Make less garbage.
 

Hello friends,

I'm trying to make less garbage.

Here's the first video in what is likely to turn into an interesting series.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tOsCfAxMSto

Take 'n' bake pizza seems to be a common theme in a whole bunch of your threads here, Ben. :confused:

#1 thing people can do to reduce garbage generating is to reduce the # of offspring they have. TRUE!!!

Goes for energy/gasoline use too. How many times have people said they would bike somewhere but no, they can't because the offspring have to be carted here, there, and everywhere?

Back to garbage: I started a thread on household garbage not too long ago.

Yes, Frank, but the whole point of conservation is to save resources for the future benefit and enjoyment of other people. In the absence of intelligent, self-aware people, it doesn't matter whether the planet becomes as arid as Mars or as hazardous as the surface of the sun.

If you can raise above-average offspring, or perhaps even if your offspring are merely self-aware and moral enough to support the desires and goals of their peers, then it's morally right to breed. Consequently, Frank, it's morally wrong to deprive the world of your would-be offspring.

That is, unless you really believe your offspring would bring enough harm to the world to bring more suffering than joy.

Said the guy who drives the "electric umbrella" to get take-out! ;)

I admit. I like pizza.
Where I live, the take and bake place is the best compromise of price/convenience/taste.

In all seriousness, transportation, food, and waste are all directly connected. It's what? 1500 miles or so that the average American food travels before you eat it?
When you think of physical pollution, what do you think of? Birds with their head's stuck in six-pack soda/beer rings? Birds doused in oil from an oil spill? Aluminum can's and fast food drink cups on the side of the road?

We invented the car, the fast food restaurant, the drive-in movie theater, the Chinese takeout container, and the suburb.

Now we have to find a way to deal with that culture that we created. It's FAR too easy to just keep doing things the way that we do. It's SO CONVENIENT! It's SO EASY. Unfortunately we just ship our waste off, never to be seen again. Out of site, out of mind.

In the background, landfills fill up, garbage scows dump waste in the ocean. Coal miner's die every day, because we leave the TV on while we aren't even watching it.

ARRRGgg! I digress and have gone negative. But that's not all bad. When we SEE the bad things, we can think about it. We can CHANGE the bad things that we don't want any more. As long as we are AWAKE, instead of sleep-walking through life, simply accepting all things without question.

Anyone ever see the movie, THEY LIVE ?
It's a terrible B-movie, but with a great concept. Our hero finds a pair of sunglasses. When he puts them on, he sees the world as it actually is. Billboards simply say CONSUME. He sees that the rich and powerful are actually ugly aliens in charge of the place.

There are days where I feel like the guy wearing the sunglasses. Like I'm the ONLY guy wearing the sunglasses.
And I gotta do something about it. Gotta Gotta Gotta do something.

How'd all this start? Oh yeah. Pizza.
See - Most people just see a pizza. I see a hundred million empty pizza boxes going into a land-fill.

Well, at least tonight, there was one less.

That's a start.

Whoa, that's rich!!! :eek: :rolleyes:

Egomania running wild! I wonder what the rest of the Earth's inhabitants would say about that...

P.S. I Love pizza!

I'll admit, it's an overstatement to assert that the life of a sheep has exactly zero value because it can not formulate "cogito ergo sum". But still, you're avoiding the real issue of whether creating more intelligent observers to enjoy their existence would be an improvement or not.

Overpopulation is a big issue. It is something we should consider.

However, that's the sort of thing we each have to think about BEFORE we start running around reproducing.

In this case though, I am thinking more about personal pollution creation, or per capita pounds of garbage.

While there are more than enough people in the world, some of us use far more than our fair share of everything, and create a disproportionately large amount of waste.

If the average American used as much electricity as the average European or ate as much meat as the average Asian, are part of the world would be very different than it is.

I've heard of one environmental science class that had all the students carry all the trash that they produced with them for a week, another way to do that is just to dump out your trash can and take a look at what you are tossing out, you will most likely find that it's full of the things you also spent the most money on.

So this is why people are putting pizza pans on their wheels... I'll take 15" pepperoni with a side of brake dust, thanks!

If by we you mean Americans, your hubris is showing (not to mention something else). The Romans had suburbs: even the word suburb is Latin, fer gawdsakes.

In addition, cars were invented by a bunch of Europeans, most prominently Karl Benz, and while I've no specific knowledge, I'd be pretty surprised if earlier cultures didn't have their equivalents of fast food. I'll give you the drive-in movies, though, but AFAIK they don't exist any more, except as an occasional nostalgia thing.

Ever wonder how the rest of you look to the rich & powerful :-)

Hey James.

Yes, Daimler had the first major auto patent. Of course there were many folks, especially Europeans involved in all sorts of car related things in the early days. But it wasn't until Ford and others that the car really starting becoming what we call a "Car" today.

While the Romans did have outlying cities (and excellent roads!) They didn't have urban sprawl the way we do now. I had heard that once a Roman city got to a certain size, they actually had a bunch of people go out to start a completely NEW city. How nice and orderly of them.

What they didn't do was commute using two gallons of gasoline per person per day, to live in one city and work in another.

My point is that in the United States, we have a long tradition of both automobiles, packaging, and waste, (which often are all related) like not quite any other place on the planet.

...ah, but that brake dust will co$t you--it's an additional "topping" (wink,wink)!

