That Green Thing

And just to bring it full circle,

back in the day people didn’t use plastic grocery bags, they brought their own net bags or other cloth bags and reused them over and over.

“back in the day people didn’t use plastic grocery bags, they brought their own net bags or other cloth bags and reused them over and over.”

That’s what I do. The grocery store sells them for a buck and I get 5 cents back each time I use it. After 20 weeks, it has paid for itself.

Speaking of trash ( and no one did ). Our neighbor made his first million in trash, starting up and selling land fills. I asked him to drop off any bike parts he came across to use on my kid’s bikes. Imagine my surprise when he had a dump truck dump a full load of bikes that were thrown away, many with little more flat tires.

I spent the next several summers making up bikes of every description for our and the rest of the neighborhood kids and some adults,including one university prof. who still uses his free “bike” to this day. I am convinced, there is cash in other people’s trash. It is amazing what people throw away, yesterday and today. Nothing has changed and I don’t feel we are any more or less green. We just live with different " things" and deal with them as best we can.

If kids are disrespectful of how we or our grandparents lived, that’s just the way we brought them up.

Our landfill segregates trash when you drop it off yourself. Electronics goes in one dumpster, oil in another container, and hazardous waste is accepted at a drop-off only when someone is there to accept it. Large items, mostly appliances, are placed on the side so that they can be sold for parts or rebuilding. There are even separate containers for metal and general trash. Almost everything is recycled, including trash picked up at our houses. We even clean food containers so that we can recycle them. Our garbage is less than 20 gallons per week, while our recycling is over 30.

I could respond by itemizing every point defensively, but I’m 100% sure that I’m better for the environment than a whole slew of plastic bag-shunning cashiers and Prius-driving fools simply because I don’t have any children or any plans to have any. (and don’t get me started on Priuses)

I maintain that while we should all try to minimize our impact on the environment, that overpopulation is one of the main problems facing the environment (and humanity), and that it’s completely controllable. I’m not saying people shouldn’t have kids, just that does anyone need to have 5 or 6 kids?

Meanwhile, I’ll keep running my computers and driving my V8. Probably just keeping my car for a decade or more like I always do is better for the environment too than driving an econobox and getting a new one every 2 years like some people do. (though admittedly it would then hurt the economy if such people didn’t exist)

Let the flames begin!

I was very recently called a ‘Picker’.

I was insulted and yet enhanced by the term.

Growing up to me that is a term referring to people that were so poor that they ‘picked’ thru the trash at the dump for some kind of sustenance. That is within my lifetime of 50 years and I well remember the images of those people. Living in shacks or abandoned ruins of houses or shacks - filthy, destitute, demoralized, debilitated, desperate for anything to survive - that was in the 60’s and not that uncommon.
I read this posting and realize how far we have not advanced - simply changed.

Younger people have no idea of how poor, poor can be. But that can yet be realized.

I do ‘Pick’ but not at the dump - I am an auto restorer and have been ‘picking’ at salvage/scrap (now Recycling) yards my entire life. After all that is were you find antique auto parts - or at least that’s where most of them came from in the first place. The disposable society we live in discards old cars, like they do leftovers, beer cans, foam cups and trash from lunch, just as easily as they do old or annoying dogs, old houses, old people, need I go on.

I have spent my life recycling. I am an educated person, you might say a recycled person. I recycled myself many years ago to become a highly productive member of an enlightened society to which we would all benefit. Unfortunately, this society became so excessively gluttonous that greed overcame reason. Millions of High paying jobs were outsourced to ‘Cost Effective Basis’. Thereby our current economic situation. Reason no longer has a place in this country. If it does it is certainly in the minority.

I am proud to have done my best to recycle and reuse. Despite the ridicule I have endured, I have educated myself, quickly paid off my student loans, made a good living (for a time), bought a house and new vehicle, supported my parent(s), created a nature preserve from the family farm, all the while appreciating the value of our environment and the material things it provides.

