Recycling

Inside a futuristic-looking dome that rises from the sandy wasteland of the high Mojave Desert, soldiers in plywood cubicles work at computers powered by solar panels and a towering wind turbine. Plug-in cars shuttle the troops across the vast expanses here at Ft. Irwin in San Bernardino County. At night, tents lined with insulating foam provide a cool retreat at the end of a 100-degree day.

There is a battle for America's behinds. It is a fight over toilet paper: the kind that is blanket-fluffy and getting fluffier so fast that manufacturers are running out of synonyms for "soft" (Quilted Northern Ultra Plush is the first big brand to go three ply and three adjective). It's a menace, environmental groups say -- and a dark-comedy example of American excess. The reason, they say, is that plush U.S. toilet paper is usually made by chopping down and grinding up trees that were decades or even a century old. Environmentalists want Americans, like Europeans, to wipe with tissue made from recycled paper goods.

Tom Bates stands in his pantry, grinning like a boy on Christmas morning with his loot spread out in front of him. There's a vase half full of used rubber bands destined for return to the newspaper carrier. A pile of hangers will go back to the cleaners. A bin of scraped and dried coffee filters awaits the artist down the street, who incorporates them into her work. Used coffee grounds fill a plastic bag on the kitchen counter. Bates collects them for the compost-making worms in his garage.

NEW YORK -- The latest report about the publishing industry doesn't compile sales figures, track the market for fiction or lament the future of reading. It does tell a great deal about books -- not what they say but what they're made of. "Environmental Trends and Climate Impacts" is an 86-page summary, printed on 50% post-consumer recycled paper and full of charts about fiber, endangered forests and carbon footprints. The news: The book world, which uses up more than 1.

Spacewalking astronauts completed almost all of the greasy repairs on a gummed-up joint at the International Space Station on Saturday, leaving just a few chores for another day. As spacewalk No. 3 was getting underway 225 miles up, a new recycling system for converting urine and other wastewater into drinking water broke down again. It was the third day in a row that the processor inexplicably shut down, and it appeared to be the same kind of sluggish motor trouble seen before.

Dreaming of a green Christmas? From biodegradable greeting cards to solar-powered Santa decorations, consumers have countless ways to celebrate an eco-friendly holiday season this year. And in this tight economy, here's some good news: Going green doesn't mean having to spend a lot of it. "It's a massive misconception," said Sophie Uliano, a Los Angeles author who wrote "Gorgeously Green: 8 Simple Steps to an Earth-Friendly Life."

Dumpster diving isn't in her job description but Leslie VanKeuren, general manager of the popular Silver Lake restaurant Gingergrass, isn't above climbing into the eatery's special compostable-food waste bin to retrieve a carelessly tossed Styrofoam container or other stray item.

The bathroom tiles are recycled wine bottles. The hardwood floors are sustainable bamboo. And the sprawling garden gets sprinkled with rainwater collected in 300-gallon barrels. From its recycled plastic deck to its solar-paneled roof, everything in and about the 2,500-square-foot home on exhibit outside the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry has been designed to show people how easy it can be to incorporate environmental sustainability into their own abodes.

An Australian state will become the nation's first to introduce recycled sewage to its drinking water, and the rest of Australia could follow suit, a state leader said today. Queensland Premier Peter Beattie said falling reservoir levels left his government with no choice but to introduce recycled water next year in the state's southeast, one of Australia's fastest growing urban areas.

It was a welcome quandary: California's bottle and can recycling program had a giant pile of unspent cash. Consumers failed to reclaim their deposits on billions of bottles and cans in recent years, leaving $180 million in a state account that could be used only for recycling. So the Department of Conservation decided last year to return much of the cash to consumers -- and create a new incentive to recycle -- by paying an extra penny or two on every can or bottle redeemed.