If you’re like me, you spend a lot of time thinking about where your garbage goes once it gets picked up from your curb. What’s that? You don’t wonder about the final resting place or you trash and recyclables? Well you should, and now, thanks to the MIT SENSEable City lab, you don’t have to wonder at all; you can know.

Trash Track  is a process in which a tiny tracking chip is placed on a specific piece of regular waste. The MIT system can then track the location of the chip as it navigates the waste management system. You can see if that scrap of pressure-treated wood ends up in the landfill on the other side of the state or a barge to South Carolina; you can see if your old battery actually makes it to the proper disposal location; you can see if that yogurt container actually gets sent to the recycling facility. How awesome is that?! Surely I’m not the only person excited by this…

Waste management in the US is “out of sight, out of mind” for most people. But if we continue to generate as much waste as we do now, it is going to become less and less out of sight for more and more people, with myriad social justice implications as well as environmental and human health impacts.

Hopefully Trash Track is just the start of better public information about our waste system; information that will allow all of us to better understand the impact of our “consume and dispose” lifestyle. And like anyone with a background in philosophy and faith in humanity I know that this new knowledge will result in meaningful change…right?

Suppose knowledge is not sufficient to elicit change; what can we do? I’ll share some thoughts in my next post. Feel free to share thoughts of your own in the comments below.

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(BOSTON, MA) AUGUST 26, 2009 — “Today, we mourn the loss of Ted Kennedy, an incomparable leader for our region and country, and a decades-long champion of forward-thinking environmental policy,” said CLF President John Kassel.  “He was a powerful voice and vote in the Senate during the development, debate and passage of every major piece of environmental legislation since the early 1960’s, and he was instrumental in advocating for clean air, healthy waterways, public transit and environmental justice in low-income Boston neighborhoods – policies that CLF strives to uphold and protect.”

“His leadership helped provide the essential foundation to pass everything from the Clean Water Act, the Clean Air Act and the National Environmental Policy Act,” noted CLF Vice President Seth Kaplan. “One key legacy that Senator Kennedy has left us is the generations of leaders he fostered and brought forward. Leaders like Rep. Ed Markey who first articulated a powerful message of environmental protection and clean energy development on a national prime-time stage at the 1980 Democratic National Convention – a speaking role that he had because of his close involvement in Senator Kennedy’s presidential campaign. While CLF and others may have disagreed with the Senator on a particular issue, the Cape Wind project, we always knew his values and goals were solid and good.”

Please share your thoughts and memories in the comments below.

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Warning: Bigger, faster, and more abundant mosquitoes may be breeding in a river or stream near you.   A new scientific study presented at this month’s meeting of the Ecological Society of America reaches the scary conclusion that mosquitoes–carriers of the West Nile Virus and other diseases–thrive in waterways contaminated by sewage.  As if we needed even more public health reasons to clean up and prevent sewage pollution!

Scientists have concluded that sewage spills and overflows are a boon to these bloodthirsty pests.

Sadly, untreated sewage pollution still flows regularly into many of New England’s rivers and streams as a result of sewage spills from aging or improperly maintained sewage collection and pumping systems.  For example, when a rupture in a Burlington, VT city sewage collection pipe went unrepaired for 8 days in 2005, it released approximately 4 million gallons of raw sewage into the river until sewage treatment plant operators finally addressed the problem.  In the wake of this high-profile incident, CLF led the effort for passage of the “spill bill”–a Vermont law that requires sewage treatment plant operators to undertake enahnced sewage spill prevention and emergency response measures and to notify the public when sewage spills occur.  The public has a right to know when its waters are being contaminated with spilled sewage (this Agency of Natural Resources web site includes a report of all recent spills) and to demand that action be taken to prevent sewage overflows through regular maintenance and greater investment in clean water infrastructure.   

As with so many other important environmental and public health issues, CLF’s efforts in one of the New England states are helping to lead the country toward a future with cleaner water.

Currently, Congress is debating passage of the S. 937 “Sewage Overflow Community Right to Know Act.”  Like the Vermont law championed by CLF, this bill would amend the Clean Water Act to require mandatory reporting of sewer spills and the cleanup, mitigation, and prevention measures adopted as a result.  According to our friends at American Rivers in D.C., the bill has passed through the House of Representatives and through the Senate’s Environment and Public Works committee.  With your help, the Clean Water Act will soon ensure our collective right to know when our rivers, streams, lakes, and beaches have been contaminated by raw sewage.  Ask your Senator to cosponsor S. 937 and to work for its passage this year– in the meantime be sure to stock up on citronella and bug dope…

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Sage advice from Freddie Mercury.

There may be days when the air quality in urban areas is bad, but the summer is still a great time to get outside and ride a bicycle; to work, to the store, or just for fun. Doing so will also help improve the air quality, assuming you are biking instead of driving a car, and if you can find a decent route you should breeze past the gridlock and thereby avoid sitting in the car traffic, inhaling the exhaust of the vehicles around you. It will only get more pleasant as the temperature begins to cool during the fall months, and if your employer is a member of a Transportation Management Association you could even win prizes for riding your bike to work!