It was the ancient Greeks who practiced that form of colonization. Rome the city had a population estimated in the 1 millon range, and practiced its own form of urban sprawl. Moving people was impractical, given the technology of the time, so they moved grain instead, shipping it to the city from great slave-worked farms in Egypt, Sicily, and North Africa. This had its environmental effects, which still exist today: compare climate & vegetation in those places pre and post-Rome.

They would say that they'll be dead by the time that the Earth becomes uninhabitable so what do they care. Another one that I run into all the time is "I don't have any kids so why should I care about the environment."

People who are responsible (environmentally responsible, financially responsible, etc.) should be having more children. Unfortunately there is no way to stop the irresponsible people from breeding.

"waste not, want not"

I was going to say non-human inhabitants but I didn't think I had to...

You actually think there's a sub-group that should be replicating more? Oh man, show me where the human shortage is.... :mad: :rolleyes:

"Tradition" is a good word. It seems so rooted that any move to reduce vehicle use, pollution or garbage production is interpretted by many as an attack on their Freedom, on the American Way of Life. Many people seem to believe that senseless driving, polluting, etc., is a part of patriotism.

Thankfully, not all people are like that, and this forum is a good place to find many of them. Thank you Ben for deciding to try to reduce your garbage footprint even further. Good luck!

Saying that the problem is overpopulation oversimplifies the problem. The problem is over consumption not over population. Humans have always managed to over consume their resources even with much lower population than we have today.

I had heard that the Romans did a fine job of stripping the countryside.

Supposedly, they ran through so much of the available useful fuel, that they ended up being the first to really make use of solar heating as an alternative.

These are the same people who had wood-fired heated floors and baths! To go from such luxury to renewable energy by necessity is very interesting.

I think we are at a similar place today. We are over-consuming, and at a rate that the ancients could never have imagined. (The amount of energy in a gallon of oil is AMAZING!)
Continuing at that rate, means we are going to run out of it REALLY fast! I just recently read an article that Peak Oil already hit.... in 2006!

Richard Heinberg is the author of a number of books, but PEAK EVERYTHING is particulary interesting. The chapters detail how much of absolutely EVERYTHING we are burning through right now.

Pessimists. I much prefer my neighbor's attitude: a few years after I bought this place, he decided to plant a few Sequoia trees. Now that's optimism, 'cause he was 88 then. 96 now, and still going strong, too.

Nor were the Romans the first. Consider this from Plato:

"[In earlier days] Attica yielded far more abundant produce. In comparison of what then was, there are remaining only the bones of the wasted body; all the richer and softer parts of the soil having fallen away, and the mere skeleton of the land being left. But in the primitive state of the country, the mountains were high hills covered with soil, and plains were full of rich earth, and there was abundance of wood in the mountains. Of this last traces still remain, for although some of the mountains now only afford sustenance to bees, not so very long ago there were still to be seen roofs of timber cut from trees growing there, which were of such a size sufficient to cover the largest houses; and there were many other high trees, cultivated by man and bearing abundance of food for cattle."

"Moreover, the land reaped the benefit of the annual rainfall, not as now losing the water which flows off the bare earth into the sea, but, having an abundant supply in all places, and receiving it into herself and treasuring it up in the close clay soil, it let off into the hollows the streams which it absorbed from the heights, providing everywhere abundant fountains and rivers, of which there may still be observed sacred memorials in places where fountains once existed; and this proves the truth of what I am saying."

MY problem is overpopulation. 20 years ago I selected my house because of it's off the beaten path/quiet/semi private location. Almost of the development in this community has happened/is happening all around me for some strange reason. I listen to construction equipment and dump trucks for 3 seasons a year for the last 10 years. Traffic has increased in front of my house, oh, 10x? Someone ran over my cat. They added another runway to the airport which (used to) be 4 miles out but is rapidly getting encircled- the result is flight paths right over my end of town. But enough about my town and how much the quality of life has gone down. Were I to bail out of this hell hole and go back to the farm... well, a few year ago they "improved" the rural two lane road and now it seems like every semi in the tri-state area feels the need to use it. There is a LOT of jet noise from the intl airport 90 miles away! :eek: And other misc B.S. that clearly says that spot has gone to pot too. Oh, there's a 3rd spot "in the family" I could go; where Grandpa's summer cabin is. Trouble is, "development" there means there are 3x the amount of cabins now vs when I was a kid, and every one of them appears to have 10x the number of lightly muffled engine powered **** than they used to, not to mention the rednecks with open piped pickups and bikes that can be clearly heard across the lake- that is, when it isn't buzzing with jetskis and motorboats. Except in the winter, it's quieter in town!

The trend in this state is clear: you have to go way waaayyyyyy out in the middle of nowhere to get away, and even then you can't because the mud trucks, atvs, dirt bikes, and whatnot will proudly let you know you ain't alone.

I don't even need to bring up the traffic situation- "rural", small town, city- all of it way more congested in only the snapshot of time which is my experience. Where does it end? Seriously? When the entire continental U.S. looks like Jersey?

I wintered in California- Oh what a beautiful place... it USED to be. Weather is nice but the area now is little more than a support system for traffic and the infestation of humans that clog the place up. I have an acquaintance that grew up where I stayed, 40 years ago. He says, Wow how great it was, but now it's wrecked. No way will he go back, probably not even for a visit. I concur, it may be nice enough for me to visit again but I don't want to live there. I guess I was born 80 years too late.

The problems are overpopulation and overconsumption BOTH.

...the proverbial urban "...ant hill..." versus the proverbial rural "...off the beaten path..."