Eating Our Way to the Landfill

For the sake of convenience, we end up throwing a lot of things out.  This is especially true with food packages.  I was looking for statistics, then I realized that we don’t need to look at hard numbers to make a point.  All we have to do is just be more observant when we are out and about.  When walking on the streets of New York City, the trash cans are filled with coffee cups and other food containers.  That’s the same with the trash receptacles in the subways.  Inside malls, one can observe that the trash cans at the food court are emptied more frequently than anywhere else.  Toward the end of the night, restaurants tend to have more trash bags sitting outside waiting for the garbage truck than other types of establishments.

There are certain ways for the average patron to help minimize the waste.  One way is to bring your own cup for coffee instead of getting a paper or Styrofoam cup.  Some places will even provide a discount for using a reusable cup.  If ordering out and bringing the food home or to the office, instead of taking the plastic utensils, use the stainless steel ones that can be washed and reused.  However, most other things are a little hard to avoid.  Once I got a sandwich around the corner from where I live, I declined the plastic bag and carried the paper wrapped sandwich back to my apartment.  I refused to walk around with an unwrapped sandwich in hand, in the open air.  When I finished the sandwich, I threw the wrapper away.  I suppose I can bring my own container to put the sandwich in.

Sometimes it is just not convenient or even practical to carry a bunch of containers around.  What if I need to buy a pizza pie for the office or to a friend’s home?  I’ve never seen a reusable pizza box before.  If they do exist, it works only if I planned it out and walk to the pizzeria with it.  Which means I can’t call for a delivery.  What if I need to buy multiple pies, with an order of hot wings, garlic knots, and a calzone?  If I have a car and all the containers are in it, then it can work.  Or I don’t mind bringing all the containers to the pizzeria to pick up the food with.  The latter can only work if the pizzeria is close by.  There’s no way that I’ll be carrying a bunch of containers to a friend’s place on the train to get pizza closer to my destination and bring all the containers back with me on my way home.  What if I got a call while I’m in transit to pick up a pie on my way in?  Unless I have the containers with me, I’ll have to settle for the pizza boxes.  Contaminated boxes cannot be recycled, so they go into the trash.

There are other times when I’m hungry and I just need to find a place to eat nearby.  Examples can be after a job interview, client meeting, and any other occasion when impression is important.  I have a Marine friend who is also a personal trainer.  He walks around with a gigantic bag on his back filled with changes of clothes, protein bars, jugs of protein powder, containers of food, and other items.  I will not be surprised if there’s a 75-pound kettle bell inside.  Whatever that doesn’t fit inside the bag gets hooked on outside.  He has this bag because his schedule is based on his clients’ schedules.  Whatever time he has in between is for eating, resting, running personal errands, etc.  Or lets say there’s an exercise that requires the TRX, elastic training bands, but the one owned by the gym is in use, he will pull his personal one out of the bag and continue on with the training.  Imagine a meeting in a business setting with a person carrying such a big bag with all kinds of things hanging on the outside.  It’s a little weird, wouldn’t you think?  Therefore, one might have to travel light and eat what’s immediately available.

For hygienic reasons, most fast food establishments need to have all of their food wrapped.  Some places use paper products and others use plastic “clam shells.”  There are also aluminum foils and Styrofoam.  Styrofoam, will soon be outlawed for in New York City, for single use, such as food containers and coffee cups.  They can’t be returned and reused, so they go into the trash.

As mentioned in a previous post, places such as McDonald’s and KFC have attendants who take the tray away when the meal is finished.  Some places don’t even like it if the customers bring the tray to the trash area.  The customers should just get up and leave.  With this setup, the workers can separate the items on the tray, between recyclables and non-recyclables.  This doesn’t really work in the United States, because it’s up to the patrons to follow the directions, which most don’t.  Once recyclables are mixed with no-recyclables, the whole bag goes to the landfill.

One method I stumbled upon is to make everything compostable.  If everything is compostable, then they call all go into the same bag.  Instead of going to the landfill, the trash can be used for farming and gardening.  This can minimize the amount of trash that goes to the landfill.  In another previous post, I have mentioned that decomposing organic matter, such as paper bags, emits carbon dioxide into the air, a greenhouse gas.  Compost is decomposing organic matter.  Maybe using it for plants that takes in carbon dioxide and gives off oxygen is a way to offset it.

I think until Mr. Fusion from Back to the Future II comes around, where we can throw in just about anything and energy gets produced, there’s no real solution to our trash problem.  We can only lower the number that goes into the oceans and landfills.  If we can turn off the stream of certain products, such as Styrofoam, all the more better.  So I think, it’s better for products to be used for planting than to add to the landfills.

Here’s a restaurant that uses all compostable materials: http://youtu.be/W1vJQaBNxno

More New Laws on the Horizon

New laws are always coming, especially for a city like the City of New York.  This one was initially proposed by former Mayor Michael Bloomberg, and it’s about banning something.  Not surprising, since Bloomberg tried to get a lot of things banned and was successful in some and not so much in others.  This time, it is polystyrene, more popularly known as Styrofoam.  On Jan. 8, 2015, Mayor Bill de Blasio made it official.  Starting on Jul. 1, 2015, Styrofoam items, such as cups, food containers, and packing material cannot be sold. New York City will follow the footsteps of over 70 cities in the USA, including Washington, DC, Minneapolis, San Francisco, Oakland, Portland, Albany, and Seattle.  There will be a six-month grace period for the companies to switch over.  Businesses and nonprofits with an annual revenue of $500,000 or less can be exempted from the ban, but will have to prove that the use of materials besides plastic foam would cause them financial hardship.

