Southern Pine Products Ltd was established in Christchurch in 1999, and fast became one of the South Island’s biggest producers of pine and medium-density fibre board (MDF) building products.

Southern Pine has a strong commitment to environmental sustainability within their business operations. Membership of the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC Certified), Telarc Sal registered and Environmental Choice New Zealand accreditation are strong selling points in an industry more readily associated with deforestation than environmental preservation.

Not only are Southern Pine Products’  forests responsibly managed, they are implementing innovative solutions to lessen their environment impact by reducing production waste that would otherwise be heading straight into Canterbury’s Kate Valley landfill. The dust resulting from MDF production was a major cause of economic and waste concern “the dust had been costing $15,000 a month to dispose of, which led the company to explore other options”*.

It was found that the MDF dust could be processed through a new alternative system into briquette form to become bio-fuel for industrial use. EECA (Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority) helped fund the build of a briquette press.

At the time, it was foreseen that there could be a potential reduction of approximately 600-900 tonnes of waste going into Canterbury landfill each year. Southern Pine Products then started to look at local companies who could potentially use the briquettes and discovered Moffatt’s Flower Company located nearby. Moffatt’s Flower Company chose to adopt Southern Pine Products latest waste reduction/bio-fuel technology, and had their burners (used to heat two hectares of greenhouses), converted to use the alternative bio fuel (instead of burning coal). The transfer process was also financially supported by EECA.

As a result there has been a reduction in annual CO2 emissions by 3,100 tonnes, while Moffatt’s Flower Company saves $98,000 a year in fuel costs*.

A financially rewarding business move, Southern Pine Products benefits by repackaging waste into a new revenue stream while Canterbury benefits from less waste to landfill, and fewer carbon emissions.

For information and case studies on how businesses can be more energy efficient, visit www.eecabusiness.govt.nz

 * http://www.beehive.govt.nz/release/eeca+guiding+businesses+green+win-win

Photos Copyright Southern Pine

Use egg cartons in the garden and then compost them.

Another week has flown by. The SIFT week has been full of a couple of new potential applicants, board papers, research, current projects management and some admin thrown in for good measure.

Lots of different things have popped up through our google reader and other newsletters, here’s the best links for you this week:

• Past SIFT project Envirocomp has received $30,000 through the MfE’s Waste Minimisation Fund to carry out a feasibility study on expanding their nappy composting. More  here.
• Photos of dumped e-waste being searched through by Ghanians looking for the valuable metals to sell. Not the best photos – this is quite sad and should not be occuring. More here from The New York Times.
• Waveney from Rubbish Free’s roundup of their weekend at the Nelson Eco Fest here.
• Have you found your WalkScore yet? More here from World Changing. Walk Score is based on Google Maps so it you know there are more services and utilities in your area that would make your Walk Score better update Google Maps with the information.
• Philipe Stark has designed home and urban usable wind turbines. From Greenpages. Now they would be a stylish addition to any home.
• Creative ways to drink tap water from Re-Nest here.
• Molly Eagen is a 25 year living in Minneapolis, USA and is attempting, as part of her thesis, to live 100 days without oil. This is a well researched blog that provides great ideas and new ways to live for all of us. Oil permeates nearly all facets of our 21st century lives so we are looking forward to seeing how she gets on living without it. Could you live 100 days without oil? (Originally via Re-Nest).
• Interactive map that shows the Earth breathing – tracking global CO2 emissions in real time. It takes 14 minutes for New Zealand to clock up 1000 tonnes. It is very well done and you can scroll over each country to see the stats.
• The biodegradable pen from GOOD USA.
• The United Nations Environment Programme has released a new report on sustainability and behaviour change. This is a great tool for all of you in communications, marketing and social change. Developed in conjunction with our favourite Sustainability Communications organisation – Futerra. You can download the report here (originally via Celsias).
• Love this video celebrating the 2010 World Humanitarian Day here.
• This is another great infographic …The National Geographic looks at how much water is embedded in everything we use (note these measurements may be different for NZ). Scroll to the right to see a whole raft of different products from meat, vege, oil, energy, solar. Very interesting.
• This has been one of the blog topics this week so we might as well add it to the list too – Japanese firm Blest is making fuel out of plastic. The video shows how it is all done. We like the way that the machine is portable and could be used for smaller or remote sites.
• Maybe we should just do a graphics blog post! Here is another one from the BBC showing how big different things are against the size of your own country - things like the Pakistan floods, the Pyramids, the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, World War II and the Twin Towers.
• Also from the BBC Mexico has completely banned plastic bags and if you use them you go to jail! More here.

That will definitely keep you going for the weekend and we hope it is a waste free one!

