Landfills, like this one at Hunter’s Point, produce methane, which can be used for electricity and fuel. Photo: kqedquest.

Trash that ends up at a landfill is the ugly stepsister of hipper, cooler compostable kitchen scraps and recyclable bottles and cans. But landfill trash has more of a future than you might think. As garbage decomposes, it gives off methane. Methane, when floating around in the atmosphere, is a harmful greenhouse gas; it traps 20 times more heat than CO2. But methane’s other moniker is natural gas, and is an important energy source. Methane from landfills can be captured and used to generate power and fuel vehicles—often the very same garbage trucks that brought the trash to the landfill in the first place.

Landfills are not just giant heaps of rotting trash. At the base and sides of a landfill, the trash is separated from the natural world by thick plastic liner, which prevents the effluvia from decomposing garbage from entering the environment and contaminating the groundwater. The trash itself is strategically stacked in layers of cells—landfills can be hundreds of feet deep. Within the landfill, different microbes break down the trash via anaerobic digestion. The microbes produce methane gas as a waste product. There are other gases produced too; this mix of gases produced by anaerobic microbes is called biogas.

Old landfills are punctuated by pipes that collect the biogas, which is then burned to prevent the gas from entering the atmosphere (and prevent the neighbors from smelling the stink). Open flares are just what they sound like—little burning flames of methane. Closed flares filter out the contaminants before the smoke is released. Flaring the biogas at the landfill is probably the most common way of dealing with it. But it is an unfortunate waste of a potentially valuable fuel source.

Newer landfills are built with methane collection in mind from the early stages of construction. Pipes can be buried in the landfill as it is filled with trash. Pipes can also be placed in wells drilled through the trash after the landfill has begun to be filled. A vacuum system collects the gas as the microbes produce it. The amount of gas a landfill produces depends on the volume of trash and the age of the landfill; eventually, the gas production will peak and then begin to taper off. Today’s big landfills, however, can produce biogas for decades.

The methane collected from landfills can generate electricity via a turbine or internal combustion engine. Often some of the electricity is used at the landfill to run equipment, and the rest is sold to the local utility.

Methane from biogas can be converted to compressed natural gas, which can be used as fuel for vehicles. In some areas, regulations stipulate that large fleets of vehicles (with more than about 50 trucks) are required to run on clean fuel. When biogas is converted to compressed natural gas, the vehicles can refuel at the landfill. Building a system that converts biogas into compressed natural gas is a big investment, but the fleet saves on fuel costs for decades. These kinds of biogas systems can be installed at anaerobic waste digesters at places like wastewater treatment plants, not just landfills.

Altamont Landfill has taken things a step further, converting landfill biogas into liquefied natural gas. First, impurities are removed, and then the gas is cooled down to a liquid state. This liquefied natural gas is used to fuel Waste Management’s garbage trucks. Altamont Landfill’s liquid natural gas system is the largest in the world.

Obviously, we should buy only what we need, recycle what we can, and be careful to compost everything that’s compostable. But it’s nice to know that something useful can come from plain old trash.

 E-Waste Recycling Educator Guide

Every year, Americans throw away more than 300 million outdated lap tops, cell phones, printers, broken computer monitors and old television sets. But only 18-percent of all that electronic waste is recycled, according to the EPA. Hoping to cut down on the growing mountain of high-tech trash, two dozen states have passed laws that require the electronics industry to pay to set up recycling programs. But navigating this patchwork of legislation has been a challenge. From Wisconsin, Todd Witter reports.

In a dark industrial building in south central Wisconsin, stacks of old television sets, computer monitors and electronic gadgets spread out as far as the eye can see..Jim Cornwell is the president of Universal Recycling Technologies in Janesville, Wisconsin and he's giving us a tour of what he calls the “cradle-to-grave” electronics recycling facility.

