A new study shows that U.S. landfills contain more than twice as much solid waste as we previously thought based on U.S. Environmental Protection Agency estimates.

Researchers found that we throw away 289 million tons of solid waste, which is more than twice as much as the EPA’s original 135 million ton estimate. In fact, the number even exceeds the World Bank’s predictions for waste totals in 2025, according to Live Science.

The new figures differ drastically from former estimates because they’re based on actual landfill waste weights rather than the figures EPA used to make its estimations from industry associates, businesses, and the U.S. Census. This is because in 2010 a new Greenhouse Gas Reporting rule began requiring that large landfills start reporting the weight of the trash entering their facilities. Of the 1,200 landfills included in the study, 900 were still accepting waste.

“I think the disposal rate and capacity numbers are interesting on their own, but I think in the bigger picture, it provides us a distinct, data-driven roadmap for where we can target emissions reductions in the waste sector,” study lead author Jon Powell, a doctoral student of chemical and environmental engineering at Yale University, said in a statement.

We will still have enough space for the onslaught of waste that our consumption-driven economy throws away, but we may need to transport it longer distances, according to LiveScience:

The country won’t run out of landfill space anytime soon, but sometimes the landfills that have more space are far away from cities that need their services, said Morton Barlaz, a professor and head of the Department of Civil, Construction and Environmental Engineering at North Carolina State University, who was not involved with the study.

But the larger issue becomes the impact that landfills may have on global climate change. As waste decomposes in landfills, methane is emitted into the atmosphere. In fact, landfills are the third largest source of methane in the U.S. Methane is 25 times more potent than carbon dioxide when it comes to greenhouse gas emissions. And greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide and methane slow the absorption of heat into space. Meaning, as they trap heat in our atmosphere, it can cause global climate change. So beyond waste management, landfills are a significant contributor to the greenhouse gases that can cause global climate change.

At a personal level, if you want to reduce your household trash, waste reduction should be your first priority followed by reuse and then recycling and composting. Just because it can go in the recycling bin doesn’t mean you should necessarily give yourself a pat on the back. And since plastic never decomposes, it’s best to avoid it completely because often times it doesn’t even make it to landfills, rather, it ends up crowding our oceans instead.

Related on EcoSalon

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Image of a totally full trash truck in a landfill from Shutterstock

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Fast fashion is bad. Really bad. But we doubt you can fathom just how bad it actually is.

The below clip comes from “The True Cost” and focuses on how detrimental fast fashion is to the environment. One of the most disturbing facts in the clip is this: Most textiles aren’t biodegradable and can sit in landfills for at least 200 years. As the clothing slowly breaks down, they release harmful chemicals into the air. Boffo.

Related on EcoSalon

4 Ways to Be Certain You’re Investing in Eco-Friendly Clothing

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OITNB’s Alysia Reiner Helps Launch World’s First Clothing Swap Boutique

The post Fast Fashion is So Totally Toxic and Gross [Video] appeared first on EcoSalon.

There are few things as important to new parents as The Diaper.

While you may use organic cotton diapers on your baby at home, it’s not always practical in other settings. The disposable diaper is a convenient feat of modern science—and it’s traditionally been quite a caustic one, too.

Acrylate, the chemical used in the superabsorbent material in diapers, is toxic and produced en masse: billions of tons every year go into diapers (and eventually landfills). Made from propylene (from crude oil) the problem is that acrylate forms a polymer that resists breaking down, leaving them a toxic nightmare in landfills, leaching into waterways and the air, causing pollution and health problems.

But, there may be good news as scientists at Brown University have discovered a new way to produce the chemical with carbon dioxide and an acid, in essence taking a harmful greenhouse gas abundant in the environment, and turning it into a less harmful substance that will eventually go back to the landfill and…well, you probably get the picture, right? A low-impact production cycle that reuses its own byproduct…now that’s novelty.

Published in the journal Organometallics lead researcher chemist Wesley Bernskoetter used chemicals known as Lewis acids in creating the acrylate substance by opening the five-atom ring of oxygen, nickel and three carbon atoms in the molecule. It has proven so successful that scientists are hopeful that it could be scaled up to produce acrylate in industrial settings.

