Update on pet waste

An Abundance of Poo

At the end of my week of tallying my trash, I discovered that my cats were the winners of the greatest contribution to the landfill - 7.4 pounds of litter box treasures in one week! I lamented that I didn't really know a way to reduce this landfill waste besides potty training them.


The Truth About Flushing Cat Waste

When I lived in California, I was aware that flushing cat waste is harmful to sea otters. Parasites from kitty poo survive municipal sewage treatment (which targets human waste) and are released into the oceans where they can kill sea otters.

Living in Portland, my treated sewage water goes into the Willamette River and therefore should eventually end up in the ocean. We don't have regular numbers of sea otters on our Oregon coasts because we hunted them to extinction in the early 1900s but maybe - hopefully - they'll return someday. And either way, everything is connected so who's to say that those hardy little kitty poo parasites from Portland couldn't just ride a current to Monterey Bay to attack the sea otters there?

Unfortunately my cuteness doesn't fend off toxoplasmosis!

 
Pet Waste in Portland

If the potential for harming one of the world's cutest animals is not motivation enough, my friend Liz has been helping me learn more about the best path for pet waste in Portland. Another issue with flushing pet waste (cat or dog) in Portland that I was unaware of is that our aged sewer systems often flow over in rainy times, allowing waste to bypass treatment and flow straight into the Willamette River - yikes!

No more waste here please.

It seems for now that the options left to pet owners are to continue with disposal in landfills or to compost at home. I've only just learned about composting as an option and don't know much about it but this website shares some really good information about it. I look forward to learning more and determining if this is an option for us in the future.

So, the main point? Flushing pet waste is not okay.

If you are not sure what your city recommends, check with your local water bureau!

Need a little inspiration?

Crazy Trash Stats!

Let's start off with just a sampler of trash data about Americans:

Every year, we throw away...

• 35 billion plastic bottles
• 40 billion plastic utensils
• 4.5 million tons of office paper

This is ridiculous, wasteful, irresponsible, and totally unnecessary. If every other country behaved like Americans in terms of our rates of consumption and waste, we would need five planets worth of resources to meet our demand!

 

But we've just got one...

Be Part of the Solution

We've got to start somewhere. Just to address the stats above, here are a few tips...

• Carry around a reusable water bottle - don't buy bottled water! 
• Keep a set of reusable utensils in your purse, man-purse, or car - a friend just gifted me these great bamboo ones!

I dont need yutensills, I need fud.

• Start a bin for reusing paper next to the printer at home and at work - fill it with papers that have only been used on one side and use them again.

Don't Give Up

Still feeling overwhelmed by those stats? Me too. It's hard to feel like my little bamboo utensils make a difference when most Americans don't do things like that. So watch this awesome 2-minute video and try this mantra: "I will be a hummingbird."

Do Your Best.

I'll do my best to knock these off the table. And I thought I told you no cameras. Now turn on the faucet for me.

Reference for crazy stats:

Humes, E. (2012). Garbology: Our dirty love affair with trash. New York: Avery, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

The Future of Trash: Burn it?!

What Are Our Options?

So, let's admit it. We have a trash problem.

So what does the future hold? Let's look at just a few options...

• Landfills

• Waste-to-Energy Incineration

• Zero-waste through a combination of reducing, reusing, recycling, composting, etc.

Hopefully it's obvious that zero-waste would be the ideal. I absolutely think it's possible but definitely not around the corner. Let's look closer at what I see as the temporary band-aid solutions.


Waste-to-Energy Incineration

When I started learning about waste-to-energy (WTE) incineration recently, I was immediately skeptical. I thought about a woman I saw in a lovely, small town in Costa Rica selling street food - she was feeding plastic bags into her BBQ grill. Needless to say, I did not try her food.

Hi, I'm a black vulture. (Town of Cahuita, Costa Rica)

However, modern WTE incineration has come a long way since the backyard burner. While the U.S. sends less than 20% of its trash to incineration, many other countries favor this method. Why? They've improved the technology and found more efficient ways to harness the energy while reducing pollution.

