Regional Roundup

BioCycle November 2004, Vol. 45, No. 11, p. 18

Richmond, Virginia
CELL PHONES ADDED TO LIST OF PRODUCTS TO BE RECYCLED
Beginning this fall, the Central Virginia Waste Management Authority (CVWMA) will recycle cell phones, chargers, PDAs and pagers at sites currently accepting rechargeable batteries. Like other electronic devices, cell phones contain materials such as lead, antimony, cadmium and arsenic that are potentially harmful if they are not properly disposed. Collected phones will be sent to

ReCellular in Dexter, Michigan — the industry’s largest recycler and reseller of used wireless phones. When possible, phones will be refurbished and reused.

Plover, Wisconsin
COMPOST SURVEY OF 205 STATE SITES UPDATES
DATA ON FEEDSTOCKS, SALES AND TIP FEES
The Associated Recyclers of Wisconsin (AROW) newsletter (Sept. 2004) reports results of a 2004 survey of the 205 compost sites licensed with the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources. Kathy Powell of Recycling Connections Corp. did the survey for the UW Extension Center "to update information about compost sites including locations, materials composted, who’s selling compost, tip fees and who’s interested in compost education programs." Following are some of the data:

Of the 205 sites, 185 are active, 10 are inactive, 5 are closed 4 never opened, and 1 combined their license with a nearby site. Site sizes varied from one acre to 42 acres, including 35 commercial and 147 municipal operations.
Tipping fees — 38 sites charged either by the cu yd or ton; Fees ranged from $1.60 to $50/cu yd (most running between $3 and $15/cu yd — and $5 to $30/ton.)
Feedstocks accepted — primarily leaves, grass and yard trimmings. Brush was accepted by 86 percent of the sites, and clean wood at 26 percent. Kenosha collects yard materials in biodegradable plastic bags. Several sites accepted manures, lake weeds, potato culls, paper mill sludge or cranberry residuals.
Compost sales — 43 sites sell compost primarily in bulk, from $3 to $24/cu yd; two sites currently market bagged compost, with some also making soil blends; Compost is given away at 144 active sites. Of sites selling compost, 77 percent screen their finished product.
Compost uses — 41 percent use product on site, 54 percent use it for municipal projects such as roadside reconstruction, parks, schools, landfill final cover and gravel pit reclamation. Waukesha County has set up a centralized site for composting yard trimmings, using the product to remediate a gravel pit. AROW can be contacted c/o RCC/Karin Sieg, Executive Director, 600 Moore Road, Plover, WI 54467. (715) 343-6311; www.arow-online.org.

Cleveland, Mississippi
DEVELOPING NEW CATALYSTS
(HUMAN AND TECHNICAL) TO USE BIODIESEL
Record high oil prices are focusing a lot of attention on alternative energy sources, including biodiesel, a fuel derived from vegetable oils, notes the Mississippi Agricultural and Forestry Experiment Station (MAFES). But the lack of biodiesel use concerns Thomas Howarth, who grows soybeans on his Circle H Farm near Cleveland. Howarth is one of about a dozen delta farmers who are regular customers for the biodiesel sold by Farmers Inc. in Greenville, one of the few product sources in the state. Farmers Inc. sells a blend that is two percent diesel made from soybean oil.
Bill Webster, owner of Biodiesel Fuels of Mississippi in Meridian says: "I have the capacity to make 1,000 gallons a day using mostly recycled soybean oil from catfish restaurants, but right now demand is sporadic." Since last October, one of Webster’s customers has been the Lauderdale County School System, which has been running nine of its buses on a blend containing 10 percent biodiesel.
"We’ve had no problems whatsoever with the buses that are running on the biodiesel," said Roger Wright, the school district’s transportation director. "From a maintenance standpoint we’ve seen no differences in the vehicles running on regular diesel and the ones using the blend."
Webster noted that there is one very noticeable difference, "The tailpipes on the buses running the blend are clean; they don’t have the black soot you usually see on diesel exhausts," he said.
The reduced emissions from the blend are the reason one of his regular customers uses it for tractor pull, competitions in enclosed stadiums. Another customer operates a swamp tour business and uses the biodiesel in his airboats so his customers don’t have to smell diesel fumes.
MAFES biological engineer Sandun Fernando in the Department of Agricultural and Biological Engineering is developing a new catalyst for converting soy oil to biodiesel. "The catalysts currently in use are homogenous — they dissolve during the process and have to be refined out," he said. "We are working with a catalyst that does not dissolve, making its removal much easier."
Fernando is still evaluating his process, but his research indicates the use of the new catalyst can reduce the amount of time needed to convert soy oil to biodiesel from about one hour to just a few minutes — maybe just five minutes. "Reducing the amount of refining needed to remove the catalyst also lowers the amount of heat and pressure required for the process," he said. "As a result, the cost of the process should be significantly reduced."