While there are no plans as of yet to produce diapers using the new technology, Bernskoetter is hopeful that it could happen relatively soon. But if you simply can’t wait until then to have a baby, look for environmentally-friendly disposable diaper options at your local health-minded shop.

Keep in touch with Jill on Twitter @jillettinger

Image: Carbon NYC

The post Dirty Diapers Create…New Diapers? appeared first on EcoSalon.

Armchairs made out of old traffic signs are upcycled into conversation pieces.

Rhode Island-based designer Boris Bally follows a philosophy called “HUMANUFACTURED®,” a hybrid of art, design and craft. His latest project exploits the stark graphics of street signage to create conversation pieces for the sitting room.

In his process, he seeks to minimize scrap by saving retired traffic signs from trash heaps, transforming them into furniture and using what’s left for mailboxes, house numbers, clocks and picture frames. It’s estimated that by producing hundreds of these armchairs in a year alone, Bally will save over twenty tons of aluminum waste from dead-end landfills.

Look for Lustables daily at EcoSalon. 100% gorgeous green finds, and never sponsored. Submit your favorite to tips@ecosalon.com

The post Lustables: Upcycled Traffic Sign Armchairs appeared first on EcoSalon.

But that time capsule has an impact.

The average American produces a little over 4 pounds of trash per day, and although we might be diligent about separating our recyclables, once the garbage truck comes along, to us, our waste is out of sight and out of mind. While we return to the house with an empty garbage can, our waste takes off on a journey for the landfill, where mountains of trash pile up to be pushed around by bulldozers and circled by vultures in the air.

Where does your trash go?

We rounded up a list of the top 10 biggest landfills, just to show the ultimate impact of our everyday waste. According to Waste & Recycling News, these are the biggest landfills, based upon tonnage received in 2007. Here are some interesting facts about these places, including some very uplifting ones (really).

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1. Apex, Las Vegas, Nevada. 3,824,814 tons.

America’s largest landfill, Apex, lies just an hour north of Sin City. Storing nearly 50 million tons of rotting trash, Apex is no small operation. Surprisingly enough, things seem to be slowing down. According to General Manager Mark Clinker commercial and residential waste has actually decreased. Maybe there’s still hope?

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2. Puente Hills, Whittier, California. 3,756,718 tons.

Taking in a third of Los Angeles County’s trash, Puente Hills is a big player when it comes to waste. But talking about trash doesn’t have the same effect as seeing it. Last year, the Center for Land Use Interpretation (CLUI), a Culver City-based think tank, sponsored a tour of Puente Hills in an effort to raise awareness about waste. Tickets sold out in minutes. But the landfill doesn’t just process waste. Puente Hills is the largest recycling location in the US, taking more than one million tons per year of recyclable materials.

Concerts

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3. Newton County Landfill Partnership, Brook, Indiana. 2,692,455 tons.

A stone’s throw from Chicago, Newton County Landfill is responsible for taking a large part of the city’s waste. Chicago residents produce about 1 million tons of trash per year.

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4. Atlantic Waste, Waverly, Virginia. 2,669,423 tons.

Virginia’s largest landfill, Atlantic Waste is owned by the trash giant, Waste Management. In 2008 the landfill was fined for some 8,000 gallons of leachate – in other words, garbage juice – which spilled into surrounding wetlands.

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5. Okeechobee, Okeechobee, Florida. 2,640,000 tons.

Surprisingly enough, visitors to Okeechobee won’t just see piles of trash, they’ll also get a view of local wildlife. Of the 4,150 acres that make up the site, 1,550 have been placed in conservation easement, offering visitors a variety of recreation and conservation related activities.

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6. Denver Arapahoe Disposal Site, Aurora, Colorado. 2,561,809 tons.

Colorado’s largest landfill, Denver Araphoe Disposal Site accepts around 12,000 tons of waste per day. But some of that trash is going to good use. In September of 2008, DADS launched its waste-to-energy system to convert methane into electricity. In partnership with the City of Denver, the system generates enough power to fuel about 3,000 homes. (Photos are from adjacent landfill site Lowry, which ceased operations in 1990 and is now part of the waste-to-energy system)

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7. El Sobrante, Corona, California. 2,173,216 tons.