Modern Waste-to-Energy Incineration Facts

Knowing that the main by-products of incineration are ash, flue gas, and heat, consider:


• Modern incinerators recover ash which can be securely disposed of or used to produce things like roads and parking lots --> (Abbott et al., 2003). 

• Flying ash and flue gas (which carry the scary pollutants) are caught in special filters and scrubbers.

• Modern incinerators release such low levels of dioxin (one of the scariest combustion by-products) that they are actually well below US FDA standards of what is considered a safe amount (Porteous, 2005). 

One form of the evil, bioaccumulating dioxin.

• The level of dioxin that can be found in foods is actually more dangerous than what is produced by modern incinerators (Shuhmacher & Domingo, 2006).

• Denmark, being one of the leaders in modern incinerator technology, produces incinerator emissions that are ten times cleaner than the European pollution standards - less polluting than a backyard BBQ pit! (Riber et al., 2008).

Copenhagen: considered one of the world's greenest cities.

 •  And finally, heat from incineration is used to run turbines and generate electricity. This aesthetically creative incineration plant provides heat for Vienna:

Now you know what this picture was about in the Day Seven post!

WTE Incineration vs. Landfills/Other

• Landfills contribute a startling amount to greenhouse gas emissions. One of the world's largest landfills, found in Southern California, releases approximately 31,000 cubic feet of gas (half of which is methane) every minute (Humes, 2012). 

• While landfills are required by the Clean Air Act to collect some of this gas for energy, leaks and other inefficiencies result in 60-85% of the methane from landfill waste being released into the atmosphere rather than being collected for electricity (Kaplan et al., 2009).

• Only about 25% of landfills in the U.S. are actually set up for landfill gas collection in the first place (Kaplan et al., 2009).

• While incineration does produce carbon dioxide emissions, this pales in comparison to landfill production of methane - as methane is 21 to 23 times stronger than carbon dioxide in terms of its global warming effects (Humes, 2012; Kaplan et al., 2009).

• WTE incineration generates approximately ten times more energy than landfills do for the same input of waste (Kaplan et al., 2009).

• WTE incineration produces lower levels of carbon dioxide, sulfur oxide, and nitrogen oxide than landfills and coal power plants - and less sulfur dioxide than oil powered plants (Kaplan et al., 2009).

• While many people argue that WTE incineration takes away from recycling or composting (which are certainly better methods), studies have found that landfill-using communities recycle less and countries with WTE incineration actually recycle at higher rates than the U.S. (Achillas et al., 2011; Humes, 2012).


The Future

All the articles I read pretty much agree that while WTE incineration is not perfect, landfills are much much worse. And unfortunately, probably one of the biggest impediments for WTE incineration is the initial cost - taking many millions of dollars to build a new facility.

As a side note, I did just learn about a waste-to-energy facility in Marion County, Oregon that gives tours so I might have to check it out! The energy it produces is sold to Portland General Electric, which has the number one renewable power program in the country.

Another of the world's greenest cities: Portland, OR. Hey Copenhagen, where's your snowy mountain backdrop?

Meanwhile, I'll continue to do the best I can to produce as little waste as possible. Whether we eventually all have high tech incinerators or not, reducing waste is still, to me, the ultimate goal.


References

Abbott, J., Coleman, P., Howlett, L., & Wheeler, P. (2005). Environmental and health risks associated with the use of processed incinerator bottom ash in road construction. AEA Technology Environment, Oxfordshire, England.

Achillas, C., Vlachokostas, C.,  Moussiopoulos, N., Banias, G., Kafetzopoulos, G., & Karagiannidis, A. (2011). Social acceptance for the development of a waste-to-energy plant in an urban area. Resources Conservation and Recycling, 55 (9-10), 857-863.

Humes, E. (2012). Garbology: Our dirty love affair with trash. New York: Avery, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

Kaplan, P.O., Decarolis, J., & Thorneloe, S. (2009). Is it better to burn or bury waste for clean electricity generation? Environmental Science and Technology, 43 (6), 1711-1717.

Porteous, A. (2005). Why energy from waste incineration is an essential component of environmentally responsible waste management, 1st UK Conference on Biodegradable and Residual Waste Management, Harrogate, England. Waste Management, 25 (4), 451-459.