P.S You might have noticed that our waste counter is lighter than it was last week. We have updated it to be in line with the waste statistics from the Christchurch City Council for the year to June 2010 which is 179,207 tonnes to Kate Valley Landfill. That’s a 20% drop on last year meaning our waste counter would have been way out. It was updated by the nice people at HairyLemon.

*Image via here.

It’s time for us all to wake up and recognise what our actions are doing to our environment, our only home.

Time to recognise that everything is connected and we need to care about our impacts in order to care about ourselves, our families and our communities. Our future.

I am currently reading You Are Here – Exposing the Vital Link Between What We Do and What That Does to Our Planet by Thomas M. Kostigen. I am only half way through and already I am more awake to the links and connections of my actions on other parts of the world, on the lives of other human beings, eco systems and species. And not just the impact that my waste has on the people who handle once it leaves my home and office (the drivers and hand sorters) and truck it to Kate Valley landfill and what the impacts are on the land but my actions on the humans and other species overseas (China, the Amazon for example).

Here is a quote that resonated:

“Of course we should care about other people. Too often we don’t connect our morality with the practicality of everyday things in our lives.”

If we put a face to our actions we would change our behaviour. But, all too often the environmental and social impacts of our actions are not in our face, not even in our backyards – we just don’t see it. Most don’t even know where their waste goes (mostly up the road to Kate Valley Landfill or ‘recyclables’ off shore to other countries to ‘deal with’). And you don’t see the carbon emissions coming out of your tailpipe either.

We as individuals emit carbon emissions through our activities: electricity, eating, drinking, transportation, and what we consume for example. But, a lot of the products that we purchase are not made in New Zealand. Most come from China where there is a coal fired power plant being installed every 4 days and a town called Linfen that is constantly covered in brown, toxic smog that the residents breath in from those coal fired power plants (that also amongst other things emit carbon). Those coal fired power plants produce energy to make the products that are exported to NZ for us to purchase and ultimately waste. Constant production. Constant waste. And where does the carbon and smog emitted from those power plants go?

So, what do we do.

1. Wake up.

2. Ask questions – where does my product come from? Who makes it? How does it get here? What other people, environments or species does the production of that product (and its whole lifecycle) impact on? Where does my waste go? What sustainable business practices doese that company genuinely have?

3. Make changes to our purchasing habits. Start buying more New Zealand made (but still make sure those products are low or positive impact). Support local producers. Support sustianbly product, organic and fair trade. Make your own products. Live more simply – live with less. Grow your own.

4. Research the connections of impacts and talk about it – get others to start making changes too. Educate and stay informed.

5. Help. Donate time or money to good causes that are trying to or are making a difference to key areas of the world  like the Amazon, your local environmental group or national organisation.

With China now exceeding the United States in carbon emissions the only way we can help them to reduce their emissions by 80% (which is what they need to do) is to start demanding sustainably produced products or we stop buying those products – talk to the importers, the retailers here in NZ and start demanding. And start demanding NZ options (and NZ producer responsibility programmes) too – and that will help the NZ economy as well.

It is no longer enough to expect others to make the changes first – it needs to come from us all starting today.

As read in Blessed Unrest social and environmental justice is linked. Your actions have an impact on other people’s lives and the environment and it is taking its toll. It is time to start changing our habits for a healthier future for all on this Earth.

Now. Today. Because it may already be too late for many. We may, instead,  need to start thinking about how to live completely differently for tomorrow.

Baled Alumnium Cans

Some call it lazy blogging we call it extending knowledge – sharing the cool, interesting, inspiring, good things that we come across each week that are related to sustainability, environmentally positive living, waste and anything else we think you might like.

Here are this week’s Friday Favourites:

• tips on keeping glass jars from Down to Earth
• Celsias summarises Environment Minister Nick Smith’s climate challenges speech at the Australia New Zealand Climate Change and Business Conference – here.
• Know your symbols to buy consciously – from Greenpeace.
• CO2 Now’s latest monthly newsletter – the number keeps going up – it needs to start coming down!
• This is a great mockumentary on the life of the plastic bag.
• Great case study on the savings made by New Zealand Post by working with Target Sustainability (originally via WasteMinz).
• Have you bought your compostable toothbrush yet? If not, check out these from rubbishfree.co.nz.
• Great graphic on the amount of renewable energy other countries use (NZ is not there but it is about 70%) from Good (USA).
• Love this behaviour change campaign (from Toyota) for more fuel efficient driving – drive with a glass of water on your dashboard. Might try it this weekend!

Have a great waste free weekend – see you next week.

