Recycling is Real: MassRecycle Rebuttal to NPR Article

MassRecycle Newsletter

"NPR’s recent story “Recycling plastic is practically impossible — and the problem is getting worse” misleads listeners into thinking that recycling is pointless. MassRecycle has recently written an open letter to address the misleading aspects of this story. We encourage all to read it and understand why NPR did not represent recycling accurately. It is linked below. Far from addressing the real problem with plastic waste (overproduction), this kind of negative press motivates people to 'throw it all in the trash'. Recycling is not a sham. Please do not throw everything in the trash. Recyclable plastics are being recycled and given a second life as new products. This is happening every day. MassRecycle offers facility tours, including tours of Material Recovery Facilities where recycling is processed: we invite the public to see recycling for themselves. If you put recyclable plastic in the bin, it will be recycled. There are resources available that will tell you which items can go in the recycling bin. Go to the Recyclopedia and type an item in the search bar. If it says the item is recyclable, make sure it is clean and put it in your bin. It will be recycled. If it cannot be recycled, try not to buy it again. Not all plastic is manufactured to be recyclable. Your recycling processor can not change this, but Extended Producer Responsibility legislation (EPR) can. EPR holds producers responsible for some of the cost of disposing of their products, thus incentivizing the production of recyclable products. MassRecycle has a dedicated committee devoted to advancing EPR: the Massachusetts Product Stewardship Council. Use the resources that you have available to you. Listen to the MassRecycle Podcast to hear The Rest of the Story, keep in mind that metal recycling is in direct opposition to mining, and get the behind-the-scenes of solid waste. Join us on a facility tour. Look for our upcoming resources to help you to minimize your plastic waste this holiday season. Recycling is real. The public has power. Tell your legislator that you want EPR. Find out what is recyclable and what is not. Stop buying trash." Read MassRecycle Open Response to NPR | Subscribe to MassRecycle Newsletter

Wingless Weirdos

Charley Eiseman | Bug Tracks

"Ever since I made a place on BugGuide to collect photos of them over a decade ago, I’ve been wanting to see (in person) one of those weird wingless gall wasps that can be found throughout the winter. Two years ago I put them on the 'winter bug bingo' card I made for the online 'Bugs in Winter' course I put together, and I think one participant managed to find one, but I wasn’t so lucky. Last fall at the end of a game of tennis, I noticed a white oak leaf at the edge of the court with a couple of 'oak pea galls' on it . . . This gall is caused by Acraspis pezomachoides (Cynipidae), and knowing that Acraspis is one of the genera with wingless adults, I decided it was time to be a little more proactive in my quest to see one, so I took the leaf home and stuck it in a jar. But alas, I just got a couple of lousy parasitoids. Last month, while leading a workshop on identifying invertebrate tracks and sign, I picked up a white oak leaf with an 'oak hedgehog gall' on it—made by the related species Acraspis erinacei. [...] I decided to try again, so after everyone had gotten a good look at the gall, I had Julia put it in her backpack. A week or so ago, I remembered the gall and had Julia fish it out of her backpack. I put it in a vial on a shelf in my office, and every couple of days I've remembered to check the vial (most of my other bugs having been put away for the winter at this point). Last night I checked, and there she was!" Read More

Mass. has too much food waste. Increasingly, it's being used to make electricity

Barbara Moran | WBUR

"The Fancypants Baking Company in Walpole is like a Willy Wonka cookie factory; at every turn there are giant bowls of dough and tall racks of snowflake cookies and gingerbread men. Justin Housman, who co-founded Fancypants with his wife, said the company makes up to 300,000 cookies a day. And with that many cookies, there's bound to be some mistakes. He points to a line of women piping white icing onto blue snowflake cookies. 'There's human error that's possible, they're moving quickly. If you drop something on the floor, it's sure not getting sold to a person, right? No matter what.' Those cookies that end up on the floor are part of a bigger problem: Massachusetts throws away almost one million tons of food waste every year. To help decrease this, the state has tightened its food waste ban; as of November, 2022, any business that generates more than a half a ton of food waste per week cannot send it to landfills or incinerators. At Fancypants, Houseman is already working to keep cookie waste out of landfills; he donates many misfit cookies or sells them at a discount, and the ones that can’t be saved go to a facility called an 'anaerobic digester.'" Read More 

Winter Farmers Markets Begin This Weekend

Berkshire Grown E-Newsletter

"List of Vendors, Great Barrington

November 19: Winter Farmers Market at the Housy Dome; List of Vendors, North Adams November 20: Winter Farmers Market at Greylock Works; You can find the full regional list of markets here." Subscribe to Berkshire Grown E-Newsletter

Countries Want to Plant Trees to Offset Their Carbon Emissions, but There Isn't Enough Land on Earth to Grow Them

Katie Surma | Inside Climate News

"Countries’ climate pledges rely on 'unrealistic' and 'extensive' amounts of land for carbon removal projects like tree planting schemes, a new report from the University of Melbourne said. A landmass larger than the entire United States, about 1.2 billion hectares, would be needed for countries to deliver on those plans, which largely ignore who lives on and manages the lands at issue, including the rights of Indigenous peoples and other land-based communities living in rural areas that rely on land for survival and culture. 'Countries are loading up on land pledges to avoid the hard work of steeply reducing emissions from fossil fuels, decarbonizing food systems and stopping the destruction of forests and other ecosystems,' said Kate Dooley, the lead author of the so-called Land Gap Report and a researcher at the University of Melbourne." Read More