Riber, C., Hander, G.S., & Christensen, T.H. (2008). Environmental assessment of waste incineration in a life-cycle-perspective. Waste Management and Research, 26 (1), 96-103.

Schuhmacher, M. & Domingo, J.L. (2006). Long-term study of environmental levels of dioxins and furans in the vicinity of a municipal solid waste incinerator. Environment International, 32 (3), 397-404.

 

Day Seven: The Final Tally!

Trash Tally

But first, the trash from the last 24 hours... Unfortunately I had to add a few extra items to the landfill category today after a friend informed me of this change at Far West Fibers: "Due to market conditions we are no longer accepting rigid plastics." Too bad!

Okay enough of the daily trash.


Drumroll please...


Eh hem... drumroll, I said...


Total Trash Tally for a Week

Weighing in

LANDFILL: 9.5 lbs (7.4 lbs litter box treasures in the yogurt tubs + 2.1 lbs in plastic bag)

COMPOST: 9.8 lbs

RECYCLE: 6.2 lbs

SPECIAL RECYCLE: scale did not register

TOILET PAPER: 3 rolls


Commentary

LANDFILL: With no evidence to back this up, I feel like this was a bigger landfill week for us than usual because of the shower curtain and the dishwashing gloves. Clearly the kitties produce our greatest and most magnificent contribution to the landfill. Since we only have one bathroom in our house, I unfortunately see no way around this. If we had two bathrooms, I would seriously consider toilet training the cats which is definitely preferable to this:

Hey lady, I quite resent you putting my picture on your trashy blog. I will trip you later. Now turn on my water fountain.

Thanks Jasmine, for that contribution. Anyway, where were we?

COMPOST: This seems a pretty typical week for us.

RECYCLE: This one seems to vary quite a bit depending on how we're cycling through various things but I'm guessing this is pretty average for us.

SPECIAL RECYCLE: Typical haul though really just down to stretchy plastic now.

TOILET PAPER: I don't really know what category to put this in since most of it goes through sewage treatment and I know very little about that part of the waste stream. Share if you know! I was surprised we used 3 rolls but have no idea what's normal for us. I'm embarrassed to say that a good portion of this (1/5 maybe) is for blowing noses. I need to embrace the hankie technique that I actually preached about but I'm totally ashamed to say I haven't quite gotten there yet. I knew someone who had a special way to fold it so he didn't stick his nose back in old snot and I think I'd like to know that technique.

And there we have it. My goal was to tally a week and I did it! I'm tempted to tally another week (not daily, just the week total) to see how much variability there is but I haven't decided yet. I know we still have room for improvement and might want to do this a couple times a year to sort of check in and see how we're doing. Either way, I'll be back on again soon to talk about The Future...

This is totally related to the blog.

Intrigued? Good, come back.

Day Six: What to do about paper...

Trash Tally

One more day to go and I'll weigh it all to get a total for the week. To give you a sneak peak, we've already tallied a petite cat's weight in litter box treasures. :p

Moma, I helpink cleen this cat fud can befour you recykle it.

Paper is Not Obsolete, Yet

While modern technology is allowing us to do a lot more without using paper, we're not totally independent of it yet... (hee hee, watch this 40 seconds of awesomeness!)

So let's talk about paper. It comes from trees. 'Nuff said. Here are some tricks we use in our house to help the trees...

Reduce!

A lot of the paper waste from our house is in the form of junkmail. Make it stop!

• Opt out of credit card solicitation mailings by calling 1-888-5 OPT OUT or opting out online.

• Call catalog companies (using the number on the catalog) and ask them to take you off their list.

• Try the National Do Not Mail List. The idea is that businesses don't want to waste marketing money on someone who wants off the list so they will voluntarily take you off. I'm skeptical but have signed up and will see what happens.

And some non-junkmail tips:

• Sign up for paperless online bill pay with credit cards, utility companies, etc.

• Shop with reusable grocery bags.

• Get your reading material from the local library.

• Buy used books.

And save: I got this book at a garage sale for 50 cents; retail price is $9.95.

