From: ksm@abb-sc.abb-sc.com (Ashley)
Newsgroups: alt.pagan
Subject: Re: Social inhibitions to environmental change
Date: 11 Dec 92 17:20:42 GMT
Organization: Kaos Laboratories


In article <lif807INNhon@news.bbn.com>, dhardin@bbn.com (Dawn Hardin) writes...
>In article <1298@abb-sc.abb-sc.COM>, ksm@abb-sc.abb-sc.com (Ashley) writes:
>> 
>> 	A beautiful example is the 4-wheeler people. My experience indicates 
>> that most of the 4-wheeler crowd use the parks and space set up for them, but 
>> many would prefer to "challenge" their trucks on virgin wilderness. 
>> Occasionally I catch them plowing down the wildlife and vegetation in the 
>> local preserves and parks and it makes me furious. I've even seen cretinous 
>> assholes shooting at the hawks with scoped rifles!
> 
>Just so we start off agreeing with each other, this kind of behavior
>makes me furious.  People who think they love nature when they really
>just like destroying things bug hell out of me.
> 

(initial reclaiming plastics post deleted)

> 
>How are you going to recycle plastics without letting loose a lot more
>pollution?  How much junk plastic is sitting around waiting to be reclaimed?
>I know it sure *seems* like a lot, but is it really enough to fill future
>needs, especially if you're planning on replacing wood products with
>some kind of recycled plastic substitute?  How much efficiency are we
>really going to get on that recycling (reclaiming 90% of it in a useful
>form would be miraculous)?  
> 
>I wonder how plastic products *really* stack up against wood in terms of
>what it does to the environment?  Especially if we were dealing with an
>ideal recycling, re-using situation like you're suggesting.  Plastics are
>pretty filthy to work with, but where is the wood coming from and how
>is it getting cut down?

My aim in this is a particle board that involves shredded, packed plastic, not 
melted. At the very least, we have a replacement for sheetrock that would be 
*very* warm as insulation. The real goal in this suggestion is to get the stuff 
*out* of the landfills. I have spent some time looking at a local landfill and 
have seen lots of plastic sitting around. The amount of plastic frusterated me 
and I've been brainstorming on ideas of how it could be re-used effectively. 
I'd rather it did not get buried there and a shredded, pressed plastic and (?) 
particle board or sheetrock would be a useful place to put it. 

	I'm not advocating a replacement for wood, we will always need wood. 
The problem with wood products that we have is over-harvesting. There are many 
plans that would cut only small percentages of first growth trees and larger 
percentages of second and third growth, maintaining a sustainable yield while 
allowing the forests to replentish themselves. Unfortunately, the lumber 
industry has decided that it wants big profits now and gets them by cutting 
*all* the trees and leaving barren land behind. This is clear-cutting.

	The land left behind erodes into the streams and rivers, altering their 
course and flow, dumping top-soil into the ocean. The terrain will eventually 
be covered by low bushes and a different eco-system will replace the redwood 
forest. Various parts of the Santa Cruz mountians where clear cut in the 1800s. 
The result is a manzanita and sagebrush covered chaparall zone environment. 
The change in environment also affects the local weather patterns and 
tempretures. It can be hazardous in causing a drying affect to adjacent farm 
or pasture land.

	I am advocating a sustainable yield cut, *not* abandonment of all 
timber use. I would also like to see rotation cutting so that large areas get 
relief from harvesting for periods of 10 to 40 years, depending on the growth 
cycle of the trees there (some trees grow slower than othersand will need more 
time to replentish themselves). 

(note on recaliming porcelain deleted)


> 
>Not to be rude or anything, but so what?  Even if this were doable, what
>good would it be?  I've never heard anything about toilets taking up such
>a huge amount of landfill space and even if you could get something useful
>out of them, how much useful construction material would you really get
>and what percentage of needs would it meet?  It'd obviously be a pretty
>tiny percentage.

On a recent trip to the landfill, I saw a large number of porcelain bathroom 
fixtures being crunched and buried along with other trash. I posted this 
because I really couldn't see why these where not being re-used. I don;t know 
enough to be sure, but I believe that reclaiming porcelain would not be too 
environmentally hazardous.

(note on reclaiming building materials deleted)

> 
>This is getting frustrating.  Again, so what?  What percentage of our
>building needs could really be met by stripping old buildings?  It's 
>*obviously* less than the number of buildings that are destroyed.  Maybe
>it would be enough to make a noticeable difference, but it's more likely
>that we could re-use most of what's reusable and still not be able to
>see a difference in landfill use or in demand for construction material.
>It just won't add up.  

Again, I wrote this after seeing a local building demolished and sent off to a 
dump. I thing *any* way we can lessen the amount we put into landfills is good 
and I certainly saw a lot that could be reclaimed there. I don't think we can 
make any reasonable percentage of new buildings from old, but I would like to 
see the disposal of the old buildings done more efficiently. That is my aim 
here.


(note on bio-intensive gardening deleted)

> 
>Yes, I did that too.  Of course, I was buying several pounds of grain
>a week, as well as potatoes, fruits, and dairy products.  I don't know
>how much land was required to grow the rice I ate.  I also was buying
>cow manure at the local garden store, because the only thing going into
>my compost heap was leaves, coffee grounds, and orange rinds.  So in a
>sense, I was buying fertility from somewhere else and dumping it into
>my 20 square feet of denial.  I loved my garden but after a while it
>became obvious that I was only pretending to be friendly to nature.  It's
>an improvement, maybe a big improvement, but it simply doesn't add up.
>If I couldn't have bought cow manure, my compost heap wouldn't have 
>been able to keep that ground fertile.  I'm very interested in bio-intensive
>gardening, but it's just naive to think that you could have that much
>effect from it.

When I mentioned exporting the bio-intensive technique to the farmers, I was 
presuming that we are talking about farming on a *much* larger scale than our 
little "20 square feet of denial". With crop rotation and carefull planning, I 
think we could have a self-sustaining farm. Remember that some plants will be 
returing some things to the soil, as well as taking. Manure is available on a 
large farm. I think it could work, and probably quite well. Does anyone have an 
example?

> 
>I guess the main thing that I'm trying to say here is, it doesn't add up.
>We can't get enough energy or supplies from our landfills to make up what
>put them there, recycling is *never* going to be 100% efficient, there's
>always going to be loss.  Even though we can made improvements, it's 
>AT BEST not enough to hold off the kind of environmental and economic
>disaster that Janis talked about in the original post that started this 
>whole thing.  What have we been talking, 100 years?  The best recycling
>(let's say we could recover 75% of everything, which is absurdly high)
>isn't going to give us another 100 years.  Cutting our birth rates isn't
>going to help that much, because the original generation lives on
>after producing for another 40 or so years.  It's just not going to give
>us another 100 years.  Nothing that anyone has said with the possible
>exception of space industrialization has proposed anything that extends
>our lifespan a noticeable amount.  Nothing else adds up.  Maybe mining
>space won't add up either, but it's a better play.
> 
>Dawn

	My goal here Dawn is not to make our current recycling 100% effective 
(impossible with current materials, I know), but to see our resourses used 
betterand to direct technology to come up with better uses of our resourses, to 
use renewable resourses. I don't propose to have the answers, but I would like 
to push for changing the way we create things to be more friendly. That isn't 
too difficult in some places and with a little R&D, could be a reality in 
others. There has to be ways to make our waste products reclaimable by the 
envornment and renewable to us. It involves a change in the way we look at 
things and the way we develop technology, but I think that is a good thing and 
a necessary step in our evolution. Anyway, it's no less valid than going into 
space and will improve our ability to do things when we get there.

			- Ashley