Sustainable Packaging

by Richard M. Goodman

When purchasing necessities or special gifts, deciding what items to buy based on its sustainable packaging can have a significant impact.

According to the Sustainability Packaging Coalition, the two most relevant sustainable packaging principles to the average consumer include:

• Sustainable packaging optimizes the use of renewable or recycled source materials.
• Sustainable packaging is physically designed to optimize materials and energy.

Let’s look at how to implement these two principles.  The recycling industry incurs big expense in their sorting operations to remove undesirable or toxic materials from the recycle stream.  If the packaging industry can create packaging that is easily sorted and not likely to introduce potential contaminants, then it makes the recycling industry’s job easier and ultimately reduces their costs. Proper on-package messaging from the packaging industry can help consumers help recyclers, which in the end helps the packaging industry.  Consumers should insist on greened packaging.

Paper-based packaging such as boxes, containers, cartons, sacks and bags are part of our everyday lives. Unlike other packaging options, paper-based packaging is made from trees – a renewable source that is sustainably grown, managed and harvested specifically for the paper industry – or from recovered fiber, allowing reuse of its products. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, paper-based packaging is recovered more than any other packaging material. Paper and paperboard represent more than 70 percent of all packaging recovered for recycling in the U.S. and, in 2011, 91 percent of old corrugated containers were recovered for recycling.

Another consideration involves the use of compostable materials for packaging. This can best be satisfied if the earth’s biosphere effectively recovers the nutritive value of the basic biological materials and no toxic or dangerous substances are released through any stage of the package’s lifecycle. It should be noted that the conditions for effective biological degradation do not exist in landfills and the release of problematic substances is a further concern. Managed composting and anaerobic digestion with energy recovery are examples of sustainable systems.

In summary, we should observe the following considerations when looking into the packaging of consumer goods:

• Avoid overly packaged goods.
• Look for packaging materials that are fully recyclable, including plastics with the recycle labels, aluminum, cardboard and paper.
• Look for compostable materials and either use them in your own or neighborhood composts or put them into the recycling system.
• Read the labels to be sure you are removing any potentially toxic materials from the recycling streams.

If we as consumers follow these guidelines we can help promote the use of sustainable packaging and help create a positive reinforcement to manufacturers to increase the use of these materials

Richard M. Goodman, PhD, is a chemical scientist and consultant focusing on how surface science concepts can solve real world problems.  The periodic column considers aspects of sustainability from a scientific perspective. See Goodman’s profile with Association of Consulting Chemists and Chemical Engineers (ACC&CE) at www.chemconsult.org

 

Sustainability of Rugs and Carpets

Sustainability of Rugs and Carpets

by Richard M. Goodman

We often overlook some rather obvious sources of environmental degradation or missed opportunities to conduct ourselves in a sustainable way.  I recently encountered information about an area of sustainability many of us would never consider.

In talking to a representative from a major carpet manufacturer, I learned that discarded carpets and rugs historically have taken up about 3% of landfills.  While that’s not a huge percentage, it does represent a significant amount of stuff — dirty, old, unsightly carpets that are hard to condense into landfill space and consist of many materials deliberately designed not to be very biodegradable.

What I learned is that the carpet manufacturers through their Carpet and Rug Institute (CRI) have developed a program to potentially recycle 100% of used carpets.  It is noteworthy that they have done this rather quietly without a major PR campaign or expensive commercial hype.

CRI has established carpet and rug recycling centers where used carpets can be properly segregated, broken down (where appropriate) into components and raw materials for recycling.  The CRI has defined a Seal Of Approval for carpets that spells out how the manufacturer is to describe the materials of construction and how they are to be recycled.  Components end up in plastics feedstock, new carpets, etc.

The vast majority of carpets are used in commercial buildings such as hotels and office buildings, and owners should recycle carpets when renovating their properties. Consumers can do their part by recycling carpets as well. Montgomery County provides free carpet recycling under its Bulk Trash Collections program.

