Our World and Everything in It

I was watching PBS news last night and found out a little more about how the foreclosed home situation is being handled. No wonder banks/lenders are in trouble. The waste is unbelievable. It’s called “trashing out a home” when mortgage lenders pay someone to carry everything out of a house to a dumpster. The items are many times top notch household furnishings and electronics. It all ends up in a landfill. What a waste. This pillage should be spread around.

I watched a whole new genre of mover called “trash-out crews.” They go into foreclosed homes and strip the house of all its belongings and send it to the trash dump. You might think that wouldn’t be much, but many upper middle class homes that have been vacated, leave behind much of their high-end belongings too. In some cases it looked as if someone came through and yelled “run for your lives the damn has burst” because food was left out, and toys were still on the floor. There is a large amount of TV’s and electronics like PCS left behind. These items could be put to use in schools.

When the interviewer asked the head of one of these trash-out companies about giving it to charity he said the logistics of hooking up with a charity is slim. They don’t show up, or aren’t on time, or leave things of little value behind so that he has to go back a second time. Unfortunately, he said he tried the eco friendly way and it ends up costing him money. His company is paid by the mortgage companies to pick up perfectly nice items and send them to the landfill where they pay fees to dump the stuff too.

Don’t think this happens much? The same guy with the trash-out company started with 3 employees and now has 73. His trash out crews trash 15 homes per day—high scale stuff from the edge of the golf course homes. It was sickening to see what went into a dumpster knowing the mortgage industry is in serious trouble and wasting like this. To think people somewhere are living in huts on dirt floors, and the amount and variety of things that are getting buried in the earth here is ridiculous. 

I ran across one article that wanted to know where the entrepreneurs are when it comes to trashing out homes? Think about it. It’s a never ending supply of free merchandise that you can actually resell on eBay or Craig’s list, and the bank/lender pays you to pick it up. If you don’t resell it, you store it and in the future you charge the same bank that paid you to pick it up in order to stage the same empty homes for resale using the furniture you took from them in the first place. Think of it as getting paid to pick it up, then put it back.

My first thought was, “Where is Habitat for Humanity?” After all, if an organization like Habitat is going through the trouble of enlisting volunteers to build someone a brand new home, it shouldn’t be an empty home with all this “trash” around.  The same volunteers for Habitat could be working with the mortgage lenders for “clear out” not “trash out” jobs. Imagine presenting someone with a new and “furnished” home.

Is this socialist ideology? It’s certainly “spreading the wealth” around. I see it as recycling whatever, whenever from someone who didn’t care enough to take it, store it, or donate it in the first place. Besides the amount spent on trashing and landfill costs is not that much cheaper than doing the right thing.

I don’t buy it that there is no way to hook this stuff up with charity. There is always a way. If someone offered good money for a solution there would certainly be a way to do it, but then it wouldn’t be charity.

http://www.news-press.com/article/20081022/RE/810220376/1014/RSS02

http://www.maxgladwell.com/2008/10/foreclosure-crisis-where-are-the-green-entrepreneurs/

I received an interesting e-mail from a French blogsite, e-citizen.tv, with an article about 16 year-old Canadian high school student, Daniel Burd, who put together the right balance of bacteria to eat plastic bags at a record rate of  42% elimination in just 6 weeks. That’s really close to ½ of a bag in a very short period of time. Plastic can take up to 1000 years to disintegrate.

I read Daniel’s report. Burd’s experiment is on PDF and the link is in the article. He worked with three different bacteria strains that feed on the organic material in the plastic bags. Daniel reasoned that if plastic eventually breaks down then there are bacteria that are able to digest the plastic bags. He was able to isolate the microbes that eat plastic and by mixing strains created bacteria that can really gobble the stuff without creating CO2 in the process.

Powdering landfills with Daniel Burd’s mix could substantially reduce the size of them. All I can ask is why didn’t an adult think to do this? Why didn’t science do this? Makes you wonder doesn’t it? Read about it:

http://www.e-citizen.tv/wordpress/2008/06/11/lang_frsacs-plastiques-genie-environnement-sciences-recherchelang_frlang_enplastic-bags-environement-sciences-research-geniouslang_en/langswitch_lang/en/

It’s also the largest landfill redevelopment in the state of Michigan situated over the former Allen Park Clay Mine Landfill. Ford turned this Brownfield project into something green, really green. According to a World-Wire article:

The development not only reuses the landfill property, it preserves more land than it develops. In all, nearly two-thirds of the site will be natural green space, including prairie fields, ponds, trails and a future 43-acre park surrounding one million square feet of shops and restaurants.

Furthermore, the buildings on the site feature the latest in green design and construction. Fairlane Green Phase I is the first multi-tenant retail development to earn gold-level Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification from the U.S. Green Building Council.

Environmental characteristics include high efficiency, CFC-free heating and cooling equipment, white reflective roofing, low-emitting materials, water-efficient plumbing fixtures, recycled and locally sourced building materials, windows and skylights, and a cistern to capture and re-use rain water.

More visible examples of the site’s environmental mission include large prairie fields and extensive native landscaping in parking lots, entryways, along store fronts and up the sides of buildings. Native plants require less irrigation and fertilizer while providing wildlife habitat. Additionally, rock gardens and landscaped swales cleanse and slow the flow of stormwater, which is captured in several large ponds.

Fairlane Green’s wide paved trails wind through prairies, along the ponds and through the mature woods bordering the site. Plans for the 43-acre park are underway and may include sledding, playscapes and nature study.

Read more:

http://world-wire.com/news/0805050001.html

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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’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.