Another landfill owned by Waste Management, El Sobrante works closely with the Wildlife Habitat Council to manage more than 640 acres for the benefit of 31 different species, two of which are endangered.

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8. Rumpke Sanitary, Colerain Township, Ohio. 2,128,165 tons.

Located near Cincinnati, Rumpke Sanitary brings in a lot of trash, but like other landfills, is doing its part to put some of it to good use. The landfill site hosts three methane recovery facilities that have the potential to recover approximately 15 million standard cubic feet of landfill gas daily. In total, the facilities produce enough energy to power 25,000 homes.

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9. Frank Bowerman, Irvine, California. 2,059,859 tons.

One of California’s largest landfills, Frank Bowerman also boasts the world’s first landfill gas-to-LNG plant. The plant has the capacity to produce 5,000 gallons of LNG per day, which has about the same environmental benefits as taking about 150,000 vehicles off the road per year.

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10. Columbia Ridge, Arlington Oregon. 2,050,602 tons.

Columbia Ridge processes waste from all over the Northwest, serving major cities Portland, OR and Seattle, WA.

Each week here at EcoSalon, the editors choose a post from the archives that we think you’ll love. The original post can be found here.

Images: D’Arcy Norman, Steve Marcus, Sanitation Districts of Los Angeles County, WM, Google, Farache, EPA, Center for Land Use Interpretation, Craig Ruttle, n6vhf, Eric Mortenson.

The post Tons of Trash: Tour America’s 10 Largest Landfills appeared first on EcoSalon.

My daughter is a smart girl. I don’t like to brag, but she has an IQ that is off the charts and is currently applying to a number of highly selective colleges. But if you hand her a phone book she will look at it the same uncomprehending way that Early Man looked at fire. There will be grunting and fear and a dim, bewildered expression. Drooling may spontaneously occur.

This is because my daughter is 17-years-old and the absolute only way she knows how to look up a phone number is by using some type of electronic device – either a PC or a laptop, a BlackBerry, a Droid or on an iPad. In a pinch she will dial 411 on her cell phone and ask a nice, faceless lady for the number she needs. But to her, a phone book is just a big old pile of wasted paper. And she is not alone in thinking this way – for most people (certainly anyone under the age of 30) phone books are as outdated as harem pants, mullets, and Boyz II Men concerts.

Even I, as technologically challenged as I am, now use the Internet to look up phone numbers. So there is no longer any reason for me to haul this heavy and cumbersome tome out of the linen closet – where it gathers dust along with nearly identical versions from 2008 and 2009 because I have no idea how to get rid of them. When I visit friends who live in apartment buildings I will frequently see piles of unclaimed and unwanted phone books getting progressively ratty as they are left in the lobby to rot.

No one seems to know how to dispose of these massive paper-wasters; the EPA estimates that only 18 percent of all phone books are recycled each year – many of them on the day they are received.

According to Green Valley Recycling in Los Gatos California, if all Americans recycled their phone books, it would free up two million cubic yards of landfill space per year. The problem is that many towns seem reluctant to recycle phone books (my town claims to offer this service, but the local trash collectors make a deliberate point of collecting newspapers and leaving the White Pages behind.)

Which is why my heart sank when this bulky throwback to a simpler time appeared in my driveway this morning – unbidden, unwelcome and unwieldy as ever.

It seems to me that there should be some way to distribute these anachronisms only to people who want and need them – the AARP’s mailing list perhaps. Or maybe they could be handed out at Talbot’s, along with sensible shoes and elastic waistband slacks.

My daughter (who knows exactly how old I am) asked me recently why we ever used phone books – even back in the “old days.” When I told her that personal computers had not yet been invented, she asked why we didn’t just use our cell phones to dial information.

Maybe she isn’t as smart as I thought.

Image: edkohler

The post Phone Books: A Little Slice of 1962 appeared first on EcoSalon.

Beyond the smell and decay, landfills are considered modern archeology sites, collections of discarded items that give clues to the lifestyles of those who used them. In fact, Harvard-trained archeologist Bill Rathje recently told the LA Times, “The best time capsule in the world is a landfill.”

But that time capsule has an impact.