“You can see behind the employees the conveyor with all the CRT picture tubes,” Corwell explains. “And those tubes are going up into the machine that separates the leaded glass from the borosilicate, or panel, glass. From there it goes into another machine that we built that actually cleans the glass so we can send it back to the glass manufacturers for reuse.”

Since Wisconsin's E-waste law took effect last year, Cornwell has added over 40 new employees at the Janesville facility. And while the state did not keep ewaste data before the program began, they have seen a 34% increase in ewaste collections in the last 6 months. The law has helped take in what would have languished in someone’s basement or, worse, been dumped illegally in a landfill. Illegal because all of that e-waste is loaded with nasty chemicals and heavy metals like lead, cadmium and mercury.

Sheila Davis is executive director of the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition, based in San Jose, California. Davis says that there are over 4,500 chemicals that are used to make a flat-panel display in your average television set.

“And the same with your computer,” Davis adds. “There's over a thousand different kind of chemicals that go into making an integrated circuit board in your computer console. That's a lot of chemicals and when you throw them away, those chemicals go somewhere. And right now there's really not a safe place for them to go.”

That's why Wisconsin and 23 other states have enacted so-called “take-back” legislation over the past decade. The laws require electronics manufacturers to provide for the collection and recycling of e-waste. In Wisconsin, manufacturers need to collect and recycle 80 percent of the amount of electronics they sell in the state. If they can't collect that much, they're fined. But Wisconsin’s law is different than many of the other states with ewaste laws. And that’s making it difficult for electronics producers, says Walter Alcorn, a vice president with the Consumer Electronics Association, an industry group based in Washington, D.C.

“There’s some, I believe 19 different sets of registration requirements that exist across the states,” Alcorn explains. “These create additional compliance costs that really don’t go toward getting more electronics recycled, which is ultimately the goal of this whole effort I believe.”

Alcorn adds that a federal E-waste law would eliminate some of the redundancies as well as what he calls the “dead weight” costs of administering 24 different programs.

“These are costs that don’t go toward collecting or recycling used electronics, but go to something else that would not be necessary if there were a national system for recycling electronics.”

Although there is a bill in Congress that would curtail E-waste exports to some developing countries, there is nothing in the works to coordinate producer responsibility. That’s because there is wide disagreement between the computer industry, TV industry, environmental groups, retailers, and other players over how strict a law should be, if there are fees involved, and other details that involve potentially billions of dollars in costs.

Jason Linell is executive director of the National Center for Electronics Recycling, a non-profit organization that assists in promoting recycling programs across the country. He suggests that a national takeback law might be easier to administer, but not all manufacturers will embrace it.

“It’s not something the industry will talk about a whole lot,” Linnell says. “But privately they’ll say, maybe it’s better that we only have 25 states now and not 50, because that’s a whole lot more people if we have all 50 states covered and potentially a whole lot more volume that we’d be responsible for collecting and funding the recycling of.”

New E-waste laws take effect this year in New York, New Jersey, South Carolina and Vermont. But even with them, one-third of Americans still live in states with no e-waste recycling laws. And until that changes, experts say, millions of obsolete cell phones, broken VCRs and unwanted TVs will keep heading for landfills.

Audio Slideshow

Additional Links:

• E-waste lesislation passed in various U.S. states
• Information on Wisconsin E-waste law

Until very recently Philadelphians recycled a dismal five-percent of their trash. But all that began to change a few years ago when the city stepped up its mandatory recycling program and cracked down on violators. Now residents are diverting nearly 20-percent of their trash – and that’s saving the city fees from expensive landfills. In our continuing series on Recycling in America, Kerry Grens, from WHYY, reports on how a little consequence can go a long way to changing behavior.

Bright blue recycling bins neatly line 45th Street on Philadelphia's west side. William Taylor, a recycling truck driver and a reverend, treats his routes kind of like a recycling ministry, doing whatever he can to get people on board.

“This is one of the better neighborhoods for recycling,” Taylor said. “They have more of a clue of what's supposed to be in the bucket. Some other neighborhoods, they don't have a clue.”

