Eideard

A ski area in the US state of Arizona hopes to become the latest in a small number of resorts using “recycled” sewer water to make snow. But the Hopi Indian tribe aims to stop what they describe as the desecration of their sacred mountain.

The San Francisco Peaks tower over the baking Arizona desert. Stands of white barked aspens, spruce and ponderosa pines dot the high tundra landscape, and the mountain is the highest in the state.

The writer must never have been there. This is near Flagstaff and one of the greenest parts of the state.

The US Forest Service, which manages the land, recommends it for hikers seeking solitude in the wilderness. The mountain is a holy entity for the Hopi and other Indian tribes who lived in the area centuries before Europeans arrived.

On the mountain’s western face lies the Arizona Snowbowl ski resort, a narrow 777-acre block of land poking 10,000ft (3,048m) into the wilderness area, which surrounds it on three sides.

People have been skiing there since 1938. But Arizona is one of the driest states in the US, and a recent run of dry winters has left the operators scrambling to find water to make artificial snow to keep skiers – and their dollars – on the slopes.

The resort’s owners, who manage the resort under an agreement with the US government, are embroiled in a row with the Hopi Indian tribe, which has filed a lawsuit to stop Snowbowl’s plan to pump highly treated wastewater from the nearby city of Flagstaff up the ski runs to make artificial snow.

The Hopi say spraying treated wastewater on the mountain – even just within the boundaries of the ski resort – would irreparably sully it and threaten their ability to carry out their religious rites among the peaks. And they say it would defile the pristine wilderness for all those who want to enjoy it without skis on.

I’m not going to waste space on the myths of religious beliefs which wholly ignore science and scientific testing. Recycling wastewater is a successful process worldwide. It’s such a standard in the world of recycling that the topic is boring.

Solve the Hopi worries the same way they have always been solved. Give them a percentage of the business. That may be cold; but, it’s pretty much acceptable to all the Native American nations in the region. Usually the only question is which tribe gets the fees.

I seem to have bumped into more than the usual number of looneybirds, dumb crooks and foolishly dangerous human beings in my reading around the world, around the Web, today. But, I think I’ll ignore ‘em for a nice guy-tale from General Motors.

Yes, you read that right. General Motors has indeed taken scrap battery covers that would otherwise have been discarded and, with the help of a team of youngsters from the Lasky Recreation Center in Detroit, turned them into duck houses.

Seems odd, no doubt, but we’d certainly rather see creative recycling such as this instead of sending off the scrap bits and pieces to rot for hundreds of years in a landfill or some other ignominious end-of-life scenario.

According to The General, these homes “will provide a safe place for wood ducks and even screech owls to lay their eggs.” For what it’s worth, this is the second such creative recycling project we’ve heard about from the team behind the 2011 Chevrolet Volt, the first being the reuse of oil-soaked boom material from the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico made into underhood plastic Volt parts. Nice work, GM.

I agree.

A Taiwan company has built a three-storey exhibition hall using 1.5 million plastic bottles instead of bricks to raise interest in recycling, creating what the builder described as a world-first.

Far Eastern Group, a Taiwan-based conglomerate known for construction and financial services, commissioned the 130 meter long, 26 meter high structure almost three years ago and will donate it next month to the city government.

Builders took bottles from Taiwan’s waste stream for reprocessing into plastic containers that interlock strongly enough to block the elements and withstand storms or earthquakes, said Arthur Huang, managing director of the contractor Miniwiz Sustainable Energy Development Ltd.

No one else in the world had built an exhibition hall with walls made entirely of bottles, he said.

The pavilion, dubbed the EcoARK, includes an amphitheatre, museum space and a screen of falling water collected during rainy periods for air conditioning. The clear plastic containers in the wall allow natural light to flood the cavernous interior.

Just a single example of what can be constructed from society’s leftovers.

There really is a difference between smart shopping vs. cheaping out.

Axion International Holdings has won a $957,000 contract to provide the U.S. Army with two bridges made from a thermoplastic composite and recycled plastic.

The two bridges, which are replacing old wooden ones, will be constructed at Fort Eustis in Virginia from a proprietary Recycled Structural Composite (RSC) developed by Axion in conjunction with scientists at Rutgers University.

The railroad cross-ties will be made entirely of a plastic composed of recycled materials from both consumer and industrial plastic waste…

The location is significant. Fort Eustis is home to the U.S. Army Transportation Corps, the branch of the Army responsible for coordinating the movement of personnel and cargo. The Fort Eustis motto is Einstein’s famous quote “Nothing happens, until something moves.” It’s also the location of the U.S. Army Transportation Museum.

But this is not the first military bridge to be made out of plastic by Axion for the military. The Army has previously built plastic bridges for Fort Bragg and Camp Mackall in North Carolina using materials and structural design that allowed for a bearing load of 73 tons for tracked vehicles and 88 tons for cars and trucks. To demonstrate its strength a 70-ton M1A1 Abrams tank was driven across the bridge at its official unveiling in September.