Unlike the ban on large sugary drinks that Bloomberg tried to ban in the city, this one, like the ban on electronic wastes in the trash, was met without much resistance and fanfare.  Of course, the Styrofoam manufacturers and sellers made a fuss.  However, the average consumer doesn’t really care whether the food comes in a Styrofoam carton or plastic container.  Same thing with a cup of coffee, whether in a paper cup of Styrofoam cup.  However, it is true that coffee can remain warm longer in a Styrofoam cup than a paper cup.  Therefore, say “good bye” to enjoying warm Dunkin Donuts coffee hours after the purchase.

The ban was delayed to give companies who make them come up with a way to recycle used Styrofoam.  Dart Container, the largest Styrofoam producer said it is possible to be recycled in a cost effective manner.  It even guaranteed that in five years time, all the Styrofoam waste in New York City will be recycled at no cost to the city.  That was back on Dec. 29, 2014.  In the Huffington Post article that was uploaded on Jan. 9, 2015, “’While much of the waste we produce can be recycled or reused, polystyrene foam is not one of those materials,’ explained Sanitation Commissioner Kathryn Garcia in a statement. ‘Removing polystyrene from our waste stream is not only good for a greener, more sustainable New York, but also for the communities who are home to landfills receiving the City’s trash.'”  Therefore, the ban will commence.

My previous posts have not discussed this material at all, I suppose I fell into the out-of-sight-out-of-mind trap.  Occasionally, I do get a cup of coffee from Dunkin Donuts, their medium cups are Styrofoam.  Each time I do, I think about how bad it is for the environment.  Other than that, I don’t encounter Styrofoam that much anymore.  When I order things online, I find paper products or plastic bags filled with air used as packing materials.

Why’s it bad anyway?  Like plastic, it is made of oil based substances, in a way, it is a form of plastic.  Oil, the one commodity that we just cannot get away from, a not renewable one too.  Unlike plastic, the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) and International Agency for Research on Cancer have determined styrene as a possible human carcinogen.  Many years ago, I’ve learned that if Styrofoam is heated with food in a microwave, carcinogens may get released into the food.  When I used to order food from my boss’ restaurant, I always cringe when the person behind the counter pops the food in a Styrofoam container into the microwave to heat it up.  I worked in a freight forwarding company and the boss also had a restaurant at the time.  Isn’t that bad enough already?  One can develop cancer from eating or drinking out of these things!

According to Earth Resource Foundation, “The National Bureau of Standards Center for Fire Research identified 57 chemical byproducts released during the combustion of polystyrene foam.”  I don’t know what those byproducts do and what harm they impose, but the articles make them sound bad.  Upon searching for what they are, more articles come up about the harmful chemical byproducts that get released into the air and water from the making of Styrofoam, chemicals considered to be harmful to the environment, as well as to plant and animal life, including humans.

There are other environment impacts, such as all the used Styrofoam products ending up in landfills.  However, that pretty much goes for everything else that goes into the trash.  At least now, it’s going to be severely limited as more metropolitan areas in the USA start to ban its use.  I think this post should act as a reminder of things that we don’t care about or are popular in the news media.  This topic did not occur to me until a friend pointed it out on Facebook.  Ignorance is not bliss.  What one doesn’t know can be hurtful.

Here’s an interesting video that can sum up a good portion that was mentioned above, and then some.  Only problem I have is the waste of paper in the video.  http://youtu.be/1HlwB26DTw0

New Year, New Laws

A little over a week ago, the world rang in the new year one time zone at a time.  When it got to the United States, ringing in the new year also brought in new laws, state by state and city by city.  USA Today had a headline, “New year brings in hundreds of new laws.”  Some of them are as follows.  21 states and five cities raised their minimum wage.  Five states increased their taxes on gasoline.  In California, dogs are allowed to dine with their human companions in restaurants’ outdoor patios, if the restaurant allows.  Illinois imposed a beer tax.  Massachusetts will allow “hold open” clips on gas pumps, so customers do not have to hold on to it while pumping gas into their cars.  In Oregon, if the home was previously used as a meth lab, sellers must disclose it to the potential buyers.  Although, the article didn’t say whether recreation vehicles are included in the law, because they are considered, as per “Breaking Bad,” as “private domicile,” and the occupants shall not be harassed.

In the City of New York, I received an official notice stating, “Starting January 2015, you can’t discard electronics in the trash.  Look inside for recycling options.”  When I received it in the mail, I thought, “Great!  The city’s doing something positive.  Let’s see how this great city is going to get this done.

When I opened it, I was extremely disappointed.  The notice lists five recycling options.

1) DSNY (Department of Sanitation New York City) allows apartment buildings with more than 10 units to enroll for “free and convenient” pickup service.

2) Retail drop-off programs.  Electronics can be dropped off at Goodwill, Salvation Army, Best Buy, Staples (no TVs), or the Gowanus E-Waste Warehouse.

3) Free mail-back programs.

4) Electronics recycling events.

5) Donate or sell working electronics.

Seriously?!  This is one very irresponsible law.  So the law is to turn everybody in New York City into someone like me, who ends up sitting on a bunch of electronic waste and don’t really know what to do with them.  Apartment buildings are asked to voluntarily enroll for pickup service.  What if somebody lives in a building with fewer than 10 units?  They will have to physically move their electronic waste to a drop off facility.  What if the tenant is physically incapable of moving the items to a drop off location?

Missing in the notice is punishment.  Electronics cannot be discarded in the trash, but it doesn’t say what will happen if they do.  Sure, large items are easy to spot; such as large monitors, computer towers, all-in-one printers, etc.  What about the MP3 players, mice, and video game consoles that are listed in the notice?  They’re small enough to be thrown out with tonight’s dinner trash.  When thinking about it, so what about large items?  Who will stop me if I decide to bring a computer tower to the corner and drop it next to a trash can at the intersection in the middle of the night?  DSNY does not work that late, although, it is an agency that is allowed to issue summons.  Better yet, the New York City Police Department is on a work slowdown, so chances are, I will not get a summons for such a menial offense.  What will happen to the computer tower?  Will it just sit in the intersection until it rusts itself away?