How to recycle your White and Yellow Pages

We have just had our new 2010/2011 White and Yellow Pages dropped off today and I thought it would be useful to highlight how they have said you can recycle your old phone books. This is useful information for those who are not so sure what they should do. For those with less than 4 books you can put them straight into the Yellow top recycling bin. For those with between 4 and 50 books you can drop off a local transfer stations or eco depots. Any more than that and you can either directly drop off at an Eco Depot or contact a paper recycler directly.  Not putting more than four phone books in your recycling bin will be most likely because they will be too heavy.

Good on the Yellow pages for providing this information. The next step would be to provide an opt out service for those of us who are happy to use the internet and reduce the amount of paper used to make phone books and phone books are made from recycled paper not from virgin pulp.

There are a couple of other ideas for what to do with old phone books on the Oily Rag website (scroll down to ‘P’).

Great summary video belwo of Paul Hawken discussing the movement:

The recent book of choice which I have just finished is Blessed Unrest by Paul Hawken. Borrowed from the library it is so good I decided to buy a hard copy to keep and luckily found a second hand one on Trade Me. I will be able to read it again and highlight passages that were significant, moving, interesting and enlightening – because there were many.

Blessed Unrest is a book about the growing movement and connectedness of a vast range of thousands of different but like minded people who run organisations with the sole purpose of saving humanity, regeneration and restoration, social justice and environmental justice. After spending days reading about pollution, waste,  climate change (and worrying about how we all need to start making changes today), social injustices and environmental devastation and disrespect it is refreshing to read a book that captures all the good things that are happening in the world.

Paul Hawken likens the movement to the body’s immune system. A quiet but strong immune response to the diseases (we have created) on the Earth.  He starts off by delving into history to see where the movement came from; from Ghandi to Rosa Parks to Ralph Waldo Emerson and Rachel Carson where the movement started it now spans the entire globe with organisations like World Wildlife Fund for Nature, Greenpeace, 350.org, Friends of the Earth and even SIFT. The world is made up of a vast network of social and sustainability focussed organisations  – focus areas include the arts, education, poverty, children, families, women’s rights, animals, gardening, sustainability, climate change, waste, employment and more.  The hope is that the work these organisations carry out (trust, foundations, NGOs, non profits, some corporations, volunteer groups) will prevail over the destructive forces from a small number of large organisations. This book highlights the good in humans and the need for social and environmental change that must come if we are to survive.

It is definitely a book to read and helps to remind you of all of the good work that is being done on the Earth to enable it to be healthy for future generations. There are some excellent passages and it is well researched with a long bibliography and includes a taxonomy on all of the different areas of focus and the number of organisations working in that area. You need to get a full understanding of the vastness, the connectedness of all of these organisations and their good impacts in order to feel positive – don’t just stick to the general media to keep you informed!

You can read more about Blessed Earth here and browse all of the listings of organisations from around the world here at WiserEarth (set up by Paul Hawken). As their website tag line says “Together we act as one” and it is great that SIFT is apart of this network.

There is so much more that could be said but reading it will do it justice more.

Ever wondered what happens to your clothes after you put them in a donation clothing bin? No? Presumably the clothing is directly transported onto shelves for resale. Right?

We recently headed over to St Vincent de Paul in Stanmore Road to find out what they are doing with the clothing they receive in their clothing bins. Fed up with paying for waste clothing to go to landfill they felt that they could do better and come up with new solutions for the clothing that they could not sell.

Interestingly, here in Christchurch only 25-30% of donated clothing actually enters the St Vincent de Paul stores. The other 65-75%, due to donations being of such a poor quality (yes, clothing bins donations require a level of wear-ability), are dumped. Into landfill. Until now.

St Vincent de Paul has decided to reuse the unwearable clothing in a different way. By approaching local industries the charity found that some of the clothing can be turned into usable rags, customised to the requirements of local businesses who can use them (not just in a couple of sizes). The rest of the unwearable clothing is stockpiled waiting for a solution – currently four containers have been filled.

The purchase of a commercial over-locker has allowed a skilled machinist to customize toweling specifically for car groomers and cleaners and t-shirt material is specifically for mechanics (good oil absorbtion). With an increase in demand from these services the reserve of toweling fabric is now running low. This is a welcomed income input for the charity.

In comparison to St Vincent de Paul, the Salvation Army has 40% of their donated clothing going to local shops for resale and 60% is sold on to a third party who exports the clothing to Africa.

Most surprisingly, the Red Cross imports clothing from Australia, with orders (like a commercial store) being placed to a central warehouse hub across the Tasman. 128 tonnes of second hand clothes were shipped into Tauranga, as quoted in The Press (05/05/2010) due to insufficient donations of a high enough quality from within New Zealand for resale in New Zealand stores. With 4% of waste nationally* being textile waste, the 128 tonnes is an unfortunate addition to the future waste stream.