Currently, more than 70% of carpets nationwide are recycled. The goal is 100%, and when that happens, a significant waste stream to landfills will have been eliminated.

Richard M. Goodman, PhD, is a chemical scientist and consultant focusing on how surface science concepts can solve real world problems.  His periodic blog posts consider aspects of sustainability from a scientific perspective. See Goodman’s profile with Association of Consulting Chemists and Chemical Engineers (ACC&CE) at www.chemconsult.org.

 

Summertime on two wheels

by Kiera Zitelman, UMD Environmental Economics student

From trails between downtown monuments to bike lanes on Woodmont Avenue, the DC metropolitan area is brimming with bicyclists in these summer months. The success of Capital Bikeshare (affectionately known as CaBi), which has added 874 new docks in the last eight months, has introduced a new community of casual bicyclist-commuters around the city. Users pay an annual, monthly, or daily fee to rent one of over 1,500  bikes from over 100 stations around the metro area. CaBi plans to expand into College Park with a $375,000 state grant this fall.  Future plans look to Rockville, Alexandria, Bethesda, Silver Spring, Takoma Park, and other suburbs.  A recent survey of CaBi’s 18,000 users showed annual transportation savings of over $800 a year and avoided 5 million collective miles of driving.

While bikesharing programs grow around the country, Bethesda enjoys some excellent bike trails. The Capital Crescent Trail and C&O Canal Towpath put Georgetown within an hour’s ride of downtown Bethesda. DC’s high gas prices and rising Metro fares make biking an excellent alternative to driving or public transportation. And biking is a great form of exercise, too – an hour of moderate speed burns close to 500 calories.

Getting on a bike has never been a better idea. The Washington Area Bicyclist Association offers educational events for adults and children. Annual Bikeshare memberships are just $75, and new or used bikes can be easily found at area bike shops and online. Try replacing one commute a week with a bike ride instead, or plan a family trip on the weekend. Happy riding!

 

Bethesda Green basketball team gets a new coach

by Nick McGreivy, Bethesda Green intern

When he agreed to coach the Bethesda Green sponsored basketball team, Connor Garrity thought he was signing up as an assistant coach. Head coach David Breslaw was returning for another season, and Connor would be his assistant for the summer. But for Connor Garrity and Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School basketball summer league team, very little went as planned.

Days before the first game, former B-CC Head Coach Breslaw called up each of players to inform them that he would be leaving to coach at his alma mater, Richard Montgomery High School. While the move was not entirely unexpected, it still came as a shock to the players and to Coach Garrity, who was thrust into a new role as head coach.

Facing tough circumstances, Connor Garrity impressed. “He did a great job motivating us,” one of the players said. “He did everything we could have asked of him, considering it was his first head coaching gig. When Coach Breslaw left, we weren’t sure what kind of coach we would have, but now all of us are thankful to have had Connor as our coach.” With Garrity as head coach, he guided the Barons to a 3-6 record. Named the “Bethesda Green,” the team is composed of 13 players entering either their junior or senior years at B-CC high school. Some of the key players included seniors Matthew Lawrence, Eric Tschiderer, Nick McGreivy and Riley Markham.

Bethesda Green and Federal Realty Investment Trust sponsored the B-CC summer league team. A special thanks from the players to Bethesda Green and Federal Realty for their support of the team and of B-CC.

 

Sustainability in Clothes Washing

Sustainability in Clothes Washing

by Richard M. Goodman

A previous blog post addressed the relative hazards or toxicity of cleaning chemicals, emphasizing that minimal human toxicity and environmental impacts promote sustainability.  In addition to detergent selection, another aspect of the simple household chore of clothes washing is the energy utilized.  Depending on the size of your family and how frequently you wash clothes, the energy consumption can be significant.  The major consumer of energy in clothes washing is normally the heating of the water used.  In fact, if you normally do a wash load at say 130 degrees F, your energy consumption is actually 60% greater than if you used 85 degrees.  Further, with the availability of many cold water laundry detergents which use  environmentally green formulas, there is no need to ever use water above 85 degrees.

