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Hey, I'm Meredith Danberg-Ficarelli.
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I'm a waste expert and garbage nerd.
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Today I'll be answering your questions from Twitter.
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This is waste support.
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Alright, first up, Gold Peril asks, "WTF is zero waste, bruh?"
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Zero waste is an approach to resource conservation that recognizes every step of the supply chain.
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Everything is made of something, and the point in a zero-waste approach is that there is no burning, so no incineration, and no discharge, so that includes no landfilling, no materials ending up in the ocean, and no particulate matter or any other impacts from disposal ending up in the air.
0:44
The term zero waste comes from the Zero Waste International Alliance.
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We, as waste experts and garbage nerds, recognize that we need to restructure the entire economy in order to get there, but we're working on it.
0:57
From Danny Wanny Faux Fannie: "Why are landfills/dumps still a thing?"
1:04
"Shouldn't we be able to just launch all our [waste] into space now?"
1:04
Have you ever seen a rocket launch?
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There's like fire underneath it because it takes a lot of energy to shoot things into space.
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It would be really ill-advised to waste energy to shoot our waste into space when everything's made of something potentially valuable.
1:20
So this is a bad idea, don't do this.
1:22
Lay Lemon Head: "Why don't we use volcanoes as waste incinerators?"
1:27
The Zero Waste International Alliance says that we can't use burning to dispose of material.
1:34
Volcanoes would burn stuff.
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If we're making something to be able to use it, to be able to just get rid of it by burning it, you're disrespecting all of that value that went into the thing.
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That includes the human labor, and it includes all the natural resources and everything else, the time that went into making the thing.
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We want to be able to use that value over and over and over again.
1:55
Another reason is that burning waste in incineration facilities can be incredibly dangerous.
1:59
Harmful toxins referred to as dioxins and lots of other potential chemicals can be released into the atmosphere, and the communities that live around those incineration facilities can end up with higher levels of cancer, higher levels of asthma.
2:14
So aside from this recognition that materials have value, we don't want to burn things because it ends up endangering the lives of people and everything else that's alive on the planet.
2:27
"Yes, but why though?" says, "Does recycling matter?"
2:30
"Tell me it does."
2:32
Recycling totally matters.
2:32
Everything is made from something, and so by recycling, by participating in a recycling economy, we are respecting all of the nutrients, all of the labor, all of the emissions that went into producing those things that we hold.
2:46
And in order to make a new thing, if we use a can as an example, we have to use many, many, many more resources to make a brand new can out of brand new virgin materials than if we're taking a can that already exists, sending it through a recycling system, and making a new can out of it.
3:03
And the main thing that we really need to do as part of building a circular economy and moving towards zero waste is to increase access to the ability for people to recycle things, improve infrastructure to make it easier and more affordable to recycle things, and hopefully reduce the travel distance that we need to send things in order for them to get recycled, and also to recognize that some things probably just shouldn't be made.
3:26
Britain Nays says, "Why is it so hard to recycle?"
3:30
"You are 20 and can't put a plastic bottle in a separate bag from the regular trash, make it make sense, or putting regular trash in the recycle."
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You're not alone, recycling is confusing, and it's not your fault.
3:43
So I've actually got a couple bins here: a trash bin with a clear bag, recycling bin with a black bag.
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So this is one of my, my favorites.
3:51
We have four different material types here.
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We've got a wooden stir stick that should be put in the compost, ideally.
3:58
Anything that was once alive can be composted.
4:00
The lid is plastic, it's a number six.
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The little triangle that's on plastics that has a number in it, that number is a resin identification code.
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So six is a polystyrene plastic.
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Depending on where you are, different numbers of those recycling codes might be accepted or might not be accepted in your recycling program.
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This like brown part here is paper, so it should go into the paper recycling.
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And then the cup is made of paper, but it has a plastic lining to make it watertight.
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That plastic lining makes this cup really hard to recycle in most recycling programs.
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So the cup actually belongs in the trash.
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This cup also actually says, "This cup is made with 10% post-consumer recycled fiber."
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That's awesome because post-consumer recycled content supports a recycling economy by making products out of recovered materials in waste.
4:50
And in waste lingo, and when I'm educating people about waste, I talk about materials literacy, which is the idea of recognizing what the thing you're holding is made of.
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So if we use this glass jar as an example, glass, metal.
