Want to recruit a Trader Joe's store to Greensboro? Give Trader Joe's a better option than what they have today and maybe they'll come. And in doing so we could build a new green community that brings much needed jobs to East Greensboro, develops new green technologies and helps to solve an environmental nightmare that the entire world is facing right now.
Aldi, the parent company of Trader Joe's is facing pressure from environmental groups because:
"A sperm whale that washed up in Spain died after swallowing almost 60 different pieces of plastic dumped by the greenhouses that supply Trader Joe's parent company, Aldi.
This 4.5 tonne whale was defeated by 17 kg of plastic waste, including two dozen sections of the transparent sheeting used to cover industrial greenhouses. There’s no excuse for Aldi's failure to ensure their suppliers recycle and safely dispose of their deadly waste — but as long as they’re given a free pass, plastic will continue to swamp our oceans each year, and more whales will die.
Tell Trader Joe's parent company to make sure their greenhouses recycle or safely dispose of their waste.
Only about 1,000 sperm whales are left in the Mediterranean..."
The problem is: there are very few options for companies to safely dispose of these waste plastics and even the safe options-- landfilling-- simply aren't sustainable.
What's that? Recycling you say? The plastics industry simply isn't interested.
A few years ago (2009) while working as the general manager of a recycling company I devised a means to use mixed plastics waste in the construction of homes and buildings in much the same way that straw bales have been used since the 1850s http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw-bale_construction to build houses. My entire motivation was to prevent the sort of environmental nightmare that is taking place in our oceans today. And it's not just animals that are being poisoned, people are being poisoned by plastics waste as well. The American Chemistry Council, aka, the plastics industry, along with Ogilvy Public Relations fought me tooth and nail even going so far as to threaten my employer and put my job in jeopardy. What the jerk from Ogilvy didn't know was that when he called my boss to speak with him about "my behavior" my boss was out of the office and the jerk from Ogilvy was talking to me. I presented my ideas as part of the American Chemistry Council's second annual blog summit on Plastics “Too Valuable to Waste”
"In addition to Kneiss, the blog will include viewpoints from contributors such as: Bill Carteaux, President and CEO of the Society of the Plastics Industry; John Frederick, Executive Director of the Professional Recyclers of Pennsylvania; Blaire Pollock, Solid Waste Planner of Orange County, NC; Anne Johnson, Director of the GreenBlue Sustainable Packaging Coalition; Billy Jones, General Manager of Salvage America; John Lively of Preserve Products; Patty Moore, President of Moore Recycling; Rachelle Strauss, Blog Author from MyZeroWaste.com; Amanda Wills, Assistant Editor of Earth911.com; and Jeff Wooster, Dow Chemical, North American Senior Value Chain Manager."
The American Chemistry Council and Ogilvy Public Relations has since removed the blog from the web because they didn't want my ideas to take root and the second annual Plastics “Too Valuable to Waste” blog became their last such effort. But they couldn't remove all the press releases they sent out. This idea will work, the plastics industry knows it will work and they don't want you to know it will work. Why? Because among the membership of the ACC are listed every major producer of oil and natural gas in the world. Most plastics are made from natural gas and oil and competing with products that are virtually free are not something they like to do, not now, not ever. The fact that they have hidden my ideas from the world adds weight to what I have to say.
Now I'll go on to explain my idea. I'll begin with an excerpt from Wikipedia on Straw Bale Construction, simply think plastic every where you see the word, straw:
"Straw bale building typically consists of stacking rows of bales (often in running-bond) on a raised footing or foundation, with a moisture barrier or capillary break between the bales and their supporting platform.[17] There are two types of straw-bales commonly used, those bound together with two strings and those with three. The three string bale is the larger in all three dimensions.[18] Bale walls can be tied together with pins of bamboo, rebar, or wood (internal to the bales or on their faces), or with surface wire meshes, and then stuccoed or plastered, either with a cement-based mix, lime-based formulation, or earth/clay render. The bales may actually provide the structural support for the building[19] ("load-bearing" or "Nebraska-style" technique), as was the case in the original examples from the late 19th century. The plastered bale assembly also can be designed to provide lateral and shear support for wind and seismic loads.
