SIFT Vision Poster on the wall at our After 5 Drinks and Nibbles event on Tuesday

Welcome to the end of another working week. We met some potential new projects, had a bit of an After 5 drinks and nibbles event for few key people at our offices, met with current projects to get updates and generally continued to do what we do.

On the way we also found some interesting tid bits that you might be interested in perusing. Here are this week’s Friday Favourites:

• A great article here from Nick Potter on his affair with the word “sustainability” – what will be the new words? You can see more of what Nick Potter does on his website Re-Be.
• A dining room made from recycled plastic bottles that floats – a unique eating experience here.
• Another great link from the team at Re-Nest who found an article in a recent Martha Stewart Living magazine about using real peanuts for packing (definitely better than styrofoam “peanuts”).
• The latest Environmental Indicators Quarterly from the Ministry for the Environment here (pdf).
• A great little tutorial on how to make reusable sandwich bags – (no velcro, glue, and only minimal sewing) – great idea here.
• A move in the US to replace ornamental gardens with food producing gardens here.
• More disrespect for and damage to the environment – will the fine work? More here.
• The kitchen of the future – bringing the vege garden inside – more here.
• The fridge that grows food not just stores it here.

Have a great waste free weekend.

Furniture is being moved around today in the office including the massive board table we bought last year being moved upstairs. Thanks to one of our trustees Dixon McIvor and his band of strong lifters! Hope they go okay moving the massive bits of glass! And the really early daffodils bought earlier in the week are still letting off a very spring fragrance and provide great loveliness throughout our working day as well!

A few great links have come our way over the past week:

• How to make gift bags from newspaper (love this idea!) on How about Orange blog.
• Wellingtonians can now recycle more plastic than before. Numbers 1 to 6 can now be put in the recycling bin. More here from Scoop.
• Carbon Neutral coat hangers – this guy has big plans – via Re-Nest.
• Funding for the world’s largest Reuse network has been launched by actress Joanna Lumley and London Mayor Boris Johnson.
• Beautiful Gorilla gardening with living quotes on walls from A Bloomsbury Life.
• Shoes made from left over bits of wood from Swedish artist Liza Fredrika Aslund here via Bit Rebels.
• Bike powered tools in Guatemala via Re-Nest – what a great idea!
• Couple in the US went waste free for a whole year (just like our friends Waveney and Matthew at RubbishFree.co.nz).

Have a wonderful waste free weekend.

Martha Stewart Living Test Kitchen Waste Station

While catching up on some blog reading over the weekend I spied the above inspiring yet simple waste station in the test kitchen of Martha Stewart Living Omnidmedia in New York via Martha Stewart’s blog. You can just see that there are more bins on the other side as well. I love the Landfill sign “This is quit-zies no take backs” and that they have  a bin for the chickens!

What is great about this waste station is that it works within the function of that particular work space – the test kitchen; it includes a bin for organic waste (for the chickens) as well as the other types of waste recycling or recovery. Not only does the signage fit with the MSL brand but it is also super simple and easy to see what goes where.

When it comes to reducing the amount of waste that goes to landfill from businesses and organisations it is interesting to note two things: 1) Anecdotal research* suggests that household waste accounts for about 3.8% of all waste to landfill (the rest is commercial and industrial and construction and demolition) and 2) for some reason those who recycle at home may not necessarily recycle at work. This shows that our next step to reduce waste to landfill needs to come in the commercial and industrial and construction and demolition areas. And the first easy step is to set up easy and efficient waste management in your own business. For some this might mean they have access to council provided bins or bags for others this will mean hiring bins from independent waste management businesses. Know the types of waste you produce and what the best way is to 1) reduce it and 2) to recycle it.

Promote the benefits to reducing waste and installing an efficient waste management system to ensure buy in from all levels of the oraganisation. There will be benefits to the bottom line with cost savings for procurement (buying less paper) and waste managment (reducing to a smaller bin). Make it relevant to your staff, easy to use and understand and possibly a little fun with some good signage. Lots of internal communications on the hows and whys is important.