It's hard to blame residents for being confused.

It used to be that people had to separate their recyclables: cans in one bucket, glass in another, and so on. Then the city rolled out “single stream” recycling: just one big blue bin for all recyclables.

“People just didn't know what was recyclable,” says Carlton Williams, the deputy commissioner of the Streets Department. “People said, 'I'm confused, I'm not going to figure it out anymore, I'll just throw it in the trash.'”

Philadelphia was the first city in the country to enact mandatory curbside recycling in 1987, and it's one of the toughest laws in the nation.

Other cities like San Diego and Seattle have followed suit, but Philadelphia’s recycling rates were low for years.

So when mayor Michael Nutter took office in 2008, he got serious. The city started picking up recycling each week, instead of once every two weeks. It added plastics and cardboard to the list of acceptable items. It spent millions of dollars on trucks, bins, advertising and education.

Philadelphia had a good incentive: it could earn money selling recyclables, while saving money on high tipping fees for hauling rubbish to landfills or incinerators.

“We're at an all time high of $65 a ton for recycling for the city of Philadelphia. That is phenomenal. We're paying $66.50 a ton when we throw things away as trash,” says Williams.

To keep garbage costs in check, and to cash in by collecting more recycled material, the city sent dozens of city workers out roaming the streets, and they began hitting scofflaws in the pocketbook.

That's where Kerry Withers, a SWEEP officer, comes in.

“Sweep stands for Streets Walkways Education and Enforcement Program,” explains Withers.

In other words, he's the trash police.

“If we see most of the people have blue bins around here, what we'll look for is somebody who doesn't have one and that prompts us to check if they're recycling or not,” says Withers, as he snaps on blue latex gloves and walks up to a house, its front yard groomed with flower beds.

“Like right here, you have your soda, your plastics, inside of the trash,” says Withers, opening black trash bags. “You have your cardboard right there that's not flattened down.”

Withers walks up to the home owner, Thessalonia Sharpe, who comes out to her porch.

“You just got to let me know that you're going to recycle. That's all I need to know,” he says to her.

“I'm trying,” says Sharpe. “I'm just cleaning out my basement, I thought that was all cardboard paper and stuff like that.”

“All your cardboards should be broken down,” he instructs her.

This time Withers gives Sharpe a warning, but he regularly writes $50 tickets for people who don’t recycle.

Some Philadelphia residents have paid thousands of dollars in trash and recycling tickets, including property owner Jacquie Stevens.

“Otherwise known as Madame Trash. That's how I feel,” says Stevens. “I'm a landlord in the city of Philadelphia, regretfully.”

Stevens owns 13 properties, which means she's responsible for all the recycling misdeeds of those 13 properties. She says digging through her tenants' trash is a violation of their privacy.

“I put up a no trespassing sign. Doesn't make any difference to them. They're on the hunt for money. Like a gambler went mad, you know?” says Stevens.

Since January of 2010, Philadelphia has issued about 24,000 tickets.

Though Philadelphia's approach to getting people to recycle might anger some, it clearly has worked.

“We've been averaging about 9900 tons a month [of recycling material], which is an all-time high,” says Deputy Commissioner Williams.

Between the money not spent in landfill fees and the money earned selling recycled materials, the city is realizing a net savings of about one million dollars a month.

Hoping to get those numbers even higher, the Streets Department has now dangled a carrot in front of residents, a coupon rewards program http://www.phillyrecyclingpays.com/recycling-rewards-detail.asp for anyone who recycles. The program is too new to tell whether it's any more effective than writing tickets, but it's bound to be more popular.

In California, 82 percent of cans and bottles are recycled.

Monet Coleman, I think it’s fair to say, is not your average dyed-in-the-wool, tree-hugging environmentalist. She says until recently, “I never thought to recycle. Ever.”

