81–90 of 150 posts
My wife and I were traveling in Borneo a few years back. They have "water villages" there where all the houses are built on stilts in shallow water. You could not see the shore because it was completely covered in a layer of garbage. It was like living on top of a landfill. At first I thought it was garbage thrown out by the villagers, but it's not. It was garbage that washes in on the tide. Every now and then the vi…
I've wondered for a time, why we put so much energy into banning certain plastic items, instead of improving biodegradable plastic technologies in conjunction with efficient trash sorting at waste management plants. If we can replace most plastics with biodegradable forms, a large part of these issues go away completely within our lifetime; plastics decomposing in as little as 24 months![1] > According to a 2010 EPA…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I saw that on the Malaysian peninsula. Chinese fishing villages that still speak an old dialect of Cantonese. It's worse in what looks to be the dry season and low tide like you have there. The other issue is that it's not important to them to clean it up - as it was explained to me. I talked to a local while there and she explained that growing up she never saw it, but years away and she doesn't like it now but know…
I live in Seattle, one of the most expensive cities in the US. Most of the houseboats on Lake Washington and Lake Union dumped their sewage straight into the lakes until the late 60s. It was only this year that we passed an ordinance prohibiting dumping treated sewage from boats into Puget Sound and the lakes. That's a shudder-inducing thought when you consider that many of the delicious oysters we have here are dire…
Most of life, really. It's only recently (the last century) that we've hit upon such economies of scale, population and production capacity that our natural renewal processes can no longer handle the load.
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Human nature being what it is, it's inevitable. Making it about personal responsibility to recycle and dispose tidily is guaranteeing a tragedy of the commons. This frees manufacturers to create ever more packaging crap and chase an extra fraction of a cent. Only way to stop it is to go back to packaging that decomposes or is inert like glass which soon loses the sharp edges.
We need to get back to paper/cardboard packaging. Trees can be and are farmed. You can use as much paper as you want and never run out of trees.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I saw that on the Malaysian peninsula. Chinese fishing villages that still speak an old dialect of Cantonese. It's worse in what looks to be the dry season and low tide like you have there. The other issue is that it's not important to them to clean it up - as it was explained to me. I talked to a local while there and she explained that growing up she never saw it, but years away and she doesn't like it now but know…
I live in Seattle, one of the most expensive cities in the US. Most of the houseboats on Lake Washington and Lake Union dumped their sewage straight into the lakes until the late 60s. It was only this year that we passed an ordinance prohibiting dumping treated sewage from boats into Puget Sound and the lakes. That's a shudder-inducing thought when you consider that many of the delicious oysters we have here are dire…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
How hard is it to carry some TP with you? NBD, right? So you wouldn't mind having to take your own with you everywhere you go? > Why are people so helpless? I... you are literally talking about disabled people. A decent society should have some care for the needs of these people, and not ignore them when they tell us what is important to them.
Toilet paper and drinking straws are not equivalent. TP is biodegradable and EVERYBODY needs it. If stores were to stop carrying TP, then everyone would need to carry it around and that's silly. Disabled people aren't helpless, they generally will do everything they can up until their disability stops them. I'm really struggling to think of a disability where someone would be prevented from putting a straw on their p…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
We need to get back to paper/cardboard packaging. Trees can be and are farmed. You can use as much paper as you want and never run out of trees.
Also makes it a natural carbon sink (trees->paper packaging->landfills).
This is the key. We must hold the companies producing single use plastics responsible for the massive amounts of toxic waste they dump on our planet. For too long, they have been allowed to pass the responsibility and blame on to the consumer. Recycling programs have not been sufficiently successful. It's time to stop the problem at the source.
I've wondered for a time, why we put so much energy into banning certain plastic items, instead of improving biodegradable plastic technologies in conjunction with efficient trash sorting at waste management plants. If we can replace most plastics with biodegradable forms, a large part of these issues go away completely within our lifetime; plastics decomposing in as little as 24 months![1] > According to a 2010 EPA…