A responsible law will not only have punishment, but also solutions.  For example, normal trash, we’re not allowed to discard it anywhere else in the city, except at designated locations.  It is the same with recyclables, such as cans, bottles, and papers products.  They are normally convenient, for high-rise apartment buildings, there are garbage chutes.  The garbage gets compressed and left at the curb for collection.  For houses, residents haul the garbage out to the curb in front of their home.  It should be the same for electronic waste.  Disposing of it should be simple, not the same inconveniences as before the law.  The law doesn’t really change anything.  Even with convenient collection of non-recyclables and recyclables, some people still don’t do it, what made the lawmakers think that having a law in place will make people do more work?

I’m quite disappointed.  Maybe on the bright side, at least it’s a step in the right direction, albeit, a very small step, more like a twitch.

25 Extremely Bizarre Laws: http://youtu.be/S_NEBE2n3QE

Real or Fake Christmas Tree?

My brother once read somewhere on the Internet that it’s better to have a real Christmas tree than a fake one.  The article said that real trees come from farms, so there’ll always be an abundant of them, year after year.  Fake trees end up in landfills, which is not a good thing.

I’ve been wondering about that.  Real trees can land up in landfills too, sure they can decompose, biodegradable, but as mentioned in a previous post regarding paper bags, organic decomposition releases carbon dioxide.  Therefore, a bunch of real trees decomposing will produce carbon emissions, which is not something that we want to do.  Plastic trees, same as plastic bags, will not release anything in landfills, they just will stay around for a very very long time.

Real trees can be recycled.  In New York City, trees are collected by the Department of Sanitation and chipped into mulch for distribution to parks, playing fields, and community gardens.  That’s not much of a recycling effort, since it’s just making the trees into smaller pieces for further decomposing.  At least it serves some function in the meantime.

Fake trees can be recycled too, plastic can be reused into other materials.  However, it’s just that currently, it’s not widely done.  They do end up in landfills if thrown out.  However, most people don’t buy a plastic tree, use it once, and throw it out.  After the season is over, they get packed into the box that it came in with, then stashed away for the next season.  In places where I’ve worked and working now, they’ve been using the same fake tree year after year.  As long as they keep getting reused, they’re not contributing to the landfills.

According to an analysis done by an outside organization commissioned by the American Christmas Tree Association, the carbon footprint of using either tree is negligible.  Real trees, of course, can only be used for the current season.  If the plan is to get one tree and use it for as long as possible, then a fake tree works best, the minimum use is 7 years to be “green.”

Of course, there are supporting arguments for both sides.  Fake trees are typically made in China and it uses more energy to transport to the United States.  There’s also the manufacturing process that is damaging to the environment.  On the other side, real trees require fertilizers and pesticides to grow.  Unless the tree farm is certified organic, apparently, there’s an organic farm in Oregon.  Oregon produces the most Christmas trees in the nation.  There’s also the whole process of cutting them down and transporting them to their designated markets.

In the world of transportation logistics, it is quite efficient to ship fake trees from China to the United States. There are so many vessels circling the Pacific Ocean, it doesn’t matter that a few more containers get loaded onto the ship bound of the United States.  These containers will be loaded with all the other consumer goods coming for the United States; electronics, clothing, floor tiles, dried foodstuffs, and everything else that is made in China these days.  No new ships get added for the holiday season and taken out of service afterward.  The complexity of rotating container vessels is a whole topic on its own that can cover many pages.  Once the containers reach the ports, usually on the West Coast, they will get railed to the major markets.  It’s not until the last few hundred miles of their journey that the merchandise will get moved by truck.  Ocean containers are typically not moved across the United States on the road.

Real trees, however, need to move fast.  Once they’re cut, the clock starts ticking before the pine needles start falling off.  In term of “moving fast,” I mean it quite literally.  I used to attend the University at Buffalo, on one of my trips back to New York City for the holidays, a flatbed truck loaded with Christmas trees was flying down the Interstate.  It was a snowy night on this road, this truck went by so fast, I was pushed partially onto the shoulder.  As it kept going, I see cars ahead of me getting pushed over as well.  The logistics company I’m working for now recently shipped a couple hundred of live trees to Hong Kong, it went by airfreight.  Carbon footprint of an airplane is much larger than a cargo ship when compared to a per kilogram of goods moved.  There are added flights for the holiday season, mostly in the form of chartered flights.  Live trees are largely moved over the road, carbon footprint from trucks are much larger than trains per kilogram of goods moved.  A truck with a two-man team can get from Oregon to New York in 3 days.  It can take a train up to a week and a half to cover that same distance.  The big difference is because the train makes stops along the way to offload and load more cargo, the truck only stops for fuel and for the drivers to get food and shower.

The real damage to the environment, is customers driving to go get the tree.  If one drives 60 miles round trip to go pick up a real tree, it is more damaging than driving 5 miles to get a fake tree.  If that fake tree gets used for 7 years, then that’s more environmentally friendly than getting a real tree.    In New York City, it is possible to walk down the block and pick up a real tree, best mode of transportation of all.  My question is, “Are they using plastic netting to wrap the trees with?”

So what’s the conclusion?  It’s up to you.  Get a real tree close to home and dispose of it properly.  Or get a fake tree close to home and use it for the next 10 years.  10 years later, we will hopefully have better recycling methods.  Another environmentally damaging concern is how the tree gets decorated; with a lot of energy sucking electric lights, or just very sparkly ornaments using ambient light?  Let’s leave decorations alone this time.

