Tag Archives: production

Electronics Recycling Program Has Real Community Impact

by HartkePoundstone568 Posted on March 7, 2013

According to a recent informal poll, 84 percent of Earth911 readers said they would be more likely to recycle if it benefited a charitable cause. Are you more likely to donate your old electronics knowing it benefits your local job market?

If you are one of millions of Americans with old computers or electronics gathering dust in your home, there’s never been a better time to get rid of your stockpile – and for a good cause.

Photo: Shutterstock

Dell’s free computer recycling program, Dell Reconnect, makes it easier than ever to donate your old computer or electronics through its partnership with Goodwill Industries, whose primary focus is putting people back to work in their local communities. Because all profits from the Dell Reconnect program go directly to Goodwill, you can make your donation knowing it’s good for the planet and your community.

In 2011, Goodwill provided employment training, services, support and resources to over 4.2 million people.

As a non-profit, Goodwill works to assist those with disabilities and disadvantages earn a living and improve their lives through employment and orchestrate educational opportunities, counseling and other resources.

This was a first-hand experience for Goodwill employee Robbie McKolanis, who oversees the Dell Reconnect program at Goodwill of North Central, Penn.

McKolanis started out in his local Goodwill’s school-to-work transition program, Goodwill Works, and was hired by Goodwill after he graduated high school in 2007. Despite struggling with communication challenges with his speech and extreme shyness, his hard work as part of the production team at the Retail Processing Center in Falls Creek got him noticed, and once the Dell Reconnect program started, he was a tapped to apply his skills in a new direction.

Now responsible for all aspects of sorting, weighing and tracking electronics for more than 30 Goodwill locations, McKolanis has come into his own. He is now well known for having great interaction and communication with his co-workers and community, and can attest to the benefits Goodwill’s programs can provide for education and job advancement.

“It took me a while to learn and get used to everyone,” said McKolanis, adding that now, “It’s exciting talking to people and convincing them, ‘don’t be shy!’”

Having come full circle, McKolanis now mentors others participating in Goodwill Works and provides information to visiting guests.

“As Robbie has grown as an employee and taken on the additional responsibilities of the Dell Reconnect program, his potential for opportunities within the employment sector have increased tremendously, “ said Jason Marshall, executive VP of workforce development and retail services for Goodwill of North Central, Penn.

“This partnership with Dell has allowed for Robbie to find his voice and provided another opportunity for us to witness the power of work.”

The power of work is invaluable to those receiving assistance from Goodwill. In 2011, Goodwill helped place more than 23,000 people in need of employment at Goodwill locations, and 189,000 more were placed in jobs within their communities – including tens of thousands of veterans – a new demographic of people facing unique employment challenges.

In 2012, Goodwill expanded its effort to serve post- 9/11 veterans by rolling out Operation: GoodJobs, a program designed specifically for returning military servicemen and women and their families. In addition to job training and placement, the program offers transition assistance programs to help vets re-acclimate to civilian life and individual development plans to assess and assist with personal needs.

Since 2004, Dell Reconnect has diverted more than 250 million pounds of e-waste from landfills. With more than 2,000 participating Goodwill locations throughout the U.S. and Canada the program allows you to simply drop off used computer electronics of any brand and in any condition for free. The trained staff at your local Goodwill will determine whether each item should be refurbished and resold or responsibly recycled.

Editor’s Note: Earth911 partners with many industries, manufacturers and organizations to support its Recycling Directory, the largest in the nation, which is provided to consumers at no cost. Dell is one of these partners.

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Electronics Recycling Program Has Real Community Impact

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Getting off oil, protecting our land

by Posted on February 20, 2013

Getting off oil, protecting our land

Posted 21 February 2013 in

National

A recent study that purports to show the conversion of grassland to corn and soybean crops is not only off the mark, but it also distracts from the real threat facing our nation’s land.

The study, published in the proceedings of the National Academies of Science, relies on hard-to-interpret satellite imagery to come up with estimates, which are, by the authors’ own admission imprecise.

The Renewable Fuels Association takes the study to task in this blog post:

A recently published study in the Proceedings of the National Academies of Science suggests that native grasslands in Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska, North Dakota, and South Dakota have been converted to cropland to facilitate increased corn and soybean plantings between 2006 and 2011. The study’s findings stand in stark contrast to U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) acreage data, which show increased corn and soybean acres in the region have occurred via crop switching, not cropland expansion. Further, the extremely high rate of error associated with the satellite imagery used by the authors renders the study’s conclusions highly questionable and irrelevant to the biofuels policy debate.

