Everyday ways to save the Earth

(photo by KEVIN GUTTING) --Beth Paulson, a field technician for the Center for Ecological Technology, shows a Belchertown homeowner how to clean under her refrigerator to decrease the amount of electricity it uses. CET has performed such "energy audits" across western Massachusetts for more than 20 years.

by STEVE PFARRER, Staff Writer

Thursday, October 24, 2002 -- The noise is nearly overwhelming; several dozen children from ages 5 to 7 are all talking, shouting and laughing at once. It's lunchtime at the Bridge Street Elementary School in Northampton and, as in most school lunchrooms, not a whole lot of food is getting eaten. There are too many important distractions - one boy's Lego spaceship has all of his tablemates enthralled, two girls are peering at a book and another boy is waving a tasty looking candy bar triumphantly at his friends.

As a consequence, there's a steady stream of children maneuvering toward the large containers at one side of the lunchroom, carrying plastic trays laden with food; untouched baked potatoes seem particularly numerous. A lot of stuff appears headed for the trash.

But in fact, it's not being thrown out. There are three large plastic containers in the corner - one for garbage, one for milk cartons and one for food. The latter has a large sign on it saying "Food - Feed The Worms!" with hand-drawn pictures of fruit, pizza and a sandwich. It's up to these bins, which are almost as tall as he is, that first-grader Tyler Tobin steps. He balances his plastic tray on the edge of the food bin, tosses a napkin and plastic fork into the trash barrel, his milk container into the milk carton bin, and then tips his unfinished meal - including a potato - into the food container.

It might seem a slightly tricky operation for a 6-year-old, getting everything in the right place, but Tyler has no problem with it. "It's not hard," he says.

Tyler's potato and the rest of the Bridge Street schoolchildren's uneaten lunches are headed for Tim Smith's big compost heap off Burts Pit Road, just past the old state hospital grounds.

At first glance the site appears to be a garbage dump. Behind a screen of tiny pine trees stand six rows of dirt, each about 60 yards long and 4 feet high, all flecked with paper, plastic and other bits of refuse. Further back from the road is an artificial hill of what again seems a giant heap of dirt that's studded with garbage; behind that is a huge pile of discarded cardboard boxes, the kind used to crate produce at supermarkets.

But just off to the left, about 50 yards away, is another large pile of dirt, this one a rich, dark brown that's free of any trace of garbage. It's compost - a crumbly material that sells for $30 a cubic yard and for which Smith, composting manager for Smith Vocational and Agricultural High School, says he has no shortage of customers.

The site is owned by the school. The section that looks like a garbage dump is actually a mixing area where manure, waxed cardboard, discarded bedding and food waste - including Tyler's baked potato - are blended together to make, over the course of about a year, compost that is then sold to local gardeners and homeowners.

All those food scraps and assorted debris that might otherwise end up in a real garbage dump are being routed here instead, thanks to an "organic recycling" program put in place over the last five years by the Center for Ecological Technology (CET), a Northampton- and Pittsfield-based nonprofit group that's dedicated to showing how small changes in day-to-day activities can pave the way to making Earth a healthier place.

Still, Smith says with a laugh, it's not hard to see why people passing by might get the wrong impression. "If you don't know what's going on here, it can look pretty ugly. And on bad days, it can smell a bit. Some people have wondered exactly what we're doing here."

What Smith does here is an important part of the organic recycling program that CET helped set up for Northampton over the last five years. Smith takes in food waste from over a dozen local restaurants, Northampton schools and the University of Massachusetts; waxed cardboard from Stop & Shop and Big Y supermarkets and the State Street Fruit Store; milk cartons from the schools; and sawdust, yard trimmings and bedding from various local sources.

The material is picked up and delivered to the Smith Vocational site by local haulers such as Duseau Waste Industries making specific "organic waste" runs. To facilitate pickup, some of it is collected in central sites, such as a storage shed behind Thornes Market where the Northampton restaurants participating in the project bring their waste.

Smith mixes all of this with manure and then spreads it out in "windrows" - the long, low rows that are flecked with cardboard. Given time, says Smith, the cardboard breaks down entirely, while twice a year he rents a machine called a screener that removes from the mix plastic and other bits of waste that aren't biodegradable. He also regularly checks the mixture - for composting to work, the temperature inside the mix must be 170 degrees Fahrenheit - and remixes the material if necessary to push the composting process along.

"It's a balancing act," says Smith. "I can't let [unmixed food waste and manure] sit for long, because it will start to smell. But I can't rush the composting process, either; it needs time to work properly. Yet every week we've got more stuff coming in."

