Waste and Recycling

GE, Idaho Labs turn waste heat into electricity

General Electric and the Idaho National Laboratory are plumbing engines for a cheap source of energy: waste heat.

The two organizations said Tuesday that they have received a $2 million Department of Energy grant to further develop GE technology that converts the heat from industrial engines into electricity. That technology could make engines 20 percent to 40 percent more efficient and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

The engines that run factories, mills and power plants are often only 35 percent efficient. That means the rest of the available energy from fossil fuels goes unused.

GE researchers in Germany and New York … Read more

DTV transition: Avoiding an e-waste 'tsunami'

On June 12, the U.S. makes its long-anticipated shift to digital television. As that changeover prompts consumers to ditch their old analog TV sets in favor of more modern devices, environmental organizations such as Greenpeace are warning of a surge in e-waste.

"We are seeing now a huge anticipated spike in the amount of electronic waste, really a tsunami of electronic waste coming through because of this digital transition," said Casey Harrell, a Greenpeace International campaigner.

And it's not just that the old television sets are piling up--as with scrapped PCs and printers, there's also … Read more

EPEAT rating to rank TVs' eco-features

Updated at 12:10 p.m. PT with comments from co-chair of the working group.

A consortium of manufacturers and retailers is working on an environmental rating for TVs that goes beyond just power consumption to include everything from packaging to amount of toxic material used.

The standard, tentatively called EPEAT-for-TV, is spearheaded by the Green Electronics Coalition and is being worked on through the IEEE Standards Association.

The arrival of energy-hungry flat-screen TVs has some consumers looking more closely at the electricity consumption of their electronics. (See CNET's energy-efficient guide for TVs here.)

The EPEAT-for-TV rating will define … Read more

Waste Management invests in trash-to-energy tech

Municipal trash giant Waste Management on Thursday created a joint venture that will turn waste into energy using technology that it says is cleaner than incinerators.

S4 Energy Solutions is a joint venture which will use plasma gasification technology from InEnTec of Bend, Ore., to build distributed energy systems. Waste Management financed the creation of the venture, marking the first time that the trash collector has invested in gasification technology, said Senior Vice President Joseph Vaillancourt.

The new company plans to build distributed energy systems that use separated industrial waste as a "feedstock." For example, the company plans … Read more

MIT experts tackle nuclear power waste problem

CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--Advocates say a nuclear power "renaissance" can solve global energy problems, but construction of new reactors in the U.S. faces a number of barriers, not the least of which is nuclear waste.

Delaware Senator Thomas Carper, who actively supports nuclear power, hosted a panel of experts on Monday to discuss nuclear waste at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. MIT on Monday also updated its 2003 study on how nuclear power can play a role in reducing carbon emissions (click for PDF).

The four panelists--executive director of the upcoming MIT Nuclear Fuels Cycle study Charles Forsberg, … Read more

Study: E-waste build-up will plateau by 2015

The contribution to landfills from electronics will actually escalate until about 2015, but good news will follow, according to a report released Wednesday by Pike Research.

So-called e-waste will reach a global volume of 73 million metric tons by 2015, then begin to decline in the years following as recycling initiatives and practices catch up to the rate of the production of electronic goods, according to the report called "Electronics Recycling and E-Waste Issues."

The prediction is the firm's own forecast based on the premise that companies and governments worldwide will continue and expand current recycling programs … Read more

Just how much tech junk is getting recycled?

Correction at 9:20 a.m. PDT: The time span for Office Depot's figures is one year.

Last year, Office Depot recycled almost 1.5 million pounds of old tech equipment through its service for consumers, the company said Wednesday.

That sounds like a lot. It makes you realize how quickly all those landfills must be filling up since that figure represents only the junk from people who 1) actually bother to recycle, and 2) chose to go with Office Depot's recycling program.

For a comparison, I decided to check how other company-sponsored recycling programs are doing. Unfortunately, … Read more

Q&A: What really goes into that carbon footprint?

Sustainability may be all the rage but, as the song says, it's not easy being green.

Without widespread standards, companies are struggling with how to properly calculate and disclose their carbon footprint to the public. And many don't have the financial resources to address environmental resource concerns.

Kevin Wilhelm is the chair of the Greater Seattle Chamber of Commerce Sustainability Committee and CEO of Sustainable Business Consulting. His new book, "Return on Sustainability," which got endorsements from environmentalists Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Laurie David, takes a shot at deciphering the ins and outs of corporate … Read more

Hitachi's 'green' refrigerator turns out blue

Going "green" is a huge movement, with companies around the world releasing products that have less and less of an environmental impact--or, at least, that's what they want us to believe. As consumers' interest in eco-friendly products gets higher, so does the temptation to embellish a product's green credentials.

According to The Mainichi Daily News, Hitachi Appliances, a subsidiary of Hitachi and currently Japan's biggest refrigerator maker, seems to be the first company to have fallen for the temptation to claim a product is green when it isn't.

Of nine refrigerator models the company released between September and November of last year, including the "Eiyo Ikiiki Shinku Chirudo V" and the "Big & Slim 60", six are not eco-friendly at all and the other three are far from the level of eco-friendliness the company advertised them to be.… Read more

Spam's carbon footprint: One e-mail is like driving three feet

Not only is spam a nuisance and sometimes criminally deceptive, it's got a carbon footprint.

The mere act of people around the world deleting spam and searching for legitimate e-mail falsely labeled as junk creates the annual energy consumption equivalent in the U.S. of 2.4 million homes using electricity and the same greenhouse gas emissions as 3.1 million passenger cars using two billion gallons of gas.

That's according to "The Carbon Footprint of Email Spam Report" conducted by climate-change consultants ICF and commissioned by security vendor McAfee.

The average greenhouse gas emission associated … Read more