Drive the plastic highway? How a California company’s innovative repaving process could lead to the ‘holy grail’ of road construction.
By Jorge L. Ortiz, USA Today
Plastic bottles by the side of a road are a common sight, an unseemly reminder of how often consumer products are discarded carelessly.
Now some of those bottles may become part of the road.
A California company has devised a process that integrates recycled plastic into road repaving, an innovation that could revolutionize the industry while yielding environmental benefits.
Sean Weaver, president of TechniSoil Industrial in the northern California city of Redding, says the polymer-infused roads churned out by the company’s pavement process are sturdier, flatter, safer and more durable than those made with regular asphalt.
More appealing to environmentalists, they incorporate 100% of the old asphalt – sparing the air from dozens of trips by trucks hauling away and bringing in building material – and provide a new market for plastic products that could otherwise wind up in a landfill.
“Everybody that’s looked at it said this will be one of the most transformative road-construction technologies ever,’’ Weaver said. “We’re recycling what’s there, and we’re delivering a road that’s better than the original, at no higher cost than it would cost you to rehab that road the traditional way.’’
By GILLIAN FLACCUS and ANDREW SELSKY Associated Press
Deadly wildfires in heavily populated northwest Oregon were growing, with hundreds of thousands of people told to flee encroaching flames while residents to the south tearfully assessed their losses.
People evacuated statewide because of fires had climbed to an estimated 500,000 — more than 10 percent of the 4.2 million people in the state, the Oregon Office of Emergency Management reported late Thursday.
One fire approached Molalla, triggering a mandatory evacuation order for the community of about 9,000 people located 30 miles (48 kilometers) south of Portland. A police car rolled through the streets with a loudspeaker blaring “evacuate now.”
Inmates were being moved from a women’s prison less than a mile from Interstate 5 in Portland’s southern suburbs “out of an abundance of caution,” the Oregon Department of Corrections said.
With two large fires threatening to merge, some firefighters in Clackamas County, which includes Molalla, were told to disengage temporarily because of the danger. Officials tried to reassure residents who abandoned their homes, and law enforcement said patrols would be stepped up to prevent looting.
The local fire department said on Twitter: “To be clear, your firefighters are still working hard on the wildfires in Clackamas County. They are taking a ‘tactical pause’ to allow firefighters to reposition, get accountability & evaluate extreme fire conditions.”
ALBANY — The University at Albany says it has been notified by local health officials of a “very concerning” spike in COVID-19 cases among students.
If the increas is not addressed immediately, it could result in suspension of all in-[person activities on campus, including teaching, the university wrote in a lengthy Twitter thread.
Emergency rainfall temporary shellfish closures are effective immediately on September 10, 2020, for the following areas due to the extremely heavy rainfall and extraordinary amounts of stormwater runoff and localized street flooding associated with the rainfall:
Towns of Hempstead and Oyster Bay (south shore): All that area of Hempstead Bay, East Bay and South Oyster Bay, including tributaries. Towns of Babylon and Islip: All that area of South Oyster Bay, Great South Bay and their tributaries lying westerly of the northbound span of the Robert Moses Causeway Bridges. Towns of Islip and Brookhaven (south): All that area of northern Great South Bay, including Nicoll Bay, and tributaries lying northerly of a line extending northerly from the southern base of the northbound span of the Robert Moses Causeway (north side of Captree Island) to Dickerson Channel Buoy R N “6” then easterly to North Channel Buoy R “4” Fl R 4s (southwest of Nicoll Point) to junction buoy GR “EN” Fl (2+1) G 6s (Nicoll Bay) to North Channel Buoy R N “30” (south of Green Point) through North Channel Buoys R N “32”, R “34” FL R 2.5s, thence proceeding northwesterly from buoy R “34” FL R 2.5s to Brown Creek Light Fl R 4s 20ft 3M “2” (on the southern tip of the eastern jetty).
Shellfish harvesters can check the status of emergency (temporary) rainfall closures on DEC’s website and by calling a recorded message at 631-444-0480 for the status of the closures. This message will be updated to advise on the status of the closure and reopening of harvest areas.
Heavy rainfall can lead to pollution moving from land to water, known as ‘runoff’, which is a major threat to water quality and the shellfish that live in affected waterbodies. DEC temporarily closes certain areas that exceed a rainfall amount to prevent the harvest of shellfish and to protect public health.
Emergency rainfall shellfish closures last between 4-7 days. During that time, DEC, in cooperation with bay constables and local municipalities, collect and examine water samples from the affected areas.
The temporary closure will be rescinded once water quality meets certified area criteria and shellfish have adequate time to naturally cleanse themselves of potential pathogens.
As part of the experiment in the U.K., you’ll be able to return the cup to McDonald’s when you’re done—or drop it off at a network of collection sites at places like supermarkets.
If you visit a McDonald’s in the U.K. early next year, you might notice a new option if you get a hot drink like coffee or hot chocolate: Instead of a typical disposable cup, you’ll have the choice to walk away with a reusable plastic cup and lid that you can later put in a special bin to be collected and sterilized for another customer.
“Reuse is a really interesting, important tool in a suite of tools that we will need, and we’re exploring as we look to keep waste out of nature,” says Jenny McColloch, vice president of global sustainability at McDonald’s Corporation. The company is the first in the food service industry to partner with Loop, a company that also pioneered a new system of reusable packaging for mainstream consumer products like shampoo and ice cream from major brands. The pilot will test how Loop’s system could work in the context of fast food.