Enjoy the holidays, have fun with your friends and family, and don’t worry too much about using a fake or real tree.  Compared to the grand scheme of things, they’re negligible.

Weather Channel Article

State Impact Article

NYC Christmas Tree Recycling Program

O Christmas Tree – http://youtu.be/b3d6JMLaRzQ

Recycling Makes You More Attractive

One day, scanning the headlines, I saw a title, “The weird thing that makes you sexier (You probably already doing it!).”  Curious, to see if I finally have a sexy trait in this fast changing world, I clicked on it.  It is a Glamour blog post.  To my great delight, I’m attractive!

• 40 percent of people would have a more positive opinion of someone after learning they recycled. That’s way more than those who would take more kindly to someone after finding out they have a graduate degree (25 percent), an impressive job (18 percent), or even a bank account with beaucoup bucks (8 percent).
• More than 21 percent of people surveyed would be turned off if someone they were on a first date with doesn’t recycle.
• At 22 percent, almost a quarter of those polled have shown disappointment when someone did not recycle in front of them.
• Two in five respondents want an S.O. who cares about the environment.

Although, I can’t find the survey itself, I found the PepsiCo Recycling Facebook page.  The survey was done by PepsiCo, the research team behind the survey polled more than 1,140 Americans over the age of 18.  This is huge!  This means that the next time I attend a party, I can talk about recycling, and to further impress the person, I’ll perform the actual act of depositing a plastic bottle into the blue bin.  For everybody who will be attending Christmas and New Year Eve parties out there, this should be the topic of discussion.  Especially on New Year Eve, impress that hottie before midnight enough to get that ringing in the New Year kiss.

What is more important is anthropological meaning behind this.  This means that the environment is becoming extremely important to the average person.  As the saying goes, “beauty is in the eyes of the beholder.”  Attraction depends heavily on current times.  There was a time when fat was beautiful, some societies now still believe it today.  Fat means the person doesn’t have to work hard, has more than enough food, and most likely has money.  As recent as the 70’s in the USA, men like women to be curvaceous and not skinny, as shown in past advertisements.  Today, there are major debates on supermodels depicting extremely skinny women and Barbie dolls giving young girls a misconception of body image.  Not only women, men as well, body image for men is important too, which is why I find this Honest Trailer of “300” to be extremely hilarious.  Especially the narration saying, “[T]he movie that made guys everywhere feel out of shape.”  Watch the trailer, the male images depicted in the movie is quite self-explanatory.

What does this survey tell us?  I think it is more in the, I can’t see people actually talk about it up front and use it as a pickup line, “Hello gorgeous, I like the way how you recycle.”  I’ve done Match.com, have never seen it listed as a trait or hobby, “My favorite hobby is making sure that all my trash is separated properly into paper, plastic, compose, and landfill.”  Therefore, it is more in the subconscious, it’s not something people do to enhance their looks or use materials to show off status.

It is just too simple to pass up.  People work hard to impress others, such as spending large sums of money on super cars, workout at gyms to achieve a certain body image, get good grades in school, get hired by prestigious firms, post achievements instantaneously on Instagram, and the list goes on and on.  Recycling, however, can be done without a lot of work, and it’s so impressive already, more than a graduate degree, impressive job, and having lots of money.

We are ready!  Our environment can be saved!  We just need the little nudge, with political and industry support, to squarely put us into that direction.  That’s where the big changes will be.

Keeping up the holiday spirit: http://youtu.be/S6AAdFMGoJ0?list=PLE7E8EB7C18B2E04A

I need it!

We are now into the shopping season.  Thanksgiving marks the beginning of it.  I’ve been keeping my ears open when I listen to the radio to see if there are any mentions of Thanksgiving as the holiday itself, or products and services for the holiday, I didn’t hear any.  When I’m on the street, I looked for clues of Thanksgiving, not including workers setting up for the Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade in New York City or delis advertising cooked turkeys.  There were any hardly Thanksgiving decoration, but Christmas decoration is all over the place.  Every advertisement points to Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and shopping for the holidays.  Christmas equals shopping now.

I also felt that the boundary for “need” and “want” have been obscured.  Someone I know bought an iPhone6 Plus for a lot of money.  She said that it was “needed.”  I can’t imagine why it’s a need, I’ve never seen her do anything spectacular on the phone.  All I’ve seen her do has been making phone calls, texting, play Candy Crush, normal smart phone stuff that other smart phones can do as well.  I recently got a smart phone myself, a Motorola Droid Maxx, because I’m part of a family plan that was activated since way back, it cost me 99 cents to get it.  There was a want, I want to be able to text, read e-mails, browse the web, and other normal stuff comfortably.  I will probably never use the full potential of the phone.  It’s not like I’m a spy in one of those awesome spy movies where I’ll save the world by stopping terrorists from launching nuclear strikes against American cities off of it.

That’s the power of marketing, to get consumers to need things.  All the deals, the percentages taken off of the original price, the signs, sometimes with lights, along with holiday decorations, all the mind manipulations and sensory attractions, are all very overwhelming.  It gets people to trade in their money for material stuff.  As I’m typing this, I am considering making a purchase for dress shirts.  There was a time when I needed these shirts, when I started a job that requires me to wear them.  For one year, I just cycled through four shirts a week, we get “dress-down” Fridays.  That became a problem when an extra day popped up that required another day of me in a shirt.  If it’s an event which I needed to wear a suit, that wasnt’ not so bad, I’ll just find the less wrinkly shirt and wear it again, just had to keep the jacket on throughout the event.  Sometimes it got hot.  Other times, well, I’ll just show off the wrinkles.  Eventually, I bought four more shirts, simply for the sake of the per shirt discount.  Right now, it’s a want, I already have more shirts than the calendar week.  Maybe a semi-want, since some of the older shirts are getting worn out, I wear those when I don’t think I’ll see anybody else, other than co-workers.  Or did I just made an excuse for myself?

