Out Of the News, Not Out Of the Woods: Reconstruction Begins in Haiti

Hospital under reconstruction

The humanitarian crisis caused by the Haiti earthquake has fallen out of the evening news. But that doesn’t mean the crisis is in any way diminished.

At this point, four months after Haiti’s earthquake, the situation has been stabilized in terms of the most urgent needs for food, water, medicines, and temporary shelter. These supplies are flowing into the country and are being fairly efficiently distributed where they are most needed. Another top priority has been to repair roads and ports. You’ll recall from January and February the many news stories about supplies piled up at the Port au Prince airport, and hundreds of containers stacked on U.S. piers waiting for Haitian port facilities to reopen. This situation is improving. Port au Prince facilities have partially reopened, and containers are also being routed through smaller Haitian ports and through the Dominican Republic.

Now the focus shifts to long term reconstruction. The earthquake destroyed tens of thousands of businesses, and many hundreds of schools, hospitals and health clinics. Hundreds of thousands of homes need to be rebuilt and furnished for Haitian families. Several IRN partners are already on the ground building simple sturdy wooden residences, much more resilient in the face of a future earthquake than the mud and cement huts they replace. This effort will go on for years.

As structures are rebuilt, there’s equal need for furnishings and supplies to fit them out. Tables and chairs, bureaus, beds and mattresses for homes. Desks and chairs and bookshelves for schools. File cabinets and shelving and desks for businesses. Cabinets and exam tables and beds and a thousand other supplies for clinics and hospitals. Stoves, ranges, refrigerators, serving equipment for private and institutional kitchens.

In short, there’s critical long-term need in Haiti for surplus property that can be sourced from the U.S. I don’t want to beat the drum for my own organization because this is what we do, but every business and institution in the U.S. should remember, before tossing surplus into the dumpster, that there are people just a couple hundred miles from our borders for whom that surplus is, quite literally, a treasure. And they aren’t necessarily in Haiti; they aren’t necessarily beyond our borders. There are millions of people right here in the U.S. – families coming out of the welfare system, homeless people establishing new lives, families recovering from natural disaster or economic misfortune – whose need for furnishings to equip their lives is equally great. It should be painful for any American to know that usable surplus is being thrown away in America.

It’s hard for almost anyone in the U.S. to imagine what living conditions are like in Haiti. In the U.S. the average house size is about 2,400 square feet, for the average household of 2.6 people. In Haiti the average house size is about 200 square feet, for an average household of about 7 people. That’s more than twice as many people living in a home less than one-tenth as big. You almost have to stop and read that again: more than twice as many people, living in a home less than one-tenth as big. As Americans, we are among the most fortunate people on earth. It’s not much to ask that we offer our used but still usable furnishings to those who are among the least fortunate.

A Little Thought and Effort Yield 88% Waste Reduction and 59% Savings

Company C in Concord, NH makes and sells high-quality bedding, furniture, and fabrics. Its products are made in more than 20 countries and sold to customers in twice that many.

Company C’s warehouse is a buzz-saw. Trailers and containers from U.S. and international manufacturing plants are unloaded daily. Merchandise is unpacked, racked, unracked, and repacked. Trailers and less-than-truckload carriers are loaded and dispatched.

Eighteen months ago Company C’s waste program was as simple as a hauler could make it. There was a 10-cubic-yard open top container for trash and another 10-yard container for loose cardboard. Each container took up a space on Company C’s loading dock. Their hauler wouldn’t take their bottles and cans or their office paper. They didn’t track quantities, so Company C had no idea how much they were throwing away and they didn’t offer any alternatives.

In late 2008 Company C asked IRN to take a look, and what we saw was opportunity. Most of their wastes were three recyclable materials: cardboard, plastic sheeting, and woven polypropylene “burlap.” Quantities were large enough to justify a vertical baler. The rest of their wastes were divided between bottles and cans, office paper, and periodic quantities of electronics, metals, batteries, excess furniture, and other miscellaneous materials. All recyclable, and we could put them all on a truck along with bales of cardboard and plastic.

