Waste and recycling

SANTA CLARA, Calif.--Among a hotel ballroom full of enterprise, cloud, and mobile apps, one product stood out at Demo Fall 2010: The gas pump at the E-Fuel stand.

An upgrade from the EFuel100 Microfueler we covered in 2008, which converted sugars and discarded alcohols into ethanol fuel, the new MicroFusion Reactor can process nearly any "cellulosic waste" into ethanol. Said waste is pretty much anything that'd otherwise go into a compost bin.

CEO Thomas Quinn explained the fuel pump part of the Reactor in the video in this post, as well as a companion product, an … Read more

The trash and recycling services company Waste Management is expanding into the organic gardening business, the company announced Wednesday.

The Houston-based company has acquired Garick, which manufactures things like mulch, garden compost, and playground turf made from recycled organic materials.

The terms of the deal were not disclosed. WM only went so far as to announce that Garick's composting facilities will be used to augment WM's existing organic recycling services, and offer a line of organic garden products made from WM-collected biomass waste.

The new line of products will include organic garden compost, which is often referred to … Read more

Canadian company Enerkem broke ground on a facility Tuesday that plans to convert 100,000 tons of household trash a year into ethanol.

The $75 million plant in Edmonton, Alberta, is expected to be completed in late 2011. By 2013, the city will be able to divert 90 percent of its residential waste, Mayor Stephen Mandel said in a statement.

Enerkem hosted a groundbreaking for the waste-to-ethanol plant, which it said will be the first industrial-scale project of this kind. The facility will sort recycled and compostable material and convert the remaining into about 10 million gallons of ethanol a … Read more

Humans may have naturally occurring nanotechnology to thank for partially cleaning up the oil spill from BP's Deepwater Horizon rig.

Researchers from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have found that previously undiscovered ocean floor microbes have literally risen to the occasion and begun degrading the giant underwater oil plume in the Gulf of Mexico.

While there was belief that some ocean microbes might aid in the degradation of the oil spill, the process has happened more aggressively than anyone predicted it would, according to a report from environmental biotechnologists at the Berkeley Lab.

One of the giant oil plumes that formed … Read more

The company that turned Cheetos bags into MP3 speakers is now transforming Chester Cheetah into 32-gallon garbage cans.

New Jersey-based recycling company TerraCycle is teaming up with Pioneer Plastics USA to make heavy-duty trash cans out of recycled polypropylene that was once chip bags.

The cans are 80 percent post-consumer--most of the material is from chip bags collected by TerraCycle's Chip Bag Brigade program. About 20 percent is from scraps of rubber elastic trimming that are leftover in the production of disposable diapers.

The old Cheetos and other chip bags are first shredded, and then run through a densifying … Read more

Water is not only the next big environmental issue, but also the next savings opportunity, according to several companies.

A survey conducted by research analyst Ethical Corporation in May 2010 found that 99 percent of corporate sustainability managers saw water becoming a top priority for businesses in the next 5 to 10 years. The report "Unlocking the Profit in Water Savings" found that 52 percent of sustainability managers ranked "water stewardship" within the top five most important issues they now deal with.

But more interesting is the hard data supporting the trend. Companies have found that … Read more

It's no surprise electronic garbage commonly referred to as e-waste is piling up in our nation's landfills, but the Australian National Park Service has a creative alternative: Repeat Plastics Australia just opened a new bike path made entirely out of excess plastic materials from discarded printer cartridges.

The 10.6-mile bike path stretches between Alice Springs and Simpsons Gap in the northwest territory of Australia and sees over 120,000 visitors every year. According to Parks and Wildlife Minster Karl Hampton, the bridge echoes the Australian government's commitment to sustainable development, "saving landfill, trees, and ensuring … Read more

Using freely available government data, a new Web site helps people quantify the BP oil spill in local terms.

IfItWasMyHome.com uses a combo of Google Maps and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration satellite tracking data to place the parameters of the BP oil spill--the result of the April 20 explosion of an oil rig--over any area in the world.

The spill can be moved to center on any location of one's choosing by simply entering location data (such as a city or postal code) as one would usually do for Google Maps.

Playing with the tool is devastating.… Read more

Later this year, start-up Micromidas plans to test how well an army of microbes can convert sludge from wastewater treatment plants into a biodegradable plastic.

The Sacramento, Calif.-based company, which raised $3.6 million last month in series A venture funding, expects to start pilot testing a waste-to-plastic machine at its labs within a month. Then in about five months it hopes to take that biorefinery, which can fit in a shipping container, to a wastewater treatment plant, said CEO and founder John Bissell.

Because it's still early in development, the company doesn't know how much the … Read more