Earth Day is coming up in just ten days on Monday, April 22nd, 2013.  2013 will mark the 43rd anniversary of Earth Day, a global effort through which individuals and communities from around the world come together to help find solutions for man-made issues such as climate change.  As a “green” junk hauling company that makes every effort to recycle as high a percentage as possible of the trash and unwanted items we pick-up, we decided that it would be a fun exercise to create an infographic in honor of Earth Day 2013.

In the following infographic, we’ve highlighted 8 different examples of ways that “trash” can be turned into “treasure” by exercising just a bit of creativity.  For example, you can turn a few dozen old chopsticks into a very cool and modern looking fruit basket. Old bicycle chains can transform into an ultra-unique bottle opener that any hipster would be clamoring for.  Or take the bottom half of an old suitcase and line in with some bedding to allow your canine companion to start snoozing in style!

We hope you enjoy this infographic and come away half as inspired as we did throughout the course of researching and designing it. If you’d like to add this graphic to y our own website or blog, please use the embed code located below the bottom of the infographic…

Redwood Landfill Aerial

Redwood Landfill, owned by Waste Management of Houston, and a destination point for junk and garbage from Petaluma and Sonoma, is seeking to expand their site by 50%. The state recycling agency, CalRecycle, gave approval to the expansion in 2008, but was halted due to lawsuits filed by an environmentalist group, No Wetlands Landfill Expansion. No Wetlands Landfill Expansion argues that Redwood Landfill is situated on a marsh, home to a number of species, and additional waste would cause sea level to rise putting the surrounding area at risk of flood. A Marin County judge sided with No Wetlands Landfill Expansion, stating Waste Management have failed to “fully analyze the impact of greenhouse gas emissions and health impacts such as acute respiratory infections, chronic bronchitis and asthma.”

“Redwood is owned by Houston-based Waste Management, the largest waste disposal company in the United States. It is also working on several waste diversion and alternative energy projects at the site, including a plant that would convert methane from garbage into energy and then sold to consumers, and a recycling facility for construction materials.”

Waste Management argues that opponents want to export their waste to another city’s landfill than keep it locally. Waste Management “has also been working on several waste diversion and alternative energy projects at the site, including a plant that would convert methane from garbage into energy and then sold to consumers, and a recycling facility for construction materials.” The case is now in appellate court and will be addressed next year.

Fast Haul is a proponent of environmental causes while also recognizing the need to find sustainable and responsible solutions for hauling a disposing of unwanted junk and garbage. Fast Haul’s goal with their junk hauling services include minimizing their carbon footprint in Marin, Petaluma, and throughout the Bay Area.

Source: http://petaluma.patch.com/articles/a-mountain-of-garbage

Kayakers enjoying the Petaluma River
Photo Source: David “Thorne” Luckhardt

The city of Petaluma will be holding a “Petaluma River Cleanup” after awareness has spread concerning residents and businesses using the river as a dumping ground for their waste. Steve Jette, a 65-year-old retired Petaluma resident and volunteer at the Petaluma Wetlands Alliance, regularly venture out to the Petaluma River and find all sort of hazardous waste including construction debris, fast food trash, old computers, printers, vacuum cleaners, car seats, tires and more. These electronics can discharge chemicals into the stream and large-size trash can block the flow of water increasing the risk of flood during rainy season. Some of the trash found are submerged in the river while others can noticeably be seen from the river bank, defiling the beauty of this community park. Although, there is a rise for environmental conservation, unlawful waste disposal still persist today. On May 4, 2013, a local organization, Friends of the Petaluma River, is arranging a community clean-up to help sort and properly dispose garbage found at the river. Jette also wants residents to look for waste sites near the area and report what they find to him or to the authorities.

Fast Haul advocates for proper waste disposal and keeping the environment clean and green. Therefore, Fast Haul have been providing construction debris removal, debris clean-up, electronic recycling and trash removal services to Bay Area cities including Petaluma in order to make it more convenient and cost-effective for residents to properly dispose their waste and not have to resort to unlawful and harmful practices.

Source: http://petaluma.patch.com/articles/the-river-s-keeper

Recycling at Marin Sanitary Service. Credit: Lori Tompkins

On Feb. 4, 2013, the San Rafael Council approved an additional added cost of 55 cents to their recycling rates. Households will incur a monthly cost of $29.56 to their 32 gallon trash receptacles, a 1.89% increase. The city council justified the rising rates due to a number of factors including employee’s salary, materials cost, fuel costs, everyday expenditure and landfill fees such as tipping.

From this mandate, the city of San Rafael will receive approximately $443,600 each year in which it will be used to subsidize street paving and resurfacing as well as hiring a consultant to explore alternative rate structures in green waste recycling and composting. Residents will see the benefits of the increased recycling rates over the years in not only their city’s infrastructures but the environment as well.

Fast Haul supports the San Rafael city council’s commitment to positive environmental practices such as recycling.  Fast Haul also offers green hauling in the city of San Rafael at reasonable rates with superior services.  For large items such as old appliances or electronics components (that can contain hazardous materials), local trash removal bins are not an option for disposing of them, and Fast Haul is a cost-efficient, environmentally friendly alternative to remove your trash or junk in San Rafael.

Source: http://sanrafael.patch.com/articles/why-are-garbage-and-recycling-rates-increasing-for-marin-sanitary-service

Here are a few recycling facts we gathered here are Fast Haul, presented in Infographic format. This is our first ever attempt at an Infographic and I am not sure if this is a popular format, so please let me know what you think!

Please feel free to cut and paste the following HTML into a page/post of your website or blog to republish this infographic!