The average American produces a little over 4 pounds of trash per day, and although we might be diligent about separating our recyclables, once the garbage truck comes along, to us, our waste is out of sight and out of mind. While we return to the house with an empty garbage can, our waste takes off on a journey for the landfill, where mountains of trash pile up to be pushed around by bulldozers and circled by vultures in the air.

Where does your trash go?

We rounded up a list of the top 10 biggest landfills, just to show the ultimate impact of our everyday waste. According to Waste & Recycling News, these are the biggest landfills, based upon tonnage received in 2007. Here are some interesting facts about these places, including some very uplifting ones (really).

1. Apex, Las Vegas, Nevada. 3,824,814 tons.

America’s largest landfill, Apex, lies just an hour north of Sin City. Storing nearly 50 million tons of rotting trash, Apex is no small operation. Surprisingly enough, things seem to be slowing down. According to General Manager Mark Clinker commercial and residential waste has actually decreased. Maybe there’s still hope?

2. Puente Hills, Whittier, California. 3,756,718 tons.

Taking in a third of Los Angeles County’s trash, Puente Hills is a big player when it comes to waste. But talking about trash doesn’t have the same effect as seeing it. Last year, the Center for Land Use Interpretation (CLUI), a Culver City-based think tank, sponsored a tour of Puente Hills in an effort to raise awareness about waste. Tickets sold out in minutes. But the landfill doesn’t just process waste. Puente Hills is the largest recycling location in the US, taking more than one million tons per year of recyclable materials.

3. Newton County Landfill Partnership, Brook, Indiana. 2,692,455 tons.

A stone’s throw from Chicago, Newton County Landfill is responsible for taking a large part of the city’s waste. Chicago residents produce about 1 million tons of trash per year.

4. Atlantic Waste, Waverly, Virginia. 2,669,423 tons.

Virginia’s largest landfill, Atlantic Waste is owned by the trash giant, Waste Management. In 2008 the landfill was fined for some 8,000 gallons of leachate – in other words, garbage juice – which spilled into surrounding wetlands.

5. Okeechobee, Okeechobee, Florida. 2,640,000 tons.

Surprisingly enough, visitors to Okeechobee won’t just see piles of trash, they’ll also get a view of local wildlife. Of the 4,150 acres that make up the site, 1,550 have been placed in conservation easement, offering visitors a variety of recreation and conservation related activities.

6. Denver Arapahoe Disposal Site, Aurora, Colorado. 2,561,809 tons.

Colorado’s largest landfill, Denver Araphoe Disposal Site accepts around 12,000 tons of waste per day. But some of that trash is going to good use. In September of 2008, DADS launched its waste-to-energy system to convert methane into electricity. In partnership with the City of Denver, the system generates enough power to fuel about 3,000 homes. (Photos are from adjacent landfill site Lowry, which ceased operations in 1990 and is now part of the waste-to-energy system)

7. El Sobrante, Corona, California. 2,173,216 tons.

Another landfill owned by Waste Management, El Sobrante works closely with the Wildlife Habitat Council to manage more than 640 acres for the benefit of 31 different species, two of which are endangered.

8. Rumpke Sanitary, Colerain Township, Ohio. 2,128,165 tons.

Located near Cincinnati, Rumpke Sanitary brings in a lot of trash, but like other landfills, is doing its part to put some of it to good use. The landfill site hosts three methane recovery facilities that have the potential to recover approximately 15 million standard cubic feet of landfill gas daily. In total, the facilities produce enough energy to power 25,000 homes.

9. Frank Bowerman, Irvine, California. 2,059,859 tons.

One of California’s largest landfills, Frank Bowerman also boasts the world’s first landfill gas-to-LNG plant. The plant has the capacity to produce 5,000 gallons of LNG per day, which has about the same environmental benefits as taking about 150,000 vehicles off the road per year.

10. Columbia Ridge, Arlington Oregon. 2,050,602 tons.

Columbia Ridge processes waste from all over the Northwest, serving major cities Portland, OR and Seattle, WA.

Photo Credits: D’Arcy Norman, Steve Marcus, Sanitation Districts of Los Angeles County, WM, Google, Farache, EPA, Center for Land Use Interpretation, Craig Ruttle, n6vhf, Eric Mortenson.

