Satireday on Eco-Crap

Make you Fink on Friday

Did you know that the lifetime of light bulbs once used to last for more than 2500 hours and was reduced on purpose to just 1000 hours? Did you know that nylon stockings once used to be that stable that you could even use them as tow rope for cars and its quality was reduced just to make sure that you will soon need a new one? Did you know that you might have a tiny little chip inside your printer that was just placed there so that your device will break after a predefined number of printed pages thereby assuring that you buy a new one? Did you know that Apple originally did not intend to offer any battery exchange service for their iPods/iPhones/iPads just to enable you to continuously contribute to the growth of this corporation?

This strategy was maybe first thought through already in the 19th century and later on for example motivated by Bernhard London in 1932 in his paper Ending the Depression Through Planned Obsolescence. The intentional design and manufacturing of products with a limited lifespan to assure repeated purchases is denoted as planned/programmed obsolescence and we are all or at least most of us upright and thoroughly participating in this doubtful endeavor. Or did you not recently think about buying a new mobile phone / computer / car / clothes / because your old one unexpectedly died or just because of this very cool new feature that you oh so badly need?

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Opinion:

This is criminal!

I hope you took the trouble to watch this video. Yes, I know it’s 52 minutes, but it affects your lifetime. In your lifetime, how many times will you become a victim?

These cartel members need to be PROSECUTED!

Even through the passage of time, this is still the modus operandi of manufacturers and products today.

Are you shocked?

What are you doing about it?

Source: http://archive.org/details/PlannedObsolescenceDocumentary

Upstairs, Downstairs, but what about UnderStairs?

One of the most difficult to utilise and one of the greatest space wasters is that awkward area under the stairs.

Repurpose your ‘understairs’

‘puter room

This and another 9 ideas from: The Top 10 of Everything

Change the World Wednesday – 28th Aug

Running late again.

My day was divided into three halves, and time just went out the window.

I first saw CTWW challenge at 6am, but to no avail. Now I am trying to catch up on a days blogging.

My name is Cloro, not Inigo Montoya, just prepare to be loved

Firstly, I would like you to welcome my new playmate. His name is Cloro, he’s about five weeks old. Neighbours who knew of Lixo’s demise brought him round on Saturday, so I am no longer catless, I have an outlet for my caternal instincts.

Secondly, I would like to admit to an error. Last week I posted a picture of my ‘cayenne’ pepper bush. After discovering that the peppers weren’t growing to size, I realised that it is a chili pepper bush. So I have both growing now.

My tomatoes are doing great, harvesting two each day, wonderful because that matches my usage.

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This weeks CTWW is preparing for Zero Waste Week.

This week conduct a daily food waste audit. Pay attention to what is being tossed out, how much is thrown away, where it’s ending up (compost, city compost, trash bin, etc.) and why it’s being tossed out. You might find this Food Waste Diary helpful. If you’re feeling truly ambitious, sort out the food waste and weigh it. This challenge is all about realizing just how much food we waste.

So there’s not actually much to write about at the moment, other than to say that I will be participating and report back next week.

New recycling collection

There is some local good news. Comlurb (city rubbish collection) has begun a selective rubbish campaign. Apart from our normal rubbish truck which passes in the evening, we now have coleta seletiva (selective collection) truck passing each Tuesday morning for recyclable rubbish. So far I have left glass and plastic bottles out.

So until next week.

Simple Green Ideas

This is a commercial one, but think of the possibilities.

Source: Toxel Check out more photos and ideas

Using your imagination.

Monday Moaning

China has the biggest footprint in Asia, while this post targets China, it is aimed at the whole Asian region, from India to Japan.

Apart from China’s political policy and human rights abuses China faces massive problems.

I am quite comfortable in saying that I would never consider knowingly buying any foodstuff from China or any region in Asia.

The problem is how to identify.

Panga, a fish from Vietnam is no problem, the supermarkets are full of the shit.

But when you consider that 34% of mushrooms in America come from China, you may not buy them, but what about the restaurants that use them. Then there is 16% of frozen spinach, 27% of garlic, 49% of apple juice, the list goes on. It’s hard to identify.

When you read statistics like these:

:: A fifth of China’s land is polluted. The FAO/OECD report gingerly calls this problem the “declining trend in soil quality.” Fully 40 percent of China’s arable land has been degraded by some combination of erosion, salinization, or acidification — and nearly 20 percent is polluted, whether by industrial effluent, sewage, excessive farm chemicals, or mining runoff, the FAO/OECD report found.

:: China considers its soil problems “state secrets.” The Chinese government conducted a national survey of soil pollution in 2006, but it has refused to release the results. But evidence is building that soil toxicity is a major problem that’s creeping into the food supply. In May 2013, food safety officials in the southern city of Guangzhou found heightened levels of cadmium, a carcinogenic heavy metal, in 8 of 18 rice samples picked up at local restaurants, sparking a national furor. The rice came from Hunan province — where “expanding factories, smelters and mines jostle with paddy fields,” the New York Times reported. In 2011, Nanjing Agricultural University researchers came out with a report claiming they had found cadmium in 10 percent of rice samples nationwide and 60 percent of samples from southern China.

