Zero Waste: the consumer who never throws anything away; the industry focus on diverting trash away from landfills to be reused as a consumer product; a complete life cycle for products.

This year Navstar is building its presence at SXSW 2010 with its Director for Green IT, Steven Mandzik, giving a talk on Zero Waste. It is considered an intimate “core conversation” and gives everyone a chance to talk and learn.

The discussion will be catered towards five areas of focus:

• Innovation
• Global Warming
• Green Technology
• Zero Waste
• Local Austin

Navstar is proud to support the Zero Waste effort and use the opportunity to bring its work on Green IT to all the SXSW attendees. Green IT is a total solutions product that offers IT departments a way to reduce energy costs, improve their environmental record, and in doing so improve the reliability and quality of their IT services.

Now, a little more on each focus area with link resources:

Innovation

• Wind – DOE of energy report on the goal of 20% wind power by 2030, includes a diagram showing the increasing size and capability of wind turbines. Summary of the year in Wind Power 2009.
• Solar – Third generation Solar focuses on low cost and high efficiency.
• Compost – there are automatic composters, indoor easy-to-use and cheap worm composters, and large bin outdoor compost bins that you can create or purchase.
• Sustainable Farming, Fair Trade, Life Cycle Manufacturing, Reduce/Reuse Markets like Buffalo Exchange

Global Warming

• Direct/Indirect Global Warming. Not many know this but some areas may not feel global warming at all. These are the drier and warmer places on the planet. I call this indirect global warming. While other places will feel direct global warming, although it may be global cooling as well. Just something to think about as we try to help everyone understand this concept. Not everyone will be experiencing the same weather changes, or none at all.
• COP15 was a big deal in 2009 because Obama was in office and that meant a new chess board for world leaders to play on. He announced early that he would be attending and stated his desire for a treaty. Still don’t overlook that the 15 in COP15 stands for the fifteenth meeting world leaders have had, with number 16 occurring this December in Mexico. Global Warming is a process and its going to take probably another 15 meetings before we all understand the issue and know what to do.
  • I was very upset when mass media failed to mention this and sold the event as a winner-take-all failure. When really a treaty was signed to save the world’s forests (no small thing) and several billion dollar investment funds were created (put capitalism to work on this).
• Climate Refugees (documentary film) is another term you’re going to hear a lot more of. Technically the Africans in Darfur are global refugees. Any region that fails to sustain its people because the weather has changed so drastically will soon be forced upon the world. There are several island nations that are only a foot above sea level which are already facing this trouble.
• Man-Made Debate is for all those skeptics out there. Really no one who has looked into this disputes that global warming is happening. They have stopped doing that. Now the major dispute is over whether it is man-made or “natural”.

Green Technology – (electric cars, million dollar MRFs, fuel cells)

So much to talk about here and a lot covered under innovation, so I will just touch on two of my favorite:

• MRFs, pronounced Merve’s by those in the biz, are Material Recovering Facilities. These uber recycling facilities exist in every city in America and are high tech, clean, and well run. They have these Rube Goldberg machines that cost millions of dollars and sort our trash into various types. Which are then bundled by more machines, loaded onto trucks, and sold on the open market. They have folks in space suits sorting the really complicated stuff. Trucks, bulldozers, separate facilities for the really toxic stuff. Absolutely fascinating to visit.
• Fuel Cells are not dead yet, just read this post on Bloom Servers to see why.

Zero Waste & Austin

I thought it fitting to end this post on Zero Waste by highlighting a city making it happen. Austin, TX, passed a zero waste ordinance in January 2009. I have to admit that I love presenting on Zero Waste in a city also trying to make it happen. Check out the city webpage on the program and contact us to learn more.

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