So..... what are we doing about it?

[Kathryn]

Kaltxi frapo,
                Well people, apart from jumping up and down in various fora, lobbying governments or demonstrating on the streets, what are we all doing about the environment?
Are we refusing to buy over-packaged and over-processed food, refusing plastic packaging and bags, only eating free-range eggs and meat? growing our own organic vegetables?
Example is always the best way to teach, even if sometimes a bit of law helps get things started. Legislative force creates resistance and should only be used when absolutely necessary and for as short a time as possible.
If a product has too much packaging, or that packaging is not recyclable, don't buy it. If it has traveled huge distances and is not a true necessity, don't buy it. If what you have is "out of fashion" but still working well and people urge you to get the latest one (be it phone, computer, Ipod or whatever), don't buy it.
The big corporations that get all the "stick" are only big because people buy their stuff. They are motivated only by profit, so if their polluting products don't sell, they will do better. It's up to us....
What do you want..... cheap or clean?.... Very often you cannot have both.
If we all eat less, breed more wisely, love more broadly (regardless of race, colour or creed) and live with a light tread on our Mother, we can make it.
If we do not do those things, we won't make it.... The "tipping point" into the unstoppable slide to ruin is very close. We have, perhaps a hundred years to turn it around, tops, and it is us in the more privileged corners of the world that have the power to make a real difference, and to help those who cannot do it for themselves to think globally.
We all belong to the same species; we are all brothers and sisters.... humans, animals and all life forms.

Our Mother is hurting, and it's OUR fault.......

Tiyawn si atan............

[Toruk Makto]

I agree that taking personal responsibility for one's own impact to the evironment is important, but efforts to influence governments and industry tend to have much more wide ranging effect.  History shows that it is almost impossible to coerce a large commercial entity in the market, because getting the participitory critical mass necessary is almost impossible. That is why legislation is usually needed and why intense public efforts are more successful than lone voices.

That said, I couldn't agree more with your stated objectives that each of us should reach for. But they aren't a replacement with good, old fashioned popular and legal activism.

ta Markì

[Kathryn]

Absolutely... the legal thing is a OK as a palliative and temporary thing. Big business is onkly the way it is because we have given them that power, and only by changing the mindset of "John/Jane Q Public" out there will any permanent difference be made.
We need to aim for a society where most of the regulation is not needed.... that takes time....

Maybe it's not too late..... I tend to be optimistic...

Tiyawn si atan...

[Technowraith]

The best way to get your point is through action. I agree 100% with what's been said so far.

One of the reasons I buy off brands is most off-brands are exactly identical to name brands but they are much cheaper. Less packaging, less colorful packaging (uses fewer colors, less ink), and are generally supported by domestic production and supply. Believe it or not, some brands import ingredients! Most off-brands I buy are completely domestic, for supply and production.

One of the reasons the expanded recycling program got instituted in my area is because people who wanted to expand the program began dumping bins full of recyclables at the trash hauler to protest it's lack of planning and progress in the promised curbside pick-up program. When it got to a point where tons of recyclables were being dropped off (technically this was all illegal, because it was dumping after all), but it was allowed to happen because the trash hauler made an ad in the paper suggesting people would could dump recyclables at the trash hauler's lot. "They estimated that not enough recyclables would be dropped off to make a curbside program feasible." They were wrong. Now we have a robust curbside pick-up program that accepts almost all recyclables.

Create a demand for recycled products. If you see anything that consists of recycled packaging, or contains recycled product (post or pre-consumer content) buy it! To close the loop between supply and maunfacture, you have to create demand. Recyclable material is generally a bit more expensive than virgin material, but creating a demand for recycled material closes the loop and makes a self-sustaining circle. This notion has picked up significantly over the years, but needs more work. In some areas, recycling facilities can't keep up with demand. In others, the centers are over-full with inventoried materials. Buying products with recycled packaging and product will allow us to create a market that ultimately fuels more recycling.

[Kathryn]

Kaltxi Technowraith,
                            You are on to it!. I, too, buy local whenever that is possible, even when it costs a bit more. If I can do it on my small state pension, anyone can do it. I don't buy packaged food much at all, I prefer fresh meats and vegetables, and there is a strong move afoot to not use plastic shopping bags; the supermarkets all sell very cheap re-usable bags that last a long time. Again, if I can afford them, anyone can.
One of the things that annoys me is the packing of milk in plastic and cartons.....We always had glass bottles in the past and yes, I know they cost a bit to wash and refill, but I would be happy to pay a few cents more for that. Glass is totally recyclable, and we used to get daily deliveries of fresh milk....that doesn't happen any more.... The excuse is cost, but the cost of doing it the present way is a price we will find too much in the long run.
Plastics (some of them) are recyclable too; our local authority sells very inexpensive recycling bins that are made from recycled milk containers....very appropriate.
We have kerbside recycling here (NZ) every week, and each household is given a schedule of what to put out in any particular week for the year..... paper, cans, bottles/glass etc. etc..... the system works.
In many cases the old ways were better (if less profitable for businesses).... we need to go back to go forward....... Too many people, too much garbage, too much focus on making money (which does not really exist in the first place!)......

