Tag Archives: taxes

Joining We Future Cycle To Make A Difference

November 9, 2015 wefuturecycle Leave a comment

Enid Blount Press joined WeFutureCycle to help be part of the solution of recycling and composting in the schools in 2015.

Enid is a mom and a professional musician.

On the day her 2^nd Grade daughter came home, distraught that the school had brought back Styrofoam trays in the lunchroom, she decided to call the school system and ask what their plan was for bringing back compostable trays. Their response was that the cardboard trays would be back 5 months later, in the fall. Joining Anna Giordano, who was behind getting the Styrofoam out of the schools, was her next step.

Enid now helps in the New Rochelle school system as well as other schools with the composting and recycling in the lunchrooms. Enid is “thrilled to help tackle the waste” and provide a better environmental education for our community along with her colleagues.

We Future Cycle is extremely proud to have Enid. She immediately jumped into action by joining the implementation at the White Plains Church St Elementary School.

Hastings: Astonishing First Year Results from We Future Cycle Program

October 30, 2015 wefuturecycle Leave a comment

Can you imagine 110 times the amount of garbage as in this picture? Well, this is what Hastings-on-Hudson school district has not generated in the past year thanks the robust We Future Cycle recycling program it adopted last year. About 22 tons.

Thanks to the endless energy and support of Maureen Carabello, Treasurer, as well as the two head custodians in the elementary school and the middle/high school Hastings can look proudly upon major accomplishments.

Both buildings reduced their garbage so significantly that they reduced the number of dumpster by 50% and were able to renegotiate a $2000.00 reduction in their pick up cost.

Custodial staff was also able to reduce their plastic bag usage and purchases by 50% which is an expense often overlooked.

Truly an astonishing first year results. Hats off to Hastings-on-Hudson.

We Future Cycle and Eco Pel join forces to bring Textile Recycling to Pelham Town Clean up

October 30, 2015 wefuturecycle Leave a comment

On October 24th at 10 am 60 Pelham residents arrived, ready to tackle the problem of litter. EcoPel, the organizer, joined forces with We Future Cycle to include in this 4th year clean up, also textile recycling.

As grassroots, non-partisan organization in Pelham NY concerned with environmental issues, it is important to get the message out, and this year EcoPel is concentrating on schools and textiles. There is a ground swell of concerned citizens and EcoPel was pleased to have this fantastic turn out.

A make shift donation area supervised by students was set up and loads of textiles were brought to be recycled, rather then being disposed of in the trash. These textiles went into a Spin Green Textile recycling bin at the Columbus Elementary School in New Rochelle. A win win situation. Pelham was able to divert textile from the waste, educated their citizens and Columbus is able to receive the revenue from the bin for their students.

EcoPel successfully integrated the use social media to spread the word to the adults in the Pelham community as well as the local papers. This year EcoPel also integrated the local church into their campaign, as the event was featured on the weekly church bulletin.

All of Pelhams High School and Middle Scholl students are required to complete community service hours to graduate. EcoPel contacted many teachers and guidance counselors at the schools to get the word out to the students. At the events the names of the participating students were collected so appropriate credit can be given.

A success event, due to diligent work of the EcoPel members getting the word out, and now the knowledge that textiles are recyclable is starting to grow roots. Way to go!

New Rochelle’s Elementary Schools Recycle 2,000 lbs of Textiles In 3 Months.

September 19, 2015 wefuturecycle Leave a comment

New Rochelle’s Webster and Columbus Elementary Schools are extending their sustainability efforts beyond their successful lunchrooms. We Future Cycle introduced Textile Recycling through Spin Green as a fabulous fundraiser and both school principals eagerly embraced the initiative.

According to the EPA, Americans discard 13.1 million tons of textiles per year and there is only a 15% recycling rate. Many people give nice things as hand-me-downs away, but what to do with the stained T-shirt, the holed toddler jeans or –gasp– the underwear with the rip……? Easy…recycle them in our Spin Green Textile Recycling Bin.