It is also good to consider all types of workers in your business and organisation and how they produce waste. If you have people that spend most of their time on the road install a couple of small bags in their vehicles to take the rubbish. Office bound workers can walk a short distance to a centralised waste station on each floor or house the waste station in the cafeteria or work kitchen. It is also important that those who empty the waste bins understand the importance of ensuring the right waste goes into the right bin that is collected by your council – don’t forget to talk to the cleaners too. You could even promote this to your customers, suppliers and visitors. Work with suppliers to reduce packaging, work with customers to move to less packaging for your own product or service and promote the waste management system to visitors so they know what to do with the waste they might bring with them (like lunch packaging!).

Recognition and awareness of the waste your business or organisation produces, reducing that waste and then moving to a long term efficient waste system will have benefits for the environment, for the bottom line and for your brand value.

Here are some other waste station ideas:

MSL recycling centre

Recycling Frame from Matteria Shop via BLtd

Re-Nest Recycling Station

Recycle Bins from Lowes

The SIFT Office Waste System - Organics, Landfill, Recycling

I have noticed that a lot of the links I have included are American based. There are some great New Zealand companies around that provide different bins for different uses for waste management and even just suping up some old cardboard boxes will do the trick. For Cantabrians try Agpac who stock Urba bins. You can get an organics bin like the one in the SIFT photo as well as great stackable bins for all your different waste streams.

We would love to see any creative or just plain practical office or business recycling. Send us your photos and we will post them here on the SIFT blog.

Images: MSL Recycling Centre, Matteria Shop Frame, Re-Nest Recycling Station, Lowes.

*From Richard Lloyd at Becon

Bicycles for Recycling at Resource Recycling (ChCh)

These weeks are flying by – soon we will be talking about how to have a waste free Christmas and summer holiday and feeling the heat rather than the cold! But, in the meantime here are some cheery mid-Winter links for your Friday.

• How to make your own magazine files – genius from Re-Nest.
• A treehugger article by Fred Pearce on the growing problem of consumption not population here.
• A possible solution to textiles waste from NYC here.
• Ideas for recycling old linen here.
• Green Investment Bank proposed for the UK reported by the Guardian here.
• New Waste Facilities Survey from the MfE here.

Have a Waste Free Weekend.

Source: Flickr promqu33n photostream

Phew! What a week! Project meetings, strategic planning, new enquiries…All go! But as always we still kept a look out for the waste and sustainability links that could be interesting for our blog readers. Here are this week’s Friday Favourites:

• I watched the No Impact Man movie this week, finally and it was excellent. Inspired me to do a lot more no impact living especially when it comes to waste. You can read Colin Beavan (No Impact Man)’s blog here or get inspired and take action here and watch a clip from the movie here.
• 21 Councils in New South Wales, Australia have formed an alliance to halve the amount of waste going to the Albury Waste Management Centre in Southern NSW as they are running out of room. More here.
• Latest tonnage statistics from the MfE on waste to landfill here.
• Have you heard of the Pacific Gyre and all of the plastic waste circulating around it – Beth from Fake Plastic Fish blogs about why we can’t clean it up here.
• Celsius.co.nz posted a really informative video on what happens when BP spills….coffee!
• Want to know what is happening in New Zealand’s energy sector for the past quarter (and the carbon emissions associated with that)? Check out the lastest NZ Energy Quarterly from the MED.
• How to make a house out of an aeroplane here from Re-Nest.
• Another great find from Re-Nest - Reclaimed and upcycled Apple Gadget chargers – love the typewriter.
• National Geographic’s Human Footprint movie – a look at consuming from birth to death and how much we consume. Info here and short clip here.

And if you haven’t already checked it out visit Waveney Warth and Matthew Luxon’s new Rubbish Free website for some great tips and resources.

Have a lovely Waste Free Weekend (WFW)!

Source: Twig & Thistle Sárah Goldschadt Garden Flags Reusing egg cartons

SIFT has had a big week this week. I attended the Philanthropy NZ Regional Funders Forum on Tuesday and learnt about how to create a learning organisation from Fiona Ellis, who is the ex-Director of the Northern Rock Foundation in the UK, and what it means to be a social lender from Laura Benedict, a social lending practioner from the US. Laura is in New Zealand at the moment to write a paper on social lending in New Zealand as part of the Ian Axford (New Zealand) Public Policy Fellowship and is the head of the commercial lending department of Self Help, the US’s largest non-profit community development financial institution. Lots of great and useful information from both speakers that I am still digesting.