Davis, California
FARM TO SCHOOL PROGRAM PROMOTES
HEALTHY FOODS AND FOOD RESIDUALS COMPOSTING
An innovative program, the Farm to School Connection developed by the region’s school district, promotes healthy eating habits in children and creates a school environment that links garden, cafeteria and classroom with local agriculture. The program incudes farmers’ markets visits, classroom education, farm tours and compost making. One goal of the program is to prevent obesity and associated diseases. In the U.S., the percentage of children who are overweight increased from seven percent in 1980 to 15 percent in 2000; overweight adolescents increased from five percent to 15 percent during that same period. Explain the organizers: "The incorporation of agriculture into the school curriculum provides an excellent avenue in which to discuss food — where it comes from, its health benefits, how to choose healthy foods and factors contributing to human health, as well as concepts important to planetary health, such as composting and recycling."
The program offers farm tours to second-grade classes, uses established gardens for hands-on learning experiences in composting and integrated classroom curricula. The Davis Joint Unified School District piloted food waste composting systems at three schools under a contract with the California Integrated Waste Management Board. "The goal of the Food Waste Diversion Project was to develop and test site-specific systems to reduce the lunch waste stream while engaging students in the ongoing practice of composting and recycling."
The program generated a gross savings of $6,230 in disposal fees from waste reduction at two of the schools. As of spring 2004, the authors report in California Agricul-ture, published by the state’s Division of Agriculture and Natural Resources, the composting program had been expanded to all eight elementary schools in the district.

Liberty Island, New York
STATUE OF LIBERTY GREENS UP ITS ELEVATOR ON SOY OIL
Until recently, announces the National Park Service, the elevator at the Statue of Liberty used mineral oil formulations made with petroleum. But now, the monument’s elevator runs on biodegradable hydraulic fluid made from soy oil. The project goes back two years when Park Service building foreman Jeff Marrazzo contacted a researcher at the National Center for Agricultural Utilization in Illinois asking for such a product. It had to readily break down, come from a renewable resource, be economical as well as nonpolluting, and meet industry standards. Chemist Sevim Erhan of the Agricultural Research Service formulated a new elevator hydraulic fluid using soy oil chosen because of its low cost, chemical versatility, and availability as a renewable, home-grown resource.
Agri-Lube, Inc. of Defiance, Ohio worked with Erhan’s lab, developed a product which tested well at Otis Elevator and at Liberty Island. In both tests, the biofluid worked as well as or better than the mineral oil-based formulations. Agri-Lube is negotiating licensing rights to commercialize the patent, and the Statue of Liberty is proudly using the product.

Davenport, Iowa
REUSE STORES EXPAND IN QUAD CITIES REGION...AND ELSEWHERE
Since its opening in December 2002, Habitat ReStore operated by the Quad Cities chapter of Habitat for Humanity has diverted 350 tons of waste from the landfill and contributed $67,000 to its projects. "Stores like Home Depot and Lowe’s make donations weekly," explains Cindy Kuhn, executive director. "Our volunteers contribute hundreds of hours a week, and our customer base comes to us basically by word of mouth."
As reported in Waste Matters, published by the Iowa Department of Natural Resources, similar stores are also operating in Des Moines and Dubuque. In a partnership with Dowling Catholic High School, the Des Moines Habitat ReStore has been operating since June 2003. "Our goal is to divert 350 tons from the landfill by our fourth year," says Mark Elliot, Habitat director, whose organization recently received a $46,000 forgivable loan from DNR.
In Dubuque, MidAmerica Architectural Salvage — since its opening in December 2003 — has also gotten into deconstruction, salvaging building material with its own staff. MidAmerica is in the process of developing a computerized system to track inventory.