Indeed. Smith says he takes in about 230 tons of waxed cardboard annually, and about 350 tons of food, mostly from UMass. But he's also producing between 400 and 500 cubic yards of compost a year, and last year sales of that compost, after all the costs for the operation were accounted for, raised over $11,000 for Smith Vocational, he says.

"It's been a real success," says Smith, who previously was the school's farm manager. "I really didn't know anything about composting, but CET helped me a lot in getting started, and I still talk to them all the time to give them updates on what's happening."

John Majercak, CET's special projects manager, who organized the recycling program here and in other parts of western Massachusetts, says it took awhile to get all the pieces in place. But at this point, he says, the project is self-sustaining and providing dividends to all involved. Restaurants, supermarkets and schools reduce the amount of trash they throw away; waste haulers can reduce their tipping fees, the charge for dumping trash at the landfill, by taking food waste to composting sites; and those sites can make money through their tipping fees and compost sales.

Tipping fees at the Northampton landfill, for example, are $75 a ton; it's just $25 a ton to dump food waste at the Smith Vocational compost site. Meantime, the Northampton landfill gets filled up a little more slowly thanks to the diversion of the food wastes to the Smith Vocational site.

"It can be hard to make the economics work with something like this," says Majercak. "But the ultimate goal has been to show all the participants that they can actually profit financially from this or at the least do it at no additional cost, and I think we've done that."

Tim Smith agrees. "I'm amazed at the interest there's been in our compost. [CET] really helped put all the pieces of this operation together."

Karen Bouquillon, Northampton's waste management coordinator, who has worked closely with CET to put the program in place and now largely oversees it, says she's working with the group to set up a similar system with Amherst restaurants. She's also helping them in efforts to expand food recycling completely in the two Northampton high schools, where only some waste is currently recycled.

"It makes perfect sense to try and build on the success we've already had," she says.

CET, which got its start over 25 years ago, has long focused on the pragmatic when it comes to tackling environmental issues. Co-director Alan Silverstein says the group works from the ground up, so to speak, in seeking change.

"You need to have environmental activists and advocates, the people like Clean Water Action who push the agenda and work to influence government policy," says Silverstein. "And groups like that have done a great job of creating the kind of climate we need, which is just focusing on the day-to-day things we can do to improve the environment. We don't try to browbeat people - we try to give them straightforward information."

Much of the work involves mastering the logistics of pulling together different groups of people.

Setting up the Northampton organic recycling program, which CET did between 1996 and 2000 in conjunction with the city, meant lots of leg work: convincing the schools and restaurants to collect and separate food waste; training people how to do it; finding a way to make pickups of the material financially workable for waste haulers; and finding farms and other sites that would compost the material.

Now, though, Bouquillon says the program has attracted favorable attention from communities all across the state. And it's part of a larger effort CET has developed in western Massachusetts in which close to 200 tons of waste food, waxed cardboard and other materials are collected every week from about 70 restaurants, schools and supermarkets and sent to composting sites. The program has won the praise of the federal Environmental Protection Agency.

CET's work isn't limited to composting. The group, with about 30 full- and part-time employees, has worked to promote energy efficiency and renewable energy sources such as solar power, reduce the use of toxic materials in homes and communities, and support a range of recycling efforts. It also has offered environmental education classes to schools in western Massachusetts, and it runs a "materials exchange" service that helps businesses find others that can use some of their discarded material.

More recently, CET has opened a store in Springfield that sells used home construction materials and furnishings. The state Department of Environmental Protection, among other groups, says the store serves as a good example of progressive thinking in reducing waste.

John Majercak says the group's approach has always been low-key. "We're not trying to make people feel guilty or ashamed because they're not recycling. That's not something that motivates anyone. We just want to give information to people and show them how they can incorporate it in their daily lives."

In the midday warmth of the last day of September, Tina Clarke of Amherst is shopping for some doors and other materials she needs for a house she's building in town. Clarke has big plans for her new home. It will be heated primarily though solar power, and in keeping with the environmental theme, she wants to find building materials free of toxins, such as glues used in carpets and pressboard doors.

Clarke's quest has brought her to CET's ReStore, a decidedly low-key setting in Springfield where the building itself reflects the organization's mission. This isn't like The Home Depot, with its rows and rows of shiny, sleek new merchandise. The ReStore is located in what used to be a small soda-pop factory, tucked behind another building on a gritty industrial street dotted with a number of salvage yards. Inside are a variety of used building materials, many donated by homeowners, and new items from stores that have discontinued certain materials.

