We are the solution

Making Music with Trash

I've been writing a lot about trash recently. Here is the teaser for a movie, Landfill Harmonic,

about people who live from sorting trash - and using it. I look forward to seeing the movie!

I am a happy member of a listserve called FreeCycle, where we have given away a whole lot of things we don't need to people who do.  This included recently an aluminum ladder, a bunch of large boxes, books, shoes, etc. We have more to give away, but haven't gotten around to sorting it. I'm sure someone would love our collection of old computer cords, for example. I got a bunch of sewing patterns through it, and many people use it to give away or ask for children's clothes and toys.

Our neighbors, with 3 adults and 3 children living together, have 2 blue recycle cans and one black trash bin. Our own recycle can is almost always filled to the top each week, while the enormous black bin usually has 2 or three small bags of trash rolling around in the bottom. Maybe the trash collectors should switch the 2 sizes!

Alternative Energy Revolution

This is such a great cartoon, I had to show you.

Robert Frost and the End of the World - illustrated

Thanks to the Sierra Club on Facebook today

Some say the world will end in fire.
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire,
I hold with those who favor fire.
But ice is nice
And will suffice!
-Robert Frost (from memory)

Ice this morning from the drip system in our new vegetable bed.

Trash in D.C.- and water

I guess I shouldn't be too hard on India, if you can see this view in our nation's capitol. I saw this picture on Facebook, with a link to this article: Washington Post Highlights Toxic Fish in Anacostia River with yet another picture:

The Pepco Benning Road Power Plant towers
over the river. PCB waste allegedly comes
from the plant and has ended up in the river.
(from article)

Obviously plastic bottles are something we have to do something about.In India, we were told that the only water we should drink - even at 5-star hotels - was bottled water. On our bus they always handed out bottles of water. And they had to go somewhere. At one location our driver just threw them into the already growing trash pile outside the hotel. In one of our guide-books, it was recommended that we squoosh the bottles so that they wouldn't get reused with sometimes doubtful water. Reusing bottles of course frees up toxins in the plastic, but it also means that they aren't being recycled in a reasonable way, and end up, just as in the Anacosta River in Washington, D.C. in the water, or burnt by the side of the road.
I guess one important way to solve the trash problem is to solve the clean water problem - and to convince tourists and runners in D.C. to use reusable bottles for their hydration!

India's trash

Mumbai scenes (14) Trash on city street.

I've been busy trying to be (and become) a science teacher, but the most important environmental experience I've had recently was a trip to India with the Oberlin College Alumni Association. This was my first experience of a non-European or North American country, although I've been on a couple of week-long trips to Mexico.
The very first thing we noticed when we left the airport was what smelled like wood-smoke in the air. I think that's why Indian women cover their faces with their scarves! Sometimes it was unbearable, but the guide just took it in stride. He did admit that there is a terrible problem with asthma in India.
I had read an article about how an environmental organization was trying to get rural Indians to tame the methane from cow manure to make natural gas to cook on, so I assumed that the smell was from burning wood - or dried cow dung - for cooking.

Kali as trash in the Ganges

But I think the largest source of the smoke was from burning small piles of trash on the streets and along sidewalks everywhere - in Delhi and Mumbai as well as in villages.
We did hear about a trash collection system in Dharamsala, and were shown the dump even, but when I asked our driver what to do with the water bottles (another problem!) that had collected in the car, he just threw them on the growing pile on the sidewalk next to our hotel!

In Varanasi we saw the results of thousands of paper mache images of the god Kali dumped into the river as an offering - along with other trash and, of course, remains from the funeral pyres.

Trash collection in Mumbai

In Mumbai we actually saw a garbage truck, but there were no cans to lift into it, just shoveling by hand.

Cows lying in trash along the road

I think earlier the trash caused little problem because it was either edible (by the ubiquitous cows or dogs) or biodegradable, so it became dirt. The cow dung even now is gathered up to provide fuel for cooking.  The real problem now is all the plastic trash, which does not biodegrade. I see few bottles here in the trash, because they are collected, washed and reused to sell water (which may not really be potable, as I said, another story.)