In our consumption society, we often buy a lot of things that we don’t need.  During the holiday season, we buy things to give, which are sometimes what people don’t need, in some cases, don’t even want.  I’m sure a lot of people have gotten a holiday gift or birthday present that’s not wanted.  How about those wedding gifts for guests?  Some of them are nicely personalized, so something that can be kept as memories.  Others are a small pouch of M&Ms, so they’re easy to get rid off, just hand it off to the next kid running by.  Then there are those that I have no idea what to do with.  What am I supposed to do with a 3D heart shaped plastic case that changes color when I turn it own that have the bride’s and groom’s name on it?

What do we do with most things we don’t want?  Either we put them away in some forgotten corner of our home and that’s where they’ll stay.  Or we send them away and make them not our business.  We simply throw them out.  How many of us kept all of our gifts anyway? There are probably some of my gifts in landfills that I don’t even remember ever receiving.

All I want to say is: Let’s practice being more responsible this season.  For gifts, give items that are meaningful. Maybe it’s okay to just give a gift card, let the recipient make its own purchase. Whenever possible, decline the shopping bag, whether paper or plastic.  If needed, try to consolidate the items from different stores into one back. I’m sure nobody wants to walk around with their arms wrapped around their newly bought items, bags will be used, that’s when consolidation helps.  Instead of having a bag for shirts from one store and another bag for a pack of socks from a different store, put the pack of socks into the bag of shirts, use one bag.  Be sure to sort what’s recyclable or not prior to disposal.  Don’t ever litter.

A little late, but a quick and entertaining video on the history on Black Friday.  Not sure how accurate all the facts are, but it’s funny.  A little note, there’s some expletive language.

Plastic is Good for Us

In a couple of my previous posts, I pretty much bashed on plastic whenever I had a chance.  Well, it’s quite damaging to the environment, yet, we can’t do a lot about not using it.  In a modernized society, it is part of our everyday lives.  I can’t imagine a day without touching plastic.

Plastic is great!  It’s durable, can be molded into just about any shape or form, and has multiple functions.  So much can be done with plastic, if you’re reading this, chances are, you’re using a device in an area that has access to the Internet.  In such a setting, all you have to do is simply look around, there’s probably plastic around.  You’re probably touching it right now.

Like all good things, too much of it is bad.  For example, vitamin C, people say taking it will keep you healthy.  I recently found out that too much vitamin C can cause diarrhea.  My doctor said that to me when I went for a physical check up, she was grilling me on vitamin supplement intake.  Apparently, it has other side effects as well, here’s what the Mayo Clinic says.

Diarrhea, that’s what the world is having with plastic pollution.  Uncontrollable amount of plastic waste is getting washed out into the oceans and causing a lot of concern.  Plastic waste doesn’t stay in their own form once out in the ocean like glass bottles.  Glass bottles stay intact, a record of a recovered message in a bottle was first thrown into the sea in 1913.  The bottle was recovered in 2014, 101 years at sea.  LINK

Plastic breaks down under long exposure under the sun, it “photodegrades.”  It doesn’t disappear though.  The smaller pieces still slosh around in the ocean and eventually come together from ocean currents.  One such congregation places is the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.  There’s one in every ocean, the one in the Pacific is the largest of them all.  It’s one gigantic soup of degraded plastic pieces that scientists don’t know how to track or clean.  Full environmental impact is still not known.  There are many theories, such as sea life eating them and in turn messes up the ecosystem, therefore the food chain, and our food supply.

Faced with such dire scenarios of our near future, environmental groups got politicians to pass laws to ban single-use plastic bags.  It’s one of those items that are extremely abundant in the trash world.  Tons get thrown out everyday, not only into trash receptacles for the landfills, but onto the streets, on high ways, directly thrown into the waterways, the oceans, etc.  There are so many plastic bags, people don’t know what to do with them.  I have a part of my closet dedicated to hold plastic bags that I keep for trash bags.  There’s a smaller section where I hold plastic bags that I don’t know what to do with.  They’re too small for my garbage can.  There’s simply no other uses for them.  When I’m out and about, I keep an eye out for plastic bag collection bins, they can sometimes be found in large pharmacies or supermarkets.

On Sep. 30, 2014, California became the first state to ban single-use plastic bags.  LINK

On Nov. 17, 2014, Baltimore City Council banned single-use plastic bags.  LINK  This one is quite interesting, it might get vetoed.  The veto is more of a political action than an environment issue.  Here’s one of those times when politics became more important than the issue at hand.

With single-use plastic bags banned, what can shoppers use?  They can bring their own bags.  I normally decline the plastic bag when I go shopping.  If I have a backpack, I throw them in.  It can get quite heavy if there are liquid items, such as milk, orange juice, etc.  A small price to pay to carry a heavy load for a few blocks with one fewer plastic bag used.  Other times, I will bring my own bag.  What if I bought too much stuff for me to carry in my arms and I do not have a backpack or my own bag?  The answer is the store-supplied paper bag!

If one step back and take a moment to think about this.  Paper bags, paper, paper comes from trees.  Wouldn’t this mean more trees will be chopped to make paper bags?  California requires that 40% of the paper bags must be post-consumer products.  What about the 60%?

