Waste

TechDump: The Electronic Waste Land

During a recent visit to TechDump‘s St. Paul location, 17-year-old Julian and 11-year-old Dylan got a tour by CEO Amanda LaGrange. She offered a snapshot of what the company does with massive mounds of e-waste, and why. You can’t throw old electronics in the trash as you would normal trash. That’s because electronics contain hazardous…

Building Salvage in Minneapolis

When the non-profit Green Institute’s ReUse Center closed in 2011, it was a loss for Minneapolis. The Institute provided both a building salvage center and deconstruction, operating out of East Phillips from 1995 to 2011. It focused on the reduction of construction and demolition debris. The Institute closed due to financial difficulties. According to the…

Action Steps on Waste

There were several focal points at the November 2015 “Sustainable We” forum that lend themselves to action steps Minneapolis residents can take to reduce waste. 1. Think About Your Buying Habits Recognize that waste is less about what you throw in the trash and more about what you buy. As you can see in these…

Where Does Our Garbage Go?

by Dylan Morrissette, 6th grade Because my mom writes “Sustainable We,” and because my sister was an intern with Cool Planet Minnesota about climate change, I know how much work we have to do to help keep our planet healthy. Right now it is pretty sick — pollution in the air, ground, water. And we are the ones who…

The Life Cycle of Waste

What is the life cycle of products? How do we handle Minneapolis garbage? Are there smarter ways to impact waste in air/soil, beyond recycling/composting?   Composting and recycling aren’t the only answers to the waste of our consumption habits. What resources are used in creating our products? What are we sending into the air and…

The Nuance of Plastic

Not everything about plastic is bad. Here is a look at the gray areas of our use of plastic. One of the goals of “Sustainable We” has been to explore the choices we have around the many issues that do not have black-or-white solutions. With all the decisions we make in a day, we do tend to want an…

How Much Do We Waste?

Minneapolis recycling goals are ambitious for 2020. According to a 2015 Hennepin County Recycling Progress Report, there are a lot of ways we can do better.As the City of Minneapolis moves toward a 2020 zero-waste goal of 50% sent to recycling and composting centers, rather than landfills, Hennepin County’s new Recycling Progress Report gives an…

Putting a Value on Waste, by Design

At the second Sustainable We forum, in November 2015, the take-away from the group conversation came down to three bullet points: Minneapolis has the capacity, if not yet the policies, to emphasize even more sustainable social values; Minneapolis has the innovators, if not yet the awareness about them, to lift up stronger design around consumption;…

Thriving in a Land of No Waste

— Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac, 1949 It is a romantic notion that all the elements of our world are interconnected, as Wisconsin author Aldo Leopold captured in his 1949 ode to our ecology. But, it is also an accurate notion. This is, after all, how the cycles of our world have survived, century…