We parents know how fast children grow and what clothes look like after a few months on an active child, but instead of discarding them into the trash, consider supporting the schools by donating them into their recycling bins. Any dirty sock, ripped sheet, old stuffed animal can go, anything that is clothy. Even shoes, sleeping bags, old blankets.

Once donated the textiles go one of these routes.

The re-use avenue where usable clothes are sorted out and sold through second hand clothing stores or thrift shops.
The recycle avenue where the clothes are sorted according to material and then shredded down for its fiber to be used as rags or as stuffing for car seats and other applications.

Discarded textiles come with a huge price tag to society. They account for 4.9% of the municipal waste.

For Westchester, with its 2,000 tons/day garbage about 100 tons are discarded textiles EVERY DAY. At around $80 per ton tipping fee (which is just the cost to dump the load onto the incinerator floor, no transportation or labor cost are included yet, and of course no secondary cost such as road repair or environmental consideration), tax payers are footing an $8000.00 bill every day to make a resource -literally- disappear into thin air.

To learn more about the footprint of textiles here is a very interesting article.

The textile industry, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, is the 5^th largest contributor to CO2 emissions in the United States, after primary metals, nonmetallic mineral products, petroleum and chemicals.

The textile industry is huge, and it is a huge producer of greenhouse gasses. Today’s textile industry is one of the largest sources of greenhouse gasses (GHG’s) on Earth, due to its huge size. In 2008, annual global textile production was estimated at 60 billion kilograms (KG) of fabric. The estimated energy and water needed to produce that amount of fabric boggles the mind:

1,074 billion kWh of electricity or 132 million metric tons of coal and
between 6 – 9 trillion liters of water

Thanks to Melissa Passarelli and Sonia Nunez, students of Columbus and Webster are learning about the importance of recycling textiles.

Update: Carton Recycling Integration Finally Planned for February 2016 in Westchester County

September 17, 2015 wefuturecycle 1 Comment

Update:

Louis Vitrone just shared that the upgrade equipment is being purchased and a February 2016 start date is being envisioned. That is great news for Westchester, as it will take an additional 1% of resources out of the waste stream and turn it into revenue for the County.

Original article from 2014:

Milk cartons and juice boxes are a common sight in schools, and so far they are being trashed in Westchester County. In New York City, they are part of the Commingled recycling stream.

We have worked closely with Louis Vitrone, Deputy Commissioner and Marianne Patronella, Director for Resource Management from Westchester County Environmental Service to bring carton recycling to Westchester. Just in November another meeting between the County and the Carton Council took place to find ways to make it work.

Part of the problem is that if a material is added to a recycling stream, it can really only be recycled if it is sorted. This sorting is done by a complicated sorting system which includes among other optical scanners to identify materials and then sort it via air stream into the correct container. The optical scanner itself is available and manageable in cost, but because Westchester’s Material Recovery Facility was one of the first built, its building doesn’t lend itself to easy equipment changes and the upgrading of the system is complicated and needs proper planning. Yesterday’s meeting was a giant step in the right direction.

Schools that are using commercial carters such as Suburban Carting can already recycle their milk cartons as it is brought to a different facility that can sort out milk cartons.

Cartons are about 1% of Westchester’s waste stream and are a very valuable resource.

Here is a little educational youtube clip how easy it can be.

Waste Management in Germany, 87% recycling rate

July 15, 2015 wefuturecycle 5 Comments

In Germany, Source Separation is old news, everybody does it . And I mean

E V E R Y B O D Y!

It is working because Germany applied country wide the same strategy. German households, and buildings are all set up the same way. Everybody is sorting food waste into the brown “BioTonne”, Paper into the “Blue Bin” , all packaging into the “Yellow Bin” and then there is the black bin for left over garbage.

