Thursday, December 17, 2009

Balto county recycling goes single stream, finally!


My kitchen will be so much less cluttered come February!  Here's the article...

Baltimore County gets with the program! Single stream recycling begins February 1,2010.

On December 10, 2009, County Executive Jim Smith announced that single stream recycling collection will begin on February 1, 2010 for all 240,000 single family homes and townhomes, and multi family units that currently have recycling collection. In an effort to make it very easy for residents to recycle, they will be able to use a wide variety of containers to place single stream recyclables out for collection, though plastic bags will no longer be accepted in the single stream program. Additionally, residents will be able to recycle more items than they can in the current program.

As the County moves forward with its single stream recycling collection program for homes that already have recycling collection, Bureau of Solid Waste Management staff will also be working to bring apartments and condominium units without recycling collection into the program.

For more information on the County's transition to single stream recycling collection, please visit www.bcrecycles.com.           

Monday, December 14, 2009

Steven Chu goes to Copenhagen


I was surfing around the Department of Energy website today and discovered that Energy Secretary Steven Chu is on Facebook!  You too can become a fan.

You can track his travels and view powerpoint presentations like this one he just gave at Copenhagen this week.

The infrared photo on this post illustrates the sort of technologies he mentioned in the context of rolling out home energy outreach programs, iPhone apps, and building energy modeling software.

There are also some neat images of the world map, showing areas of heavy energy use and population density, which reminded me of maps I've seen at www.darksky.org

Incidentally, here's the page I was looking for during my surf:  energy saving tips for consumers, and plenty of other links nearby like www.energysavers.gov and the EERE blog ...


Tuesday, December 1, 2009

It's coming: an international green building code



The International Code Council (ICC) develops standards and guidelines for building safety, fire prevention, construction practices... and now sustainability.  These days they're working on a green building code for commercial building in the USA.

This article at Philly.com describes work by the ICC's Sustainable Building Technology Committee on the new green building code.  California and Pennsylvania are the only two states with government representatives on the panel.