

In a limited world, what is the best way to live, given unlimited demand? Simply recycle everything.

A new book, titled Revolutions that Made the Earth, has its authors argue that human civilisations in the future should emulate the biosphere and create what they name ‘Gaia devices’ – named after the Gaia theory that paints Earth as a self-regulating system – which recycle the materials and waste much more efficiently than is currently done.

Metals would still be mined, but not from conventional pits, but from the emerging centre - the cities with their heaps of discarded goods and scrap. Calling it a high energy, high recycling world, the authors such a revolution alone can sustain the demand from a rising population.

Give it a thought. So many computers, mobile phones, cameras, televisions, cars, etc are being dumped in the junkyard, not only forming an eyesore on the landscape but also forming a colossal waste. Isn't it time we gave a thought to recycling in a more serious manner? Even without a China restricting rare earth exports!

A rare wisdom

We have written quite a bit about rare earths, perhaps making our readers wonder if they really rare! Well, the rare part is actually that which allows for economical extraction. And why this attention on rare earths (RE) is simply because the world of tomorrow we plan to build on clean energy will lean a lot on these rare elements. Whether it be wind farms or CFLs and LEDs, or electric vehicles, they depend on REs.

A massive wind turbine has 40-meter-long blades made from fiberglass, towers 90 meters above the ground, weighs hundreds of metric tons, and relies on roughly 300 kilograms of a soft, silvery metal known as neodymium—a rare earth. This element forms the basis for the magnets used in the turbines. The stronger the magnets are, the more powerful the generator.

An interesting article in Scientific American looks at the whole laborious process of extraction of rare earths. Found with other ores, Chinese companies supplying them employ acid to dissolve them out of ore rock that often also contains radioactive elements like thorium, radium or even uranium.

Intensive boiling with strong acids—repeated thousands of times because the elements are so chemically similar—finally separates out the neodymium, dysprosium or cerium. The whole slew of rare earth elements are a challenge to separate because of their chemical similarity—and they are never found alone. Processing costs are high and water and energy intensive.

Geologists have found deposits in Australia, Canada, Mongolia, Vietnam and even Greenland. Perhaps it is wiser before opening up pristine places to look at recycling options given the mountain loads of electronics we discard today. So also, research is working at how best to use as little of these REs or maybe even some alternatives. Whatever it be, recycling will have to be part of the solution.

Scrape to the last bit

They are truly rare and getting rarer by the day. About 124,000 metric tons of rare earth elements (REEs) were produced in 2009, with worldwide demand during this period estimated to be 134,000 metric tons — the difference have been made up from existing stockpiles. By 2012, worldwide demand is expected to reach 180,000 metric tons while mining operations are not expected to keep up with demand in the near term.

Rare earth elements are critical to a variety of high-tech products and manufacturing processes, including catalytic converters, petroleum refining, color TV and flat panel displays, permanent magnets, batteries for hybrid and electric vehicles, medical devices, and various defense systems like missiles, jet engines, and satellite components.

The Chinese produce 97% of REEs worldwide.

Rare earths are moderately abundant in the earth's crust, some even more abundant than copper, lead, gold, and platinum. While more abundant than many other minerals, REE are not concentrated enough to make them easily exploitable economically.

Either one has to look for alternatives which will take time, or stop using all those gadgets made from these elements (asking for the moon!) or simply pally up to China.

Or, recycle wherever possible, taking help from bacteria?

Researchers from the School of Biosciences at the University of Birmingham have found a way to use microbes, similar to the common soil bacterium Desulfovibrio desulfuricans, to recover palladium from useless industrial waste. Palladium itself is one of the most precious resource metals on Earth, boasting unique chemical properties. This metal can in fact be used as an active element in autocatalytic converters able to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

As we have noted before, these are time of Peak everything!

Simple enlightenment

Given the lack of response to the blog, it's time to lighten the mood and go for a story, perhaps. This one has a moral, dear to our beliefs. So here goes...