Clarke is excited about what she sees: double-paned windows, low-water-use toilets, closet doors not made of pressboard. The store only accepts donations of materials that meet certain environmental standards, says John Majercak.

And last but not least, says Clarke, are the great prices: $50, for instance, for a bathtub that if bought from a retailer would cost well over $100. "I'm personally really thrilled to see a place like this," says Clarke as she looks at some sinks and bathtubs. "The idea behind it is great. Think of how much stuff gets thrown out when you remodel a house. Here it gets a new life."

Indeed, Majercak says a major goal of the ReStore is to try to reduce the stream of construction debris steadily filling up landfills across the state. According to Peter Nugent, a spokesman for the state DEP, about 36 percent of waste dumped in Massachusetts landfills consists of construction debris, even though some materials are already recycled, such as asphalt.

"It's something we're really looking to reduce," says Nugent, who notes that his agency is currently discussing with leaders from the construction industry a DEP proposal to eliminate virtually all such debris from landfills over the next several years. "That's why we're pleased to see something like the ReStore - facilities like that are a critical part of our strategy," Nugent says.

The ReStore gets its merchandise from a variety of sources, according to store manager Holly Milton-Benoit: homeowners who are remodeling and want to recycle their used furnishings, contractors who turn over used materials themselves, and stores such as Rugg Lumber in Northampton that donate discontinued items. Opened last year with limited hours and staff, the store is now open every day but Sunday and has two full-time employees and a number of others who work through the Americorps VISTA volunteer program. "Our business has picked up enormously," Milton-Benoit says.

She credits that increase in activity to a number of factors. For one, the store now has a truck, courtesy of a grant from the DEP, that enables staff to go to construction sites or people's homes to pick up materials. In addition, store staff and CET have worked to raise awareness of their venture by, for example, distributing fliers at business and municipal conventions and trade shows.

"We're working to expand our relationship with other retailers, and we're getting some attention," she says, adding that state environmental officials from Vermont have been among the visitors to the store. "Part of our goal is to inspire similar projects elsewhere."

John Scheehser, a Chicopee carpenter and homebuilder who's dropped by the ReStore after learning about it from a flier he'd picked up at his town landfill, is impressed with what he sees. "I can really see the value of this," he says. "I know a lot of good stuff gets thrown out that could be reused."

But Scheehser also has a suggestion for Majercak, who was the principal planner in getting the ReStore up and running. When he asks what financial incentives contractors have to bring material to the ReStore, Majercak says they can get a tax write-off but adds that the store doesn't provide details on that information. "That's something you'd need to discuss with an accountant," Majercak says.

Scheehser suggests the ReStore print up a handout to give to contractors that specifically lists the range of value for donated products. "My advice is to make it as easy as possible for contractors by telling them how much they can save on their taxes," he tells Majercak. "If they can make a quick calculation for each job they do, they'll see they can save a lot of money, and they'll be more likely to do it." He and Majercak also agree that another incentive for contractors is that by donating materials to the ReStore, they'll be able to reduce their tipping fees at landfills.

Majercak tells Scheehser he appreciates his suggestions and afterward says, "That's exactly what we want to hear - specific suggestions from contractors. We're always looking for ways to make this work better. And in turn, hopefully he'll talk to people he knows who will be interested in the ReStore, and word will keep spreading."

CET has been working on these kinds of bread-and-butter environmental issues since the group started in 1976 as, essentially, a one-man project in alternative energy. Founder Joel Nisson, a biologist who was teaching at Berkshire Community College in Pittsfield, got interested in alternative energy sources and built a solar greenhouse, at his own expense, for a garden center in Stockbridge.

"I was just very interested in renewable energy at the time," says Nisson, who today lives in Northampton and, after writing and editing an environmental newsletter for several years, works as a photographer. The greenhouse, he says, "worked great," and in the aftermath of the project he was able to get a $60,000 federal grant through the Comprehensive Employment and Training Act to conduct surveys of homes to improve their energy efficiency.

"The first thing I did after that was call Laura [Dubester, CET's other co-director], who was an old college friend, and ask her if she wanted a job," Nisson says with a laugh. "That was pretty much how CET got started." Nisson adds that there was a good amount of federal grant money available at the time, as the Arab oil embargo of the early 1970s and a dramatic rise in the price of oil sparked interest in energy efficiency and reusable power sources.