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So two material types in New York City.
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The waste stream that I would put this into is a glass metal plastic waste stream.
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So even though these are different materials, they actually end up in the same place in New York City.
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Waste streams are different depending on where you are because recycling is municipal.
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One thing to think about is don't put anything that's soiled with food in the recycling.
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And then take baby steps as you're working towards zero waste, you're not gonna learn it all in a day, and that's okay.
5:53
So Max Black Sales says, "Question of the day: just how does compost work?"
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I love this question.
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Composting is the recycling of organic matter in a controlled environment.
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So you're taking food scraps and yard waste and mixing them together with air over time, and you're making compost.
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You don't always have to have food scraps in compost, it can also just be yard waste, but the point is that it's organic matter.
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And I've got some samples here.
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So this is a jar, and you can see that this stuff is like moving pretty freely.
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It smells pretty neutral, smells like, smells like earth.
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I'm looking in here and I can see like a little bit of kind of woody material because my brother's a woodworker and he brings his wood shavings home.
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So this is my carbon source, and my greens or my nitrogen source are my food scraps.
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There are micro and macro organisms that are eating the stuff that I'm mixing together over time, and just like we as people exhale carbon dioxide, so do the microorganisms that are making compost work.
6:44
Over time, those microorganisms generate heat, and we have a compost thermometer here.
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This is like a laughably large thermometer, you would not need one this big for a backyard compost bin, but I'm a compost nerd so I got the big one.
6:56
This is used to measure the temperature of the compost because as those micro and macro organisms are eating the food scraps, they're creating a parabolic temperature curve.
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So the temperature starts low, and then it starts to increase, and at the peak you're reaching what compost people call PFRP or the process to further reduce pathogens.
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So anything that we discard that was once, you know, alive, whether it's food that might have salmonella or E. coli, potentially harmful bacteria, or even plant pathogens or other pathogens, part of composting is actually like sanitizing the organic matter.
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And so we measure temperature so that we can make sure that we are reaching this PFRP, 131 degrees Fahrenheit or 55 degrees Celsius for a minimum of, uh, three days or up to 15 days depending on the type of composting that you're doing.
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And then this last example, this is a way more recent sample.
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I pulled this out just the other day.
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You can see it's like, it's a lot more wet.
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When your compost has been in the bin for a while, or when it's kind of nearing the end of that parabolic temperature curve, nearing the end of its cycle, it should be the consistency of a wrung out sponge.
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So like if you squeeze it, there shouldn't be drops of water.
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I'm pretty sure if I squeeze this some water would fall, but this jar has been closed for a bit, and one of the tests is if you smell it and it smells like ammonia, it's not ready yet.
8:19
This smells lovely, so my compost is fine, it's just a little wet, so I want to add more carbon through the process so that it can absorb some of that moisture.
8:27
Compost is magic, and by participating in composting, you are also participating in making magic.
8:34
Miss Gen D says, "People who swim in Lake Ontario will grow a third eye and an extra limb."
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I do wonder what body of work this person is citing here.
8:43
It can certainly be dangerous to swim in polluted water bodies.
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Bodies of water can be polluted by a lot of different things.
8:51
In New York City, one of the most common sources of pollution for our water is sewage because of combined sewage overflow, which has to do with the way that our wastewater infrastructure was built hundreds of years ago for a city with far fewer people in it.
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Now that wastewater infrastructure doesn't have the capacity for the amount of water that we're sending through it, and so anytime it rains, out of I think it's more than 240 combined sewage overflow points, raw sewage just spills into New York City's waterways.
9:22
BF 99 Floyd asks, "Does biodegradable mean the remains are earth-friendly?"
9:28
Bev, this is a super good question.
9:31
Short answer is no.
9:33
Biodegradable does not automatically mean something is earth-friendly.
9:39
An orange peel is biodegradable, but you might also get like a piece of packaging that says that it's biodegradable that could just mean that that piece of packaging is made of some combination of plant-based materials and non-plant-based like plastic, fossil fuel based materials, and that over time it might break down so that you can't see it anymore, but the plastic kind of polymers, the bonds that are in there at a microscopic level, will just contaminate the soil as microplastics and be there on a human time scale forever.
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So what you want to look for is certified compostable.
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That's the language that we're looking for when it comes to packaging and knowing whether or not it can be composted.
