Our World and Everything in It

HP has found a use for leftover plastic bottles. When we return our used HP (Hewlett-Packard) print cartridges, they “undergo a multi-phase recycling process that reduces them to raw materials such as plastics and metals.” The plastic from the inkjet cartridges gets mixed with recycled bottle resin and other binders to create brand new ink cartridges according to an article in Environmental News Service. They are not remanufactured. Other cartridge suppliers have yet to do this. The amount of recycled content varies from 70 to 100 percent, while the finished product remains at HP’s highest standard.

That’s a pretty good solution for some of our leftover plastic problems considering mixing plastics usually diminishes the strength and durability of a finished product. There are 10,000 different types of plastics, and many are not compatible together. If you haven’t noticed, most recyclable bottles are stamped with numbers. These numbers are to group the different plastic materials together when reprocessing.

But new research just might change things in the future. HP has discovered a way, and according to an article by Michigan Molecular Institute, “researchers from Eastman Kodak, Eastman Chemical, and the University of Florida (UF) accomplished that goal by establishing the fundamentals of compatibilization of multiphase polymer blends.” Researchers found effective methods to compatibilize comingled-plastic waste.” In other words they’ve found a way to mix some of the normally incompatible leftover plastic we toss to make new plastic.

Sharp has developed “a new technology to blend plant-based plastic that uses corn as the raw material, and waste plastic recovered from scrapped consumer electronics” according to an article on Physorg.com.  Now this is real news because Sharp is getting away from petroleum based plastics, which is the common raw material for most plastic. I don’t think corn should take a hit again, because of its overuse by the ethanol industry, but who knows, corn today, rutabaga tomorrow as a raw material for plastic. 

With new technology coming out all the time relative to plastics, hopefully we will greatly reduce the environmental impact our leftover plastic products produce. Next on the list, we need to see plastic that easily strips away in one zip from the cloth part of those dirty disposable diapers that get tossed. Anybody got any ideas about that? 

Read more about HP at: http://world-wire.com/news/0801300001.html

About MMI’s article on mixed plastic technology read:  http://www.atp.nist.gov/eao/sp950-1/mmi.htm.

About Sharp: http://www.physorg.com/news5062.html.
 

I finally broke down and bought a new gas range and gas dryer today. I put it off because I have a habit of keeping things as long as they work well. Keep them looking nice and hey, they’re vintage. I also have a propensity for anthropomorphism, which is endowing inanimate objects with a human or animal persona. You know, fishermen refer to their boats as she and give them names. Ditto for vehicles. We can also get too attached to our homes, like they are part of the family or something, well, with feelings anyway.  For me, it is anything that has given me years of service that is still hanging in there. My range and dryer are 22 years old!  I haven’t named them but have had them an awfully long time. Of course each piece has had a minor repair or two through the years but nothing to speak of. Things were just made better back then.

I don’t like my new refrigerator, washer, or dishwasher as well as my old. Newer things are made so shabbily. There are all types of plastic parts on them that break. Even though there aren’t any kids running around my house, and I maintain things well, parts broke on my fridge the first year I owned it. And a funny thing happened to the washer. I bought a washer with a stainless drum inside, but on the outside of that is a plastic drum. It’s pretty thick plastic, but not thick enough. One of those studs used in a nail gun worked its way through one of those tiny drain holes in the stainless drum, then proceeded to score the spinning outer “plastic” drum enough times that water eventually poured out of the bottom during a rinse cycle.

Going to buy two new appliances because a good deal was to be had wasn’t a good motivator for me either. I will miss my old range and dryer, well not so much miss as feel bad they are going to be destroyed. They still work. If they didn’t work, it would be a whole different story. I thought about donating the appliances, but they are so old the trip would probably kill them.

I was assured at the store that the appliances that are hauled away are recycled. Good to know. I looked around and found that most major home appliances consist of about 75 percent steel. Scrap steel is needed to make new steel. Steel manufacturers count on recycled material as do copper, aluminum, and zinc manufacturers. So I’m helping the steel industry. Do we have a steel industry? I also found an old article that stated: “According to the Environmental Protection Agency, using recycled steel results in an 86% reduction in water pollution and a 97% reduction in mining wastes.” Who knew?

So my fear of filling a landfill with my old appliances is no longer relevant and I can think of all this as a rejuvenation process for them. Good then.  Out with the old, and in with the new. I cook every night.  I deserve a new stove. As for the dryer, I use it as little as possible. I hang my clothes out in the summer. But my winter dryer bill should surely drop. I made sure I purchased a dryer with moisture sensors so that it doesn’t stay on any longer than necessary. Oh, and I did get a good deal.
 

