There Is An Environmental Cost With The Devices We Depend On Some of the biggest news in the last month has come from the consumer electronics industry. Samsung’s venerable Galaxy Note 7, arguably one of the world’s most popular smart phone phablets, has run into a series of battery issues. Customers were reporting that the phone’s batteries were exploding or combusting randomly during charging. The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration issued on September … Read more »

Came across this great piece in the Kingston Whig Standard. Students at Kingston’s Rideau Heights Public School were taught the value of recycling their used tablets and smartphones through an in-class presentation by the Ontario Electronic Stewardship in a “Recycle Your Electronics” campaign. The school program used both video games and interactive presentations to engage fifth-grade students and educate them on ways to reduce e-waste, as well as the consequences of landfilling it. … Read more »

Annie Leonard has been schooling us on landfill waste, electronic waste, and general environmental irresponsibility since 2010. Her famous “The Story of Stuff” video was a well articulated and accurate rundown of how we affect the planet and the environment through nothing other than our habits of consumer consumption. The film concludes with a call for a green ‘race to the top’ where designers compete to make long-lasting, toxic-free products that … Read more »

What does a small junk removal company in Ottawa and the Mexican central bank have in common? This. Setting the right system boundaries As we move along with doing the ol-cah pol-cah at Junk That Funk, our discussions with the UNEP/SETAC Life Cycle Initiative have focused on the first draft of our Goal and Scope document. The highlight of the feedback so far has been about our definition of system boundaries – … Read more »

The world has an electronic waste problem. This isn’t news, and we’ve been talking about this kind of thing for a while. Environmental Handling Fees (EHFs) are charged on the sale and distribution of all new electronic products regulated in Ontario. Paid at the time of purchase, the fee reflects the actual program cost to collect, transport and responsibly recycle each electronic category the end of its useful life. The … Read more »

On July 15th, 2015 –  Junk That Funk was accepted into a project run by the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) and Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry (SETAC) Life Cycle Initiative. We’d responded to an international call for participation in a road test of new environmental performance evaluation guidelines. The call claimed to favour the participation of small medium enterprises (SMEs), as none had yet tried out the UNEP/SETAC’s … Read more »

Here it is. Our full E-waste schedule for 2015, but first, maybe some clarification is required…. What is an E-waste event? Electronic E-waste round up events are put on by Junk That Funk in efforts to reduce recyclable materials ending up landfills. E-waste round up events are designed to be a hassle free drop off site where you can assure your items will be 100% recycled! At our free drop … Read more »

February 10th was a sad day in Ottawa…. Ottawa’s Plasco Energy Group filed for creditor protection and eliminated 80 jobs in nation’s capital, in an effort to restructure. Only 25 employees will remain through the course of this transition and the Trail Rd. facility will no longer operate. This is the latest in a series of challenges for Plasco, which was attempting to build a plant to convert municipal waste to energy. … Read more »

K-cup coffee pods are convenient items in our everyday lives. They allow us to make a single cup of our favourite tea or coffee quickly and efficiently, without the excess of a whole pot of something that goes cold. Here’s the catch. By making each pod so individual and easy to dispose of, packaging increases exponentially—packaging that ultimately ends up in landfills. K-cup pods aren’t recyclable. They’re made of No. 7 plastic – a … Read more »

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