IT-Green™ : Computer Recycling Service

IT-Green™ offers leading Computer Recycling services for Corporate, Educational and Government bodies throughout the United Kingdom. A policy of zero landfill coupled with relevant licenses and a professional service means that IT-Green guarantees:

• The removal of all corporate identification.
• Compliance with stringent environmental legislation.
• Work carried out with minimal disruption to your business.
• Trained, uniformed personnel.
• A cost effective solution.

Tracking your redundant assets, removing valuable data and outsourcing an ethical recycling route can be time consuming and costly. We offer an end to end service, reducing your overheads and the burden placed upon your I.T staff.

The recycling service offered by IT-Green™ for redundant Computer Baseunits ensures:

• Resource extraction from obsolete or faulty Computers.
• Re-use of Components deemed to have residual life.
• Bespoke data wiping* solutions to meet the most stringent requirements.
• Tracking of redundant computers throughout the recycling process.
• Certification* where requested as part of a contract.
• Non export of your discarded hardware.

As part of our service, we are legally obliged to produce a transfer notice, documenting the quantities of Computer waste transferred into our posession. Our collection staff will issue you with a copy of this notice, along with a EWC (European Waste Catalogue) coding note at the time of collection.

We re-process all obsolete Computer hardware in-house and baseunits are stripped to their constituent components before being passed onto vetted processing plants for base materials extraction inside the UK, thus ensuring no resources are wasted.

Our collection staff will be happy to advise you with regard to discharging your legal obligations when a collection is carried out. For more information, or to request a quotation, please contact us using the number shown at the top of this page.

Garden compost - Four Steps To Making Really Wicked Compost

We here at Garden Advice tell you how to make the best garden compost heap so that it will smell nice and sweet and do wonders for your garden.

Step One: The Container
Firstly a container is not an absolute necessity as you can make perfectly good compost in a free standing heap as long as it is large enough. You will see later why this may be a drawback. Assuming then that we need to make a container we are faced with many choices. A very adequate container can be constructed by scrounging four shipping pallets and nailing them together to form a cube. If the nails holding the front panel are left protruding enough to get a claw hammer on them they may then be withdrawn in order to gain access to our lovely compost. This route appeals to me as I have a rather parsimonious approach to gardening.

However it must be said that your garden may start looking like Steptoe's yard [from a comedy series] with a few of these dotted around the place. There are lessons to be drawn from this approach though. The dimensions are about ideal and the gaps between the boards allow an adequate amount of air to reach the contents. It is also a robust construction which will not collapse with the weight of the compost within. The more DIY [Do It Yourself] orientated among you would be able to construct something much more aesthetically pleasing from rough sawn boards, bearing in mind that sides measuring four to six feet in all directions are more than adequate for our purposes.

You may of course decide to buy a container which is a very good idea if you are one of the mortals whose hammer to thumb aim is as good as mine. Finally the lid. A sound lid which excludes the rain and retains the heat is essential. It may be made from old carpets and plastic sheeting or be a close fitting custom made little number with matching hinges and a sexy little latch, it matters not as long as it performs the above functions.

Step Two: The Contents
Now the nitty gritty, what goes in it, what can we make into compost. In short anything with an organic origin. Obviously we do not want to put the remains of the Sunday joint in for obvious reasons, every rat within a mile radius will beat a path to your compost for a feed. Simlairly we don't want to put the remains of next doors cat in there when he has used your petunias for a toilet one time to many, tempting though it may be. The issue here is not really what goes in but how it goes in. Take for instance grass clippings, a fine compost material but every gardener will tell you not on their own. A heap of grass clippings will swiftly become a stinking morass. However mixed with some weeds and shredded woody material such as rose prunings to allow the air to move through it they would be fine, believe me. So what we are looking for is a nice diverse mixture of different types of material. We should mix our heaps like a nice rich fruit cake adding ingredients in just the right proportions to get a good texture. This is best achieved by reserving winter produced woody materials and tough weeds in a separate heap and shredding them before adding them. If you are choking on the thought of buying a shredder don't, hire one. They don't cost a fortune to hire and you could club together with a couple of gardening neighbours to defray the cost further, trust me it will be worth it when you see the end result. Another advantage of renting a shredder is the noise, they howl like a banshee and are ideal for wreaking dreadful revenge on that anti-social bugger down the road who likes to play ABBAs greatest hits at two o'clock in the morning.