And yesterday we had our yearly SIFT Strategic Planning Afternoon. We reviewed why we are here, what we want SIFT to be and do, the values, vision, mission and critical outcomes for the next year. One of those is to continue to grow SIFT as a learning organisation specifically to find waste minimisation/avoidance solutions.

We are ready for a New Year full of new projects and new ways of operating.

But for today here are the favourite links from around the world and locally:

• Tips from the Christchurch City Council on what to do if your organic wheelie bin freezes!
• The bigger picture – CO2 parts per million in the atmosphere is still rising – more action required.
• Spring idea – use old muffin pans here as mini planter boxes.
• UK recycling week to increase awareness of recycling. Keep NZ Beautiful week is September 17th to 24th. More info here.
• KR Connect talks trash – German artist HA Schult made a beach-side hotel out of rubbish from the beaches & Nike’s use of plastic bottles to make football jerseys.
• The new generation of GE lighting – Flexible Light Sheets.
• Easy way to plant native trees – the Life Box from Paul Stamets.
• Museo Ettore Guatelli’s collection of tools – lovely photos on Flickr.
• Invercargill and the Southland region is coming to terms with the best way to deal with all of its wastes here.
• Cleaning up polluted waterways here.

Have a great waste free weekend.

We visited the CCC2 Materials Recovery Facility on Tuesday - here's a sneek peek. More to come.

Here is this week’s round up of what of the waste, sustainability goodies we have come across:

• New Zealand government announced a new Environmental Protection Authority (EPA)
• UK government backs a recycle reward scheme here.
• How to be a retronaut- turning a picnic into a time machine (interesting to see what broke down in the soil over 20 years and what didn’t).
• Great graphic visual of USA waste statistics – economic growth leads to an increase in waste.
• A couple of links from Re-Nest – A cotton ball alternative and how to make some architectural storage boxes.
• A new how to from the Ministry for the Environment – how to green your event – great resource especially (don’t forget about all of the waste!)
• The latest issue of Good Magazine is nearly here – yay! So much content for our lunchtimes next week!

Hope you have a low impact weekend!

Christchurch City Council Recycling Truck (Source: CCC)

Lots of great and intersting waste and sustainability tid bits have been discovered this week:

• The glowing lamp made out of coffee cups from Re-Nest.
• Something we want to try – making our own paper.
• In the US it is prom (or formal) time and some high school girls are looking for green prom dresses – great idea.
• Bicycling as it should be – wouldn’t this be great for Christchurch – rush hour traffic on bikes from the Netherlands – could watch it for hours!
• Another Re-Nest find – covering chairs with old jersies.
• Thinking of switching from disposable razors for shaving to a snazzy metal one that will last years? If seeing who else does will help  Satorialist Scott Schuman does.
• Another look at what we consume – Kate Bingaman Burt drew what she bought everyday for 3 years.
• And more locally there has been some recent media attention on the Christchurch City Council requesting all residents ensure their bin lids are completely down otherwise they will not be emptied. You can listen to Radio New Zealand National’s Jim Mora to talk Mayor Bob Parker here (choose the Panel segment #2 and it is about three-quarters through) or read it in the Christchurch Press here.

Have a lovely Autumnal weekend.

Here are today’s Friday Favourites – have a great weekend.

• Soccer World Cup and Nike’s recycled plastic jerseys – an estimated 13 million plastic bottles prevent from going to landfill – even New Zealand is wearing them.
• M&S Plan A leading the way on sustainable business – looking to extend the amount of clothing being recycled from 2 million tonnes to 20 million tonnes.
• Fake Plastic Fish discovers some biodegradable/compostable products are not so much.
• Loving the green design content from the  blog Re-nest especially this post.
• Creative paper recycling.
• Another clothing store is recycling its clothes here.

And don’t forget if you have old whiteware tomorrow is the national Fisher and Paykel whiteware recycling day.The first 50 people through the gates will receive a $150 voucher towards some new (more energy efficient no doubt) whiteware. Below are the details for Christchurch:

Fisher & Paykel Whiteware Recycling Day Christchurch details