Continental Drift

In the UK, they are planning to open a public residual waste plant but by doing so they will over produce their regular waste amount. This has evolved into a big war between SRF(Solid Recovered Fuel) versus the RDF(Refuse Derived Fuel) along with the issue of exporting our trash over seas.  The thing that Eunomia fears the most is that they will encounter a shortage and overwhelming amount of trash flow to their shores. Another issue that they are worried about is that they are afraid that they will not have enough funding for this plan to take its full shape. Europeans are terrified that they if they go through with this plan they have predicted a  surreal number that could ultimately over flow the UK with so much trash that they could possibly be drowned in trash.  The Europeans have saved thousand of dollars to construct their incinerators but by doing so they have exceeded their maximum capapcity. In their graph that they have shown, proves that the Netherlands has surpass the overcapacity limit and they are the highest number imported from the UK. Though the UK has the space for all of the trash they will increase their landfill tax for imported trash. I was hoping that we didn't have to conclude to putting our trash into other countries but we are already doing that with China and our scrap paper, so the vibe that I am getting is that paper to China so plastic to Europe, our most allied nation that we have. I was just hoping to have someone to resolve our trash crisis and put an end to this before it goes to far that it would be impossible to reverse, lets not end up like Wall-E.

chapter 10

The interesting thing about chapter ten was in the first paragraph when they asked if anyone ever thought of going to the landfills with leftovers from your front lawn and come home with one of your wildest imagination. Well this came true for Andy Keller, his dream came true. they both came home and got pushed into the middle of a heated argument between bag manufacturers and multiple cities wanting to ban plastic bags. Keller use to be a software trade, selling enterprise-grade code for a company in San Francisco with the occasional call home to Chico, CA. Later after he got laid off, Keller decided to redecorate his home. As it turns out when he was done digging in the yard he had no where to put all of the waste from the digging, that would lead him to go to the landfills. The thing that grabbed his attention from the trip was the odor, yet I had the same response, the smell was unexplainable and horrendous. Aside the odor or the endless piles of trash the thing that truly stuck to him was the amount of plastic bags that were there and how it got caught in almost everything. By the time Keller left he began to plan how can he avoid these bags of mayhem, during his drive home he thought of ways to use reusable bags rather than plastic. By the time he got home he was finding ways to put his new knowledge to a way that would translate into a new career. While he thought about this he realized that there was a minority of people doing this but they always complained about them so Keller concluded to create a new reusable bag that would be easy to use and it can fold up. The next day he began creating his idea, endlessly working on it for days on end with prototypes, materials, and sketching's. Finally he came up with a bag that was durable, foldable, and effective which soon launched him into a company of reusable bags "Chico Bags" with almost $100,000 of credit and the credit card that he used for the company maxed out at $5,000. After the years in his company he created a super-villain alter ego that would be known as Bag-Monster. Not to long after the creation of this super-villain came a flood of requests and demonstrations for it and it eventually lead into a program of borrowing the suit. This sure sounds like a dream come true.

chapter 09

In the beginning of this chapter follows a female worker in the PDA we sort of follow her routine at work, before, and after which was a good anecdote to start off this chapter as a new section. The thing that got my attention about this chapter was its little title he gave, it sounds like he/she was actually part of the process of the landfills. Niki Ulehla sounds like she could be a worker for the PDA or a dumpster diver, i was unsure of by the fact that she was scuffling through the trash and found a little piece of something that she was looking for. Later in the chapter they reveal the fact that she is a neighborhood artist by constructing her artworks from pieces that she finds in the junk yard. This was an artist that wanted to make something from other peoples trash to inspire people to see what they are throwing and what they can be used instead. In San Francisco they have developed the AIR program to raise awarness fo the amount of trash they are tossing into the trash and how much is going into the dumps. This program started in 1990 as a southside oddity.Unfortunately this has turned into a unlikely icon which has led to many places attempting to imitate it. As an attempt to imitate this it works but it does not last as long is the original does. In comparison to all of the other dumps around San Francisco the PDA is the one that has dominated all others with a 20ft deep football field indoor swimming pool of trash. As it turns out it is a loud, stinking dangerous place, filled with an ever-shifting whirlpool of debirs and heavy machinery 24/7, due to these factors no one has figured how to attract dancers and an audience into the facility with any reasonable of comfort or safety. I hope that someone will see what we are doing to our planet and make a difference.

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.