I don’t know if any other people interested in moving forward with all types of alternative energy have noticed the purposeful placement of the word “foreign” in many of the presidential contenders, Bush/Cheney, and legislator’s speeches. When a politician says they will make sure to fund research for new technologies to get us away from “foreign” oil dependence, they are probably talking money for a new type of oil drilling process. Technically, they won’t be lying, just misleading, if you tend to disregard that tricky little word “foreign.”

Granted, it’s been said that we do not have alternative technology available yet to take up the brunt of our oil demand, but it seems we keep looking to only one, and not a combination of alternative sources. What about a combination of alternative energy sources? I hear this idea floating around, but no gelling. The Sierra Club of Michigan has a very good presentation that shows a combination of energy sources, wind, solar, geothermal, etc., plus conservation programs like reclaiming wastewater, and recycling may meet all of our energy demands in Michigan. But we’re not advancing toward a future that will no longer be reliant on one big massive conglomerate like the oil cartel is to us right now. It seems we work toward monopolies in this country. Then we’re upset when we’re stuck with them without a choice. We should be looking to all venues to move forward for our energy future, not reinforcing the idea of fossil fuel again, like it’s all right because it belongs to us. 

I see the big push to get away from “foreign” oil as the big ruse to drill in the Arctic circle, the polar bear habitat, Utah, even Livonia, MI for Pete’s sake, and anywhere a slant oil drill can legitimately be utilized to “not’ enter our protected National Parks. They do so anyway at an angle right under protected habitat, while doing a great deal of damage with all the accompanying paraphernalia like roads, pipeline, trucks, heavy equipment, and trash. Ditto for coal mining. Using coal is getting away from “foreign” oil, all oil, but is still perpetuating the use of filthy fossil fuel that will eventually run out. Sure it might be thousands of years before it does, but at what price, gutting the countryside, ruining the earth trying?

So beware of that tricky little “foreign” word that comes before oil. It’s not a detail that should go unnoticed, because it doesn’t make any difference. It does, or they wouldn’t be slipping it in there.  It makes all the difference in our lives, our environment, and our world whether our future continues to poke around the earth and the oceans below for oil or coal that is “OURS.” Our oil and coal burn just as filthy as the “foreign” stuff.

I’ve looked into green investments before and one of the fastest growing sectors is recycling electronics. One of the latest editions to this trend is called ecoNEW a service program from NEW, a customer service based company that provides extended service and buyer protection programs for products. They’ve jumped on the environmental bandwagon and got into recycling electronics of all sorts.  

Who doesn’t have some of that junk hanging around? I gave my old cumbersome, slow, needed more memory pc to a family who couldn’t afford new. I almost felt sorry for them. They upgraded everything and I can imagine what it ended up costing. Then again I know what it cost me new for this little gizmo spitting out this blog. And yes I have an extended warranty that fixes, replaces, and debugs it, no matter whose fault the problem is. I have a curious, wants-to-be-human, African Grey that I’ve found ripping off my toggle keys while standing in the middle of the keyboard of my laptop that did have a 1500 word class assignment on it. At least I saved the primitive version of it. And I found out those toggles snap back on. If only that would work on those little rubber topped buttons on remote control paddles. Every one of mine is chewed up by you know who, that won’t stay put unless he’s locked up.

Anyway, this looks kind of promising, but there is a draw back with size and weight. You will be afforded this recycling service through the retailer where you buy your electronics. When your electronic gadget gets shabby, or you want to trade it in for the latest electronics, you will simply go to a website, and fill out the online form regarding your item. EcoNEW will render a trade-in price and provide a shipping label. When your electronic item is received by ecoNEW, and verified, they will remit a gift card to the retailer where you originally bought your product. You buy what you want and what you’ve just recycled gets reconditioned, parted out, or recycled properly.

See what I mean about size and weight restrictions. Sorry but that old puter of mine was heavy! I think ecoNEW will work mighty fine with recycled cell phones though, as well as laptops, MP3 players, game devices, and any smaller items. We simply can’t keep throwing this old stuff in landfills. You never know when the Twilight Zone will hit and all those electronics and old batteries in landfills unite and become transformers and march on us. I’m taking Art of Fiction in class right now. Can you tell?

For more about ecoNEW read: http://world-wire.com/news/0801070001.html. EcoNEW is showcased at the Las Vegas Consumer Electronics Expo through tomorrow. After watching this on TV, I really want to go to this expo sometime. Besides, any reason to go to Vegas is a good one.