And there are some key facts to consider:

Total planted cropland in the five states in 2011 was the lowest since 1995. Total planted acres in 2011 for the five-state area were 3.6% below the 10-year average (2001-2010).
While North Dakota planted 540,000 more acres to corn in 2011 than in 2006, total acres planted to all crops in the state actually fell 3.25 million acres (15%) between 2006 and 2011. Total planted crop acres in 2011 were also lower in Minnesota. This strongly suggests the expansion in corn area took place on land previously planted to other crops.
Data from USDA show that the increase in corn and soybean acres in the five-state region was primarily achieved via crop switching rather than cropland expansion. That is, farmers increased corn/soybean plantings on land previously planted to hay, wheat, and other crops. Indeed, USDA shows total crop acres in the five-state region actually declined 2.1% from 2006 to 2011.

While this study leaves us with more questions than answers, here is what we do know is happening on America’s prairies: the relentless hunt for fossil fuels is having a devastating effect on land, air and water. Developing shale oil in the Dakotas for example is poisoning the soil and water, while “flaring” – or burning excess natural gas, a byproduct of extracting oil from rock formations – is spewing carbon dioxide into the air.

Meanwhile, American farmers are working hard to make the most out of their farms, often producing multiple, beneficial products out of each acre, including renewable fuel and animal feed. Production has become increasingly more efficient, with higher yields resulting in more crops without significantly expanding land use.

At the same time, advanced biofuels present the opportunity to use marginal lands for perennial energy crops – such as switchgrass – in ways that are compatible with land conservation. A study last month from researchers at Michigan State and the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory found that using marginal lands to produce biofuel from plants like grasses could yield as much as 215 gallons per acre along with “substantial greenhouse gas mitigation.”

If we are serious about protecting our natural resources, we need to address our addiction to oil and support clean alternatives like renewable fuel.

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Why the fracking boom may actually be an economic bubble

by wqds234der Posted on February 19, 2013

Why the fracking boom may actually be an economic bubble

By Philip Bump

Fracking proponents like to use an evocative economic metaphor in talking about their industry: boom. The natural gas boom. Drilling is exploding in North Dakota and Texas and Pennsylvania. Only figuratively so far, but who knows what the future holds.

The Post Carbon Institute, however, suggests in a new report [PDF] that another metaphor would be more apt: a bubble, like the bubbles of methane that seep into water wells and then burst.

PCI presents the argument in its most basic form at ShaleBubble.org:

[T]he so-called shale revolution is nothing more than a bubble, driven by record levels of drilling, speculative lease & flip practices on the part of shale energy companies, fee-driven promotion by the same investment banks that fomented the housing bubble, and by unsustainably low natural gas prices. Geological and economic constraints — not to mention the very serious environmental and health impacts of drilling — mean that shale gas and shale oil (tight oil) are far from the solution to our energy woes.

PCI’s strongest argument may be on the rapid depletion of drill sites. The case is made using the data in this graph, showing the amount of oil extracted over time from wells in the Bakken formation in Montana and North Dakota.

PCI

Bakken wells exhibit steep production declines over time. Figure 63 illustrates a type decline curve compiled from the most recent 66 months of production data. The first year decline is 69 percent and overall decline in the first five years is 94%. This puts average Bakken well production at slightly above the category of “stripper” wells in a mere six years, although the longer term production declines are uncertain owing to the short lifespan of most wells.

If five years after a well is drilled it’s only returning 6 percent of its peak production, it becomes harder to justify spending money to operate the well. With less production, more wells need to be drilled.

This steep rate of depletion requires a frenetic pace of drilling, just to offset declines. Roughly 7,200 new shale gas wells need to be drilled each year at a cost of over $42 billion simply to maintain current levels of production. And as the most productive well locations are drilled first, it’s likely that drilling rates and costs will only increase as time goes on.

This is another version of the production problem in the coal industry, but on a much shorter timeline. Wells run out, requiring more wells, fast.

PCI also argues that the low price of fracked fuels, usually attributed to the abundance of supply, is unsustainable too. Taking issue with claims that shale production is a job creator and economy builder, the organization wrote a separate report [PDF] outlining how it believes the marketplace has been manipulated.