Peu sa'nokyä ayoengyä? Pefya ayoeng poeru kìte'e sayi?
Pefya ayoengìl poeti hayawnu, na poel ayoengit hawnu?

Tiyawn si atan.....

[Technowraith]

The days of the milk man may not be so limited. If you think about it, the milk man was a very cost effective service early on. And they did recycle the bottles as well.

While plastic milk jugs are recyclable, what isn't recyclable as easily are the orange juice cartons. The laminated cardstock is difficult to prepare for recycling. However, it should be noted that most juice manufacturers used recycled cardstock or stock that contains a minimum percentage of recycled material. The one step that would rather interesting is to see Juice manufacturers move toward aluminum or steel containers. These two metals are recyclable indefinitely. All you have to do is melt them down and skim off the impurities. What's left is pure aluminum and steel. These two materials are considered the "miracle recyclables" because there is no limit to how many times you can re-melt and re-use these two metals. And recycling these materials takes 85% LESS energy and resources than it does to manufacture them from raw ore.

Plastics are a bit tougher to recycle, but they can be sorted by type (which is why they all have different numbers. Each number is a different chemical make-up of plastic.) Problem with plastic, however, is that you can't mix any numbers together. You can't mix 1's and 2's together because that's two different chemical make-ups. So aggressive sorting and processing is needed. Despite such, plastics recycling is picking up. One of the places that spearheading plastics recycling is my local public transportation agency. At all major stops, transit centers and transfer points, and train/trolley stations they've installed recycle bins (along side the trash cans) for plastic bottles and containers. The bins accept ANY plastic number 1-7. The agency reported last week, they've average approximately 2 tons of plastics a day system wide. So people are beginning to find that it's not hard to chuck a bottle or container into the green bin rather then the trash can.

Movements are picking up, but it's up to us to keep the movements going.

[Kathryn]

MMMM... but plastics are made from petrochemicals.... a non=-renewable resource (well not renewable in a time span that matters to us). Similarly, metals...their ores are not replaceable, and the energy to smelt them is often from fossil fuels; and we are not even touching on the awful pollution produced by all metal smelting.
I live in a country in which most of our energy is from hydro and wind, but we allow its exploitation by those outside of NZ. Rio Tinto now owns our aluminium smelter at Tiwai point, and that smelter uses one whole power station at Manapouri (an amazing feat in itself) to run it. We allow this stuff to happen because of the monetary system and the politics involved.....sigh.
Sometimes, you know, I think one of the worst things that we did for ourselves and our planet was to discover how to smelt metals. Without that technology, there would be a lot less of us (quality over quantity perhaps..?), and war on the present scale would not be possible.
All sources of power, whether they be physical, political or spiritual can be used, or misused, and perhaps it would have been better all around if we had not had our present technology for another few thousand years.
But what's done is done, and we have to make the best of it, and who is to say that this present global insanity is not a necessary developmental path on the way to enlightenment? 

Tiyawn si atan

[Technowraith]

I do agree with you.

The industrial age changed everything. Once we learn to exploit resources, it was only a matter of time before supply would become a pressing issue. With over 6 billion people on earth, and growing every year, we're pressing our planet to the brink. Even recycling won't cover our needs 50 years from  now if we don't begin a new way of thinking about how we use our resources and generate our power.

One of the growing movements in the US is local solar power generation. This is the simple act of installing solar panels on every house or building that has enough solar exposure and room. A construction company in the US even developed solar panel shingles and roof tiles! Used mostly in desert regions or areas with high sun exposures, experimental buildings and houses have shown promise for this technology. The areas where the test roofs and installations were built shows a marked decrease in power consumption. If the test markets work to expectation, then I think the solar roofing materials will become widespread throughout the US.

Landfills are beginning to jump into the power generation mix by trapping methane gas released from the pits to power onsite clean-burn incinerators or shipping the methane gas that's trapped to industries that need methane gas.

Responsible use of our resources is what will enable us to maintain resources for generations to come. Recycling is a start. But conservation is a vital key as well.