• Use cloth napkins and rags instead of paper napkins and paper towels. Use a hankie instead of a disposable tissue. Caspian told me it was the best choice for the environment.

This hankee smelz like nose.

Reuse!

• If paper is only printed or written on one side, use it for scrap paper or cut and staple pieces together so they become little notepads. I don't remember the last time I bought a notepad.

I rote you an importint note.

• Wrap presents in last year's pretty calendar pages. Or use scrap paper or old paper bags and decorate them yourself for a personal touch.

Recycle!

• Recycle everything you can.

• Buy recycled paper products!

 

Please share any tips you have for reducing paper waste!

Day Five: To the Grocery Store!

Trash Tally

Here's today! That's a lot of pesky junkmail in the recycling pile... I'll talk about how to reduce some of it in a future post on paper waste.

Grocery Store Tips

I thought it would be interesting to look at our general haul and how we haul/store it. Here's the typical weekly grocery shop, bulk on top and packaged on bottom:

Almost always stored in our car, ready for a shop, are our reusable grocery bags (4 of them) with our (rinsed and dried if necessary) reused plastic bulk bags:

 

Hey guyz, do yu see me in da pikchur? I'm a mastur fotobommer.

Thanks to Gianna, we also have these super handy and durable mesh bags for produce:

Once we're crafty enough to make more of these, we can use even less of the plastic bulk bags.

Our weekly haul varies quite a bit depending on our bulk supply at home. As some of these jars below diminish, we'll have a bigger shop ahead of us.

Our Pantry

Fortunately, most of our local grocery stores, whether it's the small food co-op or the big Fred Meyers, have ample bulk sections:

And of course more than ample packaged sections. This is an aisle of Oregon-loved Bob's Red Mill products: 

 

While we love the products, it's a lot of crinkly plastic packaging and if you read the blog yesterday, crinkly plastic cannot be recycled. Fortunately, the bulk section around the corner from this picture has about half of these Bob's products in bulk (for not quite half the price but still some savings!).

I am often overwhelmed in the grocery store. When I look around, it seems that all I see is packaging. I'm grateful for other options and stick as much as I can to the produce and bulk sections, happily avoiding the majority of the packaged aisles in the grocery store.


And I had to include some recognition for the beloved peanut butter/almond butter grinders, also a financial steal and so fresh. Plus, it's so fun to grind your own... the power!

Admittedly we usually do the peanut butter because it's cheaper!

Improvements Down the Road

We're pretty happy with our practices when it comes to grocery shopping but know we have places to improve. A recent change we're making (because of the awareness this blog has brought us) is in the tea category. A generous wedding gift of wonderful bulk teas reminded us that this is an option. We've usually bought it prepackaged but bulk is no packaging, just as easy to prepare, just as tasty - and half the price! Certainly, tea wrappers and bags are not a significant portion of our waste by volume or weight, but we're excited about the change on principle.

Another category we're looking to improve soon is in bulk bathroom/cleaning products. One of the local grocery stores sells laundry detergent, dish soap, shampoo, and a few other items in bulk - and, as is the way with bulk, it's much cheaper than the packaged version. Even better than this, there are some homemade options, as demonstrated by Melissa in her brilliant post about natural bath and body products sourced straight from your pantry!

Readers, please share any ideas or tips you have in relation to the grocery store trip! 

Day Four: AP Recycling

Trash Tally

Here's the tally from today. I finally broke holes in both dishwashing gloves. And they're not made of recyclable materials. But they make dishwashing so.... much... better! Let me know if you have a better, more sustainable idea. I go through three or four pairs a year.

Advanced Placement Recycling

About a month ago, some friends told us about a place in Portland called Far West Fibers that will accept more items than curbside pickup. We were thrilled (yes, we get thrilled about these kinds of things) and started collecting.

I took my first trip to this recycling center today, a mere mile away! They took about 3/4 of the three grocery bags of trash I had collected over the last month. 'Crinkly' plastic (makes a crinkly sound when you move it) was my most rejected item, joining me on the ride back home to go in the landfill pile (though I'm not counting it in the daily tally since it represents a whole month of crinkly plastic).