:: China’s food system is powered by coal. It’s not just industry that’s degrading the water and land China relies on for food. It’s also agriculture itself. China’s food production miracle has been driven by an ever-increasing annual cascade of synthetic nitrogen fertilizer (it now uses more than a third of global nitrogen output) — and its nitrogen industry relies on coal for 70 percent of its energy needs. To grow its food, in other words, China relies on an energy source that competes aggressively with farming for water.

:: Five of China’s largest lakes have substantial dead zones caused by fertilizer runoff. That’s what a paper by Chinese and University of California researchers found after they examined Chinese lakes in 2008. And heavy use of nitrogen fertilizer takes its toll on soil quality, too. It causes pH levels to drop, turning soil acidic and less productive — a problem rampant in China. Here’s a 2010 Nature article on a national survey of the nation’s farmland:

Go and read these statistics: Grist

Read about another side of this sad problem: Not even good enough for dog food: Imported food from China loaded with chemicals, dyes, pesticides and fake ingredients.

It gets worse:

Read more

Nearly 20 million people in China could be exposed to water contaminated with arsenic, a study suggests.

Scientists used information about the geology of the country to predict the areas most likely to be affected by the poison.

The report is published in the journal Science.

Arsenic occurs naturally in the Earth’s crust, but if it leaches into groundwater, long-term exposure can cause serious health risks.

These include skin problems and cancers of the skin, lungs, bladder and kidney.

Which means this is the water also used for agriculture, food products for export. Their arsenic is ending is ending up in our food chain.

Governments are bending over backwards to do business with Asia, particularly China.

Even Japan now has a major problem with radioactive contaminants.

They should be legislating to BAN Asian food products from the shelves of the western world.

Especially in China’s case, they are exporting mainly poison and cancers!

Nature Ramble

This week, something I have never considered.

So strange, in fact, that I marked it for a Nature Ramble the moment I read it.

More than 700 seals counted in Thames Estuary

Conservationists and volunteers record 708 grey and harbour seals in the first count carried out by air, land and water

Harbour seals near Whitstable, Kent. Photograph: Gareth Fuller/PA

More than 700 seals have been spotted in the Thames Estuary in the first ever count carried out by air, land and water.

Conservationists and volunteers recorded 708 grey and harbour seals along the Thames in a survey stretching up the estuary to Tilbury, the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) said.

The survey involved recording seals spotted from boats, from the air or by teams on the ground investigating small creeks and rivers, with the GPS co-ordinates of sightings noted.

The aerial survey enabled researchers to count seals on the outer sandbanks of the estuary where colonies of up to 120 seals were recorded in remote and undisturbed spots away from people and boats.

Boats were used for surveying areas of the Medway and Swale estuaries, while researchers on foot were able to get to spots the boats could not reach.

It is the first such complete assessment of the seals in the Thames following a boat survey by ZSL last year.

The survey was timed to coincide with the annual seal moult, when harbour seals shuffle onto sandbanks to shed their coats and grow a new layer in time for the winter, making them easier to spot.

The scientists estimate there were around 500 harbour seals and 200 of the larger grey seals, although the exact figures need to be confirmed through further analysis.

ZSL’s conservation scientist Joanna Barker said: “We knew there were a lot of seals in the Thames but 708 is pretty incredible.

“In previous results there’s been a good few hundred in the Thames, but it’s great to have a figure we can use as a baseline.”

She said the survey would be repeated in future years, enabling scientists to see if numbers were increasing, staying the same or declining.

“Now we know the numbers and where they are, it can help with conservation,” she added.

The presence of so many seals is good news for the Thames Estuary, which was declared biologically dead in the 1950s as a result of heavy pollution, but has since largely recovered.

Barker said: “It’s a really good indicator because the seals are the top predators in the marine food chain, and it shows that the marine environment is relatively good and is producing enough food for the seals to eat.”

She added: “At the moment it seems we’ve got a healthy population in the Thames.”

But she warned there had been drastic declines in numbers of harbour seals recently across Scotland, and that seal populations elsewhere could be vulnerable.

The reasons for the declines are unclear but could be down to disease, climate change, the shifting of prey species and competition with grey seals.

With the declines in Scotland, the Thames’ harbour seals are a more important part of the overall European population, Barker said.

The ZSL study will produce the first complete count of harbour seals in the Thames and south east coast, which will help scientists accurately monitor the species to better understand and protect them, Barker said.

In addition to the survey, ZSL also runs a reporting scheme for members of the public who spot seals and other marine mammals in the Thames. Sightings have been recorded at Richmond, by the London Eye and at Canary Wharf.

Comment:

Fancy that, seals on the River Thames. I have always associated seals with cold places, places with ice and snow. I was totally taken aback when I read this. Mind you, we get Magellan penguins in Rio de Janeiro, but we know that they are lost, forgot to get off the bus at Argentinian Patagonia.