The pick up schedule is set up to reward recycling and to penalize garbage. Country wide food waste pick up takes place once per week, Paper and Packaging Materials are alternating once per week and the left over garbage is only picked up once per month. Each bin has a bar code and is read at point of pick up. The cost per consumer is calculated by weight whereas food waste and recycling has a very low per pound fee, and remaining garbage a very high per pound fee.

The keys to success were

1. consistent signage, consistent colors of bins

2. supervision at point of collection (oops stickers, and ultimately fines for non compliance)

3. pay per throw via bar code, per pound cost differentiated by material.

4. Bio Digesters for food waste management .

The results are just amazing.

In Numbers: Germany generates some 50 million tons of waste per year from its 82.5 million people. 87% of that waste is recycled through household and industrial source separation.

Construction debris is only accepted source separated to particular standards.

Grocery stores are required to offer disposal of hard to recycle materials and with that came a revolution in packaging, as suddenly the point of sale was responsible for what it put on its shelves.

There are no active landfills in Germany, a few incinerators are dealing with the remaining 13% of left over garbage. Italy is sending its trash to Germany for incineration, and Germany is actually harvesting that trash from its recyclables before sending it to the incinerator.

And the absolute best is, that it is now cost efficient to harvest old landfills, which is starting to happen in several areas all over Germany.

A true example of what can be possible if everybody is seeing the greater good, rather then the quick buck for some selected few.

Cash For Columbus School Writing Competition Winners

June 22, 2015 wefuturecycle Leave a comment

Columbus Elementary School was the proud winner for the coveted Nina Chin Writing Contest Grant. Mrs. Nunez, Principal, gave 3rd, 4th and 5th graders the opportunity to participate by writing an essay to the Topic “I can make a difference”. 145 students rose to the challenge, an outstanding level of participation, thanks to two teachers Ms Costa and Ms Alexander-Zahn, who went from class to class to promote the contest.

On June 15th at 10:00, the auditorium was filled with excited students. Who snagged the top prizes per grade?

The ceremony began with a presentation by 11 students sharing information about Columbus’ recycling program. Students shared that they learned that they can make a big difference by sorting their waste into different categories, they were proud to have weighed the materials and realized that instead of making 400 lbs or garbage, they only made 8 lbs and all the rest is now raw material for new things.

A second grader said that she is now the recycling specialist in her house and is teaching her mom about it. A kindergarten student loudly proclaimed that we only have one Earth and she will make sure that all her friends are taking care of it with her.

A sideways glance to the dignitaries Derrik and Jean Chin, Irene Schindler and Rev. Jennie Talley showed that they were very moved, clutching tissues.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA — Sonia Nunez, Principal

The second part of the celebration was Mrs. Nunez calling one by one the runner ups and winners per grade up to the front to receive their certificate and their envelope with the cash prize. While the kids came up, some excerpts of their essay was shared.

Some truly powerful statements came from these young minds.

Mia Torres shared in her essay that she wants to help the environment because when she looks outside, she sees plastic bags in the trees. She doesn’t like that because the trees help us breathe.

Jasmin Alvarez very wisely said “Live like every day is Earthday!”

And Willy Hidalgo says; ” to make Earth green we have to care for it. We also have to clean up liter and garbage, even if it is not yours!”

Willy, you are SO right! Well said.

Michelle Oliveros thought long term, an outstanding achievement for a 5th grader. She said; ” We have to keep the Earth clean for our future families. We also have to let our families know about recycling and reusing. It is all about our Earth.”

How Much is Actually “a Ton of Garbage”?

May 19, 2015 wefuturecycle 1 Comment

Garbage costs money. However only very few people actually know how much it costs and what a ton looks like. Very few of us think further then to the curb.

Let’s look at school garbage a little closer. A school with 830 students generated 23 large black bags of garbage every lunch, the total weight of those bags is 398.5 lbs.

This is what 23 bags look like. Now that we know what about 400 lbs of garbage looks like, lets think about it.

