hey i'm meredith danberg ficarelli i'm a
waste expert and garbage nerd today i'll
be answering your questions from twitter
this is waste support
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all right first up gold peril asks wtf
is zero waste bruh zero waste is an
approach to resource conservation that
recognizes every step of the supply
chain everything is made of something
and the point in a zero-waste approach
is that there is no burning so no
incineration and no discharge so that
includes no landfilling no materials
ending up in the ocean and no
particulate matter or any other impacts
from disposal ending up in the air the
term zero waste comes from the zero
waste international alliance we as as
waste experts garbage nerds recognize
that we need to restructure the entire
economy in order to get there but we're
working on it from danny wanny faux
fannie why are landfills slash dumps
still a thing shouldn't we be able to
just launch all our into space now
have you ever seen a rocket launch
there's like fire underneath it because
it takes a lot of energy to shoot things
into space it would be really ill
advised to waste energy to shoot our
waste into space when everything's made
of something potentially valuable so
this is a bad idea don't do this lay
lemon head why don't we use volcanoes as
waste incinerators the zero waste
international alliance says that we
can't use burning to dispose of material
volcanoes would burn stuff if we're
making something to be able to use it to
be able to just get rid of it by burning
it you're disrespecting all of that
value that went into the thing that
includes the human labor and it includes
all the natural resources and everything
else the time that went into making the
thing we want to be able to use that
value over and over and over again
another reason is that burning waste in
incineration facilities can be
incredibly dangerous harmful toxins
referred to as dioxins and lots of other
potential chemicals can be released into
the atmosphere and the communities that
live around those incineration
facilities can end up with higher levels
of cancer higher levels of asthma so
aside from this recognition that
materials have value we don't want to
burn things because it ends up
endangering the lives of people and
everything else that's alive on the
planet yes but why though says does
recycling matter tell me it does
recycling totally matters everything is
made from something and so by recycling
by participating in a recycling economy
we are respecting all of the nutrients
all of the labor all of the emissions
that went into producing those things
that we hold and in order to make a new
thing if we use a can as an example we
have to use many many many more
resources to make a brand new can out of
brand new virgin materials than if we're
taking a can that already exists sending
it through a recycling system and making
a new can out of it and the main thing
that we really need to do as part of
building a circular economy and moving
towards zero waste is to increase access
to the ability for people to recycle
things improve infrastructure to make it
easier and more affordable to recycle
things and hopefully reduce the travel
distance that we need to send things in
order for them to get recycled and also
to recognize that some things probably
just shouldn't be made britain nays says
why is it so hard to recycle you are 20
and can't put a plastic bottle in a
separate bag from the regular trash make
it make sense or putting regular trash
in the recycle you're not alone
recycling is confusing and it's not your
fault so i've actually got a couple
bins here a trash bin with a clear bag
recycling bin with a black bag so this
is one of my my favorites we have four
different material types here we've got
a wooden stir stick that should be put
in the compost ideally anything that was
once alive can be composted the lid is
plastic it's a number
six the little triangle that's on
plastics that has a number in it that
number is a resin identification code so
six is a polystyrene plastic depending
on where you are different numbers of
those recycling codes might be accepted
or might not be accepted in your
recycling program this like brown part
here is paper so it should go into the
paper recycling and then the cup is made
of paper but it has a plastic lining to
make it watertight that plastic lining
makes this cup really hard to recycle in
most recycling programs so the cup
actually belongs in the trash this cup
also actually says this cup is made with
10
post-consumer recycled fiber that's
awesome because post-consumer recycled
content supports a recycling economy by
making products out of recovered
materials in waste and in waste lingo
and when i'm educating people about
waste i talk about materials literacy
which is the idea of recognizing what
the thing you're holding is made of so
if we use this glass jar as an example
glass
metal so two material types in new york
city the waste stream that i would put
this into is a glass metal plastic waste
stream so even though these are
different materials they actually end up
in the same place in new york city waste
streams are different depending on where
you are because recycling is municipal
one thing to think about is don't put
anything that's soiled with food in the
recycling and then take baby steps as
you're working towards zero waste you're
not gonna learn it all in the day and
that's okay so max black sales says
question of the day just how does
compost work i love this question
composting is the recycling of organic
matter in a controlled environment so
you're taking food scraps and yard waste
and mixing them together with air over
time and you're making compost you don't
always have to have food scraps in
compost it can also just be yard waste
but the point is that it's organic
matter and i've got some samples here so
this is a jar and you can see that this
stuff is like moving pretty freely
it smells pretty neutral smells like
smells like earth i'm looking in here
and i can see
like a little bit of kind of woody
material because
my brother's a woodworker and he brings
his wood shavings home so this is my
carbon source and my greens or my
nitrogen source are my food scraps there
are micro and macro organisms that are
eating the stuff that i'm mixing
together over time and just like we as
people exhale carbon dioxide so do the
microorganisms that are making compost
work over time those microorganisms
generate heat and we have a compost
thermometer here
this is like a laughably large
thermometer you would not need one this
big for a backyard compost bin but i'm a
compost nerd so i got the big one this
is used to measure the temperature of
the compost because as those micro and
macro organisms are eating the food
scraps they're creating a parabolic
temperature curve so the temperature
starts low and then it starts to
increase and at the peak you're reaching
what compost people call pfrp or the
process to further reduce pathogens so
anything that we discard that was once
you know alive whether it's food that
might have salmonella or e coli
potentially harmful bacteria or even
plant pathogens or other pathogens part
of composting is actually like
sanitizing the organic matter and so we
measure temperature so that we can make
sure that we are reaching this pfrp
131 degrees fahrenheit or 55 degrees
celsius for a minimum of uh three days