The post Tons of Trash: Tour America’s Top 10 Biggest Landfills appeared first on EcoSalon.

Lucky 3P writer Jen Boynton says of her recent dinner with Levi’s and a gaggle of writers: “The Levi Strauss folks came across as down to earth and honest. We talked about the sweatshop labor that plagued their press coverage in years past and how it started the company on the road to sustainability: first socially, with safe working conditions and fair labor practices, and now environmentally, rolling out EPA wastewater standards for all their international factories, life cycle analysis and energy reduction plans.”

Sounds to me like Levi’s is getting the environmental spirit.

By their partnering with Goodwill to promote “A Care Tag for Our Planet,” Levi’s new initiative aims to put billions of pounds of unwanted clothing to good use instead of into landfills. How? By using a new Levi’s tag and launching a campaign to encourage the owners of Levis to donate their jeans to Goodwill when they are done.

Goodwill can then resell to Levi’s fanatics as well as those who need affordable clothing, and provide job training programs to at-risk populations.

According to the Goodwill site, beginning in January 2010, the Levi’s® brand will be the first major retailer to include messaging on product care tags that encourages people to donate their unwanted clothing.

This is Goodwill’s first partnership designed to increase the lifecycle of clothing and textiles to address the approximately 23.8 billion pounds that end up in U.S. landfills each year.

A simple tag? Is that all it takes? We’ll see and we’ll hope.

The post When Tags Matter appeared first on EcoSalon.

The San Francisco Public Library is lending an ear to the landfill crisis by piloting a new library card program that substitutes plastic cards with ones made from corn. You’ve seen the corn utensils. This invention is just as ingenious, but it fits into your wallet much better.

Check out the new ecocard. It’s a true-blue alternative that might catch on in other cities if it proves to hold up to wear and tear. The card idea isn’t as corny as a baseball field of dreams, but I do believe if libraries bill it as the wave of the future, the rewards will come.

“Just like the issue of plastic water bottles, San Francisco is once again leading the way on alternatives to use of plastic,” explains Mayor Gavin Newsom. “By piloting a program to use biodegradable material for library cards, our Public Library is showing that real alternatives to the use of plastic exist.”

Corn is a sustainable and renewable resource unlike traditional petroleum-based plastics, and can be composted in the city’s composting system. We all know many plastic products never break down. Library patrons obtaining the new ecocards are being asked to share their e-mail addresses to answer a survey as part of an SF Environment test project to evaluate its durability and usability.

“We hope the new corn-based cards will turn out to be a good alternative to the traditional plastic library cards and that we can one day create all of the city’s library cards out of sustainable materials,” says Deputy City Librarian Jill Bourne. “The card is just one more way that the Library is working to instill more environmentally-conscious practices in its operations while providing public information, programming and events focused on green issues.”

Meantime, the Library is still distributing its traditional cards which come in four colorful designs created by San Francisco students as well as a “classic” design. To avoid adding materials to the waste stream, the new ecocard will only be offered for free to new library card holders and may be obtained as a replacement for a lost card for a $1 fee.

The old cards are visually exciting, but not as healthy for the planet. “Once the eocards cards can no longer be used, people can return them to the earth by putting them in the city’s green compostables cart,” says Jack Macy, Commercial Zero Waste Coordinator at SF Environment.

The card is the latest step in the new Green-Stacks Program, a partnership with SF Environment and Friends of the San Francisco Public Library, designed to promote sustainable and renwable efforts at the Library and around the City.

The post San Francisco Library Launches New Ecocard appeared first on EcoSalon.

My eccentric Aunt Lorraine could crochet better than most, her intricate hooded baby sweaters ideal for keeping my little ones bundled in warmth. Isn’t that the heartfelt purpose of most woolen handiwork? Yet the magical forms you see here, resulting from thousands of hours of labor, are a commentary on too much warmth – the kind devastating the coral reefs of our marine world.

In 2005, twin sisters Margaret and Christine Wertheim put their heads and needles together to crochet these spectacular models of coral heads, anemone gardens and urchins. Margaret, a science journalist and author of physics books, and Christine, a painter and professor at CAL Arts, ended up with a sophisticated woolly masterpiece described as the “AIDS Memorial Quilt of global warming”.