But a couple months ago, Coleman ran out of gas money and was late to her classes at nursing school. She wasn’t finding part time work. And that’s when she started getting a lot more enthusiastic about garbage. A few weeks ago, she made eighty dollars collecting cans and bottles from family members’ homes and around her complex, and bringing them to Alliance Recycling, a buy-back center in Emeryville.

“Recycling is making the way for me now,” she says. “I guess it’s my job.”

That’s true of a lot more people than it used to be, says Jay Anast, who owns Alliance Recycling. A few years ago, the only people who came in here were were pushing shopping carts. Now, he’s seeing late model Toyotas.

“Since the economy burst,” says Anast, “we’ve seen more of your middle-class types. We’re getting quite a bit of that now.”

A lot of this stuff would have been put out on the curbside and recycled anyway. But some of it wouldn’t have, which is one reason that recycling rates across the country have soared, according to Jerry Powell, who edits Resource Recycling Magazine, based in Portland, Oregon.

Powell says nationwide, 58 percent of aluminum cans are recycled, the highest rate in 11 years. Soon, he predicts, more cans will be recycled than ever before.

Here in California, the rates are even higher, thanks in part to the state’s bottle bill, which puts a five-cent redemption value on every aluminum, glass, and plastic beverage container, from soda cans to water bottles. (You can see which 11 states in the US have bottle bills on this map.) Last year, 82 percent of cans and bottles sold in California were recycled. That’s up from 55 percent in 2003.

People are recycling vastly more than they used to. It’s a big shift. Recycling was once the icing. Now, it’s the cake. And no where is this change as stark as it is in San Francisco, where the city now recycles or composts almost 80 percent of its waste, sending 30 percent to the landfill. “Fifteen years ago, it was completely the opposite,” says Powell.

As a result of both high recycling rates, and increasing scarcity of natural resources, recycling is a bigger part of our economy than it has ever been before. Entire industries, here, and abroad, literally can’t survive without those bottles, cans, and cardboard boxes you put on the curb, or bring to a recycling center.

“If the total recycling industry said ‘stop,’, says Powell, “ you wouldn’t have an American car made. They’re mainly made out of recycled steel. You wouldn’t have beverages as we have today. You’d have half the newspaper, because you could only get half the paper. Recycling is now just part of the normal economic order.”

But when people start recycling even more and throwing away less, there are growing pains.

For example, Berkeley. For years, the city billed residents for garbage pick-up. Recycling was free, as a way of encouraging people to do more of it. But when people started throwing away less garbage, the city’s revenues dropped. The city has raised garbage rates three times in as many years.

And then, consider the landfills.

Under a baking blue sky at Altamont Landfill, near Livermore, a bulldozer rakes over the days’ trash. It’s been trucked up here from San Francisco and Alameda County and is now being crushed into the hillside.

Ken Lewis, area director for this landfill, and I stand on a massive pile of old garbage. It contains almost every scrap of trash tossed by San Francisco residents for the past 30 years.

In the industry, it’s called “municipal solid waste,” says Lewis, “paper, organic materials, plastics, film plastic bottles, a lot of materials you’d find in any household that’s been thrown out over the last years.”

But times have changed. Almost every one of those things is now recyclable, which means, more and more, they aren’t ending up here. Add the fact that, in a recession people buy less stuff, and you have a landfill that’s taking in about two thirds of what it accepted in 2000, says Lewis. He says volumes are way down from San Francisco, Alameda County, and virtually every other jurisdiction as well.

Once upon a time, California’s politicians warned about a landfill crisis. Now, the state finds itself with enough existing landfill space to last nearly 50 years.

But it also means that, as garbage sent to landfills, decreases, the companies that run the landfills must find ways to diversify their businesses. They must find ways to make a profit off of not throwing stuff away.

Houston-based Waste Management, which owns the Altamont landfill, is a good example. Over the last few years, the company has been buying up composting facilities across the country. It runs more recycling operations than any other single company.