All this rambling brings us to the somewhat vexed question of kitchen waste (vegetable of course). It seems that whatever you do your compost always turns out looking lovely except for the banana skins and eggshells peppering it like hideous decorations. The best answer I have to this problem is after much consideration a wormery. I have seen many of these in action and have been impressed by how simple and effective they are.

Step Three: Building And Managing Your Heap
Let us imagine it is spring and a gardeners fancy turns to thoughts of compost. You will soon be faced with grass cuttings and weeds to say nothing of spud [potato] peelings all to be disposed of and transformed into gold by your soon to be compost heap. Don't panic. you have your nicely shredded heap of woody material to hand, a splendid container and all summer to do your magic. Start by throwing a good layer of woody material into the bottom of the bin to let a bit of air circulate, then mow your lawn and sling in the clippings. If your lawn is large and the clippings numerous you may like to consider adding a little woody material between the third and fourth barrow load. Next perhaps, after a decent interlude and a cold one you fancy a little weeding, carry on, go nuts [crazy], chuck them all in. This material will be fairly diverse in size and texture so should not need the addition of any of our woody material. Then it's into the house to get the lunch on, this should produce a nice bucket or two(?) of material; heave that in on your way back down the garden to resume your labours. Beware however that the spud peelings etc are not to wet, too much water is very bad for compost heaps so such material should be well drained before it is added to the heap.

If you have kept up this routine throughout the summer your heap should be full by now. Obviously if you have a large garden you may be on your third heap by now, but fear not the principles are the same for postage stamp or stately home. The composting process should have begun and the heap should have heated and cooled by now and be ready to turn.

This is hard yakka [work] so choose a cool day. (Digression: here is were we find out why most people have two bins.) Either fork the material from one bin to the other or drag it all out and chuck [throw] it back in mixing it thoroughly as you go. If it looks a little dry, have a watering can handy andgive it a sprinkle from time to time. The need for this will be explained in the next part, so please bear with me. I feel this is also a good place to discuss the merits or otherwise of compost accelerators, I am unequivocally in favour of them. Composting can be problematic enough without tying one hand behind your back before you start; so use them. You can buy many sorts but they all do more or less the same thing which is help to feed the bacteria (more of which later) which actually make the compost (and you thought it was you). Anyhow, add the accelerator at this stage.

Now when all the material is back in its home in the bin, nicely moistened and fed and the lid nailed down, you can relax and enjoy life. However it is a good idea to monitor the temperature of the bin from time to time just to make sure everything is tickety boo [fine]. This is not as complicated as it sounds. If your (or anybody else's) cat sleeps on the lid in the middle of winter you can be fairly certain things are as they should be. Seriously, though all you need to do is poke a cane down into the middle of the heap leave it for five minutes and pull it out. If it feels nice and warm to the touch you have cracked it [done it right] and the job's a good 'un. Obviously, the temperature of the heap will fall as the bacteria become less active but there should be noticeable warmth there for a least two months from turning. Beware though, gentle reader, if your cane test comes up cold after only a couple of weeks you have a problem and should consider re-turning the heap and adding a little more accelerator or more water.

