The global business economy is going through an adjustment period due to events like the collapse of the real estate market and tightening of credit. The bottom line is that this crisis will eventually affect many and people will be searching for ways to pinch every single cent while creating sustainable income. They will no doubt be looking to ways to reuse products in the home so as to save and not waste money buying new.

Probably the need to budget their spending will drive people to reduce purchasing new products but the lasting benefits will be derived from helping to save the environment. However the troubled business economy has a negative effect on the business of recycling. It seems that saving the earth through recycling, reuse, and reduction works against saving a troubled business economy yet it needs to be done and presents unique challenges never experienced before.

Our business economy is based on a throwaway world and that is likely to change. The problem is not easy however. Our global business economy depends on throwaway products in order to create more throwaway products. But with significant decreases in factory orders, there has already been a drop in demand for materials from recycling centers that are oftentimes used to make these throwaway products. Many recycling centers have such a decrease in demand for materials from recycling centers that piles of recyclables stack up with no place to go. You will even hear of some recycling centers that ask people to save the recyclables in their yards for the day that prices and demand will increase. It is very likely that you will see more reuse and reduction instead of recycling because it is far more cost-effective for both the consumer and recycler.

Landfills are seeing a decrease in the amount of dumping. This is mostly because in a troubled business economy people buy fewer new appliances and other items that are typically gathered by recycling businesses once thrown away. Buying fewer appliances does not do much for boosting the business economy for new orders however it does open more opportunities for those repairing them.

How will the global business economy recover with no market for throwaway products? Industries in the business economy will probably start to lean more toward reducing production, creating ways to reuse products, and then finally encouraging recycling when the products’ useful lives are indeed gone. It is not an easy transition. For starters, many products depend on their style at the particular point in time within the culture. Bicycles are very susceptible to trends in preferences. In other words, it would be very difficult to sell refurbished banana-seat bicycles today.

The ideal situation is to create new jobs to solve these challenges in the recycling industry. The earth cannot sustain the continued filling of its landfills and depletion of natural resources in order to make new products. But by the same token, the business economy depends on production and trade and without the two there will be no new orders and thus no new jobs. Everyone wants to save the earth and have a good income for their family but how to keep the two in balance presents a challenge that requires people for a solution. Governments and green organizations should focus on how to employ the talents of those in the workforce to come up with innovative ways to meet this challenge in the business economy and the recycling industry.

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Last year, more than 150 artists and performers participated in the event which attracted more than 15,000 visitors! The 2008 festival saw an extra venue added to the schedule and in increase in the number of premiere international artists in attendance.

Founded in Barcelona, Spain in 1995, Drapart promotes creative recycling through the organization of festivals, exhibitions and workshops.

Drap-Art’s aim is to enhance creative recycling as a tool of transformation in the arts, the environment and society. Recycling, reusing and recuperating revaluates things. This, not only helps to induce a more reflexive consumerism, but also contributes to the growth of respect for the environment and for the people living in it, leading towards cultures based in knowledge and respect

A video review (in italian) of the 2007 Creative Recycling Festival in Barclona

More advertisements for the 2008 festival:

Misc

• Review of DrapArt Creative Recycling Festival 2006
• Website for festival sponsor – CCCB (Barcelona Centre for Contemporary Culture)

In 2005, a record-high 51.5 percent (51.3 million tons) of all paper consumed in the U.S. was recovered for recycling. The American Forest & Paper Association (AF&PA) hopes to increase that number and has set an ambitious goal of 55 percent recovery by 2012.

Every American can do his or her part. Although each community’s recycling programs may be different, you can generally recycle newspapers, corrugated containers (cardboard), direct mail, magazines and catalogs. Check with your local municipality to find out what you can and cannot recycle.

The AF&PA Recycling Awards were created to recognize outstanding individual, business community and school paper recycling efforts. In 2006, the program was expanded to include a category for schools.

This year’s award winners are:

Ed Hurley Memorial Paper Recycling Award (for individual achievement)

• Joel Ostroff, Macon County, North Carolina

AF&PA Business Leadership Recycling Awards

• Small Business: Bluegrass Regional Recycling Corporation, Richmond, Kentucky
• Large Business: Brewer Science, Inc., Rolla, Missouri

AF&PA Community Recycling Awards

• Small Community: North-field, Minnesota
• Large Community: Seattle, Washington

AF&PA School Recycling Awards

• Classroom: Heber Springs High School, Heber Springs, Arkansas
• Schoolwide: Mountain Home High School, Mountain Home, Arkansas
• College & University: tie between the University of Colorado at Boulder in Boulder, Colorado, and the University of Oregon in Eugene, Oregon

“This year’s Recycling Award winners have exhibited innovation and social responsibility,” said AF&PA President & CEO W. Henson Moore. “Their accomplishments in recycling have set new precedents.”