The sisters, born and raised in Australia, learned early on about the Great Barrier Reef off the coast of Queensland. Considered the world’s largest single structure produced by living organisms, the Reef covers some 133,000 square miles and is a huge tourist draw to the northern region. But climate change causes mass coral bleaching which threatens the habitat for sea life.

The sisters have spread the message through their Hyperbolic Crochet Coral Reef, which has traveled to two continents and been exhibited throughout the U.S., most recently at Track 16 Gallery in Los Angeles.

“The project has brought awareness to hundreds of thousands of people in the six exhibits we have had, but the world continues to warm and we’re still using oil at an alarming rate,” Margaret tells me, adding that this summer will be the worst coral bleaching ever. “One single project cannot change the world’s attitude about using oil. We haven’t turned the tide on global warming but we are doing our bit.”

That bit was aptly introduced in an exhibit at the Andy Warhol Museum in a show on art’s response to global warming. Since then, the reef madness caught on.

Women have responded in droves to an invitation to participate in the show’s collaborative crochet effort, many of them taught to crochet at a workshop.

As a result, the City Reefs installed vary greatly in refinement. Some emerge more “crafty” and whimsical than the museum-quality Bleached Reef in shades of white, Branched Anemone Garden, and Beaded Reef, executed by the sisters and 30 fiber artists who found them on the web.

“The level of skill might be lower in the City Reefs but they have a beauty and vitality of their own,” Margaret points out.

The Wertheims, who grew up learning to knit and crochet, are now focused on a Toxic Reef made entirely of plastic trash (below), hoping to draw attention to The Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a massive dump of plastic debris in the North Pacific.

The shameful mass is roughly the size of Texas and contains 3.5 million tons of discarded litter (shoes, toys, bags, bottles, containers). It floats midway between Hawaii and San Francisco.

“My sister and I changed our use of domestic plastic over the past two years, keeping what we amassed for the exhibit,” says Margaret. “We thought we were pretty ecologically aware but were appalled to to see how much we generated.”

They were so shocked they committed to never buying pre-packed fruit and veggies from stores like Trader Joe’s. Water bottles had long been off their list.

“Everything is sold in pre-contained units because it is easy to ship and cuts down on labor,” Margaret says. “But the consequence is it goes in the landfills or the bottom of the ocean and will be embedded in the geological record of our planet. This will be one of our legacies to the future, having created a plastic layer engulfing our planet.”

In their global effort to rescue our oceans through their exhibit, workshops and lectures, the sisters have done their math. In fact, math drives most of what they do.

Their Reef is overseen by their L.A.-based Institute for Figuring, an educational physics lab dedicated to enhancing the public understanding of figures and figuring techniques.

From the physics of snowflakes and the hyperbolic geometry of sea slugs, to the mathematics of paper folding and graphical models of the human mind, the Institute takes as its purview a complex ecology of figuring.

Margaret, like many mathematicians, sought to model hyperbolic space, surfaces that appear in coral reefs, lettuce leaves, and other natural organisms. In 1997, Daina Taimina of Cornell University, had a pearl of wisdom, discovering this could be done with crochet by increasing the number of stitches in each row (her model is below). Basically, the sisters began crocheting models with friends when they made the discovery.

“A bunch of us were sitting around the coffee table and thought ‘my gosh’ they look like coral reefs,” remembers Margaret. “The reason is that the reefs embody this geometry. It wasn’t just a coincidence.”

The next stop is the Scottsdale Public Library in Arizona through July 11 – and in the near future, the reef will be the first art exhibit ever on display at the Smithsonian’s Natural History Museum.

While Margaret is “honored” the response has been so huge, she admits “this thing has taken over my life.” Even with fiber artists like Jemima Wyman and others hired to unbox and assemble the reefs, the curating process can take up to two weeks as it all is painstakingly executed by hand.

The biggest wonder, apart from the reef itself, is that the sisters have managed to do it all on a shoestring budget, working from their home-based IFF headquarters. They continue to seek serious funding so that Margaret might get a salary for the exhaustive work, and her reef, like the natural wonder it models, can live on.

Note: images courtesy Institute for Figuring

The post The Crochet Reef: A Phenomenal Stitch in Time appeared first on EcoSalon.