For green investment in recycling of this sort goto: www.investingforthesoul.com. Ron Robins posted his website when I blogged about green business investments back in December. He’s been green investing for 40 years! He surely knows more than green me on green investing.

  
I wrote a blog way back when about trying to save our health while ruining the environment with the endless stream of God awful, empty plastic bottles from water. And now Aquafina made it official, although it’s right there on the bottle, that it’s just filtered tap water. Ditto for Dasani.

Filtered tap water is what I drink everyday from that neat little gizmo called a Brita and/or Pur filter that is attached to the end of my tap. And I’ve been waaaaaay ahead of everyone on that front. I haven’t drunk tap water since 1979. Let’s see—28 years. I gave up drinking tap water after ruining a large, heavy, thick walled pot that I utilized to humidify my apartment in the winter. The crust that built up on the surface of that pot couldn’t be knocked off with a sledgehammer. I suppose it was some sort of calcium deposit, but nonetheless, I decided it could build up in my body the same way. So I stopped drinking tap water. Besides, you know they’ve never really done any analysis of the long-term use of fluoride that’s put in the water to keep our teeth safe.

I started buying gallon jugs of distilled water. I would take the empty jugs to those good old recycling semi’s we used to have when we gave a hoot. You know. There would be one for paper, one for glass, and one for plastic. They are no more, which is sad. I would use them. I use the Alitibi paper drop-offs all the time. Just because our community doesn’t care about recycling doesn’t mean I don’t care. If the recycling semis showed up again, I would most definitely use them, trucking all the separated stuff down to them once a week.

Anyway, when the 2-½ gallon jugs of distilled water showed up on shelves, I started buying them. They have a tap so one would sit on my counter for drinking water. This is back when people thought my husband and I, (he saw my ruined pot and that hardened crust so he joined me in not drinking tap water), were nuts when we would announce we’re out of water. I can be blindfolded and pick out distilled from mineral from tap water. But, I never went for the fancy water at the time like Evian, or Perrier, just too many bottles, and more on that farther down.  Distilled is distilled. Everything is out of it. There is absolutely no taste and it’s extremely soft water, that’s how to tell it’s the real thing. Start adding minerals and I can’t tell what it is, and I become doubtful with visions of bottled water being filled out back with a hose. So for years I stuck with distilled. Then came Brita and Pur. What plastic jug savers they were, halleluiah! But then the Aquafina started, and Dasani, and Absopure got in the picture (sorry the big jugs of Absopure bring back the old vision of the hose out back).

All it took was a few water contaminate scares in some major cities, and the bottled water craze was off and running. I could never figure why someone would want to deal with all those plastic bottles anyway? This is before environmentalism mind you. Now we know for sure we’re not helping the environment or ourselves since a lot of the bottled water we drink is simply purified tap water, the same as I drink with absolutely no plastic added. Consumers trying to save themselves from bad water while ruining the environment are a stupid paradox. Lose the environment and we’re goners anyway, no matter what water we drink, duh.

As for the fancy ones like Evian and Perrier that tout they are from springs, well they are.

But one has to ask, where exactly are those springs? Evian is actually mineral water and comes from the Cachat Spring located on the Southern shore of Lake Geneva, Switzerland. Unfortunately, I found some bad reports of the water content in Lake Geneva. Core samples were taken for Pb or lead. There is runoff into the lake from a plant in Lausanne and deposits of Pb from industrial (and domestic) activities predominates there. The maximum contamination of lead occurred in the lake in the late 1970s, and has declined to the present. I’m glad I didn’t choose the Evian route back then.
 
And well, Perrier, suffered a real blow when a study in the states found benzene in the Perrier water. Perrier said it was an isolated incident when a worker goofed on the filtering procedure, and that the spring itself was uncontaminated. If so, why the filtering procedure? I never figured that out. They recalled 160 million bottles of the stuff.
 
It just goes to show, we’re gullible, very gullible and need to stop that. Our country is in a mess because we are gullible. We still haven’t moved forward, environmentally that is, because we are still being gullible to the same guys that we were gullible about that have this country in a mess. Is that double gullible? I thought for sure America had street smarts, if any smarts, although the academic type of smarts is rapidly declining also. If we did have some smarts, we would not be spending approximately 5 cents per ounce or $365 per year to drink just one 20 oz. bottle of filtered water each day and clogging up the earth with plastic that does not break down.  According to LighterFootstep.com: http://lighterfootstep.com/5-reasons-not-to-drink-bottled-water.html, bottled water is a bigger rip off than gasoline at just over 2 cents per ounce. Now that’s a real kick in the pants. If we’re going to continue to be this naive, maybe I should start a bottled water company and hook a hose up to the filter on my tap. I could spell naive backward for a name, but then again Evian has already done that.
 

I was working at something else on my laptop when a commercial came on for Subaru cars. I had to post this right now after watching it. Here is this commercial about Suburu cars that wants to give the listener the idea that Suburu is thinking of the environment and states that their factories contribute nothing to landfills. Everything is recycled, reused, or converted to electricity. What??? What the heck? Tell me the Suburu gets 50 miles to the gallon, uses hybrid technology, or that they somehow don’t emit much CO2 or use gasoline. The fact that they choose to show their environmentalism by recycling raises a flag with me. It’s a car company. What about the actual cars? 

Then I found out. According to the NRDC: “Subaru, the automaker that built its name marketing to skiers, bikers, kayakers and other outdoor enthusiasts is telling customers to take a hike. The company is about to skirt federal fuel economy rules by officially reclassifying the sedans and wagons in its popular Outback line as trucks, making small design adjustments to exploit a loophole that subjects the car to much weaker efficiency standards. Decreased fuel economy means more pollution from the tailpipe. Subaru’s contempt for air quality and the environment runs sharply counter to the image promoted by the company.” The reason they choose to talk about recycling and not their cars is because their vehicles are not that environmentally friendly. As the NRDC found: “One probable reason for the embarrassing move (to reclassify their vehicles): Subaru’s average fuel economy has been falling steadily for several years, with their 2003 models barely meeting the 27.5 mpg requirement for cars. Light trucks must average only 20.7 mpg today, and 21.2 mpg in 2005. The Outback is based on the Subaru Legacy, which has been treated as a car under federal guidelines since its introduction as a 1989 model. Subaru is able to skirt car standards by raising the suspension and ground clearance of the current vehicle. 

I just wanted to put out a warning after seeing this commercial because I think we’re going to see a lot of “We’re friendly to the environment” rhetoric pretty quick. Don’t get snowed by nonsense. We’ve already been snowed by this administration. We don’t need to continue to be duped by big industry. Let’s try to gain a little street smarts in the future and really try to grasp what people, industry, whoever, and whatever are saying relative to what they are doing. What is the number one “heads up” Jesus related? –”You will know them by their deeds.” Look up the records of those that tout environmental quality of some sort. Don’t just here the words “We’re environmentally friendly” and forget about the hows and whys. Be aware of paradoxes like “clean coal”–WHAT? The hows and whys are what make sense of everything. So in the case of that Suburu commercial, I have to say once again–WHAT?  For more about Suburu: http://www.commondreams.org/news2004/0114-12.htm   

There is something right under your nose (maybe) that you can do to help ease energy consumption, and at the same time help do your part for global warming; ditch the garage refrigerator. If you have a refrigerator in there, chances are it’s the refrigerator you used to have in your kitchen from years before or someone’s hand me down that’s old, and really straining itself to keep cool in the 90 degree weather.
 
You might want to think about replacing that big, old energy sucker for a smaller, newer model that can house your beer for as little as $150.00. That big, old  fridge is costing you extra money big time. If the refrigerator in the house is one of the biggest draws for electricity, the one in the garage needs to go. The savings on your utility bill will pay for a new one.
 
Old garage refrigerators are also dangerous to store food during extremes of weather. I know. I had an old fridge. The freezer failed and I happened to catch it. I spent the rest of the afternoon cooking all the meat into different meals, which I froze. I was exhausted, but didn’t have to cook for about 2 weeks. I never stored anything in the freezer again. Since then, the fridge is unplugged.
 
We’ll buy a small fridge if we need it. So far we don’t. Rethink your garage refrigerator. You know it’s old, definitely not efficient, even more substandard when it’s 90 degrees, you can’t keep meat in there reliably when the weather gets extreme, ditto for the fridge, and it’s really only housing beer or pop. Go smaller, and energy star efficient if you absolutely have to have two refrigerators. Most people will find they don’t.
 
As for the disposal of your old refrigerator, did you know that approximately 95% of the materials in your refrigerator or freezer can be recycled? This includes the metal cabinet, plastic liner, glass shelves, the refrigerant and oil in your compressor, and the polyurethane foam insulation. Check this website for more information about disposal of many appliances: http://www.epa.gov/ozone/title6/608/disposal/household.html. Check your yellow pages also. There may be a recycler in your area.
 
 

Temperatures soared in Las Vegas today. They might break a record. All through the Southwest temperatures are in triple digits. I was in Vegas last year this time when it was 105 degrees. All I could think of was the strain on everything because of the heat. The water usage and power for A/C is what really takes a hit. It’s a shame in a city where the sun consistently beats on the buildings, that those buildings are not solar powered. But Vegas is trying to become more environmentally friendly. Vegas water czar, Patricia Mulroy has issued mandates to conserve water, but is always searching elsewhere to maintain the water supply for the ever growing Vegas population.

When I saw the temperature in Vegas this morning, I started wondering if the plan to procure water for Vegas 300 miles away in the valleys of Nevada and Utah happened yet? The Vegas water authority bought 5 ranches for water already. Five ranches were sacrificed that is. They raised food for Americans, but were sold for a price so Vegas citizens and tourists can get more water. On the one hand Vegas is trying to be more environmentally friendly, but the argument used to get the water is based purely on the economy, which breaks down to money. It was put this way: 90% of Nevada’s water goes to agriculture, which generates 6000 jobs, so Las Vegas utilizes the water for the greatest economic return. So Vegas should get the water. Is this a wise move in the long run?

The ranchers that farm in the valley where the underground springs are threatened, claim that if water is taken from one spot, it disappears at another. One rancher pointed to spots where wildlife, sheep, and horses watered.  It dried up when new wells were tapped miles away. A U.S. Geological Survey confirms that the underground water systems in Nevada are interconnected. Vegas water czar Mulroy claims the water Vegas will extract from the underground springs is not water that is currently used by the ranchers. Current is one thing, the future is another. Five ranches growing crops for us are already out of commission for water for Vegas and now Mulroy hopes to “eventually tap 65 billion gallons of rural water a year with a 300-mile-long pipeline expected to cost more than $2 billion. That’s enough water for 50,000 families a year” in Vegas. Read the article about the rancher’s side of the story at: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=10953190. What about all the American families looking for locally grown food? Since China is not to be trusted for food imports, skepticism about any food imports is growing. Buying up farmland for water seems like a waste.

These are some of the questions that are going to keep coming up as our weather changes. It is a dilemma concerning  trade offs. Mulroy and other major investors/developers in Vegas have done much to conserve, read: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=10939792, but they fall short when it comes to curbing population growth in that area. What do you think? 

I don’t think the problem is about rural versus urban as Mulroy thinks. I think her argument for Vegas is blind to anything but economics. It’s about jobs, about money and growth. She misses the point about global warming crisis. If the temperature continues to increase in the Southwest, in other words, if Mother Nature takes over, there won’t be any people around to sustain an economy anywhere. People will move sooner or later when the heat keeps escalating. And surrounding states that are getting beat to death by nature in other ways, flash floods, tornadoes, fires, and hurricanes, won’t be able to offer the support for neighbors like we saw for Katrina victims

Since Mulroy and businesses in Vegas don’t want to curb the population growth, the ranchers that are threatened ask if this has come down to “Crops or Craps?” I’d like to know if we really mean to sacrifice our food supply for urban sprawl, and entertainment, to include all new the water parks, and amusement places that take up acres and acres of land? Importing food from other countries will become a necessity if we don’t start protecting our farmland. It’s a real revelation to see how interconnected our lives are with farms and farming practices throughout our country isn’t it?  Lately, I’ve really learned to value that guy on the tractor in the field. 
 

As I write my 84-year-old mother, who is visiting, is occupied at my kitchen counter checking all my ballpoint pens for use. She wanted some Crazy Glue, and in my search through my junk drawer, I decided to pull the neat little organizer tray out of there. By time I stacked what had fallen out of that neat little organizer tray and piled it on top, it no longer had any semblance of an organizer tray. She volunteered (I think she’s bored) to test all the pens. None of them, so far, are dried up. Which leads me to accumulation and what many of us do with it.

