An Impressive Upcycling Art Exhibition - This weekend!!

In completion of the Care Creates Change project

Greenhouse will participating in the Recycling Artistic Gallery behind held this weekend at the Mediterranean Conference Centre in Valletta.

We STRONGLY suggest you visit this event. There is some crazy Upcycling exhibited in it! :)

To read more about the project go here.

The Closing Event is on:
Friday 18th November. From 09:00 till 18:00
Saturday 19th November. From 10:00 till 18:00
Sunday 20th November. From 10:00 till 13:00

We are participating by setting up an stand on Endemic Plant species (most of which are for same if your into it :) ), Composting/Vermiculture and Permaculture (provided by the Permaculture Research Foundation.

In addition we are holding two workshops:

Saturday 19^th November from 12:00 till 13:00. (Simone Cutajar)

Don't waste your resources - Workshop on how what we

consider daily waste could be used as a resource.

Sunday 20^th November from 11:15 – 12:15 (Peppi Gauci)

Building Resilience in our Communities - Workshop on the function of our communities to address global challenges

The full programme of activities can be downloaded from here.

European Waste Reduction Week: Malta's Best NGO based project!

Good news! Our event for European Waste Reduction Week 2010 was selected as the best project in the NGO category from Malta :)

Next Monday the EU level results will be out and we'll know which NGO in Europe carried out the best event to promote Waste Reduction.

Visit the Wasteserv website to learn more about the various projects which were chosen as the best in their category.

Here's a summary of the Greenhouse event held on Campus for EWWR:

Association/ NGO- Greenhouse Organization

The project presented was spread over 4 days during the EWWR week, with each day focusing on a particular issue. These issues, although they might not be in the limelight, when it comes to waste-related issues, they are a major problem. The aim of the action was to make students and staff aware that a big part of the waste produced on a daily basis can be easily avoided by adopting simple actions which would make a big difference to our environment. Monday was dedicated to the distribution of rough paper stands across university facilities such as Student House, Library and computer labs where students could deposit or take rough paper to be used. This was done to promote the reuse of one-sided waste paper as rough paper.

Tuesday was about creating awareness about the large amounts of waste produced due to excessive packaging and to the promotion of fresh local produce and the selection of less packaged items in the marketplace. This was done jointly with a local supermarket where a stand was set up to display the different options there are to reduce this waste stream.

On Thursday a collection of goods which are not needed any longer was organized. The aim was to give these goods to an animal charity shop for reselling and thus reuse. This day served also for the promotion of the free cycling concept via websites. This also reduces the waste going to the landfill and saves the world's resources.

Friday was dedicated to the promotion of effective composting. A stand, which provided ample information about the requirements to make good compost, was set up while an example of the final product was also set on display.

Each concept mentioned above was further promoted by the distribution of bookmarks to the students to serve as a continuous reminder of the benefits of waste reduction.

Dispose.... until there's nothing left to dispose of

As you may know Greenhouse collected a number of small plastic bottles from students for us to fill up and place two in each flushing unit of each University toilet to conserve the equivalent volume of water that would otherwise be flushed down the sewers.

But where would these plastic bottles ended up? If they were thrown in a bring-in site or a waste separating skip, they would have ended up at Sant’Antnin. So Joseph and I decided to pay the place a visit to see what the place is all about.

And we were impressed.

We found huge warehouses filled with waste. Large excavators (gafef) shoving mounds of our containers and other packaging.

Look at that! That is one pile of many that were there staring at us. And it really says something about our lifestyle. I don’t want to put words in your mouth…but does it convey any message at all?

The picture above is one of the plastic piles. The most abundant items in this pile were detergent and water bottles. Easter egg wrappings and all sorts of fancy packaging lied there. How many of these containers did we really need? How long did we use them? Could we have done without them?

Transparent and colored plastic items are separated and treated differently. At the end plastic is shredded and the final shreddings exported.

A kind worker showed us around and he explained what happened in this waste treatment plant.

Paper waste is also astronomical. Paper is separated from carton; white paper is separated from colored ones, glossy paper from non-glossy.

Huge carton boxes filled with all sorts of paper lied there- junk mail of all sorts, old and worn out books and papers, magazines, leaflets and boxes of the ‘Government Gazette’- I couldn’t believe my eyes.

These papers are then packed into large batches and exported. They are then treated with a special dye to remove the ink and the paper re-used. This process is what makes recycled paper more expensive.

There was also a mound of box files but these are not easy to recycle as they have to be dismantled and the metal treated differently than the plastic covering.

Our guide also showed us a box full of transparent plastic tubes.

This is what your plastic bottle looks like before it is moulded into what we know as a plastic bottle. Bottling companies receive these tubes and, using their machinery, give them their proper shape. Apparently, some of these tubes are received damaged and they have to be thrown away.