I have fixed or rebuilt many things, including cars, from the junk pile. The list is endless. From the scrapyard I have redeemed many bicycles which were discarded simply for having flat tires or twisted handlebars. I ride bikes every day, the most recent coming from the scrap yard. All aluminum mountain bike with dual suspension and 18 speeds. A little work and I have a $350+ bike for less than $2. Just thrown out.

I live 25 miles away from the nearest landfill. It was originally intended to handle refuse for the local area but, over time, corporate interests convinced our state gov. to turn it into the only legal landfill for 100+ miles around. Two major metro areas have been dumping hundreds of semi loads of refuse per day into it now for 20+ years - with no recycling effort until the last few years. We now have 2 mountains of trash on our formerly beautiful prairie over 300 feet tall - all from our wonderful neighbors. Thanks.

So Yes, I guess I am a ‘Picker’,

You think I’m trash?

HA!

Anyone who trashes our planet for more and more Crap is trash to me.

Don’t tread on me.

Yours, very truly,

Bcudamatt

Even when I was financially well off I alway preferred finding throw aways and fixing them up to buying new stuff. Or repairing/redoing my own stuff. And I learn new things that way. In order to reupholster my living room furniture I had to learn to sew. It came out great.

I repaired some vacuums from the Litchfield dump when I lived there. I left there 15 years ago and I’m still using the vacuums. They work better than those newfangled vacuums with their “cyclones” and “rolling balls” and such.

I don’t even buy furniture. If I need something, I design it and build it myself.

Being a “picker” is a way of life, just a total 180 from the picker lifestyle cudamatt was talking about; watch American Pickers on History Channel and see.

In the electric car crash thread I mentioned something about having trash burning power plants built, since garbage is something completely renewable and VERY abundant. If they could sort through those massive piles of trash in the dump you mentioned, imagine how much smaller they’d be if they converted the land fill into a trash burning power plant.

I’ve long wondered why we don’t generate electricity by burning trash. It’s such a plentiful resource, the cost is…well…better than free…we charge companies to dump their trash, and we’d reduce the level of trash.

I guess the reason there’s no “initiative” to do so is because people can get rich off the other fuel sources used to geberate power. Nobody can get rich enough on a trash burning power station.

One reason we don’t incinerate our garbage is that, in places where it was previously done, people who lived near the burning sites suffered from respiratory diseases in greater numbers than those who didn’t live near the burning sites.

You would just be trading one kind of pollution for another kind of pollution, and having an unsightly landfill is better, in my opinion, than not being able to breathe.

The EPA is finally able to regulate smokestack emissions and go after gross polluters, and in places like Dallas and Houston, where ozone and pollution keep people indoors, it makes a difference. Throwing new substances into the incinerator makes it harder to regulate and control smokestack emissions.

I grew up near the town incinerator, and we used to have ash everywhere when that thing was going. But they used to run on open smokestacks. Smokestack emissions can be controlled with modern systems far better and far cheaper than can radioactive waste. I vote for burning garbage.

Burning garbage with modern pollution controls on the incinerators is something that I’ve thought for years should be done. Even if you only break even, you’re getting rid of stuff that will be in a landfill for decades or even centuries.

Another alternative to current nuclear power is Thorium reactors. They can’t melt down, can’t easily be used to make weapons-grade material, can use materials practically ‘right out of the ground’ without enrichment, and produce far less nuclear waste. With a little expenditure in development costs, they would be a lot cheaper to run than our current reactors as well.

I know little about thorium reactors, but in truth all the reactors just make heat to create steam to drive turbines.

Burning garbage to me is the single best solution available.

A simple crash course…

Cool. But after reading the “Dangers and biological” paragraphs I’ll stick with supporting burning garbage to produce power.

I realize that Oblivion wasn’t posting a pro-thorium post, only pointing out an alternative that’s being actively explored, but it puzzles me how the same folks that pontificate about “carbon footprints” can support these various types of radioactive power sources and such things as lightbulbs that contain mercury vapor.

When I lived In Goffstown NH they tried to put a incinerator in the town (actually a couple town officials tried to shove it down our throats).

