has a blog!
Elizabeth Royte…
Monday, March 23, 2009has a blog!
The Bulky Trash Watchman
Sunday, March 22, 2009My folks housing cooperative have a long standing internal battle against people in the cooperative not taking responsability for the recycling routines. In short, many choose to throw more or less everything in the room reserved for bulky trash (such as furniture), resulting in high costs for the cooperative when trash workers sort out the refrigerators and bottles from the couches and bags of old clothes.
This unruly behaviour has now come to an end. The board of the cooperative have put in place a harsh and virtually impenetrable line of defense: The Bulky Trash Watchman. Before this new regime, everyone had their own keys to the room, and could sneek down with their illegal trash at 4am in the morning without being noticed. No more. Now there’s one key, possessed by a man dubbed the Bulky Trash Watchman of the block.
Instead of being a 24-hour room, the bulky trash room os now open Sundays 7pm-8pm. The Watchman stands, with a grim look upon his face, inside the room and carefully eyes your bulky trash before nodding and directing you to place it next to whatever is in there already. The eagle eyes of the Watchman sees all attempts of cheating, and will happily share the regulations on what stuff goes in the room, and where one should recycle trash deemed unworthy.
Needless to say, the costs for recycling for the housing cooperative have dropped dramatically in a very short space of time. Good proof that regulation and big brother might need to step in when we oh-so-earthfriendly citizens talk the talk, but fail to walk the walk.
Weekly Compactor
Thursday, March 19, 2009
Last barge to Freshkills, March 22nd 2001
This week around the garblogosphere:
- Ruby Re-Usable officiates Another White Trash Wedding;
- Freshkills the park observes the anniversary of NYC´s last trash barge to set out for Freshkills the landfill (an excellent opportunity to become fan of their Facebook page and ours); and
- S A Schimmel Gold has a blog (not new to the world this week, but new to me this week).
Please excuse any typos or weirdness, I am posting this from a slow Internet connection in Quito, where the altitude has me a bit woozy.
More crisis less trash
Sunday, March 15, 2009Municipal recycling stations in Sweden note a decrease in the stuff that one really doesn’t need to purchase, but swipe your credit card for anyway, like electronics. Less cash and more insecurity makes us cling on to that four year old thingie, even though our neighbour bought a cooler version. The extravagance we see in time of prosperity goes beyond the usual flat screen and Wii though, as trash worker Börde Edlund gives example of:
Before, people came here with entire kitchen furnishings because they had the wrong colour.
Idiotic beyond belief, the way we live. Sometimes it just hits me. Aaaargh!
Trashing the Galapagos
Saturday, March 14, 2009Ever since I was a little girl, I have longed to see the Galapagos. My parents lived in Ecuador before I was born and to this day will not shut up about their visits to these magical islands full of amazing creatures. Embarrassing fact: both my mother and father still call me variations of the nickname ¨boopie¨ after the blue footed booby, a bird they once saw there.
Over the next few days, my sister and I will finally get to see what all the fuss is about when we visit the islands with our mom. In preparation for this trip of a lifetime, I have done very little research. After wandering around Guayaquil all day, though, I got to thinking about—what else—trash and recycling. The boardwalk in this city is shockingly developed, lined with perfectly manicured patches of tropical vegetation and freshly painted playsets for children. There are police and trash bins every few hundred feet and even large paper, plastic and glass recycling bins at the major entrances (photos forthcoming). Not at all what I´d expected.
Then again, at the nearby iguana park, tourists wander unregulated, posing with, poking and feeding junk food to the lizards and littering indiscriminantly.
Anyway, on the eve of my Galapagos adventure, I find myself camped out in the hotel business center (charging the various devices I seem incapable of traveling without and) searching the terms ¨trash¨ and ¨galapagos¨.