Loon Mountain has started a new way of doing things in regards to recycling and energy conservation that should not go unnoticed and will hopefully pave the way for other resorts, all over the world, to follow.

When you think of New Hampshire, the White Mountains, or even the northeastern area of the United States and you picture the area during the winter time, you probably have visions of yummy hot cocoa with tiny marshmellows, hats, mittens and scarves covering as much of a person from Old Mr. Frost, a roaring fire and a foot and a half of snow.  Most of that image is accurate, except, unfortunately, for the snow part.  For more than a decade or so the northeast region has not been able to enjoy Mother Nature’s usual assault of blizzard upon blizzard, resulting in a sno-globe fantasy of winter sports.  While there is still an occassional blizzard, and a lot of the White Mountain Resorts are blessed with a foot or so of base snow, it just isn’t like the winters of our grandparent’s generation.  What used to fall from the sky without hesitation or exception, for the most part, today, must be manufactured.

While most resorts have to run their snow-making machines there have been advances made in their production to further help with recycling in mind and using energy saving principles.  Loon turned to a new idea in snow-making guns where the gun generates its own compressed air, thereby saving on the energy used to have a compressed air hose as a separate unit.  At one place they have combined one “disconnect” between two of their popular slopes; Little Sister Trail and Loon Mountain Park and will be able to service both trails with the same snow-making apparatus.

Other efforts toward recycling include changing their light bulbs over to compact fluorescent alternatives, which are said to use 75% less energy and last ten times longer than the average light bulb.  Bathrooms now have motion sensors for the lights and fans, so energy is not being used when no one is in the room.  New windows and doors have been put in to replace older models that allowed for heat to leak out and the cold northeastern wind to come in.

Let’s take the lead that resorts in New Hampshire have provided and make the changes necessary in our own homes this winter, in the name of recycling and energy-saving efforts.  By following the lead set by resorts like the ones on Loon Mountain, you can bet that more resorts will fall in behind, and utilize all of the resources they have in the effort to recycle.

Last year a senior at the local high school decided it was time for a change and she and her friends organized a booth and volunteered to go around the festival collecting glass, plastic and aluminum waste off to be recycled.  Can you imagine that?  High school students, volunteering to spend precious weekend time, collecting trash without personal motivation or gain, I was impressed when I heard that.  How many people do you know that would put themselves out like that?  I don’t know too many adults, let alone any teenagers who would take that challenge on.

This year, their 25th anniversary year, things will be a little different, due in part to the efforts of last year’s senior and her group of friends and volunteers.  This year the Coca-Cola Company, who has a bottling location on North Market Street, nearby the festival site, will donate 20 recycle bins to be set up throughout the festival area.  Plastic and glass items to be recycled will be taken to the county’s recycling location and the aluminum collected will be resold for a small fund-raising profit.

What was really impressive about this story was the self-less-ness in which these students acted.  They didn’t do this because it would win them an award or a grant or money in some other form; they did this because it was the right thing to do.  How many counties, cities and towns could be forever changed if the same example were set for them?  This story is one of those great examples of what kind of change one person can make.  It should be a testament to us all that if we just put the effort out there, step out of our comfort zones, and did something we know is right, the great changes that can be made are infinite.

In just this example, you have to figure the impact the recycling will have if even just a few of the participants take a moment to notice the recycle bins and instead of carelessly tossing their waste to where it will not be separated and recycled, they did the right thing and put their waste in the designated bins.  Any efforts to change have to start somewhere and it is commendable that after 25 years, it was a teen who took on the challenge to start the change at this event.

One extra gratitude extended to this amazing student is that this year she has designed a logo that will be throughout the event that will symbolize the idea that the residents of Frederick, Maryland Recycle; she calls it, “Frederecycle.”

It’s hard to believe that a city as populated as New York City has always been, that it took until 1881 before the first sanitation collection agency was formed.  The agency was formed in an effort to clean up the city’s littered streets and to stop the general population from disposing of their waste directly into the Atlantic Ocean.  In 1881, the Department of Street Cleaning was formed and the New York City Police Department was no longer responsible for the waste problems.  It is basically the same department today with the exception of a 1933 name change into the Department of Sanitation.

Prior to the formation of the Department of Sanitation, more than three quarters of all waste from the city of New York was simply dumped into the ocean.  Just a decade later, in 1895, the very first recycling plan was implemented by Commissioner George Waring in which his plan separated household waste into three categories; there was food waste, rubbish and ash.