Buddha, one day, was in deep thought about worldly activities and the ways of instilling goodness in human beings.


One of his disciples approached him and said humbly "Oh my teacher ! While you are so much concerned about the world and others, why don't you look in to the welfare and needs of your own disciples also."

Buddha: "OK.. Tell me how I can help you"

Disciple: "Master! My attire is worn out and is beyond the decency to wear the same. Can I get a new one, please?"

Buddha found the robe indeed was in a bad condition and needed replacement. He asked the store keeper to give the disciple a new robe to wear on. The disciple thanked Buddha and retired to his room.

A while later, Buddha went to his disciple's place and asked him "Is your new attire comfortable? Do you need anything more?"

Disciple: "Thank you my Master. The attire is indeed very comfortable. I need nothing more"

Buddha: "Having got the new one, what did you do with your old attire?"

Disciple: "I am using it as my bed spread"

Buddha: "Then.. hope you have disposed off your old bed spread"

Disciple: " No.. no.. master. I am using my old bedspread as my window curtain"

Buddha: " What about your old Curtain?"

Disciple: "Being used to handle hot utensils in the kitchen"

Buddha: "Oh.. I see.. Can you tell me what did they do with the old cloth they used in Kitchen"

Disciple: "They are being used to wash the floor."

Buddha:" Then, the old rug being used to wash the floor...?"

Disciple: "Master, since they were torn off so much, we could not find any better use, but to use as a twig in the oil lamp, which is right now lit in your study room...."

Buddha smiled in contentment and left for his room.

Can we even begin to try this in our homes and workplace? The world would be a lighter and cleaner place.

Where does that empty bottle end up?

A plastic soap bottle tossed in a Manhattan recycling bin took several twists and turns around the city before crossing the river to Kearny, N.J. So, who has been following the trash? No one, but a simple tracking device. A 5-year-old group at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has spent the last year attaching thousands of tracking devices to pieces of garbage in Seattle and New York City. The devices send out pulses to signal where they are. The signals go to MIT's SENSEable City Lab for analysis.

Most cities today face problems of congestion, pollution and inefficiency problems. New technologies, like iPhones, social networking and wireless communication, can inform city dwellers and make cities "smarter."

The aim of project "Trash Track" is to study where recyclables go. As the world consumes at a faster rate than ever before, it becomes important to track trash, and see how it degrades, if at all it does.

Trash companies follow their own haul, for example. But once they separate the aluminum and sell it to a collector, their records end. No single database tracks a soda can through its cycle. Trash Track may be a useful tool with e-waste too.

But of course this calls for coordination and acting together based on the inputs from the tracking.

Or else the power of networks in general and the Internet will simply be an exercise in showing the many things that “can be done” but don’t get done!

Curbing waste at Cop-15

There are arguments, accusations, trickery, what not being reported from Copenhagen. Hope is beating a fast retreat. The hosts are not being seen in a posiitve light, at least not by the developing world. But they have taken some effort to lead by example in some things. Like what Denmark has done to make the conference energy efficient and less carbon intensive.

The Bella Center where the meet is happening is a low-lying Legoland of structures dominated by a single towering windmill. After all, Denmark is an alternative energy leader, deriving 20 percent of its energy from windmills. All of the energy used at the conference derives from renewable sources of electricity. The Bella Center underwent an efficiency overhaul before the conference, reducing its energy consumption by 20 percent.

To ensure the conference would be carbon-neutral or better, the Danish government estimated the amount of carbon likely to be expended, including the emissions incurred by the travel of visiting delegates and members of the press: 40,548 tons of carbon dioxide equivalents.

It offset those emissions by spending 700,000 euros to replace coal-burning kilns used to manufacture bricks in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Twenty new Danish-funded kilns will operate with higher efficiency and lower emissions. They will use half as much coal to produce just as many bricks, reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 100,000 tons per year.

Regarding transport, besides 100 heads of state who are provided a sedan, a minivan, and a security detail, everybody else comes by bus, train, Metro, or bicycle. Private cars are not allowed near the center, including taxis.

