Global Permaculture Solutions
a graceful end to cheap oil
local bioregional global solutions
GlobalPermaculture.org Permatopia.com
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Global Permaculture Solutions GlobalPermaculture.org Permatopia.com |
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PERMACULTURE permaculture for nine billion Permatopia dictionary: documents: environmental patterns Greenwash Permatopia food water shelter: energy
transportation
community
money: health: permaculture: waste: forests:
biomimicry detoxification: primitive technology homesteading eco-cities related websites:
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Waste is a terrible thing to mind In nature, there is no such thing as "waste" - every byproduct is the "feedstock" for other forms of life.
www.jenkinspublishing.com/humanure.html
thebidetsolution.com www.metroactive.com/papers/sonoma/11.20.03/bidets-0347.html www.treehugger.com/files/2008/04/bidets_eliminat.php www.bbruneau.com/the-bidet.html
www.biobidet.com
fungi.com - Fungi Perfecti in Olympia, Washington is one of the premier research institutes for natural detoxification with mushrooms. Paul Stamets book "Mycellium Running" is a excellent read about myco-remediation, including how different fungus species can break down (not merely absorb) petroleum compounds and even military grade nerve gas chemicals.
Human Behavior, Global Warming and the Ubiquitous Plastic Bag Sunday 30 September 2007 Yorktown Heights, New York - When she moved to the United States from Germany seven years ago, Angela Neigl brought with her the energy-conscious sensibilities of life in Europe. You drove small cars. You recycled every can, lid and stray bit of household waste. You brought your own reusable bags or crate to the market rather than adding to the billions of plastic bags clogging landfills, killing aquatic creatures on the bottoms of oceans and lakes, and blowing in the wind. But, alas, there she was Friday morning, lugging her white plastic bags from the Turco's supermarket, like everyone else, figuring there was no fighting the American way of waste. "When I was first here, I brought my own bags to the market, but they would stuff the groceries in the plastic bags anyway. Finally, I gave up," she said. "People are very nice here. It's more relaxed. But the environmental thing is a little scary." You could have learned a lot, I guess, about the politics of global warming from the lukewarm response President Bush received last week from skeptical delegates at his conference on climate change and energy security. But in the most micro of ways, you can learn plenty any day of the week at the Turco's or the Food Emporium in Yorktown Heights, the Super Stop & Shop in North White Plains, the A.&P. or Mrs. Green's Natural Market in Mount Kisco or just about anywhere Americans shop in Westchester County and beyond. And the lesson for now pretty much seems to be that no matter how piddly the effort, no matter how small the bother, well, it's too much bother. "I know," said Vicki Strebel, another Turco's shopper, when asked about bringing a reusable bag rather than taking home the throwaway plastic. "I should, but I don't. I'm sorry. I'm too busy. Things are too crazy. If I got the bags, I'd probably forget to put them in the car." Plastic bags are not the biggest single issue out there, and no expert on global warming would suggest solutions rest wholly with decisions made by individual consumers. On the other hand, it is estimated that the United States goes through 100 billion plastic bags a year, which take an estimated 12 million barrels of oil to produce and last almost forever. And if individual decisions can't solve the problem, the wrong ones can certainly compound it. Once upon a time, the question was plastic or paper, which had its own somewhat uncertain calculus of virtue and waste. Now, it has begun to dawn on people that you don't need either. Most supermarkets these days sell sturdy, reusable bags for 99 cents that people can use instead of plastic ones. Except almost no one does. For lots of different reasons. They buy them and forget to use them. (Truth in advertising: Count me among the serial offenders.) They figure they can reuse the plastic bags for garbage and dog-walking duties. They find them unhygienic; we fell in love with the throwaway culture for a reason. One reusable bag can hold the contents of several plastic ones, but that's too heavy for the elderly or the frail to carry. It's just not what we do. Of course, there are exceptions. Trader Joe's, for example, offers a variety of reusable bags and has raffles for free food or gift certificates for people who bring their own bag, so people use them. San Francisco banned petroleum-based plastic bags in large supermarkets and pharmacies, which, depending on your mind-set, was visionary leadership or the green nanny state in action. After Ireland enacted a stiff tax on the bags in 2001, consumption fell by 90 percent. Mrs. Neigl says when visitors come from Germany, they're baffled by the local customs, the tolerance of such stupendous, routine waste. But having lived here for a while she gets it: all that open space, the lustrous green acres just 35 miles from Manhattan. "I guess people aren't so concerned about the environment because they have so much of it," she said. Of course, people are aware it's not that simple. But all too often awareness changes before behavior does. At most of the grocers I visited you can find a quite remarkable Time magazine special issue on global warming. On its cover is a heartbreaking picture of a polar bear on a lonely frozen peninsula surrounded by what was once ice and is now water. It would be a downer for supermarket décor, but in the absence of political leaders from the White House on down hammering home the message that the free ride of endless excess is about to run off the cliff, maybe it takes that kind of image on giant posters next to the cornflakes to get people's attention. Plastic bags are a small part of the picture. (Sport utility vehicles, McMansions, long commutes, anyone?) But you think, if we can't change our behavior to deal with this one, we can't change our behavior to deal with anything.
