tipping point?

My friends lust torturing me. They jab at me. Make slight fun of me. Torment me. All about my eco-craziness. Really, I think it's secretly gotten to the point that some of them are OVER me talking about method, and going green. Oh, and sorta about the fact that mankind is DOOMED! Doomed, I tell ya! Because you know what, there is a tipping point. And once we've passed this tipping point, there is no going back, unfortunately. Have we already passed it? I don't know. I hope not.

So, a friend of mine sent me these photos last night, and I about had a stroke (in fact, he wrote above the link "Please call 911 now... you'll at the very least need some oxygen after you view this." Because he knows just how worked up I can get! And really, I was in shock. These photos have probably been making their rounds on the net, but I thought I'd share them with those that haven't seen them. They're scary.

"(photos below) Citarum River, West Java, Indonesia - Rapid urbanisation over the last 20 years has seen a rise in untreated household sewage, solid waste and industrial effluents, affecting public health and threatening the livelihood of poor fishing families. a new industry has sprung up - collecting the plastic waste in the river for recycling."


"(photos below) Dharavi, Mumbai, India - Because water in Mumbai, India is prohibitively expensive, many residents of this slum rely on leaks found - or created - in the massive tubes that carry water to more affluent neighborhoods. The poor of the city avoid the garbage and human waste surrounding their dwellings by walking on top of the pipelines."


(photo below) Oh hey, look! A street filled with trash! How crazy, you say? Ah, no. This is... a river! A river, that has literally become a river of trash.

Dennis Villegas writes:

"(photos below) Manila, Philippines - This is Estero de Paco, once the cleanest and loveliest creeks in Manila. Now, it has become the dirtiest, most polluted, and garbage-laden esteros among all the creeks that flow directly to the Pasig River.

I have observed that the water of the Estero de Paco is now slimy, thick, and dark-colored, with floating garbage of all kinds (plastic materials, household wastes), animal carcasses, and human feces. The garbage in the river has become so thick that rats are able to run on top of it--chased by cats. The river and its surrounding areas has a very hideous odor."






Luckily, many of these areas are getting ready for a huge clean up by their governments. (Though unfortunately some people will lose their homes in the process; which is not the best solution, since we're already talking about people of poverty.) I think we all just need to realize that trash/garbage does NOT go away. The trash man picks it up, and off it goes, and we can live happy lives - but, where does it go from there? Something to think about. Thoughts?

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original post from deputy dog

one person's trash..

A very insightful article from the Washington Post concerning a drop in trash! (Isn't it funny that they actually measure things like drops and surges in trash?)

"A Trashed Economy Foretold | By Brigid Schulte

Along with the stock market and the foreclosure rate, a less-heralded barometer has signaled the arrival of hard times: the landfill.

In an extravagantly wasteful society that typically puts 254 million tons of unwanted stuff at the curb to be thrown away each year, landfill managers say they knew something was amiss in the economy when they saw trash levels start steadily dropping last year. Now, some are reporting declines as sharp as 30 percent.

"The trash man is the first one to know about a recession because we see it first," said Richard S. Weber, manager of the Loudoun County landfill. "Circuit City's closing, so people aren't going there and buying those big boxes of stuff and throwing away all that Styrofoam and shrink-wrap . . . and whatever they were replacing."

Trash volume has dropped so much, Weber said, that instead of running out of space in 2012, as had been projected, the Loudoun landfill will gain a year and a half or so of use. "That's huge," he said.

In Prince William County, which has been particularly hard hit with foreclosures, the amount of discarded refrigerators, washers, dryers and other appliances that are usually sent to the landfill has fallen by 20 percent since the recession started. "People aren't buying new," said Tom Smith, solid waste program manager. "They're making do with what they have."

It's all part of the cycle of stuff that people in the trash business say they've seen in every economic downturn since the end of World War II. People don't buy stuff, so there's less packaging -- which typically makes up one-third of all landfill trash -- to toss. With a drop in demand, manufacturers make less, creating less waste. More vacant homes and fewer people in a community mean less trash. A stagnant housing market means less construction debris. On tight budgets, people eat out less, so restaurants order less, so there's less to throw away. Landscapers are out of work, so there's less yard debris.

At the Montgomery County transfer station, it wasn't unusual to see as many as 40 garbage trucks waiting in a line that snaked nearly a mile back to the entrance gate on Shady Grove Road to dump their loads. "Now, there's virtually no line," manager Peter Karasik said. "Ever."

Even in Virginia, which takes in more out-of-state garbage than any state save one, trash men began noticing declines in late 2007 of 10 to 20 percent. "And normally garbage is a pretty steady business because everybody wants to get rid of it," said Richard Doucette, a waste program manager with the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality. Now, he said, some landfills are laying off workers.

