This blog is about reducing our personal consumption of plastic. So far, it has been a hodgepodge of old ideas and new ideas. Old ideas can make a lot of sense, most of the time. Plastic has only become a ubiquitous part of our lives in the last few generations. Before that, other materials were doing just fine at meeting our needs… or were they?
You need to be very cautious about antique items that contain dangerous materials like lead and mercury. I would suggest a ‘better safe than sorry” approach with regards to old cookware, utensils and serving dishes. Even decorative antiques can pose health risks. Looking into the issue of lead poisoning was very depressing for me. I did not know that a proposed ban on lead paint went before the US House of Representatives in 1910 and that it took 68 years before the Consumer Product Safety Commission eventually banned it. Over 4000 tonnes of lead paint had been slapped on walls and toys and various other things in the interim.
I wonder if the push and pull related to chemicals leaching from plastic drinking containers will drag on that long? Actually, I am certain that it will not. Things move faster in the information age. Several companies removed products containing Bisphenol A as soon as the issue started making headlines. Interestingly, I think the scandal about lead in products made in China may has sensitized the media and consumers in such a way as to catalyze the reaction to Bisphenol A.
Another depressing issue involves the modern low watt light bulb. Al Gore et al. want to ban incandescent light bulbs in homes. The present alternative is a CFL that contains mercury. They also contain more plastic than a typical incandescent bulb.
Proponents of these efficient bulbs say that the fact that they contain more hazardous materials and the fact that they take more energy to produce are more than offset by the energy savings. I am worried about the environmental impact of their production because they are presently made in China. I am also worried about the mercury. There have been advances, with some bulbs having 1/5 the amount of mercury of typical CFLs.
I have personal experience with cheap CFLs that did not have the long life that is touted by their promoters. The answer might be higher standards. Right now, they are trying to compete with standard light bulbs. When legislation kicks in this will be less of an issue.
Credit for this picture goes to www.wasteplastictechnology.blogspot.com, a blog promoting the use of waste plastic as a source of energy. I don’t think that is the best direction to take. It seems like it is just sending the pollutants somewhere else, namely into the air that we breath.
The blog gave me some things to think about, though.
I was reminded of the fact that cruise ships routinely dump their waste at sea. I think responsible consumers should insist on responsible cruise ships.
Black is not the new green, according to Google. Blackle is a website that uses a custom search engine provided by Google and displays all their results with a black background. This would have been a great idea except for the fact that users are moving towards flat screen technology in greater numbers. Displaying a black page on a flat screen actually uses slightly MORE power. If you have a big, old, power sucking monitor, and you want to reduce your plastic consumption by not upgrading, you could consider using sites like Blackle.com to reduce your power consumption slightly. Powering down completely when you are not using your computer will save more electricity. When the time comes to buy another computer monitor, look for EnergyStar 4.0 compliant units.
The issue of biofuels is not the focus of this blog, so I am not going to expound a lot on the subject. If you are trying to become informed so you can have an educated opinion on the concept, please keep in mind that the most vocal proponents of the idea are usually the people who are selling the idea, and the fuel, to business and consumers.
It is much easier for proponents to explain why it is a good idea than it is for detractors to explain why it is a bad idea. Unfortunately, the general public will accept a simple explanation over a complicated one regardless of the consequences. Frostfireseeds.com uses a diagram to make a compelling argument against biofuels. Cookingfire.com uses the 60 cent rise in the cost of a container of milk in New York as a simple example of how diverting corn to ethanol fuel production is making food more expensive. The biofuel industry is leading us down the wrong road. I think reduced consumption should be the primary focus with maximizing the use of free resources like wind and solar as a close second.
There’s not much of a plastic reduction angle to this. I just think it is kind of cool. This solar powered coffee roaster uses focused energy from the sun to roast coffee beans. I noticed that they do use paper bags to package the fresh roasted coffee. This seems like a great business model for people that enjoy attending summer festivals. It must really suck when there is a cloudy day during a scheduled event.
I first heard of these guys a few years ago and at that time they were looking for a winter home for this machine. They are a Colorado based venture and they have a limited roasting season.
After I read about the concept of saving energy by making websites black, I immediately changes over to black on one of my blogs. I then went to a forum that was discussing good and bad design decisions and the consensus seemed to be that people don’t like black. They complain that it is too hard to read. There have been people pushing Google to go black. They are too duplicitous to come out and say that they aren’t changing because they don’t want to risk loosing any of their enormous share of the search engine pie. They say that it is unclear as to whether the savings are really significant. They biggest savings comes with CRT monitors, which are gradually being displaced in the market by other more energy efficient monitors. I think public places that have rows of CRT monitors should set black search sites as homepages. I am going to try using Blackle instead of Google.