And a couple years ago this landfill took a step ahead of any other such site in the country. It opened up the first landfill-gas-to-liquid-natural-gas facility in the country. This way, the company can benefit from all those rotting banana peels inside the landfill. As the garbage decomposes, it lets off natural gas, including methane. The landfill has built a facility to suck these gasses out of the landfill, and send them to a processing facility, where they’re converted into liquid natural gas.

This gas now fuels Waste Management’s trucks.

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Here's one silver lining to a slow economy: High recycling rates. Americans are wasting far less, and recycling far more. Nowhere is the trend as strong as in California. As Amy Standen reports, this change is sending ripple effects throughout the economy.

Monet Coleman, I think it’s fair to say, is not your average dyed-in-the-wool, tree-hugging environmentalist. She says until recently, “I never thought to recycle. Ever.”

But a couple months ago, Coleman ran out of gas money and was late to her classes at nursing school. She wasn’t finding part time work. And that’s when she started getting a lot more enthusiastic about garbage. A few weeks ago, she made eighty dollars collecting cans and bottles from family members’ homes and around her complex, and bringing them to Alliance Recycling, a buy-back center in Emeryville.

“Recycling is making the way for me now,” she says. “I guess it’s my job.”

That’s true of a lot more people than it used to be, says Jay Anast, who owns Alliance Recycling. A few years ago, the only people who came in here were were pushing shopping carts. Now, he’s seeing late model Toyotas.

“Since the economy burst,” says Anast, “we’ve seen more of your middle-class types. We’re getting quite a bit of that now.”

A lot of this stuff would have been put out on the curbside and recycled anyway. But some of it wouldn’t have, which is one reason that recycling rates across the country have soared, according to Jerry Powell, who edits Resource Recycling Magazine, based in Portland, Oregon.

Powell says nationwide, 58 percent of aluminum cans are recycled, the highest rate in 11 years. Soon, he predicts, more cans will be recycled than ever before.

Here in California, the rates are even higher, thanks in part to the state’s bottle bill, which puts a five-cent redemption value on every aluminum, glass, and plastic beverage container, from soda cans to water bottles. (You can see which 11 states in the US have bottle bills on this map.) Last year, 82 percent of cans and bottles sold in California were recycled. That’s up from 55 percent in 2003.

People are recycling vastly more than they used to. It’s a big shift. Recycling was once the icing. Now, it’s the cake. And no where is this change as stark as it is in San Francisco, where the city now recycles or composts almost 80 percent of its waste, sending 30 percent to the landfill. “Fifteen years ago, it was completely the opposite,” says Powell.

As a result of both high recycling rates, and increasing scarcity of natural resources, recycling is a bigger part of our economy than it has ever been before. Entire industries, here, and abroad, literally can’t survive without those bottles, cans, and cardboard boxes you put on the curb, or bring to a recycling center.

“If the total recycling industry said ‘stop,’, says Powell, “ you wouldn’t have an American car made. They’re mainly made out of recycled steel. You wouldn’t have beverages as we have today. You’d have half the newspaper, because you could only get half the paper. Recycling is now just part of the normal economic order.”

But when people start recycling even more and throwing away less, there are growing pains.

For example, Berkeley. For years, the city billed residents for garbage pick-up. Recycling was free, as a way of encouraging people to do more of it. But when people started throwing away less garbage, the city’s revenues dropped. The city has raised garbage rates three times in as many years.

And then, consider the landfills.

Under a baking blue sky at Altamont Landfill, near Livermore, a bulldozer rakes over the days’ trash. It’s been trucked up here from San Francisco and Alameda County and is now being crushed into the hillside.

Ken Lewis, area director for this landfill, and I stand on a massive pile of old garbage. It contains almost every scrap of trash tossed by San Francisco residents for the past 30 years.

In the industry, it’s called “municipal solid waste,” says Lewis, “paper, organic materials, plastics, film plastic bottles, a lot of materials you’d find in any household that’s been thrown out over the last years.”