Our guide concluded by pondering on some things: how very few people attend their Open Days, how many people still decide to mix their waste and how University students are not sensitive to the issue and decide to also mix their waste (Note: he was talking about skips and bring-in sites. The tri-bin system that was in place in the quad has nothing to do with this.)

As we left the place, passing by a mound of broken deckchairs some thoughts came rushing to my mind.

We are extracting the planet’s resources, turning them into things and then throw them away.

We are using very precious material to turn into useless, stupid things we can do without.

We are filling our landfills with waste and exporting an enormous amount of more waste.

I want to share with you two quotes:

“We don’t throw things “away,” we simply put them someplace where they defile the land, foul the water, pollute the air or change the earth’s atmosphere.”

-Brian Walsh & Sylvia Keesmaat, Colossians Remixed: Subverting the Empire, 2004

“Source reduction is, on the face it, perhaps the most appealing of all the possible approaches to solid-waste management. “

-William Rathje and Cullen Murphy, Rubbish!, 1992

Project Launch ‘Care, Create, Change’ building on past experience.

The wasteserve project co-funded by the EU ‘EQUAL Community Initiative Programme’ was a project run from 2004-2006. Its aim was to engage with individuals from a difficult background to find to learn skills for the work place. The participants where homeless individuals, people with mental health problems or ex-offenders and where identified by the NGOs active in these respective fields. They where thought the skills and given the means to learn how to turn bulky refuse for crafts and how to refurbish furniture. The skills learnt through his 2 year programme led them to acquire skills relevant to the job market thereby giving them tools for self development.

Pictures of the work done by the participants of the EQUAL project.

On the 27th of November Wasteserve together with a renewed number of NGOs has launched the project of ‘Care Create Change’ with the aim to extend the experience gained through the EQUAL project. The programme has also been extended to involve other training courses from MCAST technology related subjects to environmental ones run by Greenhouse and Nature Trust.

Similarly to the EQUAL project the Care, Create, Change project is a co-funded project by the EU and totals the amount of €1.2million. It will seek 100 participants from socially disadvantaged positions to help then empower themselves through training programmes, which will be MCAST certified by the end of the course. This will allow them the mobility to work abroad with a recognised certificate.

Panels Displayed during Press Conference

In this project Greenhouse will be running a training course on the management of Organic waste through Composting. This will include site visits to the various composting methods found on the Maltese Islands. Anyone wishing to be part or is interested to know more on our part in the project may contact us on green.uom@gmail.com

Sources:

Times of Malta

Waste Skips off campus

Many individuals involved in the bureaucratic processes of various administrations express their dissent in the procedural manner in which services are developed within the institution. This leading to the impression that the private sector is a more effective service provider than the public sector, which is something no one can deny. But there is limited scope in the actions of the private sector. This has been the case with the Waste Separation facilities provided for, recently outside University.

As part of a Greenhouse, GreenMT & precincts initiative waste management has been introduced off campus with limited scope and is in the process to be introduced by the Precincts department On campus. Given the fact that Precincts is responsible for On campus services Greenhouse has looked into the provision of Waste Separation services Off campus. In the commercial/residential area present around the old entrance of our University.

These are 3 locked skips which up until now ought to service the commercial sector in the area and which provided waste separation of Paper and Cardboard. The service is provided by GreenMT and the place has been provided by the Local Council of Msida. The keys to the Skips have been provided to a limited number of commercial entities but these can be shared and request to other individuals.

The entities presently in possession of these keys are: MATSEC Support Unit, Copyclub, Papier, Engineering Stationery, Micro Copy, Paper Clips, Mireva Bookshop & Greenhouse

For more details send us an email.

Battery Buster Bins - No more excuses

With all our mp3s, iPods and all sorts of gadgets, we are becoming more and more dependent on batteries- these small energy reservoirs which can provide you with the energy needed to listen to your favorite song on your bus ride back home.

But what are batteries really made of? Batteries are a cocktail of chemicals, and the chemicals therein are not exactly the most safe and green of chemicals. If left in the environment, especially exposed to rain and sun, these chemicals leach out from the batteries and can percolate underground to our water supplies. Therefore we can be drinking traces of what once powered our music entertainment.

So batteries ending up in landfills can be very damaging not only to the environment but to our own health. These chemicals can also end up in our seas risking our health during swimming. Soil can also be affected especially if we just throw our batteries into an open space or worse arable fields. These chemicals can then find themselves into crops which we then ingest.

These chemicals can affect the central nervous system especially of young children, causing seizures, learning disabilities and mental defects.

For the sake of everything and everyone dispose of your batteries in a battery bin so that they can be processed by specialized companies and thus avoid these chemicals finding their way into the environment and eventually our bodies. These bins are being placed in a number of locations around Malta and a new battery bin has been placed at the University. You can find the wooden bin just outside the cafeteria. We urge you to make good use of it!

This bins can be found by the entrance of Canteen and in Agenda bookshop.

Provided by Wasteserve.