 

Satireday on Eco-Crap

Make you Fink on Friday

Never mind the economic deficit. What about the environmental one?

Today is Earth Overshoot Day [19th Aug], when we’ve consumed more natural resources than our biosphere can replace over a year

Earth Overshoot Day: ‘an estimate of the moment in the year when humanity has consumed more natural resources and created more waste than our biosphere can replace and safely absorb over a 12-month period.’ Photograph: Corbis

Two contradictory ideas shape UK politics. First, the argument for austerity, that the nation cannot and should not live beyond its financial means. Second, the notion that we can and must, in effect, live beyond our environmental means. That is why any increase in our spending and consumption is hailed as economic success.

Today, the world goes into ecological debt, or “overshoot” – an estimate of the moment in the year when humanity has consumed more natural resources and created more waste than our biosphere can replace and safely absorb over a 12-month period.

Since the 1970s we’ve been living beyond our means, going into ecological deficit before the end of each year. And, the day when we hit “overshoot” has been creeping ever earlier. This year it falls two days earlier than in 2012. It now takes about 18 months for the biosphere to compensate for a year’s worth of human consumption and waste. Conservatively, here in the UK we’re using the equivalent of three and a half times the natural resources we have as a nation. For a country like Japan the figure is seven times. Many low-consuming countries in Africa are ecological creditors. Indonesia has been a creditor, but rising consumption and deforestation are running down its natural assets and pushing it over the brink.

For how long we can get away with not balancing the ecological books is a question that exercises many scientific minds, if unfortunately few political and economic ones. It’s a bit like Jenga, the game with the tower of wooden blocks; you can keep taking them away for a while until, with a suspenseful amount of uncertainty, the whole thing collapses.

Read more

Opinion:

The tower is already teetering dangerously, how many more blocks can we remove before the tower collapses?

The monied are oblivious to the tremors. They are blind and cannot/will not see the wobbles that are about to bring doom to us as a race.

We have a choice, spend more and save the economy, or spend less and save the environment.

The equation is simple.

 

Change the World Wednesday – 21st Aug

I don’t need one of these, I have a bladder

*Looks at clock* 2am!

I am insane, yes this week I needed an early morning pee, earlier than normal.

One of the problems of getting old, your bladder loses it’s clock function.

So one tends be up at all hours, bladders don’t have any respect.

It’s a good thing my split days have finished, so I get to sleep in when & where. Time is again mine.

I had another sign that I am not getting any younger. Saturday night, I got dizzy lost my balance, and again more seriously on Sunday morning. My neighbours took me to a local medical centre where I got a jab in the bum and some pills and told to rest.

What’s this ‘rest’ thing? Teachers don’t just ‘rest’. If teachers just ‘rested’ whenever they wanted, the world would come to an end. I went to work Monday night, dopey but I managed to teach without falling into an undignified anamorphic heap on the floor. Although, I nearly did last night because my pill taking got out of kilter with my teaching times. Lesson learned; take pills to work.

Last week, I wrote about my modest garden and preserving. I snapped a few photos for you.

Tomatoes are ripening

Already eaten one, made two lovely salad rolls, another is in the vege stand and I am looking forward to making a little ketchup.

You can’t see them, but there are little peppers growing

Just look at all those little white flowers, each one will become a robust red cayenne pepper.

Modest at the moment

But I have already plucked and used some of my parsley.

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Let’s get on with this week’s CTWW.

Canceling Subscriptions.

Cancel magazine subscriptions. Instead, read magazines online or at the library. Have any old publications sitting around your home? Donate them to libraries, medical/dental offices or recycle them.

 

OR …

If you don’t subscribe to any publications, get your name off catalog and junk-mail lists. Check out Catalog Choice, National Do Not Mail List or contact companies and ask that they remove your name from their mailing list or ADD your name to their “do not mail” list (whichever they use).

Okay, well, this one is easy. I don’t have magazine or newspaper subscriptions. ALL my reading is via the net. I work on the basis that if it’s not on the net, it’s not worth knowing.

I don’t get junk mail from companies, that’s rare in Brazil, but we do get little fliers (A6 size stuff usually). If they are on plain paper, they get tossed on the compost as I walk past (‘ashes to ashes’ theory); if they’re glossy, they go in the rubbish; if they are bigger supermarket fliers, they go back to the supermarket.

Problem solved, challenge met!

The world still needs real books

I do like books, though. If I had access to books in English, I would buy them (secondhand). I just love the feel and the smell of paper. I have read one novel on the net, and didn’t like the experience; there is something cosy about curling up with a book in bed for that twenty minutes before lights out. Laptops, etc, just don’t cut the mustard, they’re not comforting like a real book.

Just a language note here. I mentioned “books in English”, I can read books in Portuguese and Spanish, but because they’re not my first language and I don’t have the same intimacy in the other languages despite being proficient in both.

The world does need books. Electronic means for recreational purposes is just too stark and sterile for an old romantic.