Alternatively, bale buildings can have a structural frame of other materials, usually lumber or timber-frame, with bales simply serving as insulation and plaster substrate, ("infill" or "non-loadbearing" technique), which is most often required in northern regions and/or in wet climates. In northern regions, the potential snow-loading can exceed the strength of the bale walls. In wet climates, the imperative for applying a vapor-permeable finish precludes the use of cement-based stucco commonly used on load-bearing bale walls. Additionally, the inclusion of a skeletal framework of wood or metal allows the erection of a roof prior to raising the bales, which can protect the bale wall during construction, when it is the most vulnerable to water damage in all but the most dependably arid climates. A combination of framing and load-bearing techniques may also be employed, referred to as "hybrid" straw bale construction.[20]
Straw bales can also be used as part of a Spar and Membrane Structure (SMS) wall system in which lightly reinforced 5 - 8 cm (2 - 3") gunite or shotcrete skins are interconnected with extended "X" shaped light rebar in the head joints of the bales.[21] In this wall system the concrete skins provide structure, seismic reinforcing, and fireproofing, while the bales are used as leave-in formwork and insulation.
Typically "field-bales", bales created on farms with baling machines have been used, but recently higher-density "precompressed" bales (or "straw-blocks") are increasing the loads that may be supported. Oryzatech out of Goleta, California has been developing rice straw compressed block.[22] Field bales might support around 900 kg per linear meter of wall (600 lb./ lin. ft.), but the high density bales bear up to 6000 kg per linear meter of wall (4,000 lb./lin.ft.), and more. The basic bale-building method is now increasingly being extended to bound modules of other oft-recycled materials, including tire-bales, cardboard, paper, plastic, and used carpeting. The technique has also been extended to bags containing "bales" of wood chips or rice hulls.[4][5]
Straw bales have also been used in very energy efficient high performance buildings such as the S-House[23] in Austria which meets the Passivhaus energy standard. In South Africa, a five-star lodge made from 10,000 strawbales has housed luminaries such as Nelson Mandela and Tony Blair.[24] In the Swiss Alps, in the little village of Nax Mont-Noble, construction works have begun in October 2011 for the first hotel in Europe built entirely with straw bales.[25]Harrison Vault, in Joshua Tree, California, is engineered to withstand the high seismic loads in that area using only the consisting of bales, lath and plaster. The technique was used successfully for housing in rural China. Another method to reap the benefits of Straw is the incorporate Straw-bale walls into a pre-existing structure.[26]"
Did I read that right, did the Wikipedia article read, "The basic bale-building method is now increasingly being extended to bound modules of other oft-recycled materials, including tire-bales, cardboard, paper, plastic, and used carpeting. The technique has also been extended to bags containing "bales" of wood chips or rice hulls." How about that, Billy Jones was right again, Dammit!
As a matter of fact, back in 2009 I pitched my idea to sevaral of the world's leading straw bale builders all located in the west and midwest. Their response was always, sure it will work just fine but why bother with plastic when we can get all the straw we want for free? But when I explained to them that here along the East Coast fields of amber grain from which to cut waste straw are few and far between and bales of straw often cost $4.oo or more apiece they all agreed plastic bales were looking better all the time.
Locally people said, "But what do bale houses look like? We don't want to live in ugly houses." This is a bale house. Click on the photograph to get a close-up.
The outside of the bale house can be covered with vinyl siding, stone, brick, stucco or any other conventional siding choice just as conventional houses are built. A bale house can look any way you want it to look. You see, even your brick houses aren't really brick houses. The bricks aren't holding up the walls and roofs, they simply act as siding to cover the wood. No one has built real solid brick houses in over 100 years.
Bale houses are stronger than any kind of conventional houses, transmit less noise through their 18" thick bale walls, have R values of 17-55 and have higher resistance to fires, earthquakes, hurricanes and tornadoes. Though to be honest I wouldn't put a lot of stock in any above ground structure's resistance to tornadoes. And with plastic bale construction there are no concerns with water damage during construction.
Now imagine if we combined plastic bale construction with some of the other ideas in my series, Economic Development At The White Street Landfill. Many of those ideas like Aquaponic Farming (Part 5) pellet manufacturing (Part 2 and Part 7) Vermicomposting (Part 9) and Community Supported Agriculture (Part 10) would all be complementary to one another and attractive to the kinds of customers Trader Joe's seeks to do business with.
And in doing so it would create a new option for the disposal of waste plastics despite years of efforts by the American Chemistry Council, Ogilvy Public Relations and the worldwide oil and gas industries to do otherwise.
Please folks, share this post with everyone you know even if they don't live in Greensboro.
Please continue reading Economic Development At The White Street Landfill: Part 12