There is an organization in San Francisco suing against the ban, called Saved the Plastic Bag.  Their website has a bunch of interesting information.  For one example, carbon dioxide emission.  Paper bags, as with most organic compounds that degrade or decompose, such as dead animals, carbon dioxide is released into the atmosphere.  The estimated amount of paper bags that will replace plastic bags will emit annual carbon dioxide estimated to be equivalent of 92,280 passenger vehicles.  According to this theory, switching solely to paper bags will make things worse for us.  The site also went on to say that the U.S. and California governments are working on keeping carbon dioxide from being released from landfills.  Plastic bags are said to last a very long time.  During that time, nothing is released into the air.

What does this mean for us?  We’re in a “damned if you do and damned if you don’t” scenario.  Others will call it a “Catch-22.”  Use plastic bags, they can potentially go into the ocean and add to the patch.  Or use paper bags, they go into the land fills and release carbon dioxide into the air.  Carbon dioxide is largely blamed for global warming.

I believe it comes down to responsibility.  If we try our best to not use store bags, whether paper or plastic, then there’ll be less waste.  Sometimes I see people buy one single small item, such as a bottle of water, and ask for a bag.  That’s silly!  What’s the point of carrying a bottle of water in a bag when it can be carried in the hand?  The hand is needed to carry something anyway.  If we do our part and pitch in to the recycling effort, then less waste, paper or plastic will end up in the landfills or oceans.

Another thing that we need to be responsible is to do our own due diligence and don’t rush to conclusions.  When passing these laws banning single-use plastic bags, did the law makers do their own research?  Did the environmental groups perform research on the alternative?

Do you know that they can turn plastic bags and other waste plastics into diesel fuel?

If you’re going to try this at home, do so at your own risk:

http://youtu.be/njIYHtFmcSs

Disconnect in a Connected World

Very often politicians have lost touch with how an average person lives.  It doesn’t matter whether it’s city, state, or local, even businesses and other institutions have this problem.  Those running things, the President of the United States, lawmakers, politicians, business executives, owners of companies, president of universities, etc. etc.  At some point, they become disconnected.  Has it ever occurred to you to ask, “What were they thinking?!”

Laws are sometimes preemptive and other times reactionary.  One example that touched the largest number of individuals of reactionary is the USA PATRIOT Act that was passed after the events of September 11, 2001.  There’s been a lot of controversy and debate behind this act, from national security to personal privacy.

Electronic waste is an issue and politicians saw that.  After advocacy groups provided their studies on the toxicity of these items decomposing in the landfills, local citizens voiced their concerns.  As a result, laws were enacted to ban such wastes from landfills.  This is not national, but differs from state to state, even city to city.  One thing that all these places with these laws in place have in common, there is no enforcement.

We can test this out, find out if your place of residence has such laws in place.  Then put out your electronic waste with the regular trash.  See what happens.  Chances are, you will not be fined.  Best case scenario, the garbage man will recognize that it’s electronic waste and will not throw it into the truck, if it’s curbside pick up.  Worst case scenario, it disappears from your curb and you’ll never see it again.  If you’re in a commercial building with Dumpsters chained in the parking lot, put a computer tower into it.  It’ll probably be loaded into the garbage truck and compressed with everything else in it.  Nobody will hear anything else from it, no fines, no warnings, simply nothing.  The electronic waste will get dropped off at the landfill and will contribute to ruining the environment as if the laws were never enacted.  At least I’ve never heard anybody getting penalized.  If you have, please share the story.

I worked in a company that used to import food products for a company.  That importing company went out of business and all those items needed to be disposed of, mainly because they’ve sat around for so long, everything expired.  To get rid of them, a waste disposal company was called upon and a large Dumpster was dropped off, right up to the loading dock.  All the expired food went into it, as well as broken skids that were lying around the warehouse, and other items that were normally too large for our normal trash collection Dumpster.  Then I heard one manager speak to another, “Can you believe that we have three hoovers in there?” The managers brought some of their household trash in to throw out, and yes, one of them was British.  Hoovers is how they refer to vacuum cleaners.  They threw in electronic trash!  What was the consequence of that?  Nothing!  When the man came to pick up the Dumpster, he did the company a favor.  It rained for the last two days, so there was water in it.  He drained it before hauling it away, so our company didn’t have to pay for the water weight.  The place just reeked of garbage for a week and that was the end of it.

Another issue that came out of these banning laws is that it overloads the small number of electronic waste recyclers.  With capacity issues, some have no choice but to export them overseas.  If done properly and legally, and the destination will process the electronic waste properly, that’s fine.  However, there are those who smuggle them out of the USA to be smuggled into places such as China, and they go to towns such a Guiyu.  There, workers, including kids, dismantle the electronic items to extract whatever value they could using the most primitive, dangerous, and environmentally damaging ways.

What can we do where the government failed?

 

All Politics are Local

This week, we saw something quite unusual.  China has agreed on an environmental issue with the United States.  For years, whenever environmental issues come up, China would play the “developing country” card and accuse the West of trying to limit their growth.  It has long been Chinese policy to go against Western, especially American, proposals.  The West wants China to clean up their air and water, China’s natural instinct was to rebuff it.  I often find it comical for China to self declare itself to be a developing country, especially after sending manned missions to space and having an aircraft carrier cruising the oceans.  At the same time, boasting to having the fastest growing and soon to be the largest economy on Earth.  For a long time, I wonder if China knows what it means to be a superpower.  It’s not all about projecting power and make people listen, it’s also to do its own part as a world leader.

I once asked Michael Zakkour, a coauthor of a newly published book, China’s Super Consumers, cowritten by Savio Chan, the question regarding China declaring that it’s a developing country whenever it’s to their benefit.  He said that China is in a very unique position.  It is very rich, but very poor.  There are people who are very educated, but also very uneducated.  The spectrum of China reaches both sides of the scale almost across the board.  It is also a country with a very large population, so the ranges are great.

