The Incinerator as Eye Candy

What Elisabeth Rosenthal talks about in this article is rather intereseting given the fact that in Denmark they design their plants in a unique way that the design contributes to producing clean energy. Some twenty years ago Denmark passed a "pollution control" stating that it would construct tall smokestacks so would dispers the dirty emissions far and wide. Now in modern times that is no longer necessary because they have developed a way to clean the air through a series of filters and scrubbers ridding of most of the harful pollutants, rather of demolishing the old incinerators they have decided to reopen them but put a modern twist to them the emit clean air instead of teh harsh chemicals it would normally produce. Along with the new retrofitted technology in the old ones and new plants they also added some interesting designs on them to make them unique in their own way. Now people aurrounding them do not mind them because they enjoy the fact that it makes clean air, heat, and electricity, so their is no need to argue with the government about where they are placed like our issue with Puente Hills. They should do this in America so it would resove the landfills issue and instead of having people argue about it why not benefit from them, the same way Europe is benefitting from them.

chapter 08

In chapter 08, the the thing that i found shocking was that in World War 2 the U.S. was producing 2.5 million pounds of wasted food a day during the war. How can someone be so wasteful of the thing that we consume to survive besides water. Archaeologist Bill Rathje wanted to determone how much food we waste over the decades. He has discovered that about half of the food that we produce is thrown away through surplus of food, why do we produce so much food when the reality we are making more then we can eat. He excavates ancient ruins from our past to get a better understanding of how they lived, what did they do, and studied all of the little details are the ones that count. As of today the Garbage Project is the one on charge of all of the all of the excatation details that relates to waste of the old, as a little artifact they have uncovered a little aluminum can, that was dated to a time befor the pull-tabs taht we have today. This little fact was interesting because our fountain drinks concept was around before us, around the Egyptian time if i remember correctly. At first Rathje did not know how to classify this finding 'til later, when he found more of same thing is when he understood what it was. In the Garbage Project they have developed a catalog of all of the things that has been thrown away, a total of 190 separate codes in all. In all of their codes they have unvailed an alarming rate of food waste when they started crunching the numbers and the little thing that they used ot keep track of the food was that they found a large amount of meat being thrown away, so they used that as a tracker so they wont lose their spot in the process of counting. In the process of calculating the amount of meat consumed they noticed that their was more food wasted during the shortage months, with the conclusion that people bought more before the shorrtage months stasrted but would have to throw it away when the food went bad, they have wasted 3 times their normal waste rate of 3percent. How can people be so wasteful when their are others in the world that are starving and here we are wasting the food that could be used to feed the hungry. Its just infuriating on how much food we waste and the food that we are wasting is more then enough to feed the hungry. The food that we waste in a day can feed the hungry for weeks on end but why aren't we doing that, we would rather toss the food then feed the hungry, how can we be so careless of this. If it were the other way around people would do it, if we are willing to do it if it were the other way why not now with the situation that is at hand now.

the story of electronics

It was surprising to me how much e-waste we produce and what its doing to us throughout the process, what the video says is true but what has been done to fix this in America. The thing that shocked me was that we produce 25 million tons of e-waste annually and when we "recycle" it actually goes over seas and pollute other people. I do not understand why do we put toxins in everything we use, their is really no need for them but we add them to what benefit. Their are some cases that our old electronics have an overwhelming amount of toxins in them such as our old televisions contained 5lbs. of lead, I personally find that to be a lot of lead and what was it suppose to do for the television would be my next question. It really does not make sense to change the outlets every 18 months, its no real good reason but for people to go buy the latest technology so it will work, but when the next latest technology comes out you will have to trash your some what new one because some of its features are not going as fast as it use to be or maybe its on the verge of being obsolete. I just frustrates me that corporations find these little things to change on our electronics that will make the old versions obsolete because it has more storage space or it is faster then the older model. What the lady in the video said about putting all of the old models in the big corporations garage is not really a bad idea when you come to think about it, that will indeed make a difference but our government will not punish them but us for doing such a thing. That is just unfair because the government is backing up the big corporations more then the people that for the people that put our representatives into congress to just turn  their backs on us because we have less money. The corporations have this disgusting feeling from them after every article I read that mentions them and what they do to make more money, even they have to poison everything in the process, they almost sound like a overlord from hell robbing people of everything they work hard to get, it is just infuriating. At least now we can learn from these dirty secrets and make a change in them.