Boston is making a big effort to improve the cycling infrastructure by adding many miles of on-road bike lanes and many new bike racks. This will all serve to make biking safer and more convenient. In addition, the City is poised to rollout a city-wide bike sharing program in the near future. Soon, even if you don’t commute to work from home on a bike, you will still be able to make trips during the day by bike, all over the city.

Parallel to these efforts, MassBike is conducting an online survey regarding the behavior of cyclists and drivers. The results will hopefully help to shed light on issues that result in reasonable frustration as well as misplaced anger. Anyone who rides a bike or drives a vehicle in Massachusetts should take the survey.

When you’re done with the survey, turn off the computer and get outside! This Friday, August 28th, is the final BikeFriday event of the summer. It’s time to stop procrastinating and start enjoying your commute.

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Well the advent of serious heat and humidity means that all of us up here in the tailpipe of America (the Northeast generally and New England in particular) must face the seasonal reality of dangerously bad air.

During the summer we face “ground level ozone“  which is created when substances like nitrogen oxides and volatile organic compounds are created by cars, power plants and the burning of gasoline, diesel fuel, coal and other fossil fuels interact with sunlight and heat.   Many states, like Massachusetts, New York and Maine are happy (in addition to the Feds) to give you the gory details – but the bottom line is that ground level ozone harms the lungs of just about everyone but can cause the most trouble, increasing asthma attacks, heart attacks and even death in very vulnerable folks – like the elderly, the very young and people with various health problems.

A different problem is the dangerous haze of “particulate matter” that can be trapped in our air, particularly on a hot and muggy day.  The potentially dangerous microscopic solids and liquid droplets less than 2.5 microns in size are known as “fine particles”.  Like ground level ozone this pollution can be traced back to the burning of fossil fuel in cars, trucks, power plants and industrial furnaces. In cities around the world particulate matter is a major threat to the health of residents of inner city neighborhoods.

The states and the federal government continue to debate and consider new rules about the amount of this kind of pollution that is safe.  The Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection has proposed new standards regarding these pollutants – and CLF filed a comment urging adoption of tougher standards than what has been proposed.

If you want to see how bad your air is today and how bad it is predicted to be tomorrow then check out this handy government website full of national and regional maps with links to state-by-state information.   And don’t let the “moderate” label fool you – since some real harm is possible at those levels of pollution it is worth paying attention before the pollution crosses over the line into “unhealthy for sensitive groups” let alone “unhealthy”, “very unhealthy” and the (fortunately unusual but terrifying) “hazardous”.

And of course as average temperatures rise due to global warming we will see more of this kind of bad air quality – as the pollution combines with hotter air.  This is just one of the many health effects anticipated as global warming unfolds.

All the more reason to look towards cleaner energy sources for our electricity and our transportation needs.

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There’s a lot of talk about 2012 being the end of the world. And if it’s not 2012, it’s the swine flu.

But how will it really end? If the latest scary climate science is any indicator, it looks like humans may be to blame. We know that climate change is happening all around us, but it looks like things are changing a lot quicker than any of us expected. As such, it’s time for a climate change reality-check. Did you know?

• Temperatures are already on the rise. Since 1970, winter temperatures in the Northeast have increased by an average of 1.3 degrees per decade—changing and damaging marine life, forests, agriculture, recreation and human health.
• Extreme storms are becoming more frequent. Boston and Atlantic City, for example, can expect a coastal flood equivalent to today’s 100-year flood every two to four years on average by mid-century, and almost annually by the end of the century.
• The oceans are rising. Scientists project that sea levels could rise another 4.5 feet by the end of the century—inundating our coastline and claiming countless low-lying communities from Portland, Maine to Boston to Hyannisport and beyond.
• Heat waves are expected to increase. Within our children’s lifetimes, Northeast cities like Boston or Hartford could experience 20-30 days above 100 degrees causing pain, distress and even increased mortality for our vulnerable citizens.
• Our snow season is becoming shorter and shorter. By late this century, the length of the snow season could be cut in half across northern New York, Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine, and reduced to a week or two in southern parts of the region, a trend that may have already begun.
• Plant and animal populations are shifting northward. Species like the fir and spruce are expected to all but disappear from the region by the century’s end. The Baltimore oriole, American goldfinch and song sparrow populations will become much less abundant.
  (Source: NECIA’s “Confronting Climate Change in the U.S. Northeast: Science, Impacts, and Solutions”)

The facts speak for themselves. It’s clear that the road on which we’re traveling is a dead end. Fortunately, we have the opportunity to make a u-turn—but it’s going to take your help to turn this country and this planet around.

What can you do about it?

As we catapult towards the point of no return, it’s time to hit the brakes. Confront the climate threat today and demand a new energy and climate law now!

It takes less than 30 seconds to use and customize our pre-written letter to your Senators urging them to pass a smart and effective “cap and trade” climate law. Click here to do your part.

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