Introduction - Green Waste Recycle Yard

[GreenWasteRecycleYard]

Hi All,

 

I'm Bernie Lenhoff, business manager for Green Waste Recycle Yard, a San Francisco Bay Area green waste recycling facility. We are particularly interested in Terra Preta technologies as an alternative processing for our lowest level waste, which is the topic that brought me to these forums.

 

Here is some boilerplate stuff about us.

 

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Green Waste Recycle Yard provides a green and beneficial alternative to the wasteful and costly practice of dumping green waste from our urban forests into landfills. Instead, we recycle 100% of the discarded wood into a variety of useful value-added products including:

 

• Dimensional lumber
  
• Supports and trusses
  
• Hardwood flooring
  
• Moulding and wainscoting
  
• Landscape retaining walls and step blocks (eucalyptus)
  
• Tabletops and slabs
  
• Select pieces for woodworking artisans
  
• Organic aged and mixed mulch
  
• All-wood premium mulch chipped from culled logs
  
• Biomass wood fuel
  

Nothing goes to waste. Even the sawdust from the milling process gets recycled.

 

We are located near the Golden Bear Transfer Station (formerly West Contra Costa Sanitary Landfill ), off Richmond Parkway, and offer a less costly tipping fee for green waste (logs, large brush, branches, and woodchips; we don't currently do composting, so don't accept succulents, sod, dirt, and the like).

 

Please have a look at our website and feel free to contact me with questions or suggestions. We're really pioneering this sort of business, so lots of ways to move forward!

 

Best,

 

Bernie Lenhoff

Business Manager

info at GreenWasteRecycleYard dot com

GreenWasteRecycleYard.com

 

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[Tormod]

This borders on spam since you represent a commercial company, and your introduction is mostly a company presentation.

 

How about a personal introduction where you tell us why you work with what you do?

[GreenWasteRecycleYard]

This borders on spam since you represent a commercial company, and your introduction is mostly a company presentation.

 

How about a personal introduction where you tell us why you work with what you do?

 

Sorry, I didn't consider that spamming, since it is directly relevant to why I'm here (to contribute to the Terra Preta discussion), and since our company, despite being commercial, is doing work I thought would be of interest to anyone concerned with environmental sustainability. I joined so I could add some more links to the new Terra Preta thread on Hydrothermal Carbonization, and only posted an introduction because we are required to do so (which I think is a good idea, btw).

 

As to your question, I work there because 1) some nice people offered me a job, and 2) having previously worked on the nonprofit side, it's the kind of grunt work operation that is essential to building sustainability. I myself am more of an "idea person," so it's a challenge (and in a way, ethically preferable) to be involved in the practical "down-and-dirty" operations that must be created and implemented to put environmental ideals and goals into action. While this business needs to at least break even financially to be sustainable, Terra Preta interests me not as a way to make a buck, but as a potentially better way to create sustainability and a healthier planet.

 

Hope that clarifies. Thanks for the forums.

 

Best,

Bernie

[InfiniteNow]

Howdy Bernie,

 

Welcome to Hypography. You'll have to wait until you've submitted 10 posts before you are allowed to share links (an anti-spamming measure), but I do genuinely hope you'll add your words, insights, and experiences in the threads until and after that time has come! :D

 

 

Enjoy. :rolleyes:

[Tormod]

Hope that clarifies. Thanks for the forums.

 

Best,

Bernie

 

It sure does. Thanks for joining! I look forward to your participation in our Terra Preta forum. :)

[Michaelangelica]

Green waste is mainly gathered by local councils here and i am told sold to potting mix companies.

 

Recently we had a massive storm-so i don't know what happened to the tens of thousands of trees that came down.

 

I only use my green -waste bin for Rose prunings. No way I am going to give the council such a valuable resource

It shocks me to see people filling their bins with grass lawn clippings.

 

No doubt your facility could use a small pyrolysis unit.

( Have you talked to BEST Energies in USA? Their units are mostly very big and about $5mil)

 

PS It is interesting that Atmospheric methane levels have gone down in the last 8-10 years. Does this mean we are draining swamps or re-cycling green waste more & better?

[GreenWasteRecycleYard]

No doubt your facility could use a small pyrolysis unit.

( Have you talked to BEST Energies in USA? Their units are mostly very big and about $5mil)

 

I've tried to contact them, but the rep I was supposed to speak with was out of town at the time. I've talked with some of the other companies involved in this kind of R&D, and we'll be looking to partner when an opportunity can be created.

 

There's some heavy duty money being poured now into biofuel academic research at University of California at Berkeley, and I hope there will be some research projects looking at green waste and agrichar that we can support.