muck, waste, trash, emissions…………………. to Money?

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Small Business Owner!
Is it difficult for you to discover how you can get on-board the Circular Economy?

A clear picture of how important “waste” is, is a good place to start.

2019, was a buyers’ market in waste management and recycling. It is easy to understand why this article by Mr. Henry Grabar, is entitled:

Recycling Isn’t About the Planet. It’s About Profit.

I have pulled some items from the article to give you a taste. But if you have the time, go to Slate Magazine online and read the whole article.

Mr. Grabar’s story is about the USA, but, of course, the whole world is involved. Waste supply chains are going to become much more important to the things we produce and use – the circular part from a business point of view: Technical Supply Chain Loops

“Back in 2011, if you wanted to recycle a plastic Coke bottle, it was a great time to do it. That spring, every plastic soda bottle was worth about x8 what it was just 2½ years earlier, and x4 what it would be five years later.
Your 2011-era empty Coke bottle was not only worth a lot because of high oil prices—it was worth a lot because Pakistan had suffered devastating monsoons in the summer of 2010. Flooding in the Indus River was one of the events that sent cotton, in April 2011, to its highest price since records began in 1870. Jeans were going to be more expensive, Levi’s announced. And so, it turned out, was recycled PET plastic, because polyester fibers made from used plastic bottles were a cost-effective replacement for cotton. Cotton was up; plastic was up; recycled PET prices went up. The scramble was on for old bottles. Which you, American reader, the world’s leading consumer of soda and bottled water, have plenty of.”

“Is American recycling still functioning after all the exports to China, etc. dried up? ““Functioning may be a little optimistic,”” says Analiese Smith, who runs the recycling program in Waukesha County outside Milwaukee. ““But we’re keeping the lights on.””

“Let’s get one thing out of the way: Recycling isn’t going anywhere. It’s an ancient practice. (200 years ago, the Chinese still had a thriving market in human manure.) It is motivated by profit. It’s also much bigger than your bottles. There are grease buyers and ship strippers and copper wire thieves. The single greatest recycled material in the United States, by weight, is ferrous scrap—primarily iron and steel from old cars. No one exports more ferrous scrap than the US. (The three biggest buyers are Turkey, Mexico, and Taiwan.)”

“For a while, making “pure” bales/shipments did not seem necessary in the US. Beginning in the late ’90s, U.S. waste haulers DECIDED, to go back to the old ways and called this old idea “single-stream recycling”. (everything all mixed together) Contamination rates rose. Did single-stream recycling produce a lower-quality good? Indisputably!! There’s a reason it is NOT practiced anywhere else in the world” or is it? It is one of the reasons that China got out of the game.

“The American domestic recycling industry has a few choices to make, while we wait for prices to recover. Cities can quit single-stream recycling and make residents sort things themselves, again. That’s what Brookhaven, Long Island, did and switched back to “multi-stream” in November. This is after its trash collector broke a contract because it couldn’t sell what it was picking up. “There is no market for single-stream. Just no market,” the town supervisor told Newsday.”

“Ecomelida, a Chinese recycler, is opening a plastics and paper recycling facility in the state of South Carolina. The plant will turn empty bottles into pellets that will be shipped, of all places, to China, where they’ll be used to make coat hangers and fake plants … which might, eventually, get sold back to you.”

Think of that carbon footprint!

Take a look !!!!!

As I wait to get your questions and requests, I have investigated a few things.

These investigations suggest
thousands of potential businesses, jobs, projects…………………

1. The PANDEMIC has been a Horrific Disruptive – Economic Opportunity! … Yes, Opportunity for your business!
2. GREEN JOBS! Everyone is talking about it. A Green Recovery – Look for – What Is A Green Job? Green And Other Colors. ….. I am going through all my posts to check for Green Jobs & Money toward recovery. Already updated over 12+ posts showing vacancies!
3. The First industry to achieve total Circular! Ink, Paper, Packaging, Textile, Plastic, Equipment all Circular! Every Print Shop Can “Go ECO”! NOW!
4. WASTE PLASTIC! No matter how degradable plastic becomes, we have years of plastic waste ahead of us. Waste Plastic BUSINESSES – UpCycles Lots to do!
5. Ocean Cleanup is looking for Operators: This is jobs & businesses – NOW. Local partners to operate the Interceptors™ that will extract the waste from rivers and bring it to land. the world’s 1000 most polluting rivers look here: https://wasterush.info/cleanup-4/
6. Useful WASTE Business Ideas that can scale to any size you can use. Lots to do!
7. Water-Sanitation-Toilets: very serious consequences to our planet Lots to do!
8. Mycelium in Industry: the roots of mushrooms; how important they are
9. Streamline Eco-Ethical action for the Consumer: Businesses can help accelerate the consumer Vote/Buy for our planet the strategy and APPs to help the consumer Vote/Buy!
10. CO2 Capture: How possible is it?
11. Climate Energy Retrofits for existing buildings There is going to be GREAT DEMAND for contractors to do this work!
12. Too Much Methane!, but if we could control it, the Waste to Energy technology is already in place! …. a number of posts!
13. The Path to Cradle to Cradle Certified™ – The Best customer assurance!
14. Circular Economy issues when Financing a small business
15. Africa: Please Stay Harmonised with planet Earth
16. for Hire: listings of people who want to help
17. Ask WasteRush; Answers to your requests and questions
18. Tools and Guidance: Online tools, Do-it-Yourself Tools, EMF training and learning platforms
19. Carbon Footprints: What are they and how do we deal with them

(look at the bottom of each post. there are lots of links to more information…)

We need lots of recycling superstars!

Scientist Dr. Veena Sahajwalla is a recycling superstar with some bold new ideas about how to save waste from landfill.  This “can-do attitude” shapes her engineering career and sowed the seeds for some ground-breaking ideas, including using car tyres and plastic bottles to cut down on the cost of making steel and keeping some mountains of waste out of the landfill.

The video below is 29:01 minutes. BUT look at the first 5 minutes or less. You will feel the enthusiasm that Dr. Veena Sahajwalla has for the Value of Waste.  If you go on, you will see the background of an average person like you and me who does what we all need to do – value waste. Take a look at, at least, the first 5 minutes.

So, what could you do?

Are you a shoe store that could collect used shoes and find a company that is recycling them, if not up-cycling the materials?

Nike has been doing it for 26+ years……….

In 1993, employee Steve Potter started shredding old Nikes and turning them into reusable materials. From this vision Reuse-A-Shoe was born and that has since turned into Purpose which is Nike’s way of handling ESG:

• PEOPLE
  • PLANET
• PLAY
  
  

But now, almost every day, there are new solutions to the problems that we humans face: Edible Plastic for food bags, Plastic made from Rubbish, Fuel made from Rubbish, Leather made from Mushrooms, Meat made from Mushrooms, Printing & Packaging; First industry to achieve total Circular!, Cleaning up the ‘non-recyclable’ Waste Plastic, Companies making money from Biomimicry: They Asked Nature.

We need to start using these new technologies to bring down their costs. Governments, need to give the economy incentive!

Your eco-business concerns are the motive for my blog.
If you have questions about how you and the Circular Economy are going to work together, Feel Free to Contact me ! Tell me what concerns YOU.  Maybe, I can help you find a solution.  Lesley

I’d be thrilled to assist you, too: