Bird Flu & Recycling Wiki

Purpose of this wiki

Will flu (or any other contagion) get spread through recyclables going from curb to recycling center to end market? Will there be so much employee absenteeism that recycling and waste go uncollected, leading to other public health issues? Will food waste diversion programs need to stop?

In the interest of helping recyclers and our colleagues who deal with garbage, this wiki was created to provide one place where people can compare notes.

This is not a bulletin board or a blog--this will be a page that includes knowledge shared by you and other experts in the field. You can edit what you see if it isn't right or isn't current--you don't need to wait for someone to edit a web page.

Share what you are learning about bird flu and how it might affect your operations and/or the health of your staff.

Specific strategies

1. Collection

We haven't found a guide specific to this, but here's a good list of business planning links from the University of Minnesota's Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy, http://www.cidrap.umn.edu/cidrap/content/influenza/biz-plan/readings/index.html

1. Sorting & processing of recyclables
2. Collection of organic waste

We know that you can't get bird flu from eating poultry, but we're looking at what will happen to food-to-hogs operations. More to come.

1. Collection and disposal of dead birds

The Minnesota Board of Animal Health has a good page on avian influenza at http://www.bah.state.mn.us/diseases/avian_influenza/avian_influenza.htm

Links

Here are some links to existing bird flu and other related resources.

• World Health Organization guidelines (summary): http://www.who.int/csr/disease/avian_influenza/guidelines/EPR_AM_final.pdf

• World Health Organization guidelines (long report): http://www.who.int/csr/disease/avian_influenza/guidelines/infectioncontrol1/en/index.html

• State of Minnesota Bird Flu page: http://www.bird-flu-state.mn.us

• State of Minnesota Office of Homeland Security page on bird Flu: http://www.hsem.state.mn.us/readyminnesota/New_Ready_Web/flu1.html

• Composting of Animal Mortalities, Minnesota Department of Agriculture, http://www.mda.state.mn.us/composting/default.htm (this isn't for birds, but is interesting)

• National Strategy for Pandemic Influenza: Implementation Plan, http://www.whitehouse.gov/homeland/pandemic-influenza-implementation.html (released May 3, 2006)

• PandemicFlu.gov, the U.S. Government's official web site with pages for state, local, and business planning, http://www.pandemicflu.gov

• National Public Radio's web page on bird flu, http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4949542

• Bird Flu Day-by-Day (an interesting graphical page illustrating the spread of the bird flu worldwide), http://msnbc.msn.com/id/12375868