Step Four: The Science Bit
It would only be fair to ask at this stage how the blazes does a bit of water, air and compost accelerator turn a mass of unprepossessing garden waste into a useful, nee indispensable, garden product. The answer is simple and yet at the same time fiendishly complicated. I will attempt the former explanation. Simply put, it is bacterial activity which does the magic. If you give the little devils the correct living conditions then they will work their magic. A word of caution here though, there are basically two kinds of bacteria, aerobic and anaerobic. this merely means some need air (the aerobic ones) to thrive and others (anaerobic) can manage quite well with little or none. For reasons which will become obvious, the ones we want are the aerobic ones. The anaerobic kind live at the bottoms of ponds, sewers and other wet, dinghy places and give off a fearful smell as they do their nefarious work. If your compost is too cold and wet, this is the kind you will encourage. Beware. Aerobic bacteria on the other hand are creatures of light and air and enjoy a little warmth; correctly made compost heaps are absolutely crawling with the little dears. And how you may ask do we encourage these paragons. By varying the texture of the material we provide for them, in order that air may circulate (and turning the heap to re-invigorate them when the first flush of activity has passed). By providing just enough moisture to allow them to work without drowning them and finally by adding a little something extra to help them to thrive. The life cycle of the compost heap then goes something like this: as you are building theheap and throwing in lots of good green material you will notice it getting very hot, steaming would be good. This is the first phase of activity as the bacteria go to work being fed mostly by the nitrogen in the material. When the heap cools, it is because these bacteria have used up all the available food, air and moisture and are having a little post lunch nap. It is very important to know that at this stage things can go very pear shaped [wrong] as the heap can become anaerobic, but here you come with your fork to turn the pile and restore it to an aerobic condition. This flush of air and the accelerator you have added will wake up our bacteria, and get them working for you again. the second phase of composting will then start, which will not necessarily be as hot and exiting as the first but will still produce plenty of heat. When all finally goes cold, you will be able to break open the heap just in time to feed it to your hungry garden, to start the whole thing going again.

There you go. I hope you enjoyed that little dissertation on the subject of compost and are feeling a little more enlightened. I am sure there are those who will take issue with what I have written. To them I say good luck, bon chance etc. It is only by entering into a debate about things that we make progress.

Organic Fertilizers

Contact: Diane Relf, Extension Specialist, Environmental Horticulture
Posted April 1997

When used in reference to fertilizers, the word organic generally means that the nutrients contained in the product are derived solely from the remains or a by-product of an organism. Cottonseed meal, blood meal, fish emulsion, manure and sewage sludge are examples of organic fertilizers. Urea is a synthetic organic fertilizer, an organic substance manufactured from inorganic materials.

When packaged as fertilizers, organic products have the fertilizer ratio stated on the package label. Some organic materials, particularly composted manures and sludges, are sold as soil conditioners and do not have a nutrient guarantee stated on the package, although small amounts of nutrients are present.

Some organic fertilizers are high in one of the three major nutrients (nitrogen, phosphorus, or potash,) but low or zero in the other two. Some are low in all three macronutrients. A few organic products can be purchased "fortified" for a higher nutrient analysis. The ingredients used to fortify organic fertilizers are organic materials; for example, rock phosphate to increase phosphorus, or greensand to increase potash.

Organic fertilizers depend on soil organisms to break them down to release nutrients; therefore, most are effective only when soil is moist and warm enough for the microorganisms to be active. Nutrient release by microbial activity, in general, occurs over a fairly long time period. One potential drawback is that the organic fertilizer may not release enough of their principal nutrient when the plant needs it for growth.

Cottonseed meal is a by-product of cotton manufacturing. As a fertilizer, it produces a somewhat acidic reaction; consequently, it is frequently used for fertilizing acid-loving plants such as azaleas, camellias, and rhododendrons. Formulas vary slightly, but generally, cottonseed meal contains 7 percent nitrogen, 3 percent phosphorus, and 2 percent potash. Nutrients are most readily available to plants in warm soils, but there is little danger of burn.

Blood meal is dried, powdered blood collected from cattle slaughterhouses. It is a rich source of nitrogen, so rich, in fact, that it may burn plants if used in excess. Gardeners must be careful not to exceed the recommended amount suggested on the label. In addition to nitrogen, blood meal supplies some essential trace elements, including iron.

Fish emulsion, a balanced, organic fertilizer, is a partially decomposed blend of finely pulverized fish. A strong odor is associated with most brands of fish emulsion fertilizer, but the smell dissipates within a day or two. Recently, deodorized brands have been developed.

Fish emulsion is high in nitrogen and is a source of several trace elements. Contrary to popular belief, too strong a solution can burn plants, particularly those growing in containers. In the late spring, when garden plants have sprouted, an application of fish emulsion followed by a deep watering will boost the plants' early growth spurt.