There are non charitable businesses that work within this small industry also; Tasman Traders and Doonans are rag traders who take old clothing and make them into rags of a few sizes (although not customized for each service like St Vincent de Paul are doing) – and although a percentage of their profits go to charity, this may be as little as 1%. The Traders bins out number charity bins, with hundreds distributed around Christchurch city. Currently the Red Cross have no bins, and St Vincent de Paul have 22 at Catholic parishes around Christchurch.

We have a long way to go yet before we have successfully tackled textile waste but in the meantime here are a few tips to ensure your clothes are sold once you have donated them:

So some tips before you put your clothes into the charity bin:

• Check the quality – no rips or stains

• Wash them first

• Ring your local charity to see if they have any specific requirements before you donate them

• If they aren’t really wearable, think of the uses around the house first – turn them into rags (cleaning the car, windows, washing pets etc)

• Some charities also take household goods like sheets, towels, kitchen and cook ware

• Be mindful of the amount of clothing you buy each year – remember to reduce your consumption first.

* http://www.mfe.govt.nz/environmental-reporting/report-cards/waste-composition/2009/

An estimated 3.156 million tonnes of waste went to landfill in 2006 making the textile waste portion of 4% in 2007/2008 equivalent to 126,240 tonnes just in textiles or 31.5kg per person per year. In Christchurch the total waste to landfill in 2009/2010 was estimated to be 170,000 tonnes – using the national percentage of 4% of textile waste to landfill that’s 6800 tonnes just to Kate Valley Landfill or 19.5kg per person per year.

Last week I posted about reducing waste to landfill through better work waste management systems and asked our readers to send in their new/innovative/creative waste management systems in their offices. My sister-in law happened across the blog post (cos’ she follows us on Twitter here too) and sent in the above photos and the following comment:

“At my workplace we have recently implemented a strategy which Crown Research Institutes have been doing for a while. In your office you get a large cardboard tray for recycling and a tiny wee box for rubbish. Then you have to empty these yourselves at one of the depots. Unfortunately we don’t currently have a strategy for organics, so the depots only have landfill, glass/plastic, and paper/cardboard. The cleaners no longer empty bins in our offices and only empty these larger communal bins.”

Thanks Nicola. This is a great example of in-office waste managment.

Simon Williams

Our latest Green Collar Job Q&A is with Simon Williams. Now, we haven’t actually met (or interacted) with Simon (yet) but we have with Sue Coutts (from Wanaka Wastebusters) who passed on the Green Collar Job Q&A to a few of the people who work for Wastebusters and Simon is one of them. He is the Enviroschools Facilitator, Zero Waste Educator and graphic designer  at Wanaka Wastebusters.

Education for sustainability is Simon’s thing. For the last 3 – 4 years he has facilitated EfS within the Lakes District of Aotearoa, New Zealand, with the local early childhood, primary, high schools, youth groups & community. He delivers the Enviroschools and Zero Waste Education programmes with passion, energy and commitment. Simon loves working at Wanaka Wastebusters, the dynamic and energetic way of working really suits. When he’s not immersed in EfS he uses his graphic design and photography skills to promote sustainable living to his community.

Simon is part of a growing number of people who are using their skills to further sustainable living ideals – thanks Simon for your answers!

1.    What do you do to live more sustainably (with a low impact) in your life?
I try to minimise my waste, am conscious of home energy consumption, I buy quality products that I expect to last a long time.

2.    How do you live more sustainably at work?
Print as little as possible, recycle and compost my waste, make the most of travelling, using the least amount of energy possible, promote sustainable practices to many people  I work with.

3.    What do you  think is the biggest environmental issue we need to deal with in Christchurch/New Zealand?
That more, big and economic growth are best.

4.    What makes you smile?
snowboarding, amongst many other things, and the colour yellow.

5.    What is your biggest pet peeve?
People talking using only clichés and power terms, it tells me they don’t fully understand what they are talking about and it’s so ambiguous….grrrrrrrrrrrrr

6.  What is your favourite colour and why?
White because it is a combination of every colour…….then yellow because it makes me smile

7.    Do you have a favourite place in the world? Describe why?
2nd pipe at Treble cone……it’s so much fun

8.    What’s your connection to SIFT?
I don’t have one

9.    Do you remember your favourite teacher and why they were your favourite?
I’ve had many favourite teachers, the ones who inspire me to change the way I think and question my staid opinions

10.    What do you want to leave behind?
Inspiration

11.    What do you think the future will bring?
Fun and lots of smiles on top of many heart wrenching tears

12.    Who is someone you really admire and why?
Richard Feynman – One of the world greatest thinkers with the ability to communicate amazingly complex things with everyone in a fun and engaging fashion.

13.    What is happening outside your window right now?
I don’t have a window right now.

14.    What is your favourite breakfast?
Full English

15.    What is the best piece of advice you can give us?
Don’t talk to me in clichés