by Robert Podurgiel 

WASTE COLLECTION  |  WORMS RECYCLE FOOD WASTE  |  LOCAL BUSINESS PITCHES IN  |  BRIGHT IDEA 

Hazardous Household Waste Collection Day

Worms Recycle Food Waste 
(4/08)

Today we're traveling a little far from the borders of Scott Township to Montana, the home of Wilson's Worms, one of the largest farms in the country devoted to raising earthworms. Not just any worms, African red worms. These are considered the Olympic athletes of the worm world when it comes to eating garbage. They reproduce rapidly, are very active, grow fast, can withstand wide temperature variations, take well to confinement and eat any kind of organic vegetable and fruit waste you can throw at them. 

Not only will they eat the coffee grinds you feed them, they'll eat the coffee filters, too. What they won't eat are any types of grease, fat, bones, meat or dairy products. 

As I am writing this Recycle Roundup I am waiting for my pound of African red worms to arrive from Wilson's Worms. They cost $24 per pound and about six hundred to a thousand worms come in each pound depending on their size. What the UPS driver thinks of shipping and handling worms is unknown, but the shipping is included in the cost of the worms. 

To get ready for my worm's arrival, I've been busy chopping up my kitchen waste. After all, they'll probably be hungry after their long trip from Montana. I've been throwing orange rinds, banana peels, coffee grinds with filters, tea bags, cantaloupe skins, grapefruit rinds, shriveled potatoes that have been languishing in my refrigerator too long, even stale bread. 

So far, I have about three pounds of kitchen waste stored in a large plastic jug that was formerly home to one of my favorite snacks, Utz's pretzels. 

When the worms arrive, I'll put them in large wooden box in my basement lined with about two inches of wet newspapers and cardboard cut into strips which will provide the bedding for the worms. 

Once I dump the worms into the box, they will borrow into the bedding then I'll place their dinner in the form of chopped up food scraps on top of the bedding. I'll put some bedding on top of that, and a wood lid on the box with holes drilled in for air. I've also drilled some holes in the bottom of the box for ventilation and to allow any excess liquid to drain out into a tray under the box. Whatever drains out can be used as a liquid fertilizer for my flower beds. 

In a couple of weeks the worms will have digested all the kitchen scraps, and converted them into a rich, natural fertilizer filled with nitrogen, and minerals needed to make plants thrive. The worms will have migrated through holes I've drilled in a second box filled with new kitchen scraps I'll empty out all the worm casings, as they're called, in the bottom box and send them right to the garden, where they will help grow new beans, tomatoes and other vegetables, the unused portions of which will be given back to the worms to turn into more fertilizer. Then I'll repeat the process again and again. Actually, the worms are doing all the work. I have the easy part. 

What are the tangible benefits to my worm project? The average household produces 4 to 6 pounds of vegetable and fruit waste a week. That's about 312 pounds less garbage that has to be hauled each year to the landfill. Once it hits the landfill, it decomposes without oxygen producing a pound of methane gas for each pound of waste. Methane in the atmosphere acts as a greenhouse gas, twenty times as potent as C0₂ in trapping heat. So for each pound of vegetable and fruit waste we recycle, it's the equivalent of not releasing twenty pounds of C0₂ into the atmosphere, or about what we save by not burning a gallon of gasoline, or over the year, 312 gallons of gasoline. 

The fruits, vegetable, flowers, and fruit trees will also produce plenty of rich organic produce. Thanks to the worms, we'll all be eating healthier foods at home. 

We also had some laughs at work when I told Jack, my co-worker, about the worms. I offered to share some worms with him. 

"No thanks," he said. 

Jack explained he had a bad experience once when his house in Green tree was attacked by millions of millipeds after they were stirred up by his grandchildren playing in the pine needles under the trees in his backyard. 

"These are worms, not millipeds," I told him. 

"I don't care," he said. "Just make sure they don't get loose and come after you." 

"They don't eat meat," I said, "just fruits and vegetables." 

Jack chuckled, his knowing 74-year-old Navy veteran smile that says, "I've seen just about everything." 

I did concede. "With my luck, Jack, they'll probably send me the flesh eating worms." 

"That will be a tough one to explain to the police," he said. 

He had a good point. 

If in a future edition of the paper you see a police blotter item that reads man under attack by worms, you'll know Jack was right.