Once the agreement was announced, there was a lot of praise, and of course, a lot of criticism.  Analysts quickly say that it’s not binding.  China agreed to set its carbon emission peak in 2025.  “The China Academy of Social Sciences saying in a study last week that slowing rates of urbanization would likely mean that industrial emissions would peak around 2025-2030 and start to fall by 2040.” – LA Times (Nov. 12, 2014)

“Sen. James Inhofe of Oklahoma, likely to succeed Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) as chair of the Environment and Public Works Committee in the Republican-led Senate next year, called the deal a “nonbinding charade.”

“I will do everything in my power to rein in and shed light on the EPA’s unchecked regulations,” he said. Inhofe, perhaps Congress’ most prominent climate change skeptic, has long criticized the Environmental Protection Agency.” – LA Times (Nov. 12, 2014)

Right away, American lawmakers are against what President Obama did, especially now, since Republicans hold both the House and the Senate.  Some analysts says it is more of an uphill battle for Obama than for President Xi Jinping of China.  Chinese cities, including Beijing, are already suffering from health and reputation issues from their infamous smog.  The Chinese government knows it needs to clean up the air and water, if not for its own people, for reputations sake.  China is trying to host just about every prominent international event it can.  It had the Summer Olympics in 2008.  Now it is trying to win the bid to hold the Winter Olympics in Beijing in 2022.  One needs to keep in mind, the Chinese government is the Chinese Communist Party.  It must do what it must to stay in power.  How did some Roman emperors gain the support of Roman citizens?  They hosted games.

Politics is extremely local, the United States legislative system is set up that way.  U.S. House of Representatives only serve two-year terms, so they must keep their district’s voters happy, or they will not get reelected.  U.S. Senators get six-year terms, to make sure that Senators’ terms overlap with the U.S. President’s term.  It’s all about checks and balances.  Similar to House representatives, to be reelected, Senators need to keep voters in their home state happy.  For those who have seen House of Cards, it’s not all about voters, but supporters as well.  Supporters need to be kept very happy for reelection.

The pledge between Obama and Xi was on carbon emission reduction.  What’s wrong with that?  Isn’t it nice for everybody to collectively reduce their carbon footprint, the rate of global warming will slow down, glaciers will not disappear as fast, and the Jet Stream will not slow down at such a rapid pace.  Demonstrators in Australia mocked their own government for not participating by putting their heads in the sand (link).  What’s wrong is that it makes certain people unhappy.  On the path of progress, some people will get hurt, that’s just the nature of things.  Just as how trans-Atlantic passenger steamship lines disappeared as people favor air travel after it became cheaper and more abundant.  Nowadays, trans-Atlantic voyages are considered cruises, for vacation purposes, not simply transportation.

Who can get hurt from this pledge?  Industries that emits carbon will get hurt.  For example, coal fired plants will need to take steps to reduce their emissions.  These steps cost money, cutting into their bottom line.  Investors don’t like their profits reduced.  It’s an industry that is powerful enough to have lobbyists on Capitol Hill.  As a result, representatives that represent the state and counties of these industries will have to fight the pledge.  Click this link for other industries that emits a lot of carbon.  You might quickly see that those sectors on the list have some powerful lobbying power in the government.

How about China, isn’t it an authoritative country?  If it wanted carbon emissions to stop, just order it!  It wanted to flood the Three Gorges, so it forced everybody out of the area, and built a gigantic dam with dizzying speed.  During the Olympics, it made factories close and limited the amount of cars on the road.

Similar to the United States, there are lobbyists in China.  Politicians rise and fall in China as well, Xi did not get to where he is today without any support.  That’s logic, nobody can become a leader of a nation, especially one as large as China, without strong support from behind.  In the interest of support to remain in power, Xi, as well as members of the Politburo, must keep their supporters happy.  Which is why China has been so resistant to participating in global environmental pledges up until this week.  Maybe there is a change in the Chinese political ideology.  Or maybe the businessmen realize that cleaning up is cheaper than to continue to pollute.  A party can only remain in power for as long as the citizens allow it, military firepower can only drag out the time in power longer, but eventually, that can be overcome.  China is very good at censoring information and provide not-too-truthful reports.  It becomes very difficult to say that things are fine when people are coughing and wheezing on the streets.  One does not require great education to realize that something’s wrong when he sky is yellow and the sun blocked out by smog.  So this might be an issue that the Party is now tackling to remain legitimate?

Politics is local, whether on the national level like the United States and China, or international, such as G20, World Trade Organization, or United Nations.  Their own self interest always comes first.

http://www.cnn.com/video/data/2.0/video/world/2014/11/12/lok-mckenzie-china-apec-climate-change.cnn.html

Our Own Demise through Consumerism

The world is changing very fast.  Things really sped up in the 90’s and does not seem to be slowing down. Consumer technology exploded and things became obsolete much faster than ever before.  As individuals, if unable to keep up, we fall behind.

Take my father for example.  His mindset is still set in the late 70’s of Communist China.  Multiple attempts to recalibrate have failed.  Sometimes he gets hit by a dose of reality and for one small instant, he gets amazed by technology.  He doesn’t understand recycling as the word is being used today.  Growing up, nobody threw anything away, nobody had enough in their possession to throw things away.  Recycling was cutting up old clothing to patch up the better conditioned clothing.  He said that it didn’t even matter if one had money at the time, if you go to a store, all you can buy was salt.

Now, he’s in the United States, living the American Dream.  He worked hard, raised a family, has money in the bank account, and can be a consumer.  Something he was not able or allowed to do in China.  Consumption in the United States, the freedom to do anything, buy anything one wishes.  Quite interestingly enough, something he never saw when he was in China, or anybody else, it’s that China is now along the same lines as the United States.