Sigh. Chip bags, cereal bags, etc. = not recyclable

They also don't take packing peanuts which is disappointing because I just don't know what to do with those things now. They seem like the type of trash that's just itching to fly off the landfill truck and head for the ocean to kill some seals... or cats.

Bad kitties!

However, I happily recycled piles of stretchy plastic food packaging, plastic grocery bags, bubble wrap, shrink wrap, and more. As well as whole pieces of Styrofoam and some harder 'rigid' plastic that curbside won't take, like all those lids to plastic food tubs.

Watching a guy haul this really nasty dog crate to the recycling center warmed my heart!

So, Who Does AP Recycling?

Perhaps the most enlightening and interesting part of this excursion today was to see who else was at the recycling center. Call me out for stereotyping but I pictured a bunch of environmentalist tree hugging hippie types. I can say this without being judgmental because it's probably the category most people put me in...

Peace!

But they weren't what I expected. My sample size (6-7 people) isn't very significant for the whole 10 minutes I was there but it still makes for intriguing quasi-data: None of them were my age - mostly in their 40s and 50s. All white except for one Hispanic couple. Women and men. Normal looking, regular people. I asked three of them how they knew about this place and here were the answers:


"I took a Master Recycling class." (This is an eight-week course offered by the City of Portland's Bureau of Planning and Sustainability.)

"I live out in the country now and they don't provide us with recycling services." (Coming from a household of six, she visits Far West Fibers about once a month with three huge trash buckets packed in the back of her van, full of recyclable materials.)

"My family has always come here. My uncle's a cop and he's always been into recycling."

None of these people have to do this. None of them are benefiting from this effort in a direct way. They were all very matter-of-fact about it - it's just what they do. Awesome! I love it. Oh, and now I can be judged for my stereotype that 'normal' people wouldn't do this.

Come back tomorrow for an excursion to... the grocery store!

Day Three: Is Plastic the Devil?

Today's blog got kind of long so please cruise around to the topic that interests you...

Trash Tally

There's definitely a pattern I'm seeing so far... Lots of recycling and composting with very little in the landfill category except for the defunct shower curtain today and the kitty litter every day (which finally filled the bucket after three days and three pounds - go kitties, I think you are winning!). 

 

Yessssss!!!! Chek owt my victoree leep!

However, in any category besides composting, plastic is usually the most common material. 

 
Plastic as a Miracle
Plastic is awful for the environment and I'll focus on that below (because it's really important!) but I also want to recognize the amazingness of plastic. Yes, I made up a word to describe plastic. 

With what other material can you make so many incredibly useful and convenient things? :
•  plastic wrap, tubs and jugs, etc. (think of the food spoilage that would happen without this!)
•  PVC (plumbing, iPhones, computers anyone?)
•  Styrofoam, synthetic rubber, nylon, polyester, silicone - the list goes on...

And don't forget one of my favorite plastic miracles:

 

As you go about your day, how many times do you touch, use, or depend on something that has plastic in it? Imagine if everything we had could only be made from metal, wood, cotton, wool, or leather - the main materials in use just 60 years ago. But of course there's the another side to plastic...


Plastic as a Nightmare
While one of the great features of plastic is its durability, this is also part of its curse. Depending on which source you go by, plastic is estimated to persist in the environment for hundreds to thousands to millions of years.

One of the most sobering examples of plastic's persistence is the newly-famous Great Pacific Garbage Patch. This is a gyre of (mostly plastic) debris caught in the North Pacific Gyre in the Pacific Ocean. 

Some estimates say its the size of Texas. Others say it's bigger than the continental United States. It's a mobile, changeable mass that is impossible to see from satellite because most of the pieces are too small. Something that is known is that in this gyre, for every one zooplankton* there are six pieces of plastic. It's horrifying to think of the animals accidentally eating this trash - and perhaps equally horrifying to wonder how such an intelligent species could lose track of so much trash. So let's be more intelligent.

* zooplankton are tiny drifting sea organisms that, along with phytoplankton, provide the base of the oceanic food web


What Can We Do?

It's easy to feel helpless and immobilized by an issue so huge and pervasive in our world. But I agree with Margaret Mead:

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has.
 