CET opened a small office in Pittsfield and added a few staffers; Silverstein came on in 1979, while Nisson left a few years later to develop his newsletter. Also in 1979, says Silverstein, new federal legislation mandated that utility companies offer customers a free service to determine if their homes could become more energy-efficient. CET was one of several organizations approved by the state to do such assessments for utilities and handled the work for much of western Massachusetts.

In 1987, the group opened a small Northampton office on Market Street to meet the increasing demand for energy audits and other programs. Paul Schmidt, CET's manager of energy efficiency field services, estimates the group has annually performed 5,000 free energy audits for customers since the mid-1980s, generally focusing on several things: improving the insulation in homes, installing low-wattage lightbulbs, and suggesting that customers switch to more efficient heating systems, windows, refrigerators and other home furnishings.

"In the beginning, we mostly gave people advice and education," says Schmidt. "We would provide up to $30 worth of free material such as fluorescent lightbulbs. In more recent years, energy companies are offering customers a lot of incentives to switch to more efficient home utilities, so we encourage people to make the changes if possible."

For instance, he says, Massachusetts Electric Company, one of the utilities CET subcontracts for, offers customers a rebate on the purchase of a more efficient refrigerator. Overall, adds Schmidt, helping the environment by reducing energy consumption may not be the primary concern of many people, but they still accomplish that goal by seeking to reduce their energy bills through greater energy efficiency.

"Interest in the program tends to ebb and flow, based on current prices for oil and gas," he says. "But the end result is a reduction, even if it's hard to measure, in the amount of carbon dioxide and various pollutants that are a by-product of energy production."

Over the years, CET has expanded its operations and its staff as it has won additional grant funding and contracts. The group has led a series of environmental education classes in Berkshire County schools, for instance, developed a heating oil cooperative to help homeowners get fuel at a fixed rate, and run a no-interest loan program to help homeowners pay for energy efficiency improvements.

Today CET has about 30 full- and part-time employees and also regularly hires interns for specific assignments. More recent public service projects have included educating homeowners about hazardous household products like bathroom cleansers and helping communities in western Massachusetts reduce the use of toxins such as pesticides.

Wandering through the ReStore in late September, Claire Reynolds of South Hadley was eyeing some bathtubs and light fixtures as she talked about the remodeling she and her husband planned to do in their home. She liked the material and prices, she said, and she liked the concept of recycling used building components.

But she questioned how many people in a nation that's awash in new merchandise would consider used material. "Ideally this kind of [store] would be widespread," she said. "I hope the idea catches on, but I wonder if it will."

Indeed, given the variety and immense scope of environmental problems across the country, from air and water pollution to pesticide-laced food, CET's recycling and composting programs may seem like the proverbial finger in the dike. And in fact Majercak says the 200-odd tons of food and other organic waste CET helps divert weekly from landfills in western Massachusetts represents just a fraction of the amount that still ends up in the trash. "Obviously there's much more that could be recycled," he says.

Similarly, does reducing your electric bill a few dollars a month by switching to low-watt lightbulbs make a difference in the larger scheme of things? Energy use continues to rise in the United States, as an ever-expanding population demands more electricity, and the current energy plan promoted by the Bush administration advocates building dozens and dozens of new power plants.

But no one at CET is taking a defeatist view of the situation. Majercak says CET, in focusing on the practical things that can be done to create environmental change, in a sense works as an antidote to the overall picture of environmental gloom and doom that often prevails in news accounts.

"We like to focus on what we can do and not worry about things we can't control," says Majercak. "It's really a case of 'Think globally, act locally.' " In this case, the organic composting program has attracted attention from across the country, including the EPA, while Majercak himself was singled out last year in an environmental publication, "Resource Recycling," as one of several up-and-coming leaders in the recycling field.

"There's no reason why what we've done can't be replicated in many other places," he says.

Laura Dubester, co-director of CET along with Alan Silverstein, says she's "very optimistic" about the future prospects for a healthier environment in Massachusetts. She points to the dramatic increase in recycling that communities across the state have produced over the past 10 to 12 years - Southampton was the highest in Hampshire County last year, recycling 67 percent of its waste - as just one example of the steady, incremental change CET works for.

"We're looking to expand our organic recycling program, we're continuing to work on energy efficiency, and we're going into new areas," she says. CET recently received a $99,000 federal grant to reduce the use of toxic materials in rural towns in western Massachusetts, such as chemical fertilizers on school lawns and fields.

When she considers the old question of whether the glass - in this case, one symbolizing environmental progress - is half-empty or half-full, it's an easy answer for Dubester: "It's half-full - maybe more so."