Category Archives: Insights

Musings on the 50th Anniversary of Earth Day

Since I was actually alive on the original Earth Day I thought it would be appropriate for me to comment on it.  The only problem is that I have to admit that the original Earth Day just didn’t make that much of an impression on me. I was a 16-year-old high school senior at an all-white, middle- to upper-middle-class, small […]

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Is China’s scrap import ban the end of recycling?

Late last year, the mainstream media picked up on something that had already been causing sleepless nights for many in the North American recycling industry: China’s ban on certain types of scrap materials it imports. This wasn’t something totally new; China had already launched intensive inspections of incoming loads of scrap materials as part of its Green Fence crackdown in […]

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Little Known Problem, Big Impact: Food Waste in the United States

My mother was adept at giving new life to old food; stale bread became croutons, old milk was used for baking, and any leftovers were carefully stored away in Tupperware containers for the next day’s lunch. She made sure we had almost no food waste in our house – and what she was doing wasn’t just thrifty, it was incredibly […]

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