Isabela Island, photo via SuperVegan
So far, the two most interesting results mirror my high and low reactions to solid waste disposal in Guayaquil this afternoon: a write up on Treehugger last year heralding an innovative recycling venture and several blog postings from a self-described Galapagos-based vegan priate criticizing the government of Ecuador for doing little to regulate illegal dumping and animal smuggling. I will let you know what I see for myself in a few days. Hasta pronto, compañeros.
en route
Friday, March 13, 2009Hi, it’s Leila. I’m sitting in the Miami airport waiting to board my flight to Guayaquil, reading the paper and attempting to blog via smartphone. If you haven’t yet, check out the NYT story on the failing recycling industry in China. The news hook isn’t new, but the profile of a trash collector named Tian Wengui is.
Related slideshow at nytimes.com/business.
Update: here are the links for the article and the slideshow
Trash Hiatus
Friday, March 13, 2009Dear Trashies,
Leila is in Ecuador this week and Victor is in the process of relocating from Stockholm to NYC for six months. Please excuse us if posts are light this week.
Have fun in the archives!
Amazing email from Nancy
Thursday, March 12, 2009
Fused plastic tote by Nancy
I woke up to this incredibly sweet note in my inbox this morning: “Hi Leila–I went to see your presentation at the Princeton Library, and got inspired to 1) resume blogging, 2) make dozens of fused plastic totes. Thanks for the push into upcycling.”
Thank YOU Nancy. Garblogging is fun in and of itself, but it’s exciting to get proof beyond web stats that people out there are getting something out of everydaytrash. P.S., that CVS/Forever 21 mash up bag is rad. Keep us posted on the fusing madness.
Recommerce
Thursday, March 12, 2009Rich and Bob started YouRenew.com out of their dorm room at Yale. The site promotes a concept they coined: recommerce. AKA recycling incentives. Basically, it’s a directory of how to get paid to recycle your electronics. Thoughts?
This American Life
Thursday, March 12, 2009And of course, This American Life has devoted an entire show to our favorite topic. Have a listen to the garbage episode, first aired back in ’05.
Marine Trash
Thursday, March 12, 2009
Recently, I’ve become addicted to back episodes of This American Life. It’s a cliche of my demographic, I know, but I heart Ira Glass. This morning, while rooting through the onlne archives, I found this show, which includes an opening segment on the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. In it, Ira talks to an environmental sea captain with his own Web site on the topic of trashed bodies of water and efforts to restore them.
The International Scientific Congress on Climate Change
Thursday, March 12, 2009Today is the last of three days of scientific discussions on climate change, held between some 2 000 experts in Copenhagen. Obviously, with so much brains in the room(s), summarizing outcomes is quite the challange, but the intrigued should check out the conference website for online abstracts. Later, a book will be published to be handed over to our mighty policy makers at the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP-15), also to be held in Copenhagen, in November-December 2009. As we know, the COP-15 iwill be the site for negotiating the post-kyoto protocol, so this book should be valuable input.
A.P.E.
Wednesday, March 11, 2009A friend at the UN researching nongovernmental organizations sent me this link today, to The Association for the Protection of the Environment (A.P.E.).
Garbage seperation project
Since 1984 this NGO has worked to organize Egyptian garbage collecting families in and around Cairo. They run a composting center, health programs for mothers and children and a paper recycling program. They also coordinate a series of microfinance activities, helping families make and sell rag rugs, patchwork and recycled stationary. The funds raised go into community projects like new roads, schools, clinics and tree planting. Sadly, the links to buy their goods don’t seem to work or I would pimp them here.
Contxts
Wednesday, March 11, 2009Finally, zero waste biz cards. I’ve been having an ethical dilemma for over two years now about whether it’s hypocritical to print paper cards for a trash blog. Solution part a came via Cool Hunting today: sms contact cards. Soultion part b is homemade cards. Photos coming soon.
unconsumption
Tuesday, March 10, 2009unconsumption is a side project in the form of a tumblr started by Rob Walker, author of the weekly Consumed column in the Times magazine. It is also a concept tackled in some depth on his blog, Murketing. I think you’ll enjoy these links.
everydaytrash 