There was a town meeting and this one guy who spoke was from NY and had a degree in Chemical Engineering. Those trash-to burn plants are FINE…BUT ONLY AFTER you recycle…then burn what’s left over…But if you recycle properly…you can eliminate more then 50% of all household trash.

The problem with the one in Goffstown was we had to guarantee to the Trash company (Wheelabrator) we’d burn 1500 tons of trash a day. Goffstown only generated 25 tons (before recycling)…which meant we’d have to IMPORT 1475 tons of trash. Thankfully it never was approved.

They are so bad that they can’t be built within 2 miles of schools or nursing homes…

On the subject of burning trash. Ever noticed the stack at your local hospital? - many older ones have them. Burning medical waste was (and may still be) very common . I worked at a preeminent cancer hospital 20 years ago and they burned all of their waste - at night of course. Tons of burning plastics - plastic waste - generating the most toxic stuff known to humans- PCB’s - still the most prevalent and most Highly Carcinogenic toxins allowed to be released legally in the U.S.
Watch any TV hospital show and you will get an idea of the amount of waste generated for any surgery or from even a doctor visit.
However -The Major source of airborne PCB’s - In the U.S. - are Households burning trash. This releases the greatest amount of these carcinogens than any other source.
Why do people do this?
Ignorance is a major reason but economics is another. For people living in many rural areas, trash service is not always available at a reasonable cost and still an perceived as an excessive expense (esp. in hard times) when you can take all your crap out and burn it just as easily as it can be done. Just wait till the wind blows eh!
I think I live in a much cleaner environment in the country but I still have neighbors burning trash of which I am exposed to breathing these PCB’s - and you are too.

Well I tired of typing and griping but there it is.
Hope it makes more people aware.

Look up:
pcb carcinogen from burning trash

Good Luck,
Bcudamatt

Worth considering are regional and global environmental footprints (as populations grow, waste and pollution become more of a problem), and what has been done with improvements. Average fuel economy hasn’t substantially changed in recent decades in part because higher efficiency (still relatively poor for conventional engines) has been applied to more power and luxury. But at least pollution has been significantly reduced, if you ignore the fossil CO2 accumulation that no pollution control device addresses.

There are modern technologies that have real value, but there’s still room for conservation and efficiency in many of them. And speaking of the latter, TSM, newer fluorescent bulbs contain a trace of mercury and don’t normally represent a major hazard. And over their useful life, they can prevent substantially more mercury from being released into the environment from coal-fired power plants. But the ideal would be much cheaper LED arrays.

FoDaddy

Most towns had a local bottling plant, so bottles were generally only moved a mile or two; you got your soda syrup from a larger plant. Now we transport what is basically water over great distances. We are using bottles that are made in one place transported to a filling plant to be blown in whatever size they need. We used to reuse bottles over and over again, using local filter water. Yes we had some expense in cleaning the bottles, but in general the bottle really didn’t move around that much. When I was younger we’d kept on the lookout for bottles from other cities and state because it was kind of fun.

Office buildings in the past were generally only two stories high. Look at many smaller towns and you’ll see many building downtown were only two stories high, and rarely went over 5, back then the higher you were the cheaper the space. So the top of a five story walk up was much cheaper than the ground floor.

My 67 Valiant got 30 mpg+, it didn’t have the HP of today’s engine, and probably put out more emissions just sitting there not running then a new car today does while going down the high way, but I wonder what kind of fuel mileage we could be getting if they didn’t shove the insane amount of HP in to cars.

Diapers, no argument there, disposable is the ONLY way to go.

When it rained, you did wash on another day, or you used your inside drying rack.

If you didn’t have a older larger sibling, you traded with people you knew, or you sold and bought used clothing a rummage sale.

New TV, electronics never really shut off, at best they are on standby, it use to be when you shut something off it didn’t draw any power.

Manual reel mower, that’s why you had kids, but if you had a large lot, they made a reel mower with a tiny gas engine, that would spin the blades for you, you did have to rake the grass though.

Most bottling is done regionally, so it’s not as bad as if it were done in just one location nationwide.

Where I live (Martin County, FL), there is a local ordinance that no new building can be more then four stories tall.