Manure is a complete fertilizer, but low in the amount of nutrients it supplies. Manures vary in nutrient content according to the animal source and what the animal has been eating. A fertilizer ratio of 1-1-1 is typical. Commonly available manures include horse, cow, pig, chicken and sheep.

The highest nutritional concentration is found in manure when it is fresh. As it is aged, exposed to weather, or composted, nutrient content is reduced. However, most gardeners prefer to use composted forms of manure to ensure lesser amounts of salts, thereby reducing the chance of burning plant roots. Because of its low concentration of plant nutrients, manure is best used as a soil conditioner instead of a fertilizer. Typical rates of manure applications vary from a moderate 70 pounds per 1000 square feet to as much as one ton per 1000 square feet.

Sewer sludge is a recycled product of municipal sewage treatment plants. Two forms are commonly available: activated and composted. Activated sludge has higher concentrations of nutrients (approximately 6-3-0) than composted sludge. It is usually sold in a dry, granular form for use as a general purpose, longlasting, nonburning fertilizer. Composted sludge is used primarily as a soil amendment and has a lower nutrient content (approximately 1-2-0).

There is some question about the long term effects of using sewage sludge products in the garden, particularly around edible crops. Heavy metals such as cadmium, sometimes present in the sludge, may build up in the soil. Possible negative effects vary with the origin of the sludge and with the characteristics of the soil where it is used.

Compared to synthetic fertilizer formulations,organic fertilizers contain relatively low concentrations of actual nutrients, but they perform important functions which the synthetic formulations do not. They increase the organic content and consequently the water-holding capacity of the soil. They improve the physical structure of the soil which allows more air to get to plant roots. Where organic sources are used for fertilizer, bacterial and fungal activity increases in the soil. Mycorrhizal fungi which make other nutrients more available to plants thrive in soil where the organic matter content is high. Organically derived plant nutrients are slow to leach from the soil making them less likely to contribute to water pollution than synthetic fertilizers.

(Excerpted from The Virginia Gardener Handbook, Diane Relf, Editor.)

Water World: From Toxic Scrap to Harmonious Village

by Heather Livingston
Contributing Editor

Summary: The U.S. federal government has a big problem moored on the James River near Fort Eustis in Newport News, Va. David Phillip Walen, an architect in Charleston, S.C., has a solution, albeit an unlikely one given its necessary capital investment.

The National Defense Reserve Fleet, nicknamed the Ghost Fleet, is a retired collection of inactive military, merchant, and commercial ships that are under the purview of the U.S. Department of Transportation Maritime Administration (MARAD). According to Globalsecurity.org, the reserve fleet, which is moored at three separate locations around the U.S., can potentially be reactivated in between 20-120 days to meet needs of our government in a time of crisis. Unfortunately, the fleet is “an environmental disaster waiting to happen,” said the late Virginia Congresswoman Jo Ann Davis.

An article from the Daily Press newspaper in Virginia Beach noted that although a number of the ships are in near-ready condition, approximately two dozen “need to be scrapped as soon as possible … Salt water has eaten away at the hulls through the years. In some, there are thumb-sized dimples where the steel hulls have thinned and pose the risk of an oil leak.” This was in 2002. Over the years, various efforts have been made to scrap the ships in the worst condition, including one endeavor which sent a number of the ships to a scrap yard in England, only to be denied entry and returned to the James River. Because of the toxic nature of the ships’ building materials—including asbestos, PCBs, oil, and other industrial contents—strict EPA regulations determine how the ships are to be dismantled, making it highly difficult for a shipyard to meet the requirements. This is where David Phillip Walen’s solution comes in.

Forming a floating village
Walen has proposed that the ships be remediated and restored to full functionality and linked together to form a floating village that could sustain human life offshore. “I think it would be a great way to take something that people only want to scrap and use this as the seed for something that would demonstrate a radically different way of human habitat,” Walen explains.