Another aspect of the home laundry energy usage is the nature of the hot water system in your home.  In one extreme is the typical old-fashion poorly insulated electric hot water tank.  In a climate like Bethesda, the energy consumption of such a tank can be up to 25% of total household energy usage.  Highly efficient modern, especially natural gas, hot water heaters can significantly cut down on energy usage versus the typical tank, perhaps 50% or more.  Of course, if you use 100% solar to heat your hot water your energy usage is virtually zero.

So, here again by paying attention to a routine household activity you can promote sustainability by dramatically reducing energy usage to perform the simple act of cleaning your clothes.  Saving energy for the same material outcome is the very definition of sustainability. And by optimizing the efficiency of your hot water tank and always washing clothes at 85 degrees or less you could potentially save about 5-10% of your total household energy costs even without the use of solar derived hot water.

Richard M. Goodman, PhD, is a chemical scientist and consultant focusing on how surface science concepts can solve real world problems.  The periodic column considers aspects of sustainability from a scientific perspective. See Goodman’s profile with Association of Consulting Chemists and Chemical Engineers (ACC&CE) at www.chemconsult.org.

 

LEED 2012: Leading the Changes in the Green Building Industry

by Peter Doo

How do you drive an entire industry to build “green,” sustainable buildings? The US Green Building Council (USGBC), with its Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) rating system, set the standard for building green. Through LEED, a green building can be rewarded an official certification. This certification incentivizes building owners, designers and contractors to look beyond energy savings to make a building that helps and does not harm its users, site, community and the earth.

Now USGBC is setting a new bar for the industry with LEED 2012.

LEED has often been criticized for not producing the results that it touts. While some of this criticism is justified, the USGBC has consistently responded with new requirements and updates (energy reporting for example) to address many of those criticisms. Meanwhile, the larger and undeniable impact of LEED has been in the transformation of the marketplace of products and services to make true sustainability more accessible to everyone. LEED 2012 promises to keep us all moving in that direction.

Some cities, counties and states have mandated LEED for new buildings in their jurisdictions. Projects pursuing certification under LEED 2012 will definitely find it more challenging to achieve the same ratings they received under the prior systems, LEED v2.2 and LEED 2009. Municipalities will have to determine whether they keep their mandate and escalate their sustainability goals with LEED 2012, or whether they relax or eliminate their mandate altogether.

What are some of the changes in the new LEED 2012? Several of the available credits in the Materials & Resources category, for example, require the disclosure and/or avoidance of chemical toxins in building products and materials. While this is likely to be an area of some controversy if adopted, this is where the next market transformative impact of LEED is likely to be.

On the energy efficiency side, the new referenced standard is ASHRAE 2010. This represents a significant increase in energy efficiency targets that project teams should be aware of.

What other changes are coming? How will it affect the industry as a whole and the Mid-Atlantic region in particular? And how do building owners and professionals navigate this shift? These questions and more will be addressed at a special event on Tuesday, June 12th in Bethesda, Maryland, “Anticipating the Changes and Challenges of LEED 2012,” a Natural Capital Series event. For more information and to register, go to http://naturalcapitalLEED2012.eventbrite.com.

Peter Doo, FAIA, President of Doo Consulting, LLC is a sustainability consultant with over 30 years of experience in building design and construction. Peter is a LEED AP and founder of the USGBC Maryland Chapter. Doo Consulting provides services to guide, coordinate and administrate the LEED certification process for all LEED rating systems. For more information, visit www.dooconsulting.net.

 

Facts on Sustainability of Household Cleaners

Facts on Sustainability of Household Cleaners

by Richard M. Goodman

The current issue of Consumer Reports  includes an article titled, “Is your home making you sick?”  Within this article is a separate box on “household cleaners. ”  The issues highlighted include the topics of  contaminants, fragrances, especially the question as to whether some ingredients react together or with, for example, ozone to form formaldehyde or other carcinogenic materials.  Let’s investigate further the comments found in this article to uncover the science it contains.