Lunenburg, Nova Scotia
COMPOST FACILITY MANAGER GROWS
TOP PUMPKIN IN COUNCIL CONTEST
"The compost that helped this pumpkin (184 kilograms) grow so big came from the homes of Nova Scotians who regularly put their organics and recyclables out for collection," announced Environment and Labour Minister Kerry Morash. "I’m pleased the Composting Council of Canada has given us this opportunity to highlight our commitment." And so the winner of the Council’s third annual Great Pumpkin Growing Contest was announced. The gourd was grown by Dave Daniels, solid waste operations manager of the Lunenburg Regional Recycling and Compost Facility who nurtured the pumpkin patch with compost from his facility. Daniels received his $500 prize for the biggest pumpkin from Council chairperson Barry Friesen, and the money will be donated to several local garden clubs.

Waseca, Minnesota
LANDSCAPING MULCH FROM LOW-QUALITY WOOL
Several years ago, writes E. M. Mortison in Ag Innovation News, the Agricultural Utilization Research Institute (AURI) helped the Minnesota Lamb and Wool Producers Association test a mulch made from low-quality wool. Although effective, the fabric had to be made out of state, pricing it out of the market. This time, AURI is testing a cheaper plant cover made with "card wool," a textile manufacturing by-product.
The original wool mulch was made from wool worth five to ten cents per pound. Weed control was as good or better than with conventional herbicides, kept soil cool and moist, leading to more robust growth. Easy to handle, the fabric decomposed by the end of the second season, enriching soil with nitrogen. The disadvantage was the price.
Cost of collecting, washing and trucking wool to the nearest needle punch plants in Ohio and Texas pushed mulch price to about 42 cents per sq ft. — too high for commercial strawberry growers. Michael Sparby, AURI project director, credits the president of the Minnesota Association with suggesting using short fibers trimmed from wood blankets made at Faribault Woolen Mills. After several tries, Mat, Inc. of Floodwood, Minnesota, a company that makes erosion control mats out of agricultural fibers, came up with a wool mulch — light weight and less dense — that was about one-fifth the cost of the needle-punch mulch.
In May, the new wool mulch was tested in transplanted strawberry plots and compared with conventional herbicides and hand weeding. Weed control through the end of July 2004 was good, and so far, the new wool mulch is reported to be "doing what it’s supposed to be doing."

Minneapolis, Minnesota
ONLINE DIRECTORY LISTS COMPANIES PROVIDING
RENEWABLE ENERGY PRODUCTS
Companies that provide energy-efficient and renewable energy products and services are listed in a free online directory (www.EnergyDirectory.org) compiled by the Minnesota Environmental Initiative. For more information, contact Erik Pratt, manager of the MEI Energy Alley Program at epratt@mn-ei.org or call (612) 334-3388, ext 102.

Mansfield, Connecticut
LOW WASTE FESTIVAL A "NATURAL FIT" FOR SUSTAINABLE DOWNTOWN
Recycling Coordinator Virginia Walton sends this report on her town’s first Festival on the Green, brainchild of the Mansfield Downtown Partnership. "Go to any other Connecticut fair or festival, and you will find trashcans filled with paper, plastic, food, cans and bottles. Not this Festival," declares Walton.
In preparation, individual attention was given to each participating food vendor. The Mansfield Recycling Coordinator met with food vendors to discuss how they could support the intentions of a low-waste festival by using recyclable or compostable products. Through the generous donation of the local recycling processing facility, Willimantic Waste Paper Company, food vendors that participated in the Festival were supplied with Biocorp corn-based compostable knives, forks and spoons.
"Waste stations, peppered throughout the Festival area, included cans and bottles recycling, crates for returnable soda bottles and composting. Volunteers guided fair attendees in the disposal of their waste. By selling Hosmer Mountain Soda, a local soda maker known for its wide variety of flavors and its use of returnable bottles, reuse was integrated into the Downtown Partnership’s fund raiser. At the end of the day, 55 percent of the waste was either recycled or composted. 39 percent of the day’s waste is currently being transformed into soil in the Mansfield transfer station compost pile. That includes paper plates and cups, napkins, corn-based forks, knives and spoons, and food. Cans and bottles went to the Willimantic Waste Paper Company recycling facility. Hosmer Mountain Soda got most of their bottles back for reuse, and the remaining garbage went to the trash incinerator. Although the Festival did not achieve a 90 percent waste reduction, 55 percent is a commendable start."

Copyright 2004, The JG Press, Inc.