Friends,
Spring has arrived! After a night's rain, this morning we woke to blue skies and bright, dewy, emerald green grass. The outside world is exploding with new energy after a dormant winter. Now the race begins to keep up with the growing grass, shrubs and weeds.
We were able to sell our final lambs for 4H last week, for a total of 8 lambs going to fairs. We have 5 in the barn, of which I will keep the best 3 for breeding and sell the other two to a young farmer wanting to build a flock. In January, the lambs were born from 7.5 to 12 pounds and now weigh upwards of 85 pounds in about 3 months, gaining over 3/4th of a pound a day.
We have only 1 small compost delivery remaining and I started reaching to existing customers to collect firewood orders, email me if interested, especially for the coveted summer deliveries. We are fertilizing the pastures, continuing the clean-up from December and winter, and Cyndi's greenhouse is filled with little green soldiers ready for outside planting. We will complete the barn and coop spring cleaning to prepare for the new peeps next month (and produce more compost). Please let me know if you would like to clear your sinuses and enjoy some good, honest manual labor.
In addition to the 4H students, we enjoyed many visitors to the farm the past month and look forward to a busy summer enjoying our new outside patios with vaccinated friends. Unfortunately, with the warmer weather we also have some unwelcome visiting pests and predators. One raccoon in particular taunted me outside my office window.
Building on my career as a farmer, I was appointed to the highly sought after role of Chairman of the Hunting Valley Recycling and Waste Management Committee. To prepare our initiatives and receive council approval, we completed research on recycling. I thought some of those insights might be good fodder for our "fun" facts section of the newsletter. With the emergence of new life around us, and seeing the photos of the young people enjoying the farm, it is the perfect time to reflect on recycling and its importance to preserving our environment for future generations. If you have questions, please let me know, we never stop learning about this important topic and we all need to do our part! Now onto my soapbox
The logic for recycling is clear, compelling and well-documented. The basics:
We live in a consumption oriented world, often with throw-away cultures, generating greater and greater quantities of waste every year
Increasing levels of online (and take-out) purchasing are further accelerating our level of waste as “last mile” distribution is often inherently less efficient and produces greater waste
Using recycled material requires less energy and generates fewer greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) when manufacturing new products
Recycling reduces the need for new and / or larger landfills, further reducing air and water pollution and land use. And can also help avoid waste ending up in the oceans or water ways creating litter and directly harming animals
All types of trash rotting in landfills are a major source of GHG emission, that many scientist believe leads to climate change and devastating wildfires, droughts, sea levels rising, floods, temperature extremes and hurricanes
Recycling efforts generate 10X more jobs than landfilling (an estimated 1.25 million in the US alone), further diversifies local economies and reduces our reliance on imported sources of materials
Some sobering and startling facts
Only 23.6% of all US Municipal waste was recycled in 2018, and just 5% of food and 9% of plastic was composted or recycled respectively
Food scraps in landfills do not have access to the oxygen they need to compost (e.g., one head of lettuce can take more than 20 years to decompose)
Plastic is especially problematic:
It can often be recycled only once or twice into new products, after that it can be used creatively for “lumber” for decks and benches or with asphalt for more durable roads
Plastic requires an estimated 500-1000 years to decompose, meaning that essentially all plastic ever created (and not incinerated or otherwise destroyed) is still in existence
At the current rate of pollution, by 2050 there will be more plastic in the ocean than fish
An estimated 40% of marine mammals and seabird species are affected by ingestion of inorganic plastics, killing 1 million seabirds, sea mammals, marine turtles and countless fish each year.
Plastic also turns into microplastics which can be consumed by fish creating additional damage to the food chain.
Recycling one ton of paper (~ 2500 12x12x12 boxes) saves between 15-17 mature trees. Using recycled pulp requires 40% less energy or 4200 KW hours (over 1 month of average home usage), 390 gallons of oil, 60 pounds of air pollution and 7,000 gallons of water. Paper fiber can be recycled 5-7 times for new paper, after which they can be made into lower-grade paper materials such as egg cartons
Glass and metals, including aluminum, can effectively be recycled indefinitely. Glass requires 1 million years to decompose!
Recycling aluminum saves 92% of the energy required to make new cans. Steel and tin saves 60-74%, paper 60% and recycling plastic and glass saves about 1/3 of the energy compared to making products from virgin materials (e.g., energy savings from recycling 1 glass bottle will operate a 100 watt light bulb for 4 hours)
Unfortunately as recycling demand and potential increases, execution becoming more difficult
“Single stream” recycling systems implemented in the late 1990’s simplified recycling for consumers but has led to much higher levels of contamination
In 2008, the percentage of contaminated recyclables sent to landfills was 7%
In 2018, the same contamination is now roughly 25%
Some believe “Big Waste’s massive single stream facilities take in more recyclables than they can effectively sort”
The rules and economics for recycling changed dramatically as China (the biggest buyers of recycled items) tightened their requirements so that they will only accept shipments with a contamination rate of .5% or less, effectively eliminating imports …
… Hopefully, in time, domestic businesses will increase their desire and demand for recyclables to offset the losses shipping to China
Typical consumer packaging can, at times, be frustratingly difficult to recycle
“Clam shells” and take-out containers have no end-use
Other items are too difficult and dangerous (e.g., bags clog machines and batteries can cause fires)
And everything must be clean so that the resulting recycling commodities are saleable
As a result, more stringent requirements are making it harder for consumers to “get it right” when they recycle and therefore increases mistakes and what must end up in landfills, further adding to our collective, daunting environmental concerns
Fortunately, we all face similar issues and we can learn from each other
Are you doing enough??? (off my soapbox)
Thank you for helping make our world a greener one for years to come!
Harry