Local Business Pitches In 
(3/19/07)

I work at a busy retail store on Cochran Road in Scott township.  On my way to work each Monday I can't help but notice the blue bins filled with recyclables placed at the curb in front of almost every home I drive by in Scott.  The residents of Scott, as the full bins suggest, are avid recyclers, but when it comes to the many businesses in Scott, it seems there is very little recycling being done. 

Just about all of the businesses I pass on the way to work throw all their potential recyclables into the big dumpsters usually concealed near the back entrance behind their stores.  The business I work at was one of them.  I wondered about this disparity in recycling between Scott businesses and Scott residents.  Was it because business owners were uninterested in recycling or was it because recycling was just too much trouble? 

To find out the answer, I decided to conduct a little experiment.  I set out to start my own workplace recycling program to see the reaction of my management and co-workers to the idea of recycling.  I started out small, with just an empty box tucked into an unused corner of the stockroom.  Over the course of the day, I would throw into it my empty plastic water bottles, yogurt cups and pop cans.  Next to the box, I propped up a paper bag to store the newspaper I bring in each morning and leave on the lunch table for my co-workers to read while they are at lunch.  Each day, after they read the paper, I would fold it up and save it in the bag.  

After a couple of weeks, my co-workers started to throw their own bottles and pop cans into the box.  It seemed it was easier for them when they were working in the stockroom to throw the bottles and cans into the box rather than walk over to the trash bin placed near the entrance to the stockroom.  The box soon started to fill up fast, and I would take a few minutes after work to separate the recyclables then throw them, along with the newspapers, into my car to take to municipal drop off bins on my way home. 

With the success of the bottles and cans under my belt, I decided to branch out by including our discarded office paper, sales flyers, catalogues, expired coupons and the unwanted junk mail that we would receive every day in the form of credit card offers, office machine solicitations, trade journals and technical publications.  To collect the paper, I put a box next to the regular trash can in the office.  That box started to fill up even faster than the box in the stockroom, and I made it part of my routine after work to stop at the Abitibi paper retriever bins at St. Ignatius Church in Glendale or at the Abitibi bins in the parking lot of Our Lady of Grace Church on Bower Hill.  

These bins, I noticed, started to fill up rapidly, too, and needed emptied every week.  Some weeks I had to ride out to the Abitibi bin located at Carlynton Junior Senior High School in Robinson to dump the paper.  Among the newspapers, magazines, and school papers brought from local homes, I started to notice a lot of office brochures, office paper, and sales flyers mixed in, so other businesses in Scott seemed to be getting in on the act when it came to paper recycling.  

We had one hitch, though, back at the office.  The managers were reluctant to recycle paper with sales data or personnel information on them.  Dan, out part-time worker who goes to Pitt, solved the problem by bringing in a shredder.  The Abitibi bins will take shredded paper, and the managers in the office seemed to enjoy the act of feeding the paper documents into the shredder for their ultimate destruction.  Maybe it was something about the whir of the machine and the grinding part. 

"A new toy for the boys in management," Leona, our best cashier quipped when she saw how the managers took to the shredder. 

My modest goal was to collect a ton of recyclables - paper, glass, plastic, and cans - in a year, but we exceeded that goal in only about four months.  We ended up with over three tons of recyclables for the year, and we are still collecting.  As long as the recycling was easy and didn't interfere with normal work routines, but became a part of them, recycling, I found, was successful in the work setting.  It also couldn't be imposed on workers by fiat, but worked better if everybody did it voluntarily.  

I found, too, everyone had a slightly different reason why they helped with recycling.  Bill, our assistant manager, worked for several years in Bedford County, Pa. near a massive land fill.  Every day he saw thousands of tons of usable materials being buried in the land fill and wanted to cut down on the waste going into landfills.  Dan, our part-timer from Pitt, liked the environmental benefits of using less of the Earth's resources when we recycled.  Leona, who emigrated to this country from Germany, and whose family lived through the Depression and World War II in Europe, pitched in too because while growing up she had absorbed a deep abhorrence to wasting anything.  Waste, in her family's view, was a sin.  Management liked the idea because the three tons we recycled were three tons less that they had to pay for when the trash hauler came to cart away our rubbish. 