I told her that maybe I could give the excess pens to a nursing home, hospital, office, etc., anything but the landfill. She replied “How about a school?” Right, how about a school? We read about underprivileged kids everywhere that don’t have the money to buy school basics. Instead of this massive waste we’re creating on earth by being a “toss and buy new society” why aren’t we doing more recycling everywhere? Do those with nothing demand brand new? I’m using used stuff all over my house and I’m not underprivileged. Sorry, no pride here. If it works, I keep it shined up and use it. My car is 8 years old. I just don’t think people who get free stuff are all that picky. I’m not talking about passing down junk, but…

Take for instance one of my biggest pet peeves, flowers, shrubs, and trees for sale everywhere this time of year. It’s appalling what happens to most of this stuff. Frank’s Nursery is out of business now, but my mom and I saw them throwing 2-3 year old trees, beautiful trees, in the garbage bin. We asked if we could have them. Nope, something about posting losses keeps nurseries like this from giving those trees away. So as a loss, they are a tax write-off. Fine, but so is donating to charity.

Wouldn’t it be nice to know that all those beautiful plants that overflow everywhere, every spring end up in the garden at some nursing home, children’s play yard, and how about those subdivisions I wrote about that look like you could fry an egg on the sidewalks for lack of trees?

We need to realize when we see all this glorious growth every spring and everywhere that most of the time what took much labor, water, earth, nutrients, and as much as 5 years of time to become a substantial tree or shrub is tossed like garbage for the almighty dollar. True the losses qualify as a tax write-off but does it ever occur to anyone that maybe we should cut back on growing too much of this stuff in lieu of saving the labor, water, and earth for other things like restoration of all the forests that are burning or for more farmland for food sources instead. After all, do we really need every food market, hardware store, department store, and even gas stations selling flowers, trees, or shrubs?

 Since I saw those trees hit the garbage bin years ago, the view of all the flower markets overflowing every spring makes me about as sad as seeing all the road-kill. I’ve raised a tree from a twig. Try it sometime and see if you don’t find yourself caring for that particular tree as if it were your child. To see a twig grow to a tall, strong, glorious tree that shades my yard and me against increasingly hotter summers is not much different than raising any other living thing. We need to take notice, appreciate, and nurture all living things to include the plant kingdom. There may come a time where we will no longer be able to grow anything. We’ll miss the green things.

One of my blogs was about the forests lost to forest fires and that it was really odd to see the woods of Minnesota burn since the state is noted for its many inland lakes. Then I read that the global warming impact of forest fires in our western states is the equivalent of a more severe hurricane season in the gulf. But hurricanes are over in a few days, forest fires can burn for months. About.com stated: “Researchers at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and the University of Arizona found four times as many large wildfires occurred in Western forests between 1987 and 2003 compared to the previous 16 years.”

Everything about fires has increased due to global warming. The latest fires burned 6.5 times more land, increased from around 8 days to 37 days in duration, and the whole fire season has expanded 78 more days. Here’s the interesting part. You know there are television personalities like Regis Philbin who make fun of a one degree weather change, but most of the increase in our fires corresponds with a simple 1.5 degree rise in temperature out west during the same time frame of 87 to 2003. The slightly warmer temperatures lead to longer, drier seasons that are ideal for a flash fire.

This is the first study that links global warming and forest fires. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, “The researchers examined U.S. Forest Service and National Park Service records of every forest fire that burned at least 1,000 acres from 1970 to 2003. They found that of 1,166 fires in that period, four-fifths of them, or about 900, occurred after 1987.” The article went on to say, “Steven Running, a professor in the School of Forestry at the University of Montana who wrote an accompanying article about the report for Science hopes to include Westerling’s findings in a report on the ecological consequences of climate change for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.”

I don’t doubt that sooner or later science will find a link between all major eruptions on earth such as volcanoes, and earthquakes with the rise in hurricanes, flooding, fires, etc., that are due to man’s impact on this same environment with some form of pollution. We simply haven’t given much thought to our ever increasing world population in ratio to its output of pollution. Imagine if every growing population turned into a capitalist society like ours where demand for everything under the sun in huge amounts is an everyday occurrence. Capitalism to me is more a throw away society than a recycling society right now. It doesn’t have to be that way, however. We’re into supply and demand and haven’t caught on that some of the supply can come from what has already been used. It’s simply not a good thing for the earth to start from scratch every time when there is perfectly good base material out there to be recycled.

This has just given me an idea to blog about what is currently offered in the recycled goods market and for what use. I do know that recycled plastics offer picnic tables, park benches, and even parking curbs out of high density plastic material instead of wood that rots or concrete that eventually cracks. Every Parks and Recreation Commission in all cities should be looking into recycled products like these for all of our recreational areas. It would make all of us feel a little better about all the plastic products we consume and throw away into a trash dump versus the local park or for some future use wouldn’t it? We should see how truly efficient we can be. After all our country should be viewed as a business and isn’t that the essence of business anyway to garner the greatest profit with the least overhead, and the least waste?
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