Walen first became interested in the idea after his father sent him an article on the Ghost Fleet, but Walen says that his inspiration to design a floating city comes from a sense of wanderlust. “I think a lot of people want to travel around the world and work and live,” he elaborates. “I’ve moved so many times myself in the past that thinking of a way to be a modern gypsy is kind of a path plan. How do you carry all those things that you need to engage your world? How do you transport, for example, a wood shop or a metal shop? You need a village, but how do you travel and still have a home is the dilemma that drove me to the fantasy where you’d be a gypsy with a city that you could walk with, a kind of Archigram walking city, but a floating city.”

Walen’s idea is to determine which ships are salvageable first and then “basically form a platform that would be used to recycle the ships,” tethering the ships together to create permanent islands capable of traveling around the world and potentially demonstrating a better way to live. Walen believes that retrofitting the ships to usability could employ and test a number of newer technologies like mycology remediation (using mushrooms to cleanse toxic debris), foam Asbestos containment and elimination, (potentially even used in the foam as future floatation or insulation), bacteria that eat waste, and perhaps nanotechnology.

Networked “islands”
Once the ships are made functional and habitable, the next step would be to create “intentionally unique villages, each uniformly shaped to allow networked arrangements. One island could function autonomously, but, the dynamics of networking these islands would create an ever transforming environment.” Ideally the floating islands would have greenhouses, workshops, shared kitchens, and storage holds. The various uses of the central sphere would serve the collective need of the networked islands through restaurants, agriculture, manufacture, repair, etc. In addition, Walen explains that the unique tethering system would allow for quick and easy disassembly and reformation to suit the needs of the crew/residents and allow it to fit into any port.

“There are many examples of similar ideas [such as] pitching the islands as a vacation paradise,” says Walen. “However, my tack is that these islands should be looked at not as escapes, but as solutions to our need to be social [and] live adventurously, while using a balance with nature to survive. The statements ‘all waste is kept healthy’ and ‘followed around the world by the life that feeds the people, the city feeds’ are crucial mantras. They point out that this idea (of living cities) must be beneficial to the sea life as well as the humans. If these ideas start catching on and people start making them, it could save the human race or destroy it. If the ocean were covered with vacation paradise islands, behaving like tourist [and] throwing waste overboard or relying on importing electricity and food, the pressure on the land connections and the damage to the environment could be worsened. If these islands are built in ways that don’t use resources on land to survive (instead of adding pressure on sea life, it fosters it), the ocean, which is 75 percent of our planet, could allow humanity a way to continue to grow in harmony.”

Walen does concede that the cost to achieve his proposal would be astronomically expensive, probably exceeding a billion dollars by his estimate. However, the cost to simply scrap only one of these ships is easily $500,000, and until a resolution is finally brokered, the ships will continue to leach their toxic contents into the James River estuary.

Go Green

It's the small things that can make a big difference. Incorporating regenerative thinking into your everyday life is not as hard as it might seem. Check this page often, as we'll be updating it regularly with tips and tricks to help you bring a little green into your lifestyle.



6 Easy Pieces of the fuel economy puzzle



Fuel efficiency is what car companies are bragging about in their commercials these days, and who can blame them? Gas is $3 a gallon, and the UN’s International Panel on Climate Change blames global warming squarely on the burning of fossil fuels.



If you can’t walk, bike, take mass transit, or move next door to work, and you’re on the waiting list for a Tesla Roadster (www.teslamotors.com), all is not lost. There is plenty you can do to green your ride…easily.





* Take care of your tires…

and they’ll take care of you and your wallet. Make sure they have enough tread, and keep them inflated and rotated.



* Cruising vs. Speeding

Fast starts stress your engine and waste fuel. Use your cruise control on the highway and slow down! According to Car Talk’s fuel economy page (http://cartalk.com/content/features/fueleconomy/), for every extra ten miles per hour you add to your speed, you lower your fuel efficiency 15%.



* Lose Weight

Put your car on a diet, but don’t lose the spare tire. Every 100 pounds in the trunk can lower your mileage up to 2 miles per gallon. Just don’t leave yourself stranded without a jack.



* Winter Warm Up

Instead of idling, just drive slowly until your engine is warmed up. It’s cleaner, faster, and doesn’t waste fuel sitting still.