<code><a href="http://www.fasthaul.com/ecoblog/2012/03/12/interesting-recycling-facts-infographic"><img src="http://www.fasthaul.com/ecoblog/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/Recycling-facts-infographics.jpg" alt="Interesting Recycling Facts [Infographic]" width="600" border="1"></a><br />© 2013 <a href="http://www.fasthaul.com">Fast Haul</a><code>

Trash, recycling and compostable material bins sit in front of homes in San Francisco in this file photo. (Photo: Justin Sullivan, Getty Images)

In a recent article on USAToday.com by Michelle Lodge, a joint effort between the city of San Francisco and the city’s primary waste management company, Recology, was highlighted. The goal of this joint effort is to make San Francisco a zero-waste city in just seven year’s time. By “zero-waste” this ambitious plan literally is seeking to have 100% of garbage waste diverted to various recycling or composting efforts rather than going to the landfill.  Here is a brief excerpt from the article:

If they’re successful, all of San Franciscans’ discarded items will be recycled, reused or composted, and its need for landfills will become obsolete.

As a result, what might look like a stinky pile of trash to the average person is quite another matter to a “garbage man” like Michael J. Sangiacomo, president and CEO of Recology, an employee-owned and operated company that has held a solid-waste-management contract with San Francisco for many years. Read more @ USATODAY.com

For larger items such as old appliances or out-dated electronics (that may contain hazardous materials), it can be especially complicated for consumers to assess where to dump those types of items.  In these cases, we at Fast Haul like to present ourselves as a convenient, and a green solution, that is aligned with the goals of programs such as the one described by this USA Today article.  As a true green business, Fast Haul offers a 10% recycle discount for loads containing 25% minimum of recyclable materials such as metal, paper, cardboard, green waste, etc. You can read more about this on our Green Hauling page.

The San Jose Planning Commission was given permission on Aug. 14, 2012 to expand Republic Services of Santa Clara County’s Newby Island Landfill facility after it had given their final Environmental Impact Report (EIR) and uphold the California Environmental Quality Act conformance. The dump expansion will allow Republic Services to increase the elevation from 150 ft. high to 245 ft. high as well as expand the width to about 15.12 million cubic yards. The plan will also allow Republic Services to relocate various garbage related activities including where and how it could haul, store, process and compost odor-causing food waste and other organic materials.

The city of Milpitas argued that San Jose City Council gave little attention to the immense odor emanating from the landfill, nor to the impact on waste hauling, composting and recycling operations at Newby Island if the planned changes were put into action. Additionally, the EIR falsely claimed that odors currently emanating from the dump were inconsequential and that the odor impact from the huge expansion would go unnoticed by the local community.

On Sept. 27, 2012, the city of Milpitas filed suit against San Jose City Council but are currently pursuing a possible settlement to remediate the odor issues. If no settlement is reached, Milpitas will continue with its litigation.

Fast Haul is concerned about the impact of environmental changes and health due to unethical waste hauling and disposing. Fast Haul ensures that their business practices are always in line with state environmental laws.

We were recently approached about featuring a video about the hidden costs of bottled water.  As a trash hauling and junk removal company in the San Francisco Bay Area, we see more thank our fair share of empty plastic bottles on every trip we make to the recycling center and unfortunately, we see discarded plastic bottles even more often at the landfill.  The following video makes some striking observations and “grades” bottled water very low for their lack of eco-friendliness. We hope you think twice next time before you opt for bottled water over tap water:

 Environmental: F

Locally: (F) Americans toss 35 billion plastic bottles a year. That’s 111 bottles per person. Each bottle requires about ¼ of its capacity in crude oil to be produced and distributed. Recycling just one bottle would save the same amount of energy required to power a 60 watt bulb for 6 hours. Unfortunately, only 20% of water bottles are recycled each year.

Globally: (F) Plastic is not very biodegradable, therefore every bottle that winds up in a landfill will last for hundreds of years. 22 billion plastic water bottles are tossed in landfills each year. Manufacturing sucks up 1.5 million barrels of oil per year – enough to power 100,000 cars.

A hearing took place on January 15th to consider whether Cupertino will join 25 other California cities in prohibiting the distribution of free single-use plastic carryout bags. The meeting will debate the environmental effects of plastic bags and whether a 10 cents charged should be required for paper bags offered by retailers.

Many California cities support the ban due to the negative impact plastic bags have on the environment such as the polluting of water channels and killing of marine animals. As well, the high economic cost cities must spend to haul and cleanup discarded plastic waste from sewers and oceans could have been put for better use such as funding better infrastructure and encourage entrepreneurial efforts to come up with alternatives to plastic. Cupertino is looking to improve their green trash hauling and recycling efforts, and the city is open to the ban of plastic bag to cut down on trash removal needs.

Whatever Cupertino decision comes to, Fast Haul supports environmentally friendly initiatives and healthy debates about these topic.

Beginning of 2013, residents in El Cerrito will see a 5%-10% increase in trash and green waste hauling rates and recycling fees, following City Council approval of a new contract with East Bay Sanitary.

Residents with 20 gallon trash cans will pay a monthly recycling fee of $13.64 to $16.13, residents using 35 gallon trash receptacles will pay between $21.61 to $23.08 per month and about $41.58 to $45.66 per month for residents with 64 gallon trash cans.

El Cerrito’s environmental analyst, Garth Schultz, says the agreement took place in order to make up for the loss of revenue East Bay Sanitary was incurring due to recent trends of residents switching from 35 gallon to 20 gallon receptacles. Schultz says, the impact of people using the smaller waste receptacles is severe, as it costs the same to haul trash and dump them and East Bay Sanitary receives less for doing it.

Read more on this subject here: http://www.mercurynews.com/breaking-news/ci_22224437/el-cerrito-approves-garbage-recycling-fee-hike

Fast Haul is an advocate of responsible recycling and trash hauling and emphasize the benefits of keeping the planet green and clean outweighs the cost and time in doing it.