Vermont Environmental Consortium

And

BRATTLEBORO REFORMER

September 18, 2007
VBMX Helps Vermonters Waste Not, Want Not
by
Daniel Hecht

I seldom dare to make predictions in these days of rapid change, but here’s one I’m sure of: Our concept of “waste” will change completely in the coming years. We’ll soon be calling it something else. “Waste management” will become “resource management” or “resource optimization” or “value recovery.”

We Americans have developed a bizarre relationship with our country’s rich inheritance of natural resources. Our once proudly frugal, pioneer-society habits have degenerated into a consumer lifestyle that squanders resources on a colossal scale.

Striving for ever-greater speed, automation, and profit, our manufacturing processes now waste the majority of the materials and energy they use. We then package things in cardboard, plastic, metal, glass – the packaging itself constituting a quarter of all material substances used -- and then ship them long distances, wasting petroleum. Then we use a little of the thing and toss most of it into a landfill: We drink a soda, for example, and throw away the glass bottle – i.e., about 95% of the material and energy used to get the drink to our mouths.

We’re wasting the Earth’s valuable stuff, deleting it from our resource inheritance. From a hard-boiled business perspective alone, this wastes money invested and opportunities for profit. It’s neither smart nor sustainable.

Prediction #2: Changing our relationship with “waste” will alter our way of life drastically, as much as fossil energy depletion and climate change.

But it’ll be a change for the better, and it’s already underway. In Vermont, waste management districts and haulers are working hard to find ways to redirect waste to more productive end fates. Throughout the world, waste is increasingly being recycled, remanufactured, composted, or converted to energy through combustion or gasification. Manufacturers are discovering ways to make more money by maximizing use of formerly discarded materials. Canny entrepreneurs are finding profitable uses for unwanted stuff – for example, the biodiesel producers who refine used vegetable oil from restaurants.

The best way to preserve a manufactured item’s value is simply to continue using it as what it is. And in Vermont, there’s a fabulous organization that helps people do just that: Vermont Business Materials Exchange.

VBMX’s free service promotes the exchange of reusable things. If you’ve got surplus or by-product materials, or items that you want to get out of the way without the hassle of selling or the cost of dumping, you can list them on the VBMX website at www.VBMX.org. Someone who needs that stuff or those items tours the site and finds their treasure in your trash.

If you like yard-saling, touring the VBMX online warehouse makes for great entertainment.

Many listed items are free, some cost a nominal amount. Listings include agricultural products, chemicals, computers and electronics, construction materials, containers, food, glass, industrial equipment, metals, office equipment, oils and lubricants, packaging, paper, plastic and rubber, restaurant equipment, solvents, textiles, wood, and much more.

The stats are impressive. One day last week, www.VBMX.org carried 931 active listings constituting thousands of items. These included 6,179 pieces of office equipment and 1,509 computers and electronic devices, only two of the dozens of listing categories. So far this year, VBMX has exchanged 56,289 items, keeping 885 tons of refuse out of landfills and providing valuable equipment or materials at little or no cost to those needing it.

Since all those items remain in use, there’s no need to manufacture new ones. That means VBMX also spared the earth a lot of new mining, the forests a lot of new cutting, the aquifers a lot of draining. It obviated consumption of a lot of fossil energy.

Some recent listings: 100 used keyboards, for $5 or free. New, unopened Armstrong acoustic ceiling tiles, free. HP Laserjet 5500 color printer, free. Office partitions, 26 linear feet, $200. Heavy duty cardboard shipping boxes, 100 of them, free. Double-hung vinyl windows, 53 x 39 ¼ inches, insulated glass, 100, $30. Furnaces, food choppers, fire alarms, shop lights, software, air pressure regulators . . . I haven’t looked for a kitchen sink, but I’m sure there are several.

There’s even a linear actuator, plate cylinder, single rod, 50mm bore. I don’t even know what a linear actuator is, but if you need one, you know where to find it.

VBMX is sponsored by the Department of Environmental Conservation as a one-stop resource for waste reduction and value maximization. The site features scores of links to waste management districts, re-use stores such as The Restore in Montpelier, the FreeCycle network that’s active in many towns, and comparable organizations throughout New England.

VBMX is for anyone – individuals, businesses, towns, organizations – wanting to get out of the vicious circle of inefficient use of resources, to save money, and to do the environment a favor. None of these are new ideas; they’ve just come around again, common sense with a new edge of urgency. VBMX is a champ of a resource that benefits everybody -- most of all our generous, hard-working but wearying old planet.

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Daniel Hecht is a novelist and executive director of Vermont Environmental Consortium. For more information on any Green Grapevine topic, contact vec@norwich.edu.

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