Consumerism has become part of our culture.  In the United States, Thanksgiving is more and more marked as the day of eating right before the start of the shopping season than a day of family gathering and be thankful.  Commercials have Christmas themes already, decorations are already up.  Stores are now opening on Thanksgiving evening.  Christmas is more about buying things than religion and festivities.  The marketing machine of this nation is merging shopping with the holidays, holidays means time to shop.  This resulted in a lot of people buying a lot of things that they don’t need.  Eventually, these items turn into trash.  Most of the things that we throw out can harm the environment one way or another, inadvertently, we end up harming ourselves.

It has also showed up in politics.  After the events of September 11, 2001, President George W. Bush made a series of speeches that included the words “shop” and “shopping.”  He also said we should travel and visit America’s great destination spots, “and one of the great goals of this nation’s war is to restore public confidence in the airline industry.”  Many critics said that Bush asked Americans to sacrifice for the nation and spend more money.  In 2008, both candidates, Barak Obama and John McCain criticized Bush for saying such things.  Some even accredited the collapse of the economy on what Bush said, because now that people spent so much then, the bills are due now.  Karl Rove defended Bush by saying that he didn’t tell people to go shopping, but to “participate in the economy.”  My personal take on it, Bush was just telling people not to cower from these terror attacks and continue to go about our normal lives.  We shouldn’t be afraid to go outside, “This great nation will never be intimidated. People are going about their daily lives, working and shopping and playing, worshiping at churches and synagogues and mosques, going to movies and to baseball games.”  However, with our ingrained commercialism mindset, Bush gave us a pass to spend frivolously.

There’s also the comfort of convenience.  Fast food trash is a very big issue.  There are tons of plastic utensils, straws, cups, food containers, etc. being thrown out every single day.  Most of those go to the landfills.  In the United States, the patrons bring their own trash to the waste bins in establishments such as McDonald’s.  Most Asian countries, such as Hong Kong and Taipei, the staff collect the trays.  The staff will separate the items on the tray into their respective group, plastic utensils into one bin, paper wrappers in another for recycling, even liquid has its own place to go.  Staff can be instructed to do the sorting, patrons cannot.  When I go to Starbucks, the contents of the landfill bin looks very similar to the recycle bin, customers just deposit their trash without any care.

An alternative is to let our children teach us how to do it, provided that they are taught properly to do so.  Most of us were taught as kids to bring our own trash to the trash bin in McDonald’s or similar places.  We were also taught other things that stick with us the rest of our lives, such as saying “thank you” and “you’re welcome,” hold the door open for the person behind us, and both ways before crossing the street.  Some kids were taught to like certain sports, certain teams, and certain players.  They can be taught to be environmentally conscious and do their part by sorting their own trash.  I was exposed to recycling in third grade, students from a sixth grade class working on a project on paper recycling gave us a presentation on it.  Then they set up a box in our classroom for our waste papers.  Have been putting paper in the right place since.

They can also be taught to be less materialistic, stemming wasteful consumerism.  At least be more responsible consumers.  There is often no need to buy the next generation of electronics.  If one wishes to do so anyway, that person should dispose their previous ones accordingly.  Once taught, they can in turn teach the older generation on how things should be.  Children teach adults things all the time.  A family was saved from a tsunami by a 10-year-old British girl in Thailand in 2005 because she recently learned about it.  Here’s a link to that article.  That’s extreme, but kids do share what they learn in school.  Parents do listen from time to time.

For every single individual willing to do their part, we are all better off.  One person might not seem like a lot, but collectively, the impact is tremendous.  If the older generation refuses to listen, at least we can have a whole generation working on it, therefore, not a waste.  Maybe it can be seen as the clean up crew.  It’s a big mess, that we are trying to “clean up.”

China is going the way of how Americans behave, but in its own way.  There is rampant consumerism and materialism.  The Chinese government is actively pushing these ideas, one method is rapid urbanization.  It is building cities, seizing farmlands to do so, then place the farmers into town homes.  All with the idea to transform the farmers from their subsistence ways to urban, consumption ways.  In a way, the planners felt that by putting a farmer who has no use for a flat panel display in their farmhouse will immediately purchase one for their apartment, along with smart phones, kitchen appliances, etc. to further spur the economy.  LINK (Fox) For those who like CNN more, here’s an opinion piece from it LINK.

China is on its way to surpass the United States as the largest economy, it has one of the largest populations on the planet with 1 billion individuals, compared to 300 million Americans.  Growing up, I’ve always been told that Americans are wasteful.  Imagine a group much larger than Americans being equally wasteful.  What kind of world are we moving toward?  Educating on environmental issues should not be a single country’s duty.  It is the duty of all nations, to every school child, especially of industrialized nations.  Politics should not be in the way of such an important topic.  Toxic air, water, and land do not discriminate against sex, religion, race, etc.

By no means do I want the economy to slow down for the sake of solving environmental issues.  It can expand if done right, probably at a faster pace.  Some industries can expand from it.  New industries can spring up.  Sure, some will go away, but that’s what progress is.  How many people shed a tear when the last shoe shine man made his last rounds on a cold January day in 2005 not the Staten Island Ferry?  How many people feel bad by sending e-mails when the U.S. Post Office is always on the verge of laying off thousands of letter carriers?  Change doesn’t have to be drastic, like China’s massive urbanization campaigns and forcing millions of people to relocate.  It can start small and pick up momentum, with change being more evolutionary and easier to adapt.  However, we’ll never know, but one thing is certain, if we are not more responsible, we will be in our own muck very fast.

Ever felt like this that compels you to buy things?  http://youtu.be/dN8vyO8ILD8