A township-wide recycling program encompassing businesses might just work, and there could be plenty of benefits for everyone.  The township could be eligible for state performance grants for increasing the rate of recycling.  The township also could realize an increase in revenue from the per ton fees earned for selling the recyclables to the processing center.  That income usually isn't a lot of money, but every bit of extra income the township earns helps keep all of our taxes low.  Businesses can save money, too, by paying less for trash disposal fees, which are likely to increase this year if the proposed per ton tipping fee tax at landfills is increased.  The increase is already under discussion in Harrisburg.  The township also might be able to get a grant from the state to buy larger versions of the blue recycle bin residents use.  Businesses would need larger ones since they would probably generate more recyclables than the average household. 

Employees could put the full bins outside near their present dumpsters once a week when they take out the regular trash.  In that way, taking out the recyclables wouldn't interfere with the regular work routine.  Since most of the businesses are clumped fairly close together in the commercial districts of the township, the logistics of picking up the recyclable for the township shouldn't be a formidable challenge.  In any event, it's something to consider.  We are already doing a good job with residential recycling.  Business recycling could make Scott an even better township when it comes to recycling. 

tell Scott Conservancy what YOU think

The Wisdom of Jack Leads to Bright Idea 
(3/19/07)

Every morning at work in our store in Scott township, I am in the habit of going to the office, counting my change drawer then going to the backroom to fetch the sweeper to vacuum the rug, one of our daily morning chores. 

One morning a few months back my manager said, "Why don't you bring the sweeper up with you, then you won't have to walk back? That's what Jack does." 

The next morning, I brought the sweeper up with me. My manager smiled, and said, "The wisdom of Jack." 

Jack is our 74-year-old co-worker, who not only works as hard as people half his age, but works smarter, so when Jack told me about the benefits of compact fluorescent bulbs, I listened. 

It seems Jack had an outside pole light that kept burning out. Every time it burned out, Jack would haul out the ladder, brace it up against the pole, climb the ladder, unscrew the light cover, and change the light, only to have it burn out again in another few months. He had another light above the sink in his kitchen that changing required dangling over the sink after first removing a set of glass shelves, and the glasses on the shelves. That one kept burning out, too. 

Part of the wisdom of Jack is his willingness to embrace new technologies. He's a whiz with the Internet and is always bringing in jokes and stories about bureaucratic bungling that he gleans from the world wide web, which he surfs like a master. 

Jack took a similar technological approach to his problem with the lights. He researched advances in light bulbs and found that compact fluorescent bulbs last much longer than the incandescent bulbs he was using above the sink and on the light pole. 

He bought two, installed them four years ago, and hasn't had to change them since. 

I told him I had a similar problem with a porch light that kept burning out and was a pain to change.

There are two little screws holding the covering over the bulb. One unscrews from the top, the other from the bottom, and there was always the problem of dropping the screws while balancing awkwardly as I lowered the light cover. 

I tried one of Jack's bulbs and was immediately pleased with results. I bought the soft white version he recommended, and it was as bright as the old 60 watt bulb, but the new compact bulb used only 14 watts, less than 1/3 the electricity of the old bulb. 

Being a member of the Scott Conservancy I am concerned about environmental problems, especially the threat to our children and grandchildren from global warming, so I started to look into the environmental benefits from conserving electricity with the new bulbs. 

Scientists have been telling us for a long time that CO₂ emissions, primarily from cars, power plants, factories, and homes is the major factor contributing to global warming, and the United States is the world leader in CO₂ emissions. Even though we make up only 5 percent of the world's population, we produce over 35 percent of the CO₂ escaping into the atmosphere, or over 6 times the world's average.

I found that 40 percent of the CO₂ emissions we produce in the United States come from power generation, and only 20 percent come from cars. About 25 percent of the power generation in this country goes to lighting, so any saving we can make in electricity generated for lighting can have a big impact on reducing global warming gases. 

There's another benefit, besides. The bulbs save money. I replaced all the bulbs in the house with the new compact fluorescents, and my electric bill went down by 20 percent in the first month. I figure the bulbs will pay for themselves in three months, and I'll save about $112 dollars over the course of the year. I'll also save time and lessen the solid waste problem because I won't have to change and throw away so many light bulbs. The new ones last up to nine years, and the quality of light from the new bulbs is equal to the incandescent bulbs. I use the soft white version, and I use them for everything, including reading, and I can't tell the difference in the quality of the light. 

The big payoff though, for me at least, is the reduction in CO₂ emissions. I figure I'll prevent about a ton of CO₂ from entering the atmosphere each year I use the bulbs. That benefits not only me, but my children and grandchildren, who deserve to grow up in a world not threatened by global warming. Ah, the wisdom of Jack.