But times have changed. Almost every one of those things is now recyclable, which means, more and more, they aren’t ending up here. Add the fact that, in a recession people buy less stuff, and you have a landfill that’s taking in about two thirds of what it accepted in 2000, says Lewis. He says volumes are way down from San Francisco, Alameda County, and virtually every other jurisdiction as well.

Once upon a time, California’s politicians warned about a landfill crisis. Now, the state finds itself with enough existing landfill space to last nearly 50 years.

But it also means that, as garbage sent to landfills, decreases, the companies that run the landfills must find ways to diversify their businesses. They must find ways to make a profit off of not throwing stuff away.

Houston-based Waste Management, which owns the Altamont landfill, is a good example. Over the last few years, the company has been buying up composting facilities across the country. It runs more recycling operations than any other single company.

And a couple years ago this landfill took a step ahead of any other such site in the country. It opened up the first landfill-gas-to-liquid-natural-gas facility in the country. This way, the company can benefit from all those rotting banana peels inside the landfill. As the garbage decomposes, it lets off natural gas, including methane. The landfill has built a facility to suck these gasses out of the landfill, and send them to a processing facility, where they’re converted into liquid natural gas.

This gas now fuels Waste Management’s trucks.

Slideshow Producer: Kate Szrom

I have a plastic bottle on my desk.  It once contained the cola beverage I really should stop drinking.  I go through at least one of these each day, a habit cut down from a former 6-pack-a-day deluge.  I know the cola isn’t good for me, but now I’m thinking the plastic bottle is even worse.

I have something else on my desk: a pamphlet compiled by Peter Bryant of UC Irvine titled, “What’s Wrong with Plastic Water Bottles?”  Did you know that each year, “144 BILLION beverage containers end up in U.S. landfills, roads, streams and parks?”  Laid end-to-end, according to Bryant, those containers would “encircle the Earth 720 times, or reach to the Moon and back 38 times.”  In the United States, only 10 to 12% of plastic bottles are recycled.  That waste is truly astronomical.  And keep in mind that it takes at least 1000 years for those plastic bottles to break down in the landfill.

Most plastic bottles are made of polyethylene terephthalate, or PET.  That’s a petroleum product.  “4% of the world’s oil production is used as “feedstock” for plastic," according to Bryant, “and another 4% provides the energy to transform it into plastic.”  And of course then there’s the fuel needed to transport it to market.  San Francisco has some of the cleanest, freshest water in the world coming out of the taps. Yet it wouldn’t take you long to find someone walking down the street with a bottle of water that came from France or Fiji at 1000 times the price of the water coming from the kitchen faucet.  Why?

No doubt anthropologists of the future will be scratching their heads wondering why we paid for and wasted so much resources on something we already had pumped into our own homes.

And now due to our addiction to disposable plastic, something even more sinister is happening in the ocean.  In the middle of the Pacific is a circulating place known as the North Pacific Gyre. This vast area, reportedly twice the size of Texas, contains 6 times more plastic than plankton and is now more commonly called the Pacific Garbage Patch.  And this is a expanding environmental problem.  Plastic bags, bottles, buckets, rope, toys, trash and everything in between is making its way down rivers and streams, from storm drains and beaches, to the center of the ocean.

There are many reasons why we should kick the habit of disposable plastics.  But that probably isn’t going to happen soon.  So in the mean time we should get better at reusing and recycling.  As we showed in this QUEST Lab, plastic can be easily changed and modified to be used over and over again.  It’s incumbent upon us to make sure this resource isn’t just wasted, thrown away or worse, becomes more of an environmental hazard.

I’m looking at you, soda bottle on my desk.

Watch QUEST Lab – Properties of Plastic.

QUEST on KQED Public Media.

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Life was easier back before I produced this piece. Now everywhere I look and everything I touch seems to be made of plastic.