The Pentagon moves forward into the realm of common sense, recycling, 21st Century design.

Skeptics, of course, will stick with coal-fired locomotives and other objects and ideology suitable only for theme parks.

This is NOT what we’re talking about!

Some U.S. toilet paper makers say they’re taking steps to make their product “green,” which will make it less soft and fluffy but better for the environment.

But others say U.S. customers still want the soft stuff, so they’re still selling it.

“At what price softness?” Marcal Manufacturing LLC Chief Executive Officer Tim Spring told The Washington Post. “Should I contribute to clear-cutting and deforestation because the big (marketing) machine has told me that softness is important? You’re not giving up the world here.”

His Elmwood Park, N.J., company is trying to persuade customers to try 100 percent recycled paper…

The challenge is in how toilet paper is made. Each sheet is a web of wood fibers. Fibers from old trees are longer, producing a smoother and more supple web.

Fibers made from recycled paper such as magazines, newspapers or computer printouts are shorter, producing a web that is often rougher.

It ain’t sandpaper, folks.

To my pleasant surprise, both chains only offered recycled toilet paper. Trader Joe’s was cheaper – no surprise. But, I doubt if anyone shopping there needed to make a special stop on the way home to reduce fear of abrasion on their butt.

Scientists at Manchester University have found a new way to make egg boxes – out of chicken feathers. They used feathers rejected by a duvet and pillow company as a basic ingredient for a range of paper products, including festive wrapping paper.

At present, the vast majority of the 120,000 tonnes of feathers plucked from poultry in UK farms goes into landfill or is incinerated. However, under the method pioneered by Professor Chris Carr and colleagues, feathers from poultry are beaten, filtered and turned into a crude feather pulp.

The team have also been able to make plant pots that are far more biodegradable than traditional plastic pots. The researchers believe they may even offer enhanced fertilising properties as protein originally found in the feathers leaches into the soil.

Governments both sides of the pond have pointedly ignored the precepts of reuse and recycle for so long – this seems like an enormous discovery. Before the era of Reagonomics, studies and experiments like this were common. The only questions asked were the same you’d ask, today: [a] is it profitable enough to be a viable business product? [b] is the availability of raw material adequate for long-term production.

Nice to see the phenomenon becoming widespread – again.

Time for a remodeling job for the International Space Station. At 10 years old, it needs more bedrooms, another kitchen and bathroom and a more reliable water supply — though one that might make most folks squirm a bit.

Top priority for the Endeavour crew, poised to lift off Friday night from Florida for a 15-day mission: installing hardware designed to recycle urine into drinking water…

“We are not really drinking our own urine. We are drinking water that has been reclaimed from a process with urine as the input,” Magnus said,

NASA’s water recycling gear is an essential part of plans to increase the staffing…

Endeavour’s long mission will enable the astronauts to return to Earth with the first samples of the recycled water. Experts in NASA labs will test water samples to evaluate the accuracy of the station’s own water purity analyzer.

After another round of testing, NASA will decide if the station’s reclaimed water is safe to drink.

The testing probably is just to assuage concerns of Congressional and other dummies. The process required for safe recycling of body fluids is nothing new.

Though NASA may figure out how to make it triple redundant [useful] and ten times as costly [predictable].

A block of white “foam” sitting in a pool of water slowly and steadily sucked up the magenta-colored liquid. The foam, made almost entirely from recycled glass, can absorb water from around plants and store it until needed by the plant’s root system.

Earthstone, a Santa Fe-based company, hopes the new product will be an environmentally friendly boon to the agricultural/horticultural industry. Not only do the “growstones” hold the promise of diverting millions of glass bottles from the landfill, but the technology could create new, green jobs, increase harvests and reduce the amount of water used for landscaping and growing vegetables.

The company has been seeding the market, testing its new product with major growers, who are reportedly enthusiastic. Although the planned rollout won’t be until next spring, Andy Hernandez, director of operations at Earthstone, estimates the company is sitting on at least 50 truckloads of back orders. Growers, he said, “would buy as much as we could make…”

At a plant on Parkway Drive off Rufina Street in Santa Fe, Earthstone manufactures the foam blocks using technology developed by the company. Crushed glass ground into a fine powder the consistency of flour is mixed with a foaming agent and poured into ceramic molds, which are then heated to over 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit in a railroad-car-sized kiln for up to 10 hours. The formula rises, creating a rigid foam that looks like a large loaf of freshly baked bread. Air released during the heating process creates bubbles in the material. The cooled cakes are ground into tiny bits for hydroponic uses or crushed into stones less than an inch in diameter for soil amendments. They can also be cut into abrasive blocks for cleaning purposes.

Hard-working and innovative folks. I only happen to know them in passing – from crews I had work on facility repair and maintenance. Their commitment to recycled products and green solutions is commendable.