10:17
Pikesley says, "WTF does this mean?"
10:21
"At BBC News is a microplastic a unit of measurement now?"
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"Scientists have estimated that 94,000 microplastics per second flow down the river."
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Microplastic is a term that refers to plastics that are less than five millimeters in size.
10:40
When plastic is in the environment or really anywhere and comes in contact with UV rays, the plastic starts to degrade, it ends up like flaking, like turning into smaller and smaller pieces.
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There's microplastic everywhere, honestly.
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Our clothes, unless they're made of 100% natural fibers like silk or wool or cotton, they are producing microplastics like whenever you move.
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One of the solutions is to reuse things that aren't made of plastic because plastic degrades over time.
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We do need to work systemically to make it so that it's easier for people to not do things that produce microplastics.
11:22
Yala Wild says, "Where will the trash go when all the landfills are full?"
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If we continue with the way things are going now, which is that a lot of very large companies are buying up land and building more landfills and charging a lot of money to be able to collect waste, when the landfills are full, if we continue on this trend, we'll just have more landfills and eventually the whole world will be a landfill.
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Won't that be fun?
11:22
Kevin Crazi: "How can Amazon do a better job of packing shipments?"
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So one of the things that Amazon can do is certainly improve the amount of space that they're using, maybe resize some of their packaging to be more efficient.
11:56
I would love if every packaging item that Amazon used was made of 100% post-consumer recycled content.
12:04
That would be huge because it would mean that Amazon, this massive behemoth who has incredible purchasing power, would be demanding from the global recycling economy an incredible amount of recovered material.
12:18
So like bales and bales and bales of recovered cardboard, recovered plastic, if we could like just start there, that would be awesome.
12:25
I actually brought a prop along that's perfect for this.
12:27
Zip, zip.
12:29
This is a zippy pouch that I made out of Amazon Fresh packaging, and actually the liner is made of those air pack thingies.
12:37
This is from Tamar Hospital: "How do I responsibly dispose of my ridiculous collection of defunct, obsolete electronics?"
12:45
Good job hoarding, um, and I'm glad that you didn't put these right in your waste bin.
12:49
This is gonna depend on where you live, so you should look up where you live and then electronics recycling.
12:54
Some places will have electronics recycling drop-offs or depots where you can bring these things.
13:00
Sometimes it's an event that's hosted maybe quarterly or maybe annually that is also for hazardous materials.
13:07
Sometimes municipalities and organizations will like lump those things together to make it easier for people.
13:11
For some of these things, you might be able to look up whether a local big box store or store that sells electronics might accept some of these things.
13:19
Recognize also lithium-ion batteries can be dangerous and can spontaneously combust if they're not stored correctly, so everyone should kind of like check the random drawer that has their random electronics in it, remove the batteries, and get those recycled if you're gonna kind of hold on the rest of this stuff because you don't want to catch things on fire.
13:38
Beppy says, "What's the proper way to recycle Nickelodeon slime?"
13:42
I have no idea what Nickelodeon slime is made of.
13:47
Maybe flushing it down, down the toilet, assuming that it's food safe, just don't put it in your recycling bin, it doesn't belong there.
13:52
So when is flushing something down the toilet appropriately?
13:56
If I have made food and forgot about it in the fridge, flushing it down the toilet's a pretty good option if you don't have access to composting.
14:02
I put an asterisk there because, you know, you don't want to flush like a loaf of bread down the toilet, bad idea, but if it's chili for example, it's probably okay.
14:12
Infrastructure is local, so depending on where you are, your wastewater infrastructure might not be able to handle the additional input, so I'm not suggesting that everyone go and flush all their food scraps down the toilet, that's not the thing to do.
14:30
Use the websites of your municipal entities, it's going to be different depending on where you are.
14:31
Danny Iwall 16 says, "I really, really, really want to start a recycling program at work, but I've no idea where to start."
14:37
Generally buildings have waste collection, so that's the first step is figuring out who's picking up the waste from where you are.
14:44
Making sure that you have bins to collect the recycling in, of course, understanding what should go into those bins, so that might be looking at your municipality's website or talking to your property manager.
14:56
Ideally getting some signage and doing some education, so teaching everyone else how to participate, those are some of the foundational steps.
15:08
Alright, that's it.
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That's all the questions.
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I hope you learned something.
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Till next time!