The pieces came together in mid-2009. In the first six months Company C reduced waste disposal by 88% (compared to the previous 6-month period); recycled more than 11 tons of baled cardboard and plastics; recycled about half a ton of office paper, bottles and cans; and reduced waste management costs by 59%. The baler cost about $16,000. Over a 20-year life, Company C’s return on this investment is close to 60%. No small achievement.

An environmental success story, and in tough economic times a meaningful addition to Company C’s bottom line. All that, for asking some simple questions about trash.

Weird Waste Collections and Electronics Amnesty: Simple & Successful

Electronics Amnesties are a different take on Weird Waste. Used electronics are a liability. They contain information you don’t want to escape. They contain hazardous substances. Many of them, particularly CRT and flat-screen monitors, TVs, laptops, and anything with a rechargeable battery, are regulated wastes. And like dust mites or cockroaches, they’re everywhere – you just can’t see them. Hiding in closets, behind desks, under work tables, stashed in storage rooms.

An Amnesty is a way to get rid of the junk and the liability. It’s like when the library lets you bring back your way overdue books without a fine. Tell your staff that for a period of days or weeks they can bring their old electronics to be recycled, and you’ll turn a blind eye to the fact that they’ve been sitting on these things for years.

We did this a few years ago with MIT, and the results were staggering – over 40 tons in two weeks. Granted, that was MIT, but the basic story is the same at almost every organization: electronics are a hidden liability. An Amnesty is a way to make it go away.

Think Zero Waste

There is nothing we throw away that is not a resource.

Paper – To make paper we kill trees, hurt the land, and damage ecosystems. Almost 100% of paper can be recycled. The small fraction that can’t be recycled can be composted or burned to create energy – renewable, carbon-neutral energy.

Plastic – Plastic is highly refined oil. On a planet where wars are fought over oil, it’s idiotic to throw plastics away, which we do by the millions of pounds every day. The best thing to do with this highly engineered oil is reuse or recycle it. If we can’t do that, we should burn it for energy. Plastic is (contrary to widespread belief) a very clean fuel, much cleaner than oil or coal.

Glass – There’s plenty of raw material for glass; we’re not going to run out of sand anytime soon. But making glass from sand uses huge amounts of energy. Making glass from glass doesn’t. Glass in almost all of its forms can be reused or recycled. Energy (coal, oil, natural gas) is the resource that’s saved.

Metals – The planet is running out of metals. Every scrap of metal we use can be recycled. Recycled metals, all metals, are worth a lot of money.

Food waste – One of the most serious issues on our planet is loss of fertile soil. This is true in the U.S. as it is around the world. Food waste composts into high quality soil. It is a resource that can be returned to the earth that produced it. Food waste also contains a lot of energy. That’s the reason we eat it. That energy can be captured by converting food waste to liquid fuels: ethanol or bio-diesel. A lot of food waste can be converted to animal feed, freeing up other food for human instead of animal consumption.

The list goes on and on. There really isn’t much “waste” in the world, just a lot of resources we’re throwing away. And, there’s more to those resources. Reuse and recycling create jobs. Compared to using virgin raw materials, reuse and recycling are immensely better for the environment. Reuse and recycling support local, not multi-national economies.

So, think zero waste. Even as a recycler, I used to think Zero Waste was a silly, unrealistic goal. Not any more. There’s nothing in our “waste” that isn’t a resource, that can’t be put to productive use, that can’t conserve energy and resources if reused or recycled, that can’t, if reused or recycled, make the planet a healthier, more robust place to live.

The reverse is also true. Everything that we waste tends to run down the planetary ecosystem and the worldwide economic system.

Think zero waste. It’s the only way forward.

Eyesore to Showpiece: Another Reason We Do What We Do

For over 100 years into the 1970s the H.W. Carter overall factory was a cornerstone of the community in Lebanon, NH. Sitting just off the town green, it was also a centerpiece of the landscape.