Trash in a village pond

Even small ponds get filled with the plastic trash, like a mini Pacific garbage patch.
My fellow travelers have said that this is typical in all the third world countries they visited - but India is trying to be first world. But when the trash problem is just as evident in Mumbai as in small villages, it has an enormous problem to manage. We were told that the job of collecting trash was often appointed and paid by the city council, but no one bothered to check up on whether it was being done.
Trash not only clogs the water ways, but, most importantly in India, causes constant smog that results in asthma among a large percentage of the children, in the cities as well as the countryside. The problem is not just stopping people from cutting down trees for fuel, but to solve the exponentially growing problem of  plastic trash.

Starbucks has joined the K-Cups garbage brigade

Why do companies that I have used and respected - and which have environmental policies for recycling - have to provide more opportunities for their customers to generate trash, which ultimately will end up in the great garbage patch of the Pacific?
K-cups may be convenient, but you are drinking a bit of plastic every time you brew in them. And when you're done, they are in no way recyclable.
Here's what Starbucks says about Recycling & Reducing Waste:

Starbucks is committed to significantly reducing and diverting the waste our stores generate, and recycling is just one way in which we do this. But while recycling seems like a simple, straightforward initiative, it’s actually extremely challenging. Not only are there municipal barriers to successful recycling in many cities, but it takes significant changes in behavior to get it right. One wrong item in a recycle bin can render the entire can unrecyclable to the hauler. Local municipalities, landlords, customers, baristas, and even adjacent businesses all have to work together to keep recyclable materials out of the landfill.

Why, then, do they join up with Green Mountain Coffee to generate more waste (that they evidently don't think they are responsible for disposing)? Maybe they should provide a "take-back" bag with each box of K-cups, that customers can return where they bought it. Or maybe they should ensure that the K-cups can be composted along with their contents? Otherwise Starbucks, along with Green Mountain Coffee and others, is just adding to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.

Fracking - and the Sky is Pink

I just saw this video about Fracking - and politics, and money, and cancer, and the media, and lies. Watch it to get the other side of the story from the gas companies' ads.

Tar Sands Pipelines: the Dirtiest Oil on Earth

Tar sands are still around, even though I first wrote about them in February 2009! The Sierra Club is trying again to wake people up about this source of oil with a new campaign, It's Time to Move Beyond Oil which may not be coming from Saudi Arabia, but is definitely not what we want our future source of energy to be.

The main purpose for the Keystone XL Pipeline is to carry the extremely dirty tar sand oil to US refineries. As you can see in the video, the oil is so corrosive it regularly corrodes the pipes, leaking its toxic mess into our water sources.

We all think of Canada as being environmentally responsible, but its current and most recent conservative governments have been tearing back environmental protections in Canada, and trying to see this poison the the US.
We don't want it!

Stop the Keystone XL Pipeline!

You may have noticed a lot of activity today about the Keystone XL Pipeline, which is intended to bring extremely dirty oil from Canadian Tar Sands to US refineries. 
There's been a lot of talk about how it will bring lots of jobs while it's being created.
But more important there is alarm that

• Keystone XL will cross through America’s agricultural heartland, the Missouri and Niobrara Rivers, the Ogallala aquifer, sage grouse habitat, walleye fisheries and more.
• There will be a great risk of environmental damage when there are breaks and spills (which will happen.)
• The oil it will bring is dirty and heavy. It is oil that would never have been used before for that reason. It is only now when oil costs more that oil companies are interested in it, but it will cause environmental damage during the refining and under transport.
• The Canadian tar sands are ruining Canadian forests and rivers, home to the Athanascan First Peoples. I have written earlier about these areas on this blog: tarsands

American Wind and American Jobs: Setting the Record Straight

The oil and gas companies are up in arms because they know they will end up loosing to renewables. There has been a lot of progress on cutting back on mountaintop removal, so they are putting their energy into combating the future - as well as the jobs that the coal industry is losing. I heard one of the Tea Party candidates claim that most of the government money that goes to renewables flies out the door to China. But exactly the opposite is true. There are many renewable jobs just waiting for financing, and many companies have already provided green jobs. This video from the American wind Energy Association (AWEA) tells the story right:
1

Daisy Girl Ad - Stop Mountaintop Removal!

Victory for Cape Wind!