I don’t know why I didn’t think about plastic before I produced this story about plastic from around the world that’s gathering and collecting in the Pacific Ocean. But now, everywhere I look and everything I touch seems to be made of plastic: this keyboard, pen, desk, the monitor in front of me, my water bottle, the phone to the left of me, the stacks of video tapes in plastic containers to the right, even the plastic office chair holding me up. But I’m not just struck by the fact that everything’s made of petroleum products. I’m stunned by the fact that I knew all the time that I was surrounded by plastic, but I’d found ways to ignore it, accept it and live with it.

Life was easier back before I did this piece. I didn’t think of albatross stomachs when I saw cigarette lighters for sale. I didn’t have to worry what to do with the plastic lid on the recycled paper cup after I drank my fair trade organic coffee. I didn’t get strange looks from the corner sandwich shop lady until I recently removed a lunch from the plastic bag she provided. I had to explain to her why I didn’t want the plastic bag she so carefully and skillfully packed with my chicken salad sandwich, cheddar cheese chips and juice (in an actual glass bottle).

I told her how plastic doesn’t go away for centuries, how it breaks down into smaller and smaller pieces, even nano-sized particles. I went on about how it could get into the food chain. She didn’t have an answer when I asked her if she knew what we’re doing to the ocean and the planet and our children. Plastic was the enemy and it was everywhere!

I knew I was getting carried away. But then I started thinking maybe I should get carried away. Maybe we all should get carried away, you know, talk about it, get informed about it, get angry about it, write our senators and members of Congress. But being a TV producer who’s always faced with making difficult cuts in the edit room, I knew when less was more. So I chilled out, gave her what I owed for the food and time and left a hefty tip, and started to leave. Her smile made me pause. She thanked me for telling her all about plastic. She said she’d speak to the owner about replacing the plastic bags.

Watch the Plastic in the Pacific television story online.

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According to Sunset Scavenger Spokesman Robert Reed, San Francisco residents should have nothing but "film plastics" (like plastic bags from stores and dry cleaners) and polystyrene, aka Styrofoam.

But the life of a recycling ascetic ain't easy. First of all, it means learning the rules of your particular community, since recycling practices vary depending on where you live. Probably, It means forgoing juice boxes, disposable diapers, complicated, multi-material packaging. It means you've scraped out your cat food cans ("contaminated" recyclables are often tossed). If you're a paper shredder, you've put all the scraps into a paper bag labeled "shredded paper." (Tiny pieces of paper are too hard to collect – sorters usually landfill them.) In short, you've earned a PhD in recycling. (And if you think that's complicated, consider the Japanese.)

Some experts have argued that this is all too much trouble – that instead of aiming for zero waste, we should accept a certain amount of landfilling. Others say that the more citizens recycle, the more efficient the program becomes – hence the movement toward mandatory recycling. One point that nearly everyone seems to agree on is that products on the shelves must be designed to be more easily recyclable than they are today.

Is This Recyclable?

On that note, we interviewed two recycling experts: Mark Murray, director of Californians Against Waste, and Kurt Standen (no relation, amazingly to both of us), general manager of the Sacramento Recycling and Transfer Station. We came armed with six recycling stumpers, including a rubber boot, a juice box, and that much-maligned item of transport, the plastic bag. See what Standen and Murray had to say by clicking on the images below.

Listen to the Getting to Zero Waste radio report online.

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The recyclable aluminum in these packed bundles fetches around $1.50 per pound on the commodities market.

There's something about recycling that brings out the OCD in me.

A brown paper bag filled with scrubbed-out cans and neatly stacked newspapers; corn husks and coffee filters in a compost tub; a garbage bag so light it barely makes a thud when it lands in the black bin. Things falling into their rightful place. So satisfying!

And yet for all the care we take with recycling (and I know I'm not the only one), much about the process is mysterious to most of us. Why don't municipal recycling programs pick up plastic bags – even the ones with the chasing arrows symbol on them? What's the deal with yogurt containers? Or bottle caps? Greasy pizza boxes?