But as in thousands of other communities, times changed, the Carter factory closed, and the structure devolved into an eyesore. In the mid-90s part of the building was leased by the regional Alliance for the Visual Arts. AVA attracted a number of artists to the building’s low rent space, and the old Carter factory became a hub for the local art scene. But it remained a grubby, creaking, leaking, energy-wasting eyesore.

Then in 2001 AVA acquired the building outright, and AVA’s board embraced the idea of a sweeping transformation of the Carter factory into a space that would be not just a community art center, but an example of the best in sustainable, caring design and construction.

IRN had the good fortune to be invited to join the project team as waste manager, and over the course of fourteen months we had the opportunity to witness an amazing renewal. The exterior look of the building kept its original character, with just enough new details to let you know that something special was inside. And inside – probably the most gorgeous and flexible gallery space north of Boston, teaching spaces that host a year-round schedule of classes, and naturally lit studio space for some two dozen artists, along with state-of-the art heating, ventilation, lighting, and plumbing; a green roof; waste-water management, and dozens of other features that amounted to LEED Gold. The project has been honored with multiple awards including the Merit Award for Excellence from PlanNH, the Citation Award in Historic Preservation/Restoration from the AIA Vermont Chapter, and the Excellence in Construction – Historical Renovation award from the Associated Builders & Contractors of VT/NH.

IRN is happy to have made our small contribution in a 97% reuse/recycling rate. But as waste people our favorite thing was AVA’s Waste-to-Art project. As the building was gutted, AVA invited regional artists to muck through the piles of junk left behind from 125 years of making overalls and dungarees – pieces of sewing machines, time clocks, parts of old scales, a 1910 freight elevator, painted and repainted siding – and then go make art. The resulting artworks were assembled into an amazing opening exhibition of sculpture and wall pieces that tied together the history of the old building, AVA’s commitment to sustainability, and their role as a leader in the New England arts community. The exhibit got a LEED innovation credit, but more important it sold out, putting $20,000 into AVA’s bank account. The best use of trash we’ve ever seen.

Take a look at photos of the AVA restoration and Waste-to-Art exhibit at http://picasaweb.google.com/nhmlennon/AVAWasteToArtExhibition2008#.

97% Waste Reduction at Smith College Ford Hall through Deconstruction, Reuse, and Recycling

Smith College’s Ford Hall is a 140,000 square foot brick and steel structure designed house Smith’s engineering, chemistry, and computer science programs. Ford Hall uses sustainable design, construction, and operating elements not only for their environmental and economic benefits, but also as teaching tools. In this light Smith sought to maximize and document the financial costs and benefits of jobsite reuse and recycling as a demonstration for Smith students, faculty, and staff – and for the broader academic community – of what can be accomplished with aggressive and imaginative waste management.

Ford Hall was built on the site of a downtown residential/commercial block that was a local landmark, and its demolition triggered controversy. Deconstruction was an important part of Smith’s response, assuring the community that the affected structures would be recovered and reused. Deconstruction was comprehensive down to interior finishes, furniture and appliances, flooring, trim, mantels, doors, windows, cabinets and casework, kitchen and bath fixtures, exterior benches and landscaping elements (e.g., pavers).

This level of attention carried through to demolition of the remaining shells. “Source separation” – that is, onsite separation of wastes into their constituent components – was practiced as much as possible, yielding homogeneous loads of wood, metals, wood, and ceiling tiles. This practice had no impact on the demolition schedule, and had the double benefit of reducing disposition costs and increasing recycling rates. Similar practices were employed as the new Ford Hall was erected and finished.

When the project wrapped up, IRN had helped Smith and contractor, William A. Berry achieve a 97% reuse and recycling rate. But what Smith really wanted to know was the cost. Had reuse and recycling been cost effective, or were they an expensive environmental add-on?

