waste

Staples has agreed to work with one of the most environmentally progressive electronic-waste recycling groups to handle gadgets from both the company and consumers when those devices die.

The retail giant announced a deal Monday, Earth Day, to use recyclers certified by e-Stewards, a program set up by the Seattle-based environmental group, the Basel Action Network, to handle materials collected from its free technology recycling program at more than 1,500 stores nationally. The company will also use e-Stewards-certified recyclers to handle electronic waste from its own internal operations.

One of the big problems with electronics disposal is that recycling … Read more

A blue mat, a fine-tipped screwdriver, and a dozen itty bitty screws. This is Titus Green's workspace, set within a warehouse that processes 2 million pounds of unwanted electronic waste each year.

Green, 22, and his team at San Francisco Bay Area e-waste collection center Green Citizen, refurbish 30 cell phones a day to put back into customers' hands.

If you don't chuck your electronics down the trash chute (and please don't,) the most likely cycle is that the phone will be refurbished and resold, one way or another.

Of the appliances that come through Green Citizen'… Read more

A few years back, we introduced you to EcoATM, a San Diego-based start-up that had just hit the scene with an innovative kiosk that lets consumers trade in old phones for cash on the spot.

A "CBS This Morning" report this week checks back in with EcoATM, a maturing company that now boasts 181 kiosks set up in malls and retailers around the country. … Read more

I read once that Jonathan Franzen writes his novels using an old laptop because it does not have a wireless antenna. He also took the extra precaution of gluing an Ethernet jack into the Ethernet port and then clipping the cable so that there was no way -- wired or wirelessly -- he could access the Internet while writing.

Knowing Franzen needed to take such measures to stay focused made me feel a little better about myself and my time-wasting ways on the Internet. If you need some assistance staying on point (and off Facebook) during the workday, WasteNoTime could … Read more

In a new twist on using waste for energy, Microsoft is designing a data center powered by biogas, the gas given off from landfills and other sources.

The company last week further detailed its Data Plant experiment, an idea to bring more reliability to its data centers and lower pollution from them.

Fuel cells would supply power to the data center and make it independent from the grid, said Christian Belady, general manager of Data Center Services in a blog post last week. In theory, having on-site power allows a data center operator to use the electric grid as bac … Read more

How do you feel when you're tossing food into the garbage or the waste disposal?

Do tinges of guilt bubble in your throat? Does a soupcon of self-loathing slither around your brain, as you pour that curried cauliflower soup into an unknown beyond?

I bring you news that might assist your psychological health. For just this week, some British people from a clean-tech company called SeaB have been sliding around the Bay Area, trying to get our eco-princes to invest in MuckBusters.

These artfully named objects are containers into which you can shove your leftover spaghetti, tacos, or duck a l'orange and expect, after a little technical machination, to get electricity.

If you believe the estimates, all you need is half a ton of unwanted food to run about 150 computers. Which presents a sobering counterpoint to the impression one has that 150 people sitting at computers in the average office consume at least 150 tons of food.

Some will be wondering how this machine busts your meatballs. Well, you shove your food in at one end and it gets chewed up by bacteria. As often with chewing, a lot of gas emerges. Your friendly MuckBuster does a little filtering, gets itself a methane stream and then slips that gas through a heat and power system. … Read more

The Denver Zoo is rolling out a motorized rickshaw that has been converted to run on animal droppings. It might help save a bundle.

Imported from Thailand, the tuk-tuk is about 20 years old, but it has been given a new lease on life from engineers at the zoo.

The electric three-wheeler runs on gasified pellets made from animal poop, as well as trash produced by zoo visitors and staff.

A heater on the back of the prototype vehicle turns the pellets into syngas, which is used to generate electricity to power the tuk-tuk. … Read more

Leanmap's Excel worksheets help busy people apply lean management techniques to nearly any business. Translean is a set of free worksheets for reducing waste and costs in a wide range of business processes, including transportation, labor, inventory, defects, and production. While most of its worksheets are free, it also includes a couple of try-only tools from the Pro version. We tried it in Office 2010.

Clicking any of Translean's worksheets opens Excel directly, but be sure to extract the zipped download to a familiar directory so you'll be able to browse quickly to it from inside Excel. … Read more

This week, our Crave team talks about treats for tweets, geeky furniture, intelligent bullets, and a way to strap your phone to your face. In Geek News, we have a new "Avengers" trailer, a discussion on good and evil, and the gamification of our lives.

Subscribe in iTunes SD Video | Subscribe in RSS SD Video … Read more