As the busy time of year with the holidays approaches, garbage cans overflowing with gift packaging, unwanted holiday decorations, Christmas trees, and packaging from ingredients used to make delicious feasts will again be set to the curb. Each day, Americans throw away as much as seven and a half pounds of garbage per person, leaving a behind over 100,000 pounds of trash during the course of a lifetime. As the New Year approaches, why not set a New Year's resolution to recycle your garbage and purchase items that are made from or packaged with recycled products and give a gift to future generations?
According to the National Recycling Coalition, the top 10 things to recycle are aluminum, PET plastic bottles, newspaper, corrugated cardboard, steel cans, HDPE plastic bottles, glass containers, magazines, mixed paper and computers.
The National Recycling Coalition website provides a handy "Recycling Calculator" to show how much energy and resources can be saved by recycling plastic bottles, aluminum cans, glass and newspapers. For instance, recycling four Sunday newspapers a month saves four trees per year and recycling seven aluminum cans per week conserves enough energy to watch television for 21 hours. Visit http://www.nrc-recycle.org/ to calculate your energy savings.
Many cities across America have curbside recycling programs in place for residents to use along side their regular garbage pickup service. Unfortunately not all towns and municipalities offer this type of program. For residents in these areas, it is necessary to find locations to drop off recyclable items and to consider how to begin a local community-wide effort to recycle.
In Illinois, residents can contact their local solid waste handler, the Illinois Recycling Association, the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency, or the Illinois Department of Commerce and Community Affairs, Bureau of Energy and Recycling for information on recycling.
Check out these websites for more details on how to start a recycling program in your town.
During the next several weeks, many homeowners will be making arrangements for their supply of firewood for use this winter in their stove or fireplace. For landowners, this may involve cutting, splitting, and storing the firewood. But for many homeowners, this probably means going to the local garden center or corner street vendor. Here are some tips to help you get the most benefit from your firewood.
While some tree species are preferable over others for firewood, practically all species can be burned for fuel. Homeowners are encouraged to use what is most readily available for a cost-effective source. Proper seasoning and burning are the real keys to good firewood use. However, if you have the opportunity to be selective, take time to examine the characteristics of each tree species to identify a firewood that meets your specific needs.
Firewood can be categorized based on a number of criteria. Desirable qualities of firewood include (1) low cost; (2) low initial moisture content when trees are freshly harvested; (3) ease of preparation, splitting and felling; (4) combustion qualities including heat, odor or smoke, ability to form red-hot coals, ease of ignition, and appearance of flames; (5) cleanliness or freedom from dropping dirt and wood particles in the home; and (6) freedom from ants, wood borers, or other natural inhabitants of wood that can be classified as nuisances.
Listed below is a table, from the University of Nebraska publication "Heating with Wood" comparing the burning characteristics of different tree species. This publication can also be downloaded as a pdf file by going to the University of Illinois Department of Forestry website: http://web.extension.uiuc.edu/forestry/timber_harvest/firewood.html and clicking on the link to the University of Nebraska Extension-Heating with Wood publication.
- Bob Frazee , Extension educator, natural resources
Alternate Energy Crop in Illinois
No question that the prominent crops in Illinois' agricultural landscape are corn and soybeans. And, ethanol from corn and biodiesel from soybeans are tremendous non-traditional uses for small grains that were developed primarily to produce food-based raw materials. But do you know about any of the other potential "energy" crops that happen to include miscanthus and switchgrass? Both of these perennial grasses are being studied across Illinois as a source for biomass that can be utilized as energy. In small-scale test batches (5 to 9 tons each), miscanthus and switchgrass are early winter harvested, stored as large bales, and processed into ¼" x ¾" pellets to burn directly in corn-kernel or pellet-like furnaces. How big a deal is this pellet furnace option? Start by looking at what's available at many of the larger hardware stores around you and how many building supply stores have wood pellets for furnaces on their shelves. Many researchers see the greater potential of these perennial grasses as feedstocks for the production of cellulosic ethanol, a process that is evolving rapidly and forecasted as a possible alternative or complement to the grain-to-ethanol model in existence across the Midwest. Current challenges to developing perennial crops for biomass include many being looked at the University of Illinois College of ACES: rhizome propagation, establishment, harvesting, storage, processing, pest management, wildlife habitat, effect on local economy, and potential to become an unwanted invasive plant. For more information:
The NOAA Climate Prediction Center is predicting there is a good probability Illinois will experience warmer and wetter conditions for December through February. The highest probability of warmer than average conditions is in the southern part of Illinois, while the eastern half of the state has the best chance of seeing wetter than normal weather.
This prediction is based on several factors, including a weak La Nina event continuing during the winter. La Nina is part of a natural cycle of changes in sea surface temperatures in the Pacific. Past La Nina episodes that occur during winter in the Northern Hemisphere have had a high incidence of warm temperatures in the Midwest and South, with wet conditions particularly along the Ohio River Valley.
This does not mean there will not be any cold air outbreaks, but it may indicate they will not be long lived this winter. Energy use for heating may not be extreme if this prediction holds. To see other climate predictions, visit the NOAA climate prediction center website at www.nws.noaa.gov/predictions.php