The Answer: Including the cost of waste management planning and documentation, Berry’s project managers calculated savings of about 25% compared to their budgeted waste disposal cost (that is, the cost without recycling). There was an increase in labor for daily site cleanup, but this was more than offset by the savings in disposal costs. At the end of the project, Berry had kept nearly 2,500 tons of usable materials out of landfill, achieved three LEED points and saved some serious money for itself and its client. And Smith had enduring lesson for its students in the economic value of sustainability, and in the advantages of getting materials back into the economy, and not down into the landfill.

See www.wastemiser.com for a complete case study and documentation of reuse and recycling results.

Electronics Recycling: A Divide With No Way Across

Here’s an article from the Boston Globe on March 2, another article about shady electronics recycling. You can read the whole article at http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2010/03/02/old_televisions_spark_environmental_dispute/

Nine truck-size shipping containers filled with old televisions from a Brockton recycling company are at the center of an international dispute drawing attention to a major problem in the regulation of hazardous electronic waste: When is a product intended to be reused, and when is it trash?

The containers, shipped to Indonesia by CRT Recycling Inc., were seized by port officials there after an environmental organization staked out the company’s Massachusetts operations and alerted the Indonesian government about a possibly illegal shipment of e-waste.

The cathode-ray tubes in televisions and computer monitors contain more than four pounds of lead, as well as mercury and other toxins…. An international treaty restricts shipments of these tubes for disposal in developing countries.”

“There is enough documented evidence indicating that monitors and other types of electronics shipped under the guise of resale or reuse winds up being disassembled in dangerous conditions,” said Allen Hershkowitz, senior scientist with the Natural Resources Defense Council. “There is so much documentation consumers should assume that unless the material is going abroad [to be repaired under warranty] it will be disassembled.”

Beth Daley in The Boston Globe, March 2, 2010
It would be really nice if these stories were to disappear. But they don’t and they won’t. As long as there’s money to be made shipping electronics offshore to be “reused” or “recycled”, they’ll be shipped offshore. Mark Lennon wrote about that a few years ago. In light of this most recent Globe article, we think it’s worth reprinting:

Electronics Recycling: A Divide With No Way Across

Some ancients will remember Evel Knievel and the Snake River Canyon. Evel tried to jump the canyon and ended up in the drink. There was no way across.

There’s a Snake River Canyon in electronics recycling. On one side are deals to buy old computer and monitors or take them away for free. On the other side are recyclers who charge to recycle old electronic equipment. The gap between the two sides starts at about twenty-five cents a pound and gets wider from there. And there’s no way across.

Make no mistake. If you see an offer to take monitors (or TVs or computers) away for free, or pay you for them, they will be packed in containers and shipped abroad. Maybe to China, maybe to India, maybe to Mexico. Most will get hammered apart for their metal components. They will be handled under labor and environmental conditions that are straight from Charles Dickens. Ultimately what’s left will end up in a ditch or scattered on the landscape.

The alternative – the recycling that starts at about a quarter a pound – destroys the electronics here in the United States. It recovers glass, metals, plastics, and usable components. It is subject to U.S. laws and permit requirements, with appropriate safety and environmental controls. All of this costs money. There’s just no way around the economics.

We know this is true. We have visited dozens of electronics recyclers from coast to coast and from Texas to Iowa. We have chased down the no-cost deals. We’ve visited the sites, we’ve seen the operations. We’ve seen the containers packed for export. We’ve also seen the reputable recyclers, and audited their operations as well. And there just aren’t any exceptions; if the deal is close to zero or better, the electronics are being packed into overseas containers.

Exporting electronics for “recycling” is not, in most cases, illegal. But socially, ethically, and environmentally, it is repulsive. Please call or look for links on IRN’s website, http://www.ir-network.com, if you’d like more information about what happens to electronics when they’re sent overseas.

IRN is getting the best pricing we know of for responsible recycling of monitors and other electronics. The reason is simple: IRN’s clout as a collective. IRN managed nearly 2,000,000 pounds of electronics in 2009. This makes us one of the largest accounts in New England. We get great pricing and service, and we pass those benefits to IRN clients.