Part of the problem is that these rules change depending on where you live, the result of a schizophrenic system wherein local municipalities contract with private companies or non-profits to design their own, local recycling programs. Berkeley, for instance, declines to recycle most plastic on the grounds that while technically recyclable, plastic is an environmentally unsustainable substance that we should use a lot less of. San Francisco, in contrast, picks up everything from coffee cup lids to plastic buckets and flower pots. (San Francisco was also one of the first cities in the country to start picking up compostable food scraps – which emit methane, a powerful greenhouse gas, when landfilled.)

Meanwhile, economic and policy shifts are changing the way recycling happens. In this story, we look at how recycling programs find themselves at the mercy of sudden swings in the global commodities market. Meanwhile, Moore's law and the digital conversion have helped turn toxics-laden e-waste into the fastest growing waste stream. And what about San Francisco's recent decision to become the first city in the country to make recycling mandatory? Is it a PR move, or an enforceable policy? Just some of the issues we'll be looking at later this year.

In the meantime, check out the slide show, below, to see what happens to your recyclables once they leave the curb:

Listen to the Economics of Household Recycling radio report online.

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What are the options for eco-friendly cat litter?

Let's explore the facts around this puzzle.

Fact: There are approximately 88.3 million companion cats in the United States, according to the Humane Society of the US.

Fact: All of them poop. The poop and the kitty litter must go somewhere.

Fact: The traditional clay litters have been criticized for being resourced through strip-mining, and may contain harmful chemicals that cats can lick from their fur.

These three facts alone are reason enough to feel the effects of a conundrum, but let's explore further.

Fact: Flushing cat poop down the toilet is an option once suggested by environmentalists, but is now an eco- No-No. Toxoplasma gondii, a parasite found in cat's intestines, can be passed through the feces.

When flushed, the T. Gondii travels with the toilet water from your house to a treatment center (where it resists treatment) to the bay to the Pacific Ocean and into the habitat of many sea creatures, including the Sea Otter.

A UC Davis study of otters that live in areas near freshwater runoff, found that 42% of live otters and 62% of dead otters tested positive for T.  Gondii.

In fact, recent legislation will require kitty litters bags to include warning labels about flushing.

(Editor's note: QUEST's very first TV story, ""What's Killing the Sea Otters?" – 2/6/07- " covers this topic in detail.)

Now that we are clear on the conundrum, let's explore some options.

Reclaimed Wood Litter: Litter made from reclaimed wood is an greener option. Pine and cedar sawdust that would normally end up in landfills is concentrated without the use of dangerous chemicals to produce environmentally safe litter. Feline Pine, Nature's Earth and Catfresh are options.

Recycled Newspaper Litter: Try litter made from recycled newspapers. The paper absorbs just as well and re-uses resources. Two great brands are Yesterdays News and Good Mews.

Plant-based Litters: Plant-based litters are made from materials such as corn, corncobs, cornhusks, wheat by-products, wheat grass and beet pulp. These biodegradable materials, have no odor, are very absorbent and don't produce the same kind or volume of dust as clay litters.

Biodegradable Bags: These are available at most pet stores. Use the biodegradable litter with them.

Composting: Being a Zoo employee, we are BIG composters of our herbivore poop, creating rich and wonderful soil to grow our botanical paradise at Knowland Park. NatureMill, makers of the pet-friendly composter claim that it is possible to compost pet poop, as well.  This composter, made from recycled and recyclable materials, is an easy to use alternative. Just add food scraps and the computerized composter heats up the ingredients to the 140 degrees (the EPA suggests over 130 degrees). Out comes soil for your flowerbed.

Make Your Own Kitty Litter: The DIY-crowd may even wish to attempt a hand-crafted solution.

These are all great alternatives that, of course, present more questions. Like all environmental issues these days, each solution may lead to a new puzzle or conundrum for us to wrap our greening brains around. Let's keep on exploring!

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