Besides meat that has seen ravenous consumption at Cop-15, there is paper. Thousands of reams of paper have been consumed to produce and reproduce the documents of the conference. According to a report, delegates can rarely cross a hallway without being handed a brochure, a booklet, a packet, etc ‘expressing an outrage, a hope, or an agenda’.

Recycling is obligatory at Bella Centre. The Media Center is collecting reporters’ dead batteries. Because there are many recycling bins, few trash containers, compliance is high, though not all participants have been as careful as they could be about sorting.

Plenty scope to improvise and aim higher, but this is a beginning even if only symbolic.

Certainly would help if all conferences go the same way. Small steps that lead to giant strides if many join in?

Car-free towns

Vauban in Germany is one of the largest car-free neighbourhoods in Europe, home to more than 5,000 people. If you own a car here, you must buy a space in a multi-storey car park on the edge of the district. Vehicles are allowed down the residential streets at walking pace to pick up and deliver, but not to park. Streets have been taken over by kids as young as four or five, playing, skating and unicycling without direct supervision.

Most of the European car-free areas prevent vehicles from entering the streets where people live. Exceptions are made for emergency vehicles and removals vans but not for normal deliveries, which are made on foot, trolley or cycle trailer. Cycling is a vital means of transport.

That seems a contrast from cities in developing nations where everybody is on a car-buying spree. More cars on the road, and most single occupants, mean roads to be widened and that means trees face the axe! Cities are beginning to look like desert landscapes. Goes without saying car-free cities/towns will need certain infrastructure in place.

More of the metal story follows. India is drowning under 4,20,000 tons of e-waste a year which is growing at 10-15 percent a year. Pollution control officials says there are only six regular recycling units in India, with an annual capacity of 27,000 tonnes.

Without recycling facilities that can handle the loads of e-waste that need to be process,97% of the waste gets recycled in hazardous conditions, where workers are exposed to toxins like barium, cadmium, copper and lead.

Health conditions apart, the problem points to a scenario where too many new and unnecessary gadgets keep pouring into the market place, displacing old but perfectly usable gadgets pouring into dumps and recycling facilities!

The fancy with gadgets is all too visible with the middle class joining the upper classes. Lessons in recycling and reducing waste are yet to pick up in the collective consciousness. Perhaps nothing short of a movement can address the problem.

Are you doing something in your community?

Turning an island into diesel

The Maldives premier made it to the headlines when he said he was planning to relocate his country. He was referring to the sea level rise and the threat to his nation.

There is one another island which defies sea levels. And volunteers are pitching in efforts to torpedo the island out of existence. So to say.

Sailing adrift on the Pacific is a ship no one wants to claim ownership of, but all the same it belongs to all of us. This is the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, twice the size of Texas and created from six million tonnes of discarded plastic.

Discovered in 1997 it is made of bottle caps, plastic bags and plastic chips. Broken down by sun and waves they become tiny plastic chips with huge potential attracting and poisoning marine life.

An upcoming ocean garbage expedition to the patch, dubbed Project Kaisei will explore the feasibility of collecting and recycling the garbage patch into diesel fuel. With a crew of 30, the expedition, supported by the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and Brita, the water company, will use unmanned aircraft and robotic surface explorers to map the extent and depth of the plastic continent while collecting 40 tonnes of the refuse for trial recycling.

If the plan sounds too ambitious, a modest derelict fishing net recycling program in Hawaii proves that it is possible.

The Honolulu Derelict Net Recycling Program, in which abandoned fishing nets are brought into port, chopped into pieces, crushed, sorted, and recycled as fuel at HPower, a waste-to-electricity plant. The plant provides electricity to 40,000 homes, and it’s estimated that the recycled nets account for about 280 of them. So far about 660 tons of nets have been sent to HPower since 2006.

Compared to the 4 million tons of debris in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch this is nothing. But Project Kaisei is relying on sponsorships and donations to get in gear. Want to help?