Start thinking small, just yourself and your household: how can I reduce, reuse, and recycle my plastic? How can I keep it from ending up in the ocean?

Let's start with some simple ideas:

• Buy in bulk whenever possible (this saves packaging and money!).
• Keep your reusable grocery bags in your car at all times and make yourself take a minute to go to get them if you forget - you'll be less likely to forget them again after that. And get some if you don't have them already!
• Use Tupperware, Pyrex, and reusable food sacs or wraps for lunches/portable eating.

One of my favorites are the Wrap-n-Mats - thanks Shannon! (www. wrapnmat.com)

• Reuse any plastic bags you acquire from the grocery store, phonebook/newspaper wrappings, etc. for buying in bulk, holding trash, etc. We haven't bought any kind of plastic bags in YEARS because we simply reuse what inevitably comes into our house over time.

Our handy plastic bag dryer makes it easy to reuse them over and over.

• Recycle as much of it as you possibly can, including e-waste like phones and computers. Gradually I am seeing more options for recycling more types of plastic, especially the stretchy film type used in food wrapping, bubble wrap, etc. I'll post soon about my visit to Far West Fibers to dispose of this kind of plastic.
• Donate plastic toys, gadgets, furniture, etc. to Goodwill for a second chance at life before condemning them to landfill! Didn't anyone see 'Toy Story 3'?
• If you must send it to the landfill, take some precautions. When disposing of empty plastic bags, tie them in a knot. This will make it harder for a good wind to whip them off the landfill and back into the environment/ocean.
• And if your city hasn't done it yet, push for a plastic bag ban in grocery/retail stores.

Keep hopeful. More than 20 cities have banned plastic bags in the last five years. This is just once great example of how change is happening and you can be part of it.

And please share any ideas or any methods you use to reduce your impact and use of plastic.



All images are my own unless specified below:
North Pacific Gyre from Wikimedia Commons::http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:North_Pacific_Gyre_World_Map.png

Contact Lens from Wikimedia Commons: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Contact_Lens_Ayala.jpg

Day Two: Why Am I Doing This?

Trash Tally

First things first, here's the waste that we've created in the last 24 hours (the tub 'o litter is nearly full now after just two days):

For an explanation of the categories, check yesterday's blog!

Why Am I Doing This?

Here's a little more background for why I'm doing this (tallying my household trash, making it public, writing a blog, etc.):

• It's important. For anyone who knows me, I obviously care about the environment and try to 'do my part' to minimize my impact or even help in some way. Bringing some attention to the end of our consumption chain is becoming a significant issue for me. Landfill space won't last forever. But plastic might. We've got to do better, on this issue and others.

When it really comes down to it, who doesn't want to help wildlife or the environment in some way?

• I wanted to raise my own awareness. In doing this project, I've labeled the various tubs around the house for our daily tally. Mike pointed out that simply having 'LANDFILL' written on our regular garbage sort of stops him in his tracks - to really consider this stuff we're tossing out and that it doesn't just disappear. Because of this project, I know now that my trash is driven 140 miles east from Portland to a landfill site in Arlington, Oregon (which also takes a lot of Seattle's trash). Do you know where yours goes?

No, this is not our set up at home but I have seen this kind of labeling more often around town.

• Because I can. Living in the U.S., and especially in Portland, there are a lot of options for waste disposal and I plan to use them. I have a roof over my head, food to eat, and clean water coming out of my tap. The least I can do is try to be responsible about my waste. When visiting other parts of the world (usually poorer countries), I have often been saddened and discouraged by all the waste just lying around (think: plastic bottles and bags all over Central America). Where I live, I have a truck that picks up all my stuff, even sorts it for me, and carts it away where I never have to see it again. Nearly for free. I have no excuse not to take the effort to minimize my impact and get my waste to the right places.

On a beautiful beach in Nicaragua, just littered with plastic and Styrofoam, stood this rusty waste basket with a message that roughly translates to: We need to change ourselves and not the ocean.

Okay, now I really will get some tips and tricks in tomorrow's blog. But hey, I kept my promise and didn't post any cat-in-litter-box photos today. The kitties must be slacking...   :)