Healthy Indoors Magazine - USA Edition

HI May 2014

Healthy Indoors Magazine

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Plastic and Bottles and Paper, Oh My! an I just get a little recycling around here?!?! I live in Phoenix, Arizona, which is currently the sixth largest city in the United States. We have sprawl, sunshine and some stuff to sort out when it comes to our recycling initia- tives and waste diversion goals. Across the country (and world), cities, people and industry are ramping up their recycling initiatives for a myriad of reasons: • To help curb greenhouse gas emissions. • To conserve precious land. • To earn revenue. • To turn waste to energy. • Or simply to be good stewards to the earth and because it's the right thing to do. Looking at the life cycle of a product - from natural resource through end of product life - should help make the importance of recycling (and reusing) even more apparent. * Check out The Story of Stuff Project (http://storyofstuff.org/) for good perspective on this, as well as The Story of Stuff video with Anne Leonard at the end of this article. Many cities, including Phoenix, have set waste diversion goals. When we throw something away, that "away" is most likely a landfill where we bury our waste and it slowly breaks down and contributes to climate change by emit- ting methane (CH4), which is the second most prevalent greenhouse gas emitted in the U.S. as a result of human activities. According to the EPA: "Landfills are the third largest source of CH4 emissions in the United States." So the less we throw "away," the better… About a year ago, Phoenix launched its 40 by 20 campaign (40% waste diversion by the year 2020) along with a nice new logo and educa- tional/outreach campaign called Re-imagine Phoenix. And just in case you're wondering, yes, I can re-imagine Phoenix in more ways than one, but that's a story for another day. C Healthy Indoors 51

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