A ton of garbage costs the tax payer around $80.00 to just dump it onto the tipping floor of the Incinerator, the big trash burning facility up in Peekskill. 400 lbs is a fifth of a ton. So, imagine 5 times the amount you see, or 115 bags of trash. Clearly the $80 per ton does not represent the only cost of garbage. This material has to be put in bags, then brought outside into the dumpster, then loaded by workers into diesel fuel guzzling trucks (about 2.5 miles per gallon of diesel), driven to a transfer station, dumped there, then loaded onto large trucks and driven 50 miles up north to be dumped onto the tipping floor of the incinerator. And then it is burnt into our air. I get dizzy just looking at how often this material needs to be touched and handled for it “to go away”. It takes that much time and effort to “just throw something away”.

We just started the School lunch recycling program in this school and the kids sorted their lunchwaste into liquids, commingled, milk cartons, compost and trash. The results were astounding.

Out of the previous 398.5 lbs, only 8 lbs were actually non recyclable. That means that 98% of the material is recyclable. So, “just throwing it away” is not just costing us a lot of money, but in fact, we use tax payer money to burn materials that we could easily sell for a profit.

This is what 10 lbs of commingled looks like. Some math on the value of commingled. 1 ton of plastic PETE 1 sells from the Yonkers MRF for around $800. (the cost is market driven, oil dependent and is fluctuating). 10 lbs of plastic (to simplify this calculation, it is all the same resin) 2000 lbs of plastics sell for $800.00 10 lbs = $4.00 Milk cartons sell for $450 per ton. 30 lbs = $6.75 And this is what 15 lbs of milk cartons look like, we had two of these bags. And two full 5 gallon buckets with waste liquid weighing 74 lbs. That means we use fossil fuels to truck liquids 50 miles north just to burn them, rather then sending them down the drain? By far the heaviest was the food waste. 180 lbs of wasted food from 800 kids, plus about 50 lbs of untouched never opened food that was placed into the share basket. Clearly, a ton of garbage is a lot, but as you can see, only 2% of it is actually non recyclable.

So, our convenience to “just throw it away” costs us all dearly. Not just as hard cash but also at great environmental expense.

We Future Cycle’s Bash The Trash Documentary showing in Pelham Picture House on April 22, 6:30 pm

April 16, 2015 wefuturecycle Leave a comment

On April 22nd 2015 at 6:30, the curtain will rise to show the documentary filmed about the Bash The Trash Legacy Project created and supervised by We Future Cycle in the Colonial Elementary School in Pelham. We are so excited and hope you can all join us for this event.

Also shown will be “Devide in Concord”, the tale of the battle to ban the plastic bottle.

The Pelham Picture house is located at 175 Wolfs Ln, Pelham, NY 10803.

We Future Cycle Joined Forces with Creative Change Educational Solutions to Bring STEM Based Environmental Education Into The Classroom

March 24, 2015 wefuturecycle Leave a comment

Creative Change Educational Solutions Founder and Executive Director Susan Satone asked herself in 2002:

What do you do if you’re a teacher and everything you’re passionate about is largely absent from the curriculum?

This is the dilemma I faced more than 20 years ago when I was teaching in the public schools. I had discovered sustainability through the issue of world hunger and was desperately searching for a way to bring these issues into my teaching. I wanted to inspire students and develop their skills in addressing global issues. And that’s when I decided to start Creative Change. I wanted to build an organization focused on supporting educators to teach effectively about sustainability. I wanted to equip people with quality curriculum that supports inquiry, engagement and action.

We Future Cycle’s mission is to bring sustainability awareness to students, as young as kindergarten. Children can learn that their choices, their actions count and can make a big difference. We know that doing hands-on source separation in the lunchroom needs to be backed up with class room activities. We created the 2 week “Bash the Trash” program where a 10 day curriculum is tying each step of the program into ELA, Math, Social Studies and Science.

Creative Change Educational Solutions graciously supplied us with cutting edge, STEM oriented lesson units, helping teachers to incorporate sustainability education into the mainstream curriculum.

For more information on Creative Change Educational Solutions, go to CREATIVECHANGE.NET