India is one of the world’s fastest growing economies. Much like in Canada, our cell phones and smartphones serve as a status symbol and facilitate our growing obsession and dependence on the web. Currently in third place, India is expected to become the world’s second largest cellphone market by 2017 (overtaking the U.S. and running second only to China). The Indian Telecom Regulatory Agency recently announced the nation has crossed the billion mark in mobile … 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 »
Phase in environmental performance evaluation… Since kicking off on September 25th, the most important thing we’ve learned from reading the olcah polcah guidance is that an environmental performance evaluation is done over four phases of work. Knowing these four phases really gave us a common understanding about the work ahead in the UN road test. Here are our notes on the work to be done in each phase. You start … 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 »
June 2015 was a busy month for us. We picked up just over 45,000 lbs. of electronic waste. That’s about 20 tons of e-waste diverted from landfills in Ottawa. You might be wondering what we collected. Well…here goes… 60% of the e-waste collected were old computer monitors and televisions. 20% was DVD, CD and VHS players and other miscellaneous and associated e-waste of those items. 15% were old computer towers/ … 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 »
Bait & Switch: a sales tactic in which a customer is attracted by the advertisement of a low-priced item but is then encouraged to buy a higher-priced one In this case, it’s less of encouragement to purchase something of a higher value, and more like just fraud. Late last year, a Vancouver franchisee of a junk removal company was caught on camera overcharging customers by a significant percentage. Amy Savoie … Read more »
Came across this great article in Wired Online, that outlines just how much a growing issue consumer electronic e-waste is becoming. The manufacturers of a lot of our favourite items aren’t making things any easier, either. Some 41.5 million tons of electronic waste was generated in 2011, and that number is expected to rise to 93.5 million by 2016, according to the research firm MarketsandMarkets. Right now, 70 to 80 percent … Read more »