Sustainable Offices of the Future

I would like to share a new sustainability initiative the head office at Intrepid Travel has recently implemented.

www.intrepidtravel.com

A few months ago everyone in the office was exposed to a new waste management and recycling system. The new system will minimise what goes into the big holes (landfill) in our precious planet and maximise what goes off for recycling.

There was initially a fair few teething issues, however as time has gone on staff have become quite used to selecting the right bins and ‘what goes where’ in terms of rubbish.

Introducing your new Eco-bin:

It’s 10 x 10cm big – YEAP – little. No, it’s not a new pen holder, it’s for your rubbish that will go to landfill. If you are recycling as much as possible, you should have minimal waste for Landfill. Maybe a few muesli bar or sweets wrappers & tissues, or the plastic wrap off a magazine.

You also get one of these paper recycling bins – either on your own or shared with your desk neighbour:

And in the kitchens, there will be our other new bins. They look like these:

Blue bin – clean paper, cardboard. Not food contaminated paper Eg the lid of a pizza box is OK, but the greasy cheesy bottom should go into red lidded Landfill bin.

Yellow bin – Co-mingled – bottles, cans, all ‘hard’ plastic containers including all yoghurt, takeaway food containers and even CD cases! All containers should be rinsed and flattened.

Green bin – is for fruit & veg scraps, tea bags and coffee grounds. These will be fed by the Worm Team (nominated staff members), to our new worm farm which is on 3rd floor shaded balcony.

Grey bin (not pictured here) – ALL other food scraps & tissues. Biodegradable stuff. This will be going into the giant Bokashi bin, which is like a big composter. The Worm Team will also take care of this.

Red bin – anything else. This goes to Landfill. Food soiled paper, glad wrap, broken glass (wrapped in newspaper), drink straws etc All food scraps can go in either the green or grey lidded bin.

Recycling Station – this is for a myriad of items including used postage stamps; loose change foreign currency ; corks; batteries; mobile phones & chargers; CDs & DVDs; compact fluoro lights; spectacles & hearing aids; old towels & sheets. By collecting a reasonable volume here, we can take it to the right ‘depot’ for recycling.

Through the implementation of this system it allows the company to not only reduce waste, minimize costs and make the company more sustainable but it helps contribute to make our planet healthier

Population

Reading these blogs you see a lot of issues facing our planet from people are generally arguing for a more environmentally friendly future of some kind or at least identifying some areas that need to change. I purpose a solution to these problems that some might consider against their religion or downright raciest.

There are too many people on this planet I just looked at that population counter they have and it’s about to move from 6.7 to 6.8 that a hell of a lot of people. A lot of the problem we face from managing our food, running out of fossil fuel, desertification, poverty, water scarcity, over fishing and climate change its self are all in a large part due to there being too many people either just trying to survive or live like Americans.

I am not so extreme that I think we should start killing the weak I only purpose that we need population control, in china they have done this and they have become the economical metrical of the century. Now I know there are a lot of issues and feelings around this but the truth is we cannot pretend this not the biggest problem facing humanity today.

I have attached a video of Jane Goodall who put the point across far better than me.

Waste management – Biffa proves it’s not simply a load of rubbish!

While considering the business case for sustainable development, I find the story of UK-based waste services company, Biffa, particularly interesting.

Biffa began its life as a road haulage company before acquiring a landfill site and moving in to waste management. Today, it is the UK’s largest industrial and commercial waste collection network, with more than 70,000 customers and 1,450 collection points. In addition to waste collection and landfill operations the company is increasingly specialising in the collection and disposal of hazardous and other specialty waste, and renewable power generation. In fact, Biffa’s strategy is based on transforming itself from a landfill operator and waste collection business to an ‘energy-from-waste’ business.

Biffa argues that after recycling, waste should be used to generate energy. For example, it recovers energy from waste through the application of two processes; biological treatment to generate biogas, and thermal treatment to generate energy as either heat, syngas or electricity. This electricity is then fed directly in to the UK’s national grid. The company is now one of the major generators of landfill gas-based power with an installed capacity of 109 megawatts – a row of 20 houses consumes on average 13,000kWh/month or 13MW.

In 2008, Biffa recorded sales of $1,548.4million and a profit of $79million. More recently, the company announced plans to expand its recycling and energy-from-waste business after its owners acquired rival Greenstar UK for £135m.

As I see it, Biffa is just another example of how business can benefit by pro-actively seeking out creative solutions to large-scale environmental challenges.

Home (FR): We have 10 years left to change

Clic for ENG Trailer
Clic for FR Movie (divided into chapters)
Clic for IMDB reference

Opening in 181 countries on June 5th, 2009 during the World Environment Day (WED) and thanks to the contribution of many luxury brands, this movie without copyright by Yann Arthus-Bertrand was widely broadcasted for a few days for free in french, english and spanish.

Provided also in cinemas, DVD, TV on the same day, this french documentary about the EMERGENCY to save the planet broke the world record for the largest film release in history!

Non only the message remains frightening but realistic, but also the images look astonishing, as well as the music is powerful. Watch and (re)act!

Floating rubbish dump in the pacific

As mentioned in class, the largest trash dump isn’t on land, it’s in the ocean (Pacific ocean). It is estimated twice the size of the state Texas and it is only going to get worse as our demand for petroleum plastics only increases.

In the trash dump are bottles, plastic bags, etc. from every corner of the planet. 80% (3,5 million tons) is plastics that once got into waterways and brought, via streams of the ocean, to a central point of the ocean (the pacific).

This trash dump is the ultimate example of bad engineering, “not taking into account what to do with the product (package) when it reaches the end of it’s lifecycle and is of no use anymore”. One solution could be PLA (corn plastic, see post 24 / 07) although for the moment this plastic isn’t any better than other plastics.