Materials and Waste

Living with little waste

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Besides generating most of my electricity on site from renewable sources, one of my goals when I own my off-grid home is to manage as much of my waste on site in an environmental sustainable fashion and make less than one trip a year to the transfer station. This would not only save upwards of $400 a year in disposal costs ($33/month), it would keep a lot of waste out of landfill, and save money by avoiding unnecessary products I later have to dispose of on or off the farm.

Full Dumpster

Buy less, avoid unnecessary products

The most important strategy in my book to avoiding waste is avoid buying unnecessary products. There is so many cheap frivolous products but they’re both a drain on finances and the environment.

Apparently The Best Grass Is On The Trail

Feed livestock with food scraps

When I own land I want to be a to produce some of my own food. Producing your own food avoids packaging and you can bury the guts on your own land, feeding the soil. Hogs make good bacon and pork, they can be partially fed from food scraps and garden vegatable waste. Chickens likewise can eat many of those wastes and produce eggs and meat.

Compost Pile

Compost

Most vegetables, leaves, manure and other organic matter can be composted and turned into rich soil. Many of the things good for compost don’t burn well as they have a lot of moisture and it seems a waste to be dumping organic matter into the air with fire or producing unnecessary carbon emissions.

Steel

Scrap metal

Metals don’t burn and they are good to recycle. Separating out aluminum cans and tin cans for a yearly trip to the scrap metal yard or recycling center is an environmentally responsible activity and might even few a bucks. Likewise broken down machinery can be sold for scrap. If I can’t use it, I might as well get a few bucks for it and return it to the vast material industry for scrapping.

Burn Baby Burn

Burn

Almost everything you buy in the store today is packaged in paper, cardboard or plastic. These materials – often linked with plastics – can take a long time to break down in nature unless they are burned. Fortunately as witnessed by the large number of rural households and farms with burn barrels in states without regulations prohibiting them, most ordinary household trash burns. Add some scrap wood, maybe some increased ventilation and you got a hot fire that isn’t particularly noxious. I would keep my burn barrels down wind of my cabin in a place where I can monitor them and have garbage cans to store waste until the weather is safe for burning.

Landfill Fence, Methane Pump

Transfer station

As a last resort there is always a trip to the transfer station for wastes that can’t be reused or disposed on site. My goal would be at my off-grid property to do this less than once a year and really try to use the landfill option as last resort, mostly using it for recycling of glass, e-waste or other materials that lack an environmentally responsible way to dispose of on-site, which can’t be avoided by careful choices when shopping.

Trade war vulnerability – Reuters

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U.S. dependence on China’s rare earth: Trade war vulnerability – Reuters

Rising tensions between the United States and China have sparked concerns that Beijing could use its dominant position as a supplier of rare earths for leverage in the trade war between the two global economic powers. China supplied 80% of the rare earths imported by the United States from 2014 to 2017. China is home to at least 85% of the world’s capacity to process rare earth ores into material manufacturers can use, according to research firm Adamas Intelligence.

I am not convinced that higher prices would have all that much impact on electronics, mainly because rare earths cost is a relatively small part of the total cost, and their would be substitution of rare earths for other designs. Capitalism is very efficient when it comes to things like that.

How you’re recycling plastic wrong, from coffee cups to toothpaste | Environment | The Guardian

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How you’re recycling plastic wrong, from coffee cups to toothpaste | Environment | The Guardian

It’s a familiar scene: you stand at the bin, trash in hand, and wonder: “Can I recycle this?” We tend to throw it in the recycling bin anyway, in the hope that some unknown person, somewhere else, will sort it out. Recyclers call this aspirational recycling, or wish-cycling. While recycling continues to be an essential tool for dealing with the flood of plastic inundating the planet, it’s time for a reality check.

 

Can Old Cardboard Be Used for Mulch? | Sierra Club

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Can Old Cardboard Be Used for Mulch? | Sierra Club

You can mulch your paths with old cardboard, but definitely check to see if it is printed with ink. If it is, you want to be sure it has only black ink. Most black inks are made from soybean oil. Only use the material for paths. Paper and cardboard printed with colored ink is another matter, as this ink may contain some toxic heavy metals. Avoid using cardboard or paper for mulch if it contains colored ink. Of course, if your cardboard is more than merely dirty and has absorbed oil or other chemicals, it should probably not be distributed onto the ground.

I think it's always best to reuse and recycle materials as close to home as possible. Using cardboard for mulch, is certainly better then recycling it or burning it.