The only category of the three that could not be re-used was ash, and it and whatever materials came from the rubbish category that could not be re-used were put into landfills.  Food waste, which went through a process of being steamed, they found, could be turned into fertilizer and grease materials that were used to produce soap.  The category of rubbish was collected and re-used however possible and only as a last resort, ended up in the landfills.

New York City had filled to capacity six landfills and needed to keep them closed from 1965 to 1991, which left open only one active landfill; Fresh Kills in Staten Island, which remained the only trash-accepting landfill until it closed for good in 2001.

Other than the temporary end of recycling due to World War I in 1918, New York City has kept a steady flow of recycling going for more than a hundred years and at one time ran twenty two incinerators and eighty nine landfills.

Recycling continues today in New York City as a mandatory action for all residents, schools, institutions, agencies and all commercial businesses.

When you’re staying in a hotel or B&B, let the management of the hotel know that you will be reusing your towels and there is no need to have the bed linens changed daily.  With a family, towels can get mixed up and there is an easy way to prevent that; from home, get a couple of safety pins and some beads.  Put beads on the safety pins, one design for each family member and when you get to the hotel, simply pin each towel with a beaded safety pin to identify the different ones.  Just reusing your towels for a few days will greatly impact the time and money that goes into running the laundry everyday.

Be sure to turn off all lights when you are leaving the hotel room, and any TVs or radios that may be plugged in and running.  It’s easy to be distracted in a space that is not your home and it would be just as easy to forget the ways you conserve energy at home when you’re not there.  If you find you leave the room with a light on, leave yourself a note right by the door, reminding yourself to check the lights before you walk out the door.  There are some hotels that even do this for you, where they have a magnet that they leave on the door, at eye level, reminding you if you’ve turned off the lights.

Bring your own soap, shampoo and conditioner and leave the little bottles to be reused by guests who do not remember to bring their own.  Soap travels really well in a plastic sandwich bag with a zip-lock and besides, wouldn’t you want your own choice of soap smells?

Along the same lines as remembering to turn out the lights, remember to turn down the heat/AC that will be running when you’re not in the room.  And a further way to keep the room temperatures comfortable is to remember to close the drapes when you’re out of the room, most hotels have heavy drapes that will keep a cool room cool longer, if they’re closed.

Instead of leaving the light (and fan) on overnight, bring a little nightlight with you and you will save a lot by not running a rooms full light (and fan) on while you sleep.  Have a permenant marker with you and assign one of the plastic cups to each person in your family when you arrive at the room.  There is no reason to have dishwashing services when the plastic cups are sanitary and are perfectly capable of being reused.  Avoid room service for the same reason, there is no need to have excess dishes to wash that would normally not be used.  When you eat in the restaurant, they’re already doing the dishes there.

Remember that you can still have all the home values you practice at home when you’re on the road with your family.  Keep recycling!

Some of the ways hotels are becoming environmentally friendly are by letting guests know that they will only clean the room upon request; that cuts down on the amount of laundry that needs to be washed, electricity that needs to be used to vacuum and the man power itself, that it  needs in order to accommodate for daily cleaning.

Hotels can also request that you re-use your towels rather than having them laundered every day.  There are programs in some hotels that have bins for recycling glass, plastic and aluminum set up for easy recycling by the guests as well as the employees.   Just by making these bins available gives no excuse for why recycling can’t be a success.

Hotels that are on the “Green” list are in the forefront of ways to recycle and they are finding that more than 70% of their customers not only abide by their energy and cost saving measures, they have helped to develop them.  Many hotels and motels have put suggestion cards in the rooms for their guests to fill out and have implimented some of the ideas that came right from their consumers.

If a hotel is a popular spot for banquets and meetings, changes as simple as using pourers for sugar and pitchers for cream have been able to cut down on the waste of individually wrapped sweetners and individual cups of cream.  There is also less left over to add to the unused, end-of-the-day waste.  Some facilities have gone as far as to place notices on tables in meeting rooms and some restaurants to advise customers that water will be poured, upon request.

There are some ways hotels are joining in the cause for an environmentally friendly product that most hotel guests will never see.  There are water-saving devices that will save the water that is flushed by about 75%, never affecting the flush in any way, but making quite a difference with the utility costs.  Devices such as the toilet tank fill diverter and tiny parts that fit into the head of a shower to cut down on the water useage will not be noticed by the guests but make a big impact on the environment.

Hospitality venues that are using these kinds of measures to cut back on our waste and are environmentally contientious should be the places we choose to stay.  If we, as concerned consumers, take a stand and only patronize hotels and motels and B&Bs that are taking the idea of recycling to heart and have made changes to help the Earth, the more hotels will realize that we know how to exercise our choice and will do so even when we are away from home.