Interior Secretary Kenneth Salazar announced this morning that the Cape Wind project between Cape Cod, Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard! There has been incredible opposition to this project from everyone from Ted Kennedy (god rest his soul) and more recently native American tribes, who someone convinced to complain that their ancestors sacred sites would be disturbed. Funny that they didn't complain until Cape Wind seemed sure of getting approved! You can read about the early difficulties of the project in this excellent book by a local journalist.
This will be the first of many off-shore wind projects (see this map from the New York Times today.

Coal Ash Contaminates Lives in New Mexico and Tennessee

Earth Justice has interviewed members of families whose livelihoods and health have been drastically affected by coal ash, far away from the mines.

---

---

If you'd like to read more about the effects of coal, try these books:

Clean Energy for a Strong USA

Green jobs are replacing dirty jobs with the same skills. Great movie!

Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) sponsors the Olympics - and Tar Sands

I got this message today. Please take action.

Are you tired of corporations trying to greenwash their environmental blunders? So are we. This week, Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) gets the greenwash-of-the-week award for spending $105 million (USD) to become a lead sponsor of the 2010 Winter Olympics, while simultaneously bankrolling billions of dollars in investments in the dirtiest oil project on Earth - the Alberta tar sands. RBC's efforts to advertise themselves as Canada's most caring corporate citizen through their Olympic sponsorship is incompatible with financing Canada's most polluting industry.

The tar sands oil extraction project is systematically turning vast stretches of the breathtaking Canadian boreal forest into a wasteland the size of Florida, eradicating wildlife habitat and jeopardizing the health of First Nations communities across Alberta. Let's do something about it.

The Known Universe by AMNH

I haven't posted anything in a very long time because I'm now student teaching in math, and have most of my communication needs covered!
But I thought this puts our world into perspective. Let's not ruin it, even though it's just a speck of dust in the universe! It's where we live!

A little bit of good news about Coal River Mountain

I just read this blog item by Ken Ward Jr., dated November 20 from the West Virginia Gazette, which I quote in full below. But go to the link to read the comments. Also be sure to watch the video and check the link to I Love Mountains to see videos about mountaintop removal and take action to stop this!

EPA taking closer look at Coal River Mountain mining
An interesting development just in concerning Massey Energy’s Bee Tree Mine, the Southern West Virginia operation where environmentalists had hoped to put a wind energy facility instead of a mountaintop removal job.

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency officials are investigating the Bee Tree site, examining Massey’s operation there without first obtaining a “dredge-and-fill” permit under Section 404 of the federal Clean Water Act.

Yesterday, EPA regional officials in Philadelphia sent this letter to Massey’s Marfork Coal Co. subsidiary, seeking a long list of information about the Bee Tree operations.

Recall that Massey made a change in its surface mining permit from the state that the company apparently believed allowed it to — at least at this point — not need a 404 permit that could face EPA scrutiny before it would be approved by the federal Army Corps of Engineers. Massey had applied for a 404 permit, but then withdrew that application.

According to the new EPA letter, federal officials visited the site earlier this month and now are concerned that the site does need a 404 permit. The letter cautions Massey:

The activities underway at the site do not appear to have independent utility from the proposed mining project that is the subject of the Section 404 permit application. EPA is concerned that Marfork Coal Company may be committing signficant resources and conducting operations in reliance on a Section 404 permit that has not been issued. The Corps has not yet made a determination of jurisdictional waters and we have some concern that ongoing activities at the site could impact such waters if sufficient precautions are not exercised.

Updated: Massey General Counsel Shane Harvey tells me the company has received EPA’s letter and is reviewing it.

I will keep you posted here about what happens at Coal River Mountain and other locations.

Save America's Most Endangered Mountains

See a Google map where the destruction is very obvious, with links to more video at ilovemountains.org/endangered/#.

Save Coal River Mountain!

Once again I am writing about Coal River Mountain. I get to see the new movie about it on Wednesday at a houseparty, and expect to find it both hopeful and devastating (just like mountaintop removal.) This picture shows the impoundment of toxic mining wastes, which lies directly above a village and a school. The vibrations of the blasts at Coal River Mountain could cause the dam to break down (it's happened before elsewhere) and inundate the school and the village. The article where I found the picture is at Earthbytes: Save Coal River Mountain, providing excellent background information. Then they ask you to go to I Love Mountains / Coal River, where there is a petition to the important people in the EPA, asking them to stop the blasting.

Please take action!
Save Coal River Mountain today