or up to 15 days depending on the type
of composting that you're doing and then
this last example this is a way more
recent sample i pulled this out um just
the other day you can see it's like it's
a lot more wet when your compost has
been in the bin for a while or when it's
kind of nearing the end of that
parabolic temperature curve nearing the
end of its cycle it should be the
consistency of a wrung out sponge so
like if you squeeze it there shouldn't
be drops of water i'm pretty sure if i
squeeze this some water would fall but
this jar has been closed for a bit and
one of the tests
is if you smell it and it smells like
ammonia it's not ready yet this smells
lovely so my compost is fine it's just a
little wet so i want to add more carbon
through the process so that it can
absorb some of that moisture compost is
magic and by participating in composting
you are also participating in making
magic miss gen d says people who swim in
lake ontario will grow a third eye and
an extra limb i do wonder what body of
work this person is citing here it can
certainly be dangerous to swim in
polluted water bodies bodies of water
can be polluted by a lot of different
things in new york city one of the most
common sources of pollution for our
water is sewage because of combined
sewage overflow which has to do with the
way that our wastewater infrastructure
was built hundreds of years ago for a
city with far fewer people in it now
that wastewater infrastructure doesn't
have the capacity for the amount of
water that we're sending through it and
so anytime it rains out of i think it's
more than 240 combined sewage overflow
points raw sewage just spills into new
york city's waterways bf 99 floyd asks
does biodegradable mean the remains are
earth-friendly bev this is a super good
question short answer is no
biodegradable does not automatically
mean something is earth friendly an
orange peel is biodegradable but you
might also get like a piece of packaging
that says that it's biodegradable that
could just mean that that piece of
packaging is made of some combination of
plant-based materials and
non-plant-based like plastic fossil fuel
based materials and that over time it
might break down so that you can't see
it anymore but the plastic kind of
polymers the bonds that are in there at
a microscopic level we'll just
contaminate the soil as microplastics
and be there on a human time scale
forever so what you want to look for is
certified compostable that's the
language that we're looking for when it
comes to packaging and knowing whether
or not it can be composted pikesley
says
wtf does this mean at bbc news is a
microplastic a unit of measurement now
scientists have estimated that 94 000
microplastics per second flow down the
river microplastic is a term that refers
to
plastics that are less than five
millimeters in size when plastic is in
the environment or really anywhere and
comes in contact with uv rays the
plastic starts to degrade it ends up
like flaking like turning into smaller
and smaller pieces there's microplastic
everywhere honestly our clothes unless
they're made of 100 natural fibers like
silk or wool or cotton they are
producing microplastics like whenever
you move one of the solutions is to
reuse things that aren't made of plastic
because plastic degrades over time we do
need to work systemically to make it so
that it's easier for people to not do
things that produce micro plastics yala
wild says where will the trash go when
all the landfills are full if we
continue
with the way things are going now which
is that a lot of very large companies
are buying up land and building more
landfills and charging a lot of money to
be able to collect waste when the
landfills are full if we continue on
this trend we'll just have more
landfills and eventually the whole world
will be a landfill won't that be fun
kevincracy how can amazon do a better
job of packing shipments so one of the
things that amazon can do is certainly
improve the amount of space that they're
using maybe resize some of their
packaging to be more efficient i would
love if every packaging item that amazon
used was made of 100 post-consumer
recycled content that would be huge
because it would mean that amazon this
massive behemoth who has incredible
purchasing power would be demanding from
the global recycling economy an
incredible amount of recovered material
so like bales and bales and bales of
recovered cardboard recovered plastic if
we could like just start there that
would be awesome i actually brought a
prop along that's perfect for this zip
zip this is a zippy pouch that i made
out of amazon fresh packaging and
actually the liner is made of those air
pack thingies this is from tamar
hospital how do i responsibly dispose of
my ridiculous collection of defunct
obsolete electronics good job hoarding
um and i'm glad that you didn't put
these right in your waste bin this is
gonna depend on where you live so you
should look up where you live and then
electronics recycling some places will
have electronics recycling drop-offs or
depots where you can bring these things
sometimes it's an event that's hosted
maybe quarterly or maybe annually that
is also for hazardous materials
sometimes municipalities and
organizations will like lump those
things together to make it easier for
people for some of these things you
might be able to look up whether a local
big box store or store that sells
electronics might accept some of these
things recognize also lithium-ion
batteries can be dangerous and can
spontaneously combust if they're not
stored correctly so
everyone should kind of like check the
random drawer that has their random
electronics in it remove the batteries
and get those recycled if you're gonna
kind of hold on the rest of this stuff
because you don't want to catch things
on fire beppy says what's the proper
way to recycle nickelodeon slime i have
no idea what nickelodeon slime is made
of maybe flushing it down down the
toilet assuming that it's food safe just
don't put it in your recycling bin it
doesn't belong there so when is flushing
something down the toilet appropriately
if i have made food and forgot about it
in the fridge flushing it down the
toilet's a pretty good option if you
don't have access to composting i put an
asterisk there because you know you
don't want to flush like a loaf of bread
down the toilet bad idea but if it's
chili for example it's probably okay
infrastructure is local so depending on
where you are
your wastewater infrastructure might not
be able to handle the additional input
so i'm not suggesting that everyone go
and flush all their food scraps down the
toilet that's not the thing to do use
the websites of your municipal entities
is going to be different depending on
where you are danny iwall 16 says i
really really really want to start a
recycling program at work but i've no
idea where to start generally buildings
have waste collection so that's the
first step is figuring out who's picking
up the waste from where you are making
sure that you have bins to collect the
recycling in of course understanding
what should go into those bins so that
might be looking at your municipality's
website or talking to your property
manager ideally getting some signage and
doing some education so teaching
everyone else how to participate those
are some of the foundational steps all
right that's it that's all the questions
i hope you learned something till next
time