Watched Oprah’s “Green” show tonight, and learned some things I’ll pass along here.  I know it’s a rerun, but hey, I missed it the first time around.  She handed out reusable cloth grocery bags first, reminding everyone that it takes 1000 years for plastic to break down. I know what most of the ladies in the audience were thinking. How are we supposed to get a huge shopping basket of goods into that little bag? It’s only good for small trips. My answer is to look for grocery stores that recycle those bags in bins in the bottle return area. I don’t throw mine out. I swear I can cram 50 plastic bags into one. I’ve got a trunk full for drop off now. Also look for paper recycling drop offs near your home. I reuse big plastic shopping bags to collect and cart my junk mail and any paper for recycling.

Recycle your clothes, your sports equipment, fitness equipment, appliances, yard gear, aluminum foil, and glass, just about everything. Have yard sales and meet your neighbors. My neighborhood has them all the time. Here are some interesting statistics that were on the show relative to recycling and conservation:

We use 10 billion paper bags per year that takes 14 million trees to produce.
We use 380 billion plastic bags. Try bringing your own, and then recycle.
Junk mail uses 100 million trees and 20 billion gals. of water a year.
We ask for 8 billion ATM receipts a year. It is equal to a roll of paper 2 billion ft. long that would wrap around the equator 15 times.
Using 1 less 2-ply napkin a day will save one billion tons of paper waste per year.
It takes 5 liters of water to make the plastic bottle for just one liter of water. Use re-useable bottles and for Pete’s sake get a water tap filter! New Wave Enviro products have personal reusable plastic bottles with built in filters.
Oh and our little obsession with bottled water costs big money, enough to provide the entire world with clean drinking water.

Some brand names that provide really good green products are 7th Generation, Meyers, Method reusable micro-fiber clothes. And Shaklee has been producing all natural cleaning products for years. People rave about a product called H2. Two drops of the natural cleaner in a container of water will clean everything in your house, and it works.

Americanforest.org is a website where you can buy a tree for $1 each and they will plant it. It’s the least we can do considering. And for absolutely stunning cinematography, do not miss “Planet Earth” on the Discovery Channel. I’ve seen some of it. We were given the care of such a beautiful, majestic planet, and pretty much pigged it up. The DVD and book are also available in stores. This DVD could be thought of as an heirloom for future generations to witness. For those of you out there who have pooh, poohed the poor polar bear this is heart-wrenching stuff. A woman said it changed her life when she watched a polar bear swim, and swim, and swim in what is now open water to the point of exhaustion. He finally found land where he dug the hole that would be his grave. He curled up and died.

For more statistics and tips look for The Green Book a Guide to Saving the Planet One Simple Step at a Time by Elizabeth Rogers and Thomas M. Kostigen.

A lot of the info came from Sundance at http://www.sundancechannel.com/thegreen.

I don’t know if many people are aware that mercury vapor lights are being phased out. I went to get a socket extender at an electrical supply company and the notices were on the counter. It’s due to their mercury content. We pretty much have voluntary disposal policy in Michigan as far as batteries, bulbs, and stuff with mercury in them. I guess they don’t trust us from throwing them into landfills that aren’t designated as toxic. What I really want to know is what’s going on in the minds of those that created the new policy about mercury vapor lights? Have they noticed the large amount of coal-fired plants in Michigan?

The Detroit Free Press just had an article about Michigan’s unwillingness to just stop. Stop building more coal-fired plants. We’ve lost population. The idea of needing 7 more coalburners as the article pointed out is absurd. And Detroit is making a new area downtown for technical type business and hopefully green business. I keep asking what green businesses will buy into a state that supports fossil fuel plants? Luke warm “green” isn’t enticing.  

So I ask you: Is this not a ludicrous ruling—no more mercury vapor lights? Awful lot of farmers in Michigan and people like me with a pole barn with a mercury vapor light illuminating the entire yard out of darkness. I have no problem recycling my vapor lights, but how about regulating the coal-fired plants that some studies estimate dump 2591 lbs. of mercury the atmosphere annually in Michigan. People can dispute all they want. But the state of Michigan “has had a statewide fish consumption advisory for inland lakes since 1988. The advisory warns against eating more than one meal a week of rock bass, perch or crappie over nine inches in length, or any size largemouth bass, smallmouth bass, walleye, northern pike or muskie from inland lakes. Women of childbearing age and children under age 15 are advised not to eat more than one meal of these fish per month.” While airborne mercury poses no problem, when it hits earth, groundwater, streams, and creeks there is a problem.

Not eat fish more than once a month? That’s a little frightening to me. It tells just how much of that mercury blanketed water. Over a ton of mercury is deposited onto everything in Michigan every year, to me, that means 10 tons of mercury over ten years that doesn’t completely go away. I think we need to step up to plate in Michigan and make the changes that really have an impact on cleaning up our environment and show by example we are in earnest about being a “green” state. And while we’re at it can we please mandate bottle returns on those plastic water bottles?  It drives me nuts knowing they end up in landfills and virtually never break down not in the next few lifetimes anyway.

 If you want to read more about Michigan and mercury this covers just about everything and if it’s not here the people to contact are:http://www.deq.state.mi.us/documents/deq-ess-ECOSMercurySurvey1-10-05final.pdf.     

I have to say I did not catch all of last night’s CNN “Planet in Peril.” I was into animal rights before the entire environment needed help too. So I was too squeamish to watch the abuse of beautiful creatures, especially those close to extinction. I’ve seen enough. I belong to all types of animal rights groups and read their mail. I don’t sleep well when I see something too extreme, and I mean for a long, long time. Even years later I can picture something horrid I forgot about. Memory is a funny thing. It doesn’t go away easily.

  
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