A Little Help from my Friends

OK, gang, I’m working on a project and want to use you all as a sounding board.

When it comes to garbage are there any parts or aspects of it that make you go, “huh?” Anything that you “just don’t get?” If so, let me know. I’m looking at topics like:

The Short Road from Consumption to Waste – After the Great Depression, US leaders paved the way for America to be a consumer nation. When the chips are down, we aren’t asked to cut back; we’re convinced that shopping is a solution. But where has this gotten us, besides further down the road?

Beyond the Curb – Where do trash and recyclables go? Have you ever wondered what happens to our trash and recyclables? You’ve heard about landfills and incinerators, but what do you really know about them. From environmental impacts, costs, and even benefits, there’s a lot more to garbage than you might think.

Recycling, the Myths and Truths – Many still claim that recycling costs money, but ask a recycler and they’ll say business is better than ever. Demanding manufacturing markets in China and India make recyclables a commodity, not a nuisance. Barges that bring over chachka destined to fill the shelves of discount stores across the country wait on the California coast for our recyclables that will be used…you guessed it…to make more chachka. But beyond that, steel, concrete, plastics, glass, more and more recycling is taking place not just because of regulatory requirements, but because it’s good business.

Trash is Treasure, the Business Side of the Nation’s Garbage – From Waste Management to Allied, there are companies that thrive on our throwaway attitude. It’s a competitive market that operates independently and with cities and counties. They operate collection services, transfer stations, landfills, and incinerators across the country and make a profit on every ton of garbage we throw away.

That’s all I’ve really got so far, but if you wake up in the middle of the night with a garbage question you want answered, let me know.

And please know, I'm only using you in the most appreciative kind of way, because after all, you are my friends. :-)

Who Isn’t Sailing Across the Pacific?

What a coincidence. After writing up my blog yesterday, about Roz Savage crossing the Pacific Ocean to draw attention to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch (thanks to a friend, whom I’ll call Chuck, for the content idea), I hear a news story about another crew. Check out Junk, a raft made from plastic bottles and an old Cessna cockpit.

Its crew, Marcus Eriksen, PhD and Joel Paschal, work for the Algalita Marine Research Foundation and launched their vessel on June 1.

I Sit, She Rows

I’d like to direct everyone’s attention to Roz Savage . She’s rowing across the Pacific, starting at San Francisco and rowing to Hawaii as the first leg of her journey, to bring attention to the degradation of the world’s oceans. From Hawaii she’ll go on to Tuvalu and then on to Australia. This is her second shot at the trip, but believes she learned enough from the first go-around to improve her chances this time. Go Roz!

Her website includes updates on her travel AND some great information on the challenges our oceans are facing. One in particular that I find very intriguing and disturbing is The Great Pacific Garbage Patch.

From the article…

“Charles Moore, the marine researcher at the Algalita Marina Research Foundation in Long Beach who has been studying and publicizing the patch for the past 10 years, said the debris - which he estimates weighs 3 million tons and covers an area twice the size of Texas - is made up mostly of fine plastic chips and is impossible to skim out of the ocean.”

Concerns are many from the immediate to the long term. Marine life ingests the plastics, which because they can’t be digested fill their gullet and they eventually starve to death because there’s no room for real digestible food. And long term effects that include hormone disrupters caused by the chemicals in plastic. So much for plastic being our future. Well, it may be our future, but not a very pretty one.