Toxicity relates directly to the testing of chemicals.  Every industrial chemical must provide a material safety data sheet for its transport and handling.  You can determine the overall safety of a component  by a simple computer search for the chemical name (read it off the contents of the bottle) and the letters MSDS.  Some examples: 7^th generation cleaners contain myristyl glucoside, sodium gluconate among other ingredients.  When you click on the relevant MSDS sheets, you will find that for both of these ingredients there are no exposure limits and toxicity is below reportable limits, i.e. completely safe.

When the component is a fragrance, then it may no longer be a single chemical substance.  In fact, many are complex mixtures of natural substances.  On the other hand, fragrances are almost always less than 1% of the weight of the ingredients (the EPA limit for unlisted chemicals); further, some of the pure components may be less than 1% of the fragrance total.  Thus, though one of these components of a fragrance is for example a terpene with known toxic effects, it is in such small concentrations (parts per million) as to be below any threshold for toxicity.

Ironically, some recommendations for a substitute “green’’ cleaning component list white vinegar.  However, this contains ~5% acetic acid.  According to its MSDS, acetic acid is actually considered a slightly stronger hazard because it is highly irritating to the eyes and if directly ingested is actually a serious intestinal irritant.  However, since we normally handle and consume vinegar we discount the objective fact of its relative toxicity as a chemical.  Another example is the ammonia (ammonium hydroxide) used in most window cleaners.  Ammonia is a relatively dangerous chemical.  In commerce to industrial laboratories, ammonium hydroxide is shipped in special containers and lab technicians are instructed do open these with great care while wearing gloves, respirators and face shields.  Often homeowners clean glass surfaces with no protection whatsoever.

This leads to the key message of this article.  We should not panic or overreact merely because one reads that a “chemical” is hazardous, or toxic or may react to form carcinogens.  The more familiar we are, the more we downgrade the risks while often discounting the effects of dose, concentration and how a product is used.

Richard M. Goodman, PhD, is a chemical scientist and consultant focusing on how surface science concepts can solve real world problems.  The periodic column considers aspects of sustainability from a scientific perspective. See Goodman’s profile with Association of Consulting Chemists and Chemical Engineers (ACC&CE) at www.chemconsult.org.

 

Science & Sustainability

Science & Sustainability

by Richard M. Goodman

How many times has someone said that substituting electronic communications for paper-based communications is good because you can “save a tree?”  At first this seems to be a no-brainer; how can distributing information electronically not be better than using a piece of paper?  That’s where the concept of sustainability comes in.  Sustainability preaches that we leave earth’s resources in better shape after we are done than before or at least at an even position.

It is true that paper companies plant more trees than they harvest.  (For the record, we are not talking about destruction of virgin forests but the more likely harvesting of young growth trees strictly for paper stock.)  It is also true that we can recycle a significant amount of the paper we use.  On the other side we discard electronics at an alarming rate; lifetimes of 2 years or less are common for many devices. The discarded electronics often contain toxic or limited resources.  Also, what about the source of power for the devices and the Internet?  It is almost always sourced from coal or other cheap but dirty fuels.

Now I don’t want to get into a detailed debate, however, it turns out that the comparison between printing information and transmitting by electronic media is not always in favor of electronics.  I belong to a working group that is part of the International Standards Organization (ISO), a global initiative to provide useful standards for virtually every industry.  One of the recent endeavors has been to exactly address the question of electronic vs. paper for all communications.  The conclusion from the initial study: “Users of this international standard should acknowledge that the CFPs (carbon footprints) developed according to requirements from different communication programs may not be comparable.”  In short, it’s not clear when comparing diverse technologies, which has the best carbon footprint or environmental friendliness – reinforcing the notion that green is the new gray.

Richard M. Goodman, PhD, is a chemical scientist and consultant focusing on how surface science concepts can solve real world problems.  The periodic column considers aspects of sustainability from a scientific perspective. See Goodman’s profile with Association of Consulting Chemists and Chemical Engineers (ACC&CE) at www.chemconsult.org.

