Tags: Waste Less Green More

Today, April 22, 2020, marks the 50th anniversary of Earth Day. Millions around the world are mobilizing to address the climate crisis. In addition to supporting policies to reduce carbon emissions, we can take small actions at home to live more sustainably.

As demand for plastic is on the rise and recycling efforts can only repurpose about 9% of generated plastic, scientists, engineers and producers are looking for green solutions to our petroleum plastic dependency.  While bioplastics have been around for about 100 years, there has been a recent surge of interest in them. 

Cell phones are an everyday item and an almost unavoidable necessity in our society.   In 2018, it was estimated 1.5 billion phones were produced with more cell phones active than people on the planet. Unfortunately, our increasing reliance on cell phones poses a number of environmental and social problems. 

Recycling gives some plastics a second or third life but ultimately recycling just delays the inevitable: all plastic is destined for the landfill.  While recycling systems have been developed for plastics that are commonly used and easily broken down, typically #1 and #2, technical and economic factors as well as smaller volumes have prevented recycling of other plastics such as #3 and #7.

With all the talk about recycling, do you know what those numbers on your plastic containers mean? Recycling is a great way to reduce demand for plastics, but it’s not as simple as putting your bottles in a blue bin. Different kinds of plastics are created for different purposes, and post-consumer plastics need to be managed in different ways.

It’s resolution season again, and popular resolutions include eating better and to save money.  Eating greener is a great opportunity to meet your needs, reduce environmental impact and save money.

1. Use reusable bags when shopping

A greener diet starts at the store.  

Since its inception, the Freshkills Park team has fostered partnerships with artists from a variety of disciplines in an effort to document this preliminary phase of park development through creative expression. Over time, a number of works have emerged, ranging from ink studies produced within the confines of an old shipping container to bound notebooks created from the park’s ubiquitous invasive Phragmites plant.

In May of 2019 the recycling giant, Terracycle, launched Loop: a subsidiary with the goal of reducing household waste by ‘bringing back the milkman’. They aren’t just stopping at milk either. Through Loop, subscribers can receive totes of household items ranging from toothpaste and laundry detergent, to salad dressings and Haagen-Dazs ice cream: all packaged in aesthetically-pleasing reusable containers.

In 2016, Arihunt and Avni Garg participated in a tour of Freshkills Park and learned about waste management in New York City. “Although the Sanitation and Parks Departments were working very hard, it seemed to be an uphill battle to keep our city clean,” said Avni, a freshman at Stuyvesant High School.