If you see a “better” electronics recycling deal, please tell us so we can chase it down. If the deal’s legitimate, we need to know so we can grab that benefit and pass it along to IRN clients. If the deal’s shady, we can let you know and tell you why, but keep your name out of the conversation. We can also get you in for a site audit if that would help your decision-making. If you want to take a no-cost deal, we’ll be happy to talk about the issues and the questions you should ask. But be clear, if it’s a no cost deal, or even close to that, your electronics are headed offshore.

There is in fact a huge gulf between responsible electronics recycling and containers heading offshore. There’s no way around that. There’s no way around the difference in price, and no way around the difference in social and environmental impacts.

The Golden Rule of recycling never changes: Know Your Markets.

BU’s Brown Arena Basketball Floor Gets a New Life in Jamaica

January 2005 was a bleak month for Boston University’s Brown Arena basketball floor. After 30 years hosting men’s and women’s hoops, after feeling the step of coaches like BU’s own Rick Pitino, Mike Krzyzewski, and Jim Calhoun, after playing under Reggie Lewis, Christian Laettner, and Grant Hill, after underpinning a tennis court for Billie Jean King, Virginia Wade and Chris Evert – it was shoved into a warehouse, pushed aside by a new floor at the new Agganis Arena.

There it sat for almost five years. In the dark, lost, forgotten.

There it would probably have sat until doomsday, except that last year BU landed a role in a movie (WHAT movie remains confidential). Hollywood needed the warehouse, Hollywood got the warehouse, and the old Brown Arena floor got in the way.
A couple of years ago, that would have been the end of the story. Basketball floor in the way; basketball floor in the dumpster; goodbye. But since 2007 BU has had a different way to handle surplus property. BU has linked up with IRN, the Institution Recycling Network. IRN matches BU’s surplus with a network of charities in the U.S. and around the world, where BU’s excess stuff is used for disaster and poverty relief. In 2009 alone, more than 142 tons of BU surplus were sent for reuse through IRN.

So when the Brown floor got in the way, BU called IRN. IRN called a nonprofit partner, Food for the Poor, who put dibs on the floor in a heartbeat. The match was made to a rural school in southern Jamaica, where Food for the Poor has been active in poverty relief for many years.

So it was that in early October the Brown Arena floor got a new lease on life. A crew of IRN movers took the floor back out into the light of day. It was packed into two shipping containers, trucked to the port of Elizabeth, New Jersey, and loaded onto a ship for the week-long sea voyage to Jamaica. There in Kingston it was unloaded back onto wheels for the short trip to Food for the Poor’s local warehouse. It sat for just a few days before it was taken out again and installed in its permanent new home in Sandy Bay, about 40 miles from Kingston.

Where it will probably flourish for another 30 years, almost certainly under the feet of more than a few Jamaican kids who’ll end up in the NCAA, the Jamaican National Team, or the Olympics.Terrier and all. BU’s logo can carry the school name proud and high. One of the essential missions of higher education is to demonstrate the possibilities of human creativity and imagination. Repurposing the Brown Arena hoops floor to benefit generations of Jamaican children lives up to that goal.

Q: When Is Trash Not Trash? A: When It’s Recyclable Mixed Debris.

I just returned from a few days of site visits on college and corporate campuses. I found a very common situation: open top rolloff containers that were being used for the mixed debris from onsite construction and cleanup projects. When I complimented their mixed debris recycling, I got the same response almost every time. “The rolloff is trash, not mixed debris”. But when I looked, every rolloff held mixed debris that could be recycled by Ben Harvey or ERRCO or New England Recycling or another regional facility.
Either I have been doing this way too long or this is a glass half full thing. When I think trash I think commingled commodities that can’t be recycled. MSW, municipal solid waste, the stuff in my garbage can at home. What I saw in these rolloffs wasn’t trash. It was combinations of wood, metal, brick and block, insulation, roofing, gypsum, often some furniture, lots of cardboard. Trash cannot be recycled effectively. Mixed debris, the stuff that I saw, can be recycled easily. Here in New England trash costs more to landfill or incinerate than mixed debris costs to recycle. Mixed debris can significantly increase a school or company’s recycling rate; trash reduces the recycling rate.