 

Facing the Non-Believers

by Rebecca Blaskopf

For the past decade, the worldwide environmental bandwagon has blown up; children in elementary school to senior citizens are all considering putting the world first.  However, even with so many fighting to keep the world from becoming an inhabitable place to live, there are some who still believe climate change is either a hoax or completely out of our control.  Some of these people are in fact related to me.

At a wedding last summer, I was reunited with some cousins I do not see very often.  At the reception, the issue of the environment was brought up, and I was shocked when I heard the bride exclaim, “I don’t believe in global warming. I think it’s all a bunch of crap.” I was even more taken aback when I heard another cousin agree with her.  It was shocking to realize that there are people in this country who do not think that global warming is an issue, even folks from my own family.

As I stood there, partly dumbfounded and partly not wanting to start a debate at a family event, I started to think about what to say to those who are similar to these family members. How are we supposed to get everyone involved in this worldwide issue, when some don’t even believe the issue exists?

After much deliberation and mental rough drafts made of what I would say to these cousins when I saw them again, I came to the conclusion that this event wasn’t just about figuring out how to respond to my relatives’ reasons for not being eco-conscious.  It was about discovering a passion, as corny as that may sound.

Before, I was somewhat eco-conscious; my family recycled, and we were always trying to conserve electricity and water. I believed that climate change was occurring, but that was generally the extent of my involvement and concern with the future of our planet.  After talking with these relatives who seemed so alien to what I had been taught, it made me realize that climate change is a larger and more important issue than I ever thought possible.  It made me want to educate myself on what global warming is all about, and when I learned that conservation does not mean deprivation, I wanted to spread the word to others.

That realization led me to take environmental classes in college, and even to volunteer at Bethesda Green.  So, even though I may still find my cousins’ opinions slightly illogical, I can thank them for helping me realize how important this topic is to both the world and myself.

Rebecca Blaskopf is a Bethesda Green intern and student at the University of Michigan.

 

Shredding It in Bethesda for Security and the Environment

By Beverly Firme, guest blogger

A man dumps documents at the Community Shred, August 15. (Photo by Beverly Firme)

The Bethesda Row Community Shred, sponsored by Bethesda Row, Equinox Fitness and  Bethesda Green and held at Bethesda Lane and Elm Street on Sunday, August 15, was an opportunity for local residents to bring papers and documents to discard and shred in a secure way.  Remember how rainy it was that day?  The downpour did not deter people from coming out with bags of papers to shred.  Someone pulled up every few minutes and got out of their car with bags – and sometimes bags and bags and bags – of papers.

A crew from Clean Cut Shredding was on hand to get the paper into bins and then to their on-site shredding truck for shredding.  “It’s important that we help the community,” said Dawn Jessel, Public Relations Manager.  A subsidiary of Georgetown Paper Stock of Rockville, the company provides document shredding for area businesses and private homes.  Clean Cut Shredding provides a high level of security and privacy when it comes to shredding papers.

“We have locks on our containers, and they are locked at all times.  Our bins are padlocked with unique combinations to ensure security.  The truck we have is state-of-the-art”, said Larry Etman, Director of Clean Cut Shredding.  “It enables us to take the paper from the container to the shredder without us having to touch it.  We have no idea what’s going in there.”

Shredding papers and documents is serious business.  Identity theft is a growing concern – most of us know someone who was had their identity stolen and all are at risk.  The FTC estimates that as many as 9 million Americans have their identities stolen each year.

Shredding does help protect against identity theft, but there’s an environmental reason for shredding documents as well:  It makes recycling personal documents easier.  Clean Cut Shredding shreds all paper into confetti-sized pieces, and then recycles the confetti into household paper products. So, you can protect yourself and the environment by making shredding a regular part of your routine.

After the event, Etman reported they shredded close to 3 tons of paper (5,500 lbs) that day, which works out to 47 trees saved!

Many residents asked about the next Community Shred as they emptied their bags into the bins.  Stay tuned – Clean Cut Shredding is glad to consider additional Community Shreds if there is interest and need.  We’ll keep you posted!