Q: What to do with a ton of soggy paper cups?

A: Ask Eco-Logistics for help.

photo courtesy Chris Bovey

The Lilac Bloomsday Run uses as many as 500,000  cups each year. This year, Bloomsday asked us to help minimize the event’s solid waste. We focused on cup usage and found a local yard waste composter who would accept compostable cups. So, instead of being incinerated at the local waste-to-energy plant, Bloomsday sent 2,080 pounds of cups to a more useful afterlife as garden mulch.

It really is as easy as 1-2-3:

1. Find a local composter who is willing to work with you.

2. Make sure the cups and trash bags you use are compostable.

3. Work with your hauler to arrange for proper collection and delivery to the composter.

Q: What can Eco-Logistics do for you?

The recently concluded Summer National Senior Games in Palo Alto, California, displayed a broad and consistent commitment to sustainability. From Sunny, the 2009 Senior Games Mascot, to the solar-powered torch and cauldron (pictured below), organizers were serious about impressing upon us seniors the value of pursuing sustainable actions — and they did it in an innovative and lighthearted way.

You probably can’t read the sign above, but it talks about the departure from traditional fossil-fuel burning torches typically used at the Olympic Games and other major sporting events. For these Games, the torch was powered by the sun and lit with LED lights (sorry no picture, I didn’t arrive in time for the torch relay), while the cauldron is made up of some 800  tiny mirrors that reflect the sun’s energy. Solar panels built into the cauldron capture energy from the sun throughout the day, so the cauldron can glow at night. The torch and cauldron were created by the folks at IDEO.

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