chapter 07

The question that is first introduced in the beginning of the chapter actually makes you think about it for a while, to me i woukf find that to be pretty cool but creepy. The approach in this chapter is a interesting one, almost like what a kid would wonder about, but the fact they are saying is entirely true if the trash was a "smart trash." Sadly this can not be real because we have not thought about it much on where it goes, whats put into it, and who does it harm. Without  these facts our crisis on trash is only a figment of our imagination when it is actually spreading like a wild fire with no sign of stopping. though this is a major problem that no one seems to care about their are some groups starting to "bug" our trash to see where it goes. I find to be a good idea though it would have been better if they did while it was still a minor issue. the levels of tracking the garbage was broken into three parts which I did not know that was even possible to begin with after all it does boil down to just trash. MIT, has developed a small device that they can hide inside the electronics to keep track of it when it goes through the cycle of producing, using, and trashing, though the device allows researchers in MIT to have an idea of where is the trash going and what is happening to it while it battles the elements of nature. The graph that Humes supplies in this chapter is rather startling do to the amount of electronnics we throw away and most of it is teh thing that we always have with us, our cell phones. The number of cell phones we generate, dispose, and recycle are guaranteed to be surreal to any ordinary person but the numbers doesn't lie, we are not even close to the number that we are suppose to be recycling our phones. Of the numerous units of phones we have only ten percent of the  units are recycled compared to how much is generated. All of the electronics taht we have are not being recycled as much as we should be, most of it goes to the trash when it can serve as a better purpose, reused electronics rather then spending millions of dollars to blow holes in the ground to get minerals to put in the phones when all you need to do is recycle the older models and use what you can in the newer models. I hope we will start doing stuff like this so more people will become aware about the crisis we are in with our own trash.

19-Year-Old Develops Ocean Cleanup Array That Could Remove 7,250,000 Tons Of Plastic From the World's Oceans

The amount of thought this 19yr. old put into this plan is flawless, this could be the answer that everyone is looking for to rid the plastic in the ocean without harming the sea life. I wonder why no one thought about this before but the question I have for the creator is how can the machine determine which is plastic and which is plankton? I am guessing that everyone that has asked this question do to the case that both plastic and plankton are about the same size, so how can it determine which is which. Another thing that was interesting was that this use to be a school paper that would win the Best Technical Design 2012, and a few months later he created a small scale of the project that could remove 7,250,000 tons of plastic if the government decides to invest in his invention. Boyan Slant, the 19yr old boy who designed this contraption went into a non-profit organization to make his idea a reality, the only down side is that it will take 5yrs. to gather the amount of plastic it said it would collect, then their should be more than 1 of his inventions to keep up with the rate of trash that is getting put in the ocean. I hope that this invention will be the permanent solution to the trash in the ocean, but I doubt it would be because of all of the time, effort, fabrication, making might not be enough to keep up with the rate that us Americans are throwing trash away.

Scripps Study Shows Plastic in Pacific Garbage Patch Has Increased 100-Fold

Researchers at San Diego's Scripps Institution of Oceanography has stated that insects have been laying their eggs in small clutters of plastic swept in from the ocean, another thing they have stated is that we are unaware of the magnitude of how much plastic is actually in the ocean. They have found that many people think that the ocean has some plastic bottles, cups, milk gallons, and more things floating near the ocean when in fact their is enough plastic in the ocean to cover Texas over the length of thousands of square miles in various sizes. Another shocking fact was that out of the 141 varieties of fish in the Pacific Garbage Patch (PGP), 9percent of them has plastic in their stomachs at this rate in maybe 5-10 years all of the fish in the PGP will have plastic in their stomachs unless we find a way to fix it before its too late. To make matters even worse is that the recent tsunami in Japan is only going to add to the amount of debris in the ocean. Unfortunately all of the efforts we put towards cleaning the ocean has been a literal waste of time when we are not even making a dent in the amount of trash their is in the ocean.

chpater 06

The interesting about chapter 6 was that Miriam Goldstein had done some field work disguised as different people learning about the overwhelming amount of plastic in the ocean. The stuff she does is remarkable, going to great lengths to figure out what can be done now to fix the damage that has already been done to the ocean. Another thing that got my attention was that she went to UCSD and their Scripps Institution to place a plan that would only focus on the coastal pollution, but that did nit stop her until she found out the "plastic oceans" in the heart of the gyres. It was also surprising how she was able to get UCSD to give her a grant and the Kaisei Project giving her the tools she needed to  finish the research she wanted to perform. The trash debris she found near the gyre on its own was twice the size of Texas from one gyre, imagine all of the trash at sea combined is enough to cover the U.S. twice as much or all of the land masses with some left over. The other thing that I was unaware of is that their is a lot of high concentration levels of plastic throughout the ocean. Another thing that I found odd from Goldstein's research is that the plankton did not mind the trash at all, it almost looked like their was  some kind of treaty between trash and the smallest sea life. As of now the POPs are unsure if the plastic particles are helping or increasing the magnitude of its dangers by absorbing all of the man made chemicals in the ocean by acting as little chemical magnets in the sea is one thing that the biologists are unsure on. I hope they will figure out a solution and put a stop to it before its too late.