Earth's Eighth Continent: North Pacific Gyre traps flotsam. By David Reid November 21, 2007 The Phoenix Located in the Pacific Ocean between California and Hawaii and measuring in at roughly twice the size of Texas, this elusive mass is home to hundreds of species of marine life and is constantly expanding. It has tripled in size since the middle of the 1990s and could grow tenfold in the next decade. Although no official title has been given to the mass yet, a popular label thus far has been "The Great Pacific Garbage Patch." As suggested by the name, the island is almost entirely comprises human-made trash. It currently weighs approximately 3.5 million tons with a concentration of 3.34 million pieces of garbage per square kilometer, 80 per cent of which is plastic. Due to the Patch's location in the North Pacific Gyre, its growth is guaranteed to continue as this Africa-sized section of ocean spins in a vortex that effectively traps flotsam. Few visitors The cause for the Patch's relative lack of acknowledgment is that the portion of the Pacific it occupies is almost entirely unvisited. It lacks the wind to attract sailing vessels, the biology to encourage fishing, and is not in the path of major shipping lanes. What little air movement there is blows inwards, further trapping the garbage. According to an article in the San Francisco Chronicle, Marcus Eriksen, a director at the Algatita Marine Research Foundation, said that "with the winds blowing in and the currents in the gyre going circular, it's the perfect environment for trapping." While the trash is in the ocean, it is doing what could be irreparable harm to sea life, the water it's in, and eventually humans. Plastic resists biodegrading. Instead, a plastic shopping bag or pop bottle will photo-degrade over time, meaning that it will break down into smaller and smaller pieces but retain its original molecular composition. The result is a great amount of fine plastic sand that resembles food to many creatures. Unfortunately, the plastic cannot be digested, so sea birds or fish can eventually starve to death with a stomach full of plastic. Even if the amount of plastic in a creature's body is not enough to block the passage of food, the small pellets act as sponges for several toxins, concentrating chemicals such as DDT to 1 million times the normal level. This concentration then works its way up the food chain until a fish is served at our dinner table. A deadly shining Some birds, attracted to the shining in the ocean, approach the Great Pacific Garbage Patch in search of food. Marine researchers have commented that pelicans dissected in that area have stomachs so full of lighters that they resemble convenience stores. Sea turtles are also prone to mistaking plastic bags for jelly fish, which then cause their deaths or sit in their guts for the decades it takes the bags to break down. In total, 267 species have been reported to have eaten from, or become entangled in, the Patch. According to Chris Parry of the California Coastal Commission, regrettably little can be done to clean up the Patch, although many urge that a decreased reliance on plastic is the first step. "At this point," said Parry, "cleaning it up isn't an option . . . it's just going to get bigger as our reliance on plastics continues." "The long-term solution is to stop producing as much plastic products at home and change our consumption habits." Cleaning up the Patch will likely cost billions of dollars and, as an approximation, be more difficult than vacuuming every inch of the United States. The plastic and garbage reach more than 30 metres down into the ocean and a great number of organisms would be destroyed in the process. So far, no country has so much as proposed a solution, presumably because no nation wishes to claim responsibility. Even if all plastic usage were to stop immediately, future geologists would be able to clearly mark the stratum designating the 20th and 21st century by an indelible layer of plastic coating the world's oceans. |