In the U.K., most McDonald’s restaurants are already recycling paper cups, sending them to recycling centers that remove the plastic lining so the paper can be recycled. But a cup reused multiple times can have even less impact. The process is straightforward. Customers who choose the cup will pay a small deposit on it. If they stay in the store, they can drop it off in a Loop bin there and get their money back; if they take the cup to go, they can either bring it back the next time or drop it off at another Loop site later—like a Tesco supermarket, where Loop is also expanding. (If you don’t find a Loop site, the cup is also recyclable, but loses some of the benefit if it’s not reused multiple times.)
“You can now leave the restaurant with it and deposit it anywhere,” says Tom Szaky, CEO of Loop. “So you get that sort of to-go experience fulfilled, and you don’t have to deal with anything other than depositing it back in the Loop ecosystem.” It’s easier for customers, he argues, than lugging around their own reusable mug. “The key that always emanates from everything is how do we make reuse work for the most convenience-focused businesses and consumers, and really focus on that convenience of disposability while acting reusable.”
It isn’t McDonald’s first experiment with alternatives for coffee cups. In Germany, the company gives discounts to customers who bring their own mugs, and serves hot drinks in porcelain or glass mugs when customers are eating in the store. Of course, that’s how most full-service restaurants work. “Most traditional restaurants are entirely ‘reuse,’” Szaky says. “You order your meal and it comes with metal cutlery and washable plates and dishes, and so on.” But when most customers get their food to go, it’s not an option. In Germany, the chain started working with ReCup, another reusable cup platform. The new pilot with Loop will test the idea further.
“We’re using this pilot as a test to think about how a reusable model could work for our system, both operationally in the restaurant, and from a customer perspective,” says McColloch. “So, similar to when we trial new menu items, we have to understand what this means for our franchisees, what it means operationally for the employees at the restaurant, and the overall customer experience, from placing the order to the experience of the cup and the beverage, and all the way through to that collection process. We have a number of evaluation criteria that we’re going to be putting in place for all of those pieces.” They’ll test, for example, different incentives that can be used to encourage customers to bring the cups back. The tests will also show how many times the cups can be reused before recycling, though the design aims for 100 cycles or more.
It’s possible that the same system could also be used for other packaging. “If it works for hot beverages—and we’ve already talked to the team about this—[it could expand] to soda, or your McFlurry,” Szaky says. “And then from there expanding it to your hamburger, french fries. So that you can get everything from your chicken nuggets to your apple pie in a reusable alternative.” He also expects the system to expand to other restaurant chains. “The beauty is, the more players do it, the more convenient the recollection network becomes,” he says.
The team at McDonald’s is hoping that others in the industry will also help the system move forward. “One of the things that we often see in sustainability, not just in packaging, is that the more aspects of society and the more different participants in any industry that are prioritizing sustainable solutions—and in this case, infrastructure and solutions to keep waste out of nature—the more it becomes easier for all of us to make progress,” says McColloch.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Adele Peters is a staff writer at Fast Company who focuses on solutions to some of the world’s largest problems, from climate change to homelessness. Previously, she worked with GOOD, BioLite, and the Sustainable Products and Solutions program at UC Berkeley, and contributed to the second edition of the bestselling book “Worldchanging: A User’s Guide for the 21st Century.”
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It struck in Bruce Springsteen territory, and immediately sent folks to social media, asking ‘what was that?”
By Frank Brill, EnviroPolitics Editor
I felt it. I was at home in Bucks County Pa. a bit southwest of Trenton, NJ, working at my computer and I heard something that sounded like a far-distant thunderclap and then rolling thunder. It lasted a bit longer than a storm event. I think that was an earthquake, I said to myself, and noted the time: 2 a.m.
Sure enough. The news this morning confirmed that a minor 3.1 earthquake had shaken the ground east of Freehold, NJ where New Jersey singer-songwriter legend Bruce Springsteen grew up before making the nearby shore town of Asbury Park famous worldwide.
The National Weather Service’s Mount Holly office tweeted that the small earthquake was felt “in much of central New Jersey.”
New Jerseyans in Freehold and beyond posted about the late-night earthquake on social media, checking to see if everyone else felt the same shaking. The rattling woke up some locals who had gone to sleep, while others were startled by the event as they were getting ready to turn in for the night. Some people received earthquake alerts on their phones.
New Yorkers said they felt the Jersey event on Staten Island and in Queens.
Twitter, which has become the unofficial source of public reaction to such events quickly chimed in.
Not to abandon the news event to social media, the New York Times today reported:
Fernando Bravo, who runs Tony’s Freehold Grill, said he woke up at his Freehold house at 1:57 a.m. and went to the kitchen for water. “I heard noises outside,” he said. “When I checked out the window I did not see anything, but after a minute I heard a big noise.”
He said it sounded like “something big dropped” or crunched “like wood is broken.” He checked on his daughters, who told him it was an earthquake.
When he arrived at the grill at about 6:30 a.m., he noticed the security camera had picked up a little tremble inside his office. A few customers, dropping by for their morning coffee, also said they felt it, said Jacklyn Bravo, his daughter and a waitress at the diner.
Sheriff Shaun Golden, speaking to a reporter for WNBC, said that there were no reports of immediate damage but that full assessments would be conducted early on Wednesday. “Just a lot of nerves,” he said.
Workers in the county’s operations center felt tremors like “jet engines for a few seconds flying overhead,” he said, followed by a “little rattle.” Then the department was deluged by 911 calls from concerned residents Sheriff Golden said.
An earthquake measured at 3.0 is large for the metropolitan New York region. In 2009, an earthquake of that strength hit northern New Jersey, with its epicenter in Morris County, about 35 miles west of Midtown Manhattan.
The largest in the state was a 4.8 magnitude near Trenton in 1938, said Robert Sanders, a geophysicist at the National Earthquake Information Center.
How about you? Did you feel it? Use our comment block to explain where were you and what it sounded like
