Web site seeks to teach benefits of recycling
Environmental responsibility
Web site seeks to teach benefits of recycling
Waste Management's thinkgreen.com explains trash business, stirs thoughts about environment
By Jared Pruesz
Salt Lake Tribune
The average Utah resident generates about 4 1/2 pounds of garbage a day, accumulating about 2,000 pounds annually. Many people think much of this waste collects in piles at a dump never to be used again.
According to Waste Management of Utah, garbage can be reused and be environmentally safe.
Recently, the company launched an interactive Web site, thinkgreen.com, to educate people about the business of managing waste and how technologies are turning waste into resources that protect the environment.
"The whole idea of the Web site is to make you think a bit about how to change the environment," said Susan Hayward, manager of community programs for Waste Management of Utah. "The site helps people to see where all the waste is going and the part they play in that."
Hayward said the Web site will be beneficial because recycling not required in Utah. She said the Web site will help people to start thinking of ways to make the environment safer.
Hayward said one way to do this is through the process of modern single-stream recycling. This process allows people to put all of their recyclable items into one bin. Waste Management will collect the recyclables and handle the separating process.
The site also displays a video from Waste Management CEO David Steiner.
"We're using the waste that you generate to create energy to power homes and businesses," Steiner says in the video. "And we've adopted new technology to make recycling easier. We're also using landfill space to provide wildlife habitats and recreational areas for local communities."
Along with the Steiner video, thinkgreen.com also offers interactive tours and tutorials with high-tech animation. Instead of reading large blocks of text, viewers can watch how garbage is recycled and reused. The site even features a three-dimensional landfill tour and a tutorial on the process of collecting landfill gas to create renewable energy.
Site users can also navigate through a waste-to-energy facility and watch how landfills safely manage waste through a video of a biodegradable pear.
The Web site is not the only innovative tool that Waste Management has created. The company has also built a 100,000-square-foot interactive exhibit at Epcot in the Walt Disney World Resort in Orlando, Fla. The exhibit features a virtual landfill tour and a virtual single-stream recycling center. There are also kiosks where a person can enter his or her personal trash profile and throughout the exhibit it will show how the waste is typically reused.
Eric Goodman of Walt Disney Imagineering, was in charge of the creative team that worked on the exhibit.
He said that waste, if used properly, can benefit society and the environment.
"We assume the trash we see isn't our garbage