* Maintenance is Crucial

Regular maintenance will keep your engine running clean. Check your owner’s manual for the proper intervals for service and fluid changes, and let your mechanic know you want to do whatever you can to save fuel. Simple engine upgrades and maintenance can result in impressive fuel savings.



* Keep track of your mileage

You can’t know how you’re doing unless you keep track of your mileage. It’s easy. Divide the miles you drove on a full tank, by the gallons of gas it took to fill the tank back up. 255miles/17 gallons= 15 miles/gallon. Do this 3 times, find the average, and try to improve on it by changing your driving style.



Have any green tips you’d like to share? Write to us at tips@backtonature.net.

Ethanol and land use

This post is by Robert Bonnie, Co-director of the Land, Water, and Wildlife Program at Environmental Defense Fund.

The New York Times recently reported that thousands of farmers are dropping out of the federal government’s Conservation Reserve Program.

The prices for corn and other crops are so high that conservation subsidies can’t compete with what farmers can make by planting the land.

One reason for the high prices is the ethanol mandate in the energy bill Congress passed last year.

Shifts in land use from diverting food-producing land to grow crops for energy -- called "indirect land-use change" -- can potentially negate the environmental benefits of corn ethanol.

There is still much debate on how to measure it, but no question it’s important to consider. One recent study published in Science (Searchinger, et. al.) found that using croplands for biofuels causes a significant increase in greenhouse gas emissions relative to gasoline when indirect land use change is taken into account.

Unintended consequences such as these highlight the danger of mandating a specific clean energy technology, and the importance of relying on performance standards instead.

What is "indirect land-use change"?

When food-producing land is diverted for energy production, the food that would have been grown on that land must be grown elsewhere. This prompts farmers to convert land not currently in production into cropland.

When grassland or forestland is cleared to grow crops, the carbon sequestered in the soil and trees is released into the atmosphere.

If a lot of new land is cultivated, the resulting carbon release can completely negate the benefits of using biofuels. The New York Times said as many acres as in Rhode Island and Delaware combined were removed from the Conservation Reserve Program, and that’s just one corner of the country.

Not all the land was removed due to U.S. biofuel policy, but it plays a part. Some research has found that U.S. policies can contribute to deforestation in southeast Asia and the Amazon.

Assessing the impact of indirect land-use change is tricky, and experts disagree on how to quantify it. According to the Searchinger study, when indirect land-use change is factored in:

• Corn ethanol nearly doubles greenhouse gas emissions relative to gasoline when considered over a period of 30 years, and emissions remain elevated for 167 years.
• Even biofuels from switchgrass, if grown on U.S. corn lands, increase emissions relative to gasoline by 50 percent.

We can’t say whether these numbers are exactly correct, but we can say that indirect land use effects -- particularly tropical deforestation -- are important to consider.

Shaping policy to reduce emissions

Government mandates for a specific technology to lower greenhouse gas emissions risk unintended consequences -- even higher net emissions.

An effective policy that ensures lower emissions has two key components:

• A market-based system that rewards less carbon-intensive technologies and land-use practices, whatever they may be.

  The Searchinger study suggests that a possible solution to the corn ethanol problem is to use waste products as a "feedstock" (raw material to produce biofuels). Unlike cultivated crops, waste products don’t compete for agricultural land and drive up commodity prices. Sustainably produced cellulosic ethanol made from grasses and wood also may be a viable alternative. Another possibility we’ll discuss in an upcoming post is using algae to make ethanol.
  
  But a policy that specifically mandates corn ethanol doesn’t encourage exploration of these other options.

• Performance standards based on full lifecycle analysis, including emissions from tropical deforestation and other indirect land use changes.

  There is some recognition of this in current policy, but also an important gap. The California Air Resources Board (CARB) Low-Carbon Fuel Standard and Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) both require consideration of indirect land use in assessing emissions.
  
  But the EPA’s RFS exempts corn ethanol from existing facilities from having to meet lifecycle emissions standards.

Biofuels may have a role in our energy future, but only if they’re produced in ways that lower emissions. Performance-based standards and market incentives can prevent the unintended consequences of mandating the wrong technology.