Word: plasticizers
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Mike Gering, CEO of the start-up Global Solar, picks his way along his factory floor, tracing the convoluted path that his thin-film solar panels follow from birth to shipping truck. The raw materials the workers carry are ultra-thin sheets of flexible plastic, which are then coated with a series of chemicals--indium, gallium, diselenide--that allows the module to turn sunlight into electricity...
Everyone knows we should recycle plastic, glass, aluminum and paper--or at least, we know we're supposed to. But for leftover Chinese takeout and other kitchen scraps, which make up around 30% of our residential garbage stream, there are usually only two options: do the messy work of making compost for the backyard garden--or toss the glop down the disposal or into the trash...
...Franciscans like Ellisa Feinstein have another option for their organic waste: put it out on the curb with the glass, plastic and paper, where it will be picked up and recycled by the city. For the past several years, San Francisco has offered curbside recycling of food scraps, shipping leftovers to industrial-scale composting facilities, which process 300 tons of organic waste a day. For Feinstein, the curbside program allows her to salve her green conscience without the ickiness that came from composting her own used tea bags. "It's great because it helps me do my job of diverting...
Food scraps are a recent focus for recyclers in part because, unlike glass and plastic, organic waste will decompose once it's put in the ground. But that becomes a problem in municipal landfills. As buried food breaks down in these oxygen-free environments, it produces methane, a greenhouse gas that has a warming effect 23 times as potent as carbon dioxide. Global methane emissions from garbage are estimated to be as high as 70 million metric tons a year. By recycling organic waste--composting it--methane emissions are eliminated...
Food waste makes up about 30% of the average home's garbage, but unlike glass and plastic, most of it ends up in landfills. Here's how San Francisco and other cities are turning these scraps into fertilizer and reducing greenhouse-gas emissions along...