Finally, said Ben Boxer, spokesman for Fairfax County's solid waste management program, the economy is forcing people to heed the environmentalists' mantra: Reduce! Reuse! Recycle! Repair! "A lot of these things that people throw away do have a valuable second life," he said, "especially for those who, now more than ever, are going to be facing difficult times."

In better times, Boxer has seen perfectly usable sofas crammed into dumpsters. But now, instead of ending up at the dump, stuff is being repaired and kept or traded on Web sites such as Freecycle.org, where as many as 70,000 people a week have been registering to swap stuff since the recession officially began in the fall.

Americans might not be saving string and rubber bands like their grandparents did during the Great Depression. But as the recession drags on, they are clearly rethinking the way they use their plentiful stuff.

These are the kinds of times that compel Paul Zehfuss to drive about 15 minutes from Springfield to Alexandria during his lunch hour to a new store that sells only batteries to get a little more life out of his electric toothbrush.

In other times, Zehfuss would have "absolutely" tossed the thing. His two-year-old silver Braun would have become just another ounce in what some environmental groups calculate as the 25,000 tons of toothbrushes Americans throw away every year.

"I realize this is kind of stupid," Zehfuss said. "But I'd rather replace the battery right now than buy new.""

Head here to read the rest of the article!

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You know, something that drives me batty is when I see perfectly good items being pushed to the curb for the trash to pick up, instead of going to the local Goodwill, Salvation Army, etc! What is the deal with people becoming SO lazy, they'd rather just throw it out on their yard than take it to one of these retail stores so that some additional use can be gotten from not only the object, but it helps to employ people in need at these businesses! I've thought more times than not of just picking it up and dragging it there myself (and have on occasion done this!) But I think it'd become a full time job if I was to get really serious about it! So come on people, do your part to reduce trash in the landfills, and help out these businesses! No more good furniture, etc. on the curbs!

Oh, and the guy that used to throw his electric toothbrushes away, instead of just buying new batteries for it. He. Should. Be. Shot. Seriously, who are these people? Just how wasteful can one person be? OH my word. Ridiculous. If he's got that much money to waste, he could just buy ME an electric toothbrush, cause Nathan ain't got enough money to be buying himself one! He's gotta manually go up and down on his pearly whites (well, actually coffee tainted whites.) Geesh! - Nathan's rant, over and out.

garbage man

A very interesting article/experiment, taken from the Good Morning America website (and morning show.) Hmm, think you could do this?

"'Garbage Man' Saves Trash to Learn About Conservation
By Darcy Bonfils and Imaeyen Ibang

For one year, Los Angeles resident Dave Chameides conducted an experiment to see just how much he could conserve and how little he could throw away.

A California man is living with all the trash he creates for one year.

"I am efficient with my waste," said Chameides, who goes by the name Sustainable Dave on his Web site. "I made a decision that, for one year I would not throw anything away or recycle anything and, instead, I would keep everything in the basement."

After one year, Chameides had stashed about 30 pounds of trash — not counting recyclables — in his basement. He was able to limit his waste for a whole year to roughly the amount the average American produces in six days, he said.

According to the Environmental Protection Agency, the average American disposes of five pounds of trash daily, which adds up to nearly 1,700 pounds of garbage annually.

But Chameides' garbage dump was so small he was able to tuck it away in only 10 square feet of space in his basement.

Soon after he began his experiment, Chameides said, he realized how easy it was to cut back on how much waste he produced.

"If you're ever thinking of keeping your trash in the basement, you have to be very well organized. The trail down the stairs are all bottles," Chameides said. "I tell people if I drank bottled water like most people do, which I don't, the whole basement would be full of it by now."

In addition to the garbage he would have thrown out, Chameides accumulated 64 plastic bottles, 153 glass bottles and two aluminum cans to be recycled. He also has 19 pounds of cardboard boxes, 12 pounds of e-waste and a 50-pound box of paper for recycling.

With the help of a secret weapon, Chameides was able to get rid of much of his organic waste.

"It's an in-home worm composting bin. All of my food scraps and paper and things like that go in here and the worms eat them up," he said.

The worms do the trick by eating a couple of pounds of paper a month, in addition to all of Chameides' leftovers.

What he doesn't have are plastic shopping bags, because, he says, they are an eco-enemy.

"I won't use plastic shopping bags," he said.

Most Americans do use plastic shopping bags — the EPA estimates the average person in the United States will use more than 18,000 in their lifetime. They end up tossed in a landfill where, scientists say, they will linger for centuries.

Chameides is taking the lessons he learned during his experiment and applying them to his post-garbage man life. He plans to continue to conserve.

"What I try to tell people is, if they just think along the lines of 'consume less, conserve more,' you've kind of hit it on the head," he said. "When you're going to buy something, look at it and think, 'Where did this come from? What am I going to do with it? And where is it going to go?'"

For more information on Dave Chameides' journey, visit www.sustainabledave.com