With a little effort to keep out the worst contaminants, all of these “trash” rolloffs would be mixed debris recycling containers. Environmental benefit, waste diversion, cost savings, increased recycling rates – am I missing something here, or are a lot of campuses trashing a lot of recyclables.

Why We Do What We Do: Columbia Reality House

IRN runs on a really dumb model: When it comes to getting stuff out of the waste stream, we try to be everything to everybody. A lot of the time we kick ourselves for trying to do so much.

But every now and then a project comes along to remind us that all the things we do aren’t separate jigsaw pieces. They fit together into a unified approach to resources, people, and economics. We’re not just helping people reuse and recycle. When the pieces come together, we’re demonstrating a new and sustainable economy.

Reality House in New York was a project like that. Reality House was an addiction clinic that closed down seven or eight years ago. They left a lot behind: Hundreds of boxes and file cabinets of documents; Dozens of computers and monitors; Hundreds of pieces of furniture. They had started and then quit fitting out a floor of office space, leaving behind metal framing and doors and wiring, and piles of other building materials.

Columbia University took over the building a couple of years ago. They rehabbed part of the building into offices. The rest was to be emptied and gutted. Columbia knew that IRN places a lot of surplus furniture for disaster relief, so they called to see if we wanted any of the stuff in Reality House.

When we saw it, Reality House was a nightmare. We couldn’t even get to the furniture, because it was jumbled with all that other crap.

Then a light went on that said, “It all fits together.” What if Columbia recovered not just the furniture, but everything else at the same time? The paper – recyclable. The computers and other electronic junk – recyclable. The building materials – reusable, and if not, recyclable. A “normal” demolition project would trash things like fluorescent lamps and ballasts that, by law, cannot go into the trash. But they can be recycled.

There was more. IRN manages a lot of deconstruction – dismantling structures to recover usable building materials. What if we deconstructed the partly built-out floors of Reality House to get building materials back into the community, and what if we used the project to train young workers in deconstruction techniques. New York doesn’t have any deconstruction crews, and deconstruction is one of the fastest growing parts of the Green Economy.

What we’d have, in short, was a project which would demonstrate that recycling does not mean just getting stuff out of the trash. Recycling means approaching used stuff in a way that seeks and finds its potential – as raw materials, as resources for people in need, as an engine for job creation and economic growth.

And that’s what we did. We teamed with Build It Green! NYC, a nonprofit that gathers and resells surplus building materials at low cost to New York residents; with Nontraditional Employment for Women, a nonprofit that works with New York’s unions to train women for skilled jobs in the construction trades; and with The School of Cooperative Technical Education, an alternative NYC school that provides at-risk students with training in trades‐based skills.

Over the course of a month last summer, IRN managed NEW and SCTE crews who removed nearly 70 tons of reusable and recyclable materials from Reality House. More than 3,000 pieces of furniture and building materials went back into New York communities through Build It Green. Two shipping containers of surplus furniture and supplies were sent for disaster relief in Nicaragua. More than 20 tons of scrap metal were recycled, along with 13 tons of paper and cardboard. The computers, monitors, fluorescents, and other universal wastes were recycled. Overall, more than 90% of the Reality House “junk” was reused or recycled; less than 10% was thrown away.

And more than 30 disadvantaged young men and women got serious job training, in a field that’s growing, where trained workers are much needed and much in demand.

Yes, so it’s dumb to try to do and be all things to all people in reuse and recycling. But it’s the nature of what we do. Recycling isn’t just getting one or two things out of the waste stream. It’s a different way of approaching the economy, it’s a big part of a new sustainable economics. It’s got a lot of pieces: deconstruction; construction material recovery; reuse; eliminating hazardous materials from the waste stream; returning multiple raw materials to productive use; training workers for a green career future. And saving money? Compared to calling in a wrecking crew, Columbia saved a bunch.

The pieces all fit together. And when they do, recycling doesn’t get any better.