Wall Street promoted the shale gas drilling frenzy, which resulted in prices lower than the cost of production and thereby profited [enormously] from mergers & acquisitions and other transactional fees.
U.S. shale gas and shale oil reserves have been overestimated by a minimum of 100% and by as much as 400-500% by operators according to actual well production data filed in various states.

The timing of this report is important. As we noted last week, natural gas prices (particularly for electricity producers) are again increasing. Natural gas has been touted as a bridge fuel from carbon-heavy coal to renewables. If the price of natural gas is being kept artificially low and if production is necessarily going to taper off, that clung-to promise looks remarkably shaky.

Or, to use PCI’s original analogy: The bubble may be about to burst.

Fracking well in Scott Township, Penn.

Philip Bump writes about the news for Gristmill. He also uses Twitter a whole lot.

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Find out which facilities near you are doing the most damage to the climate!

by HarralGeidl697 Posted on February 5, 2013

Find out which facilities near you are doing the most damage to the climate!

By Philip Bump

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In 2011, American industry produced the equivalent of 3.3 billion tons of CO2 emissions — 10.5 tons for every resident of these United States. Two-thirds of those emissions were from power plants, by which we of course mean fossil fuel power plants.

That’s the topline summary of the EPA’s new report on greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions — the second time the agency has completed such a survey. The good news is that the GHG emission number from power plants is going down. From The Hill:

In all, 8,000 facilities across nine industry sectors put 3.3 billion tons of carbon dioxide equivalent emissions into the air in 2011. Power plants accounted for about 2.2 billion of those tons.

EPA said that was a 4.6 percent decrease from power plants compared with 2010, which it attributed to growing reliance on natural gas and renewable energy for electricity generation.

Those emissions could drop even more in the future, as low natural gas prices, expanded renewable electricity generation and an abnormally warm winter last year curbed coal-fired generation. …

EPA released its first report from the program last year, when it considered 2010 emissions from 29 sources. Emissions from those sources fell 3 percent in 2011.

Petroleum and natural gas systems were the second greatest emitters, clocking in at 225 million tons of carbon dioxide equivalent emissions. Refineries ranked third, at 182 million tons.

What’s really cool is the EPA’s interactive map, which lets you zoom in to regions and see what polluters are in any given neighborhood. You can also see where certain types of polluters are more common. Here is pollution from refineries, by state:

EPA

Click to embiggen.

But what the EPA’s map doesn’t show well is where the most pollution occurs. So we made a map that does.

Here’s how our map works: The 250 largest producers of GHG pollution are shown. The larger the orange circle, the more the facility pollutes. The icon over each location is actually a graph; dark orange represents the amount of pollution that is carbon dioxide, lighter orange is methane. Click on an icon and you can see the name, type of facility (see key below), and amount of emissions. (It may be easier to view the map in its own window.)

You won’t be surprised to see that many of the top polluters are in Texas and the old Rust Belt. This is in part because older power production facilities are still grandfathered in under pre-Clean Air Act pollution standards — one of the main gaps in attempts to curb emissions.

What does all of this tell us? Not much that we didn’t know. Power plants create a lot of carbon dioxide pollution. The U.S. creates a lot of greenhouse gases — in 2011, 0.5 percent of the total amount we can still create before tipping into climate catastrophe.

But at least now we know who’s doing it.

—–

Key to types of facility:

C: Stationary Combustion
D: Electricity Generation
E: Adipic Acid Production
F: Aluminum Production
G: Ammonia Manufacturing
H: Cement Production
I: Electronics Manufacture
K: Ferroalloy Production
L: Fluorinated GHG Production
N: Glass Production
O: HCFC–22 Production and HFC–23 Destruction
P: Hydrogen Production
Q: Iron and Steel Production
R: Lead Production
S: Lime Production
T: Magnesium Production
U: Miscellaneous Use of Carbonates
V: Nitric Acid Production
W: Petroleum and Natural Gas Systems
X: Petrochemical Production
Y: Petroleum Refining
Z: Phosphoric Acid Production
AA: Pulp and Paper Manufacturing
BB: Silicon Carbide Production
CC: Soda Ash Manufacturing
DD: SF6 from Electrical Equipment
EE: Titanium Dioxide Production
FF: Underground Coal Mines
GG: Zinc Production
HH: Municipal Landfills
II: Industrial Wastewater Treatment
SS: Manufacture of Electric Transmission and Distribution Equipment
TT: Industrial Waste Landfills

Philip Bump writes about the news for Gristmill. He also uses Twitter a whole lot.

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