Recycle, Reduce, Reuse and Close the Loop

Kids will remember anything if it has a catchy jingle. The title of this blog are the lyrics to the advertising ploy for recycling when I was a kid, but I couldn't tell you if there is a new one now; I don't hear much about recycling these days.

But this does not mean that recycling is limited or that it is not making a difference (it just means that they need to fire their current advertisers and hire some young college grads, particularly those that are graduating Spring '08)

Here is just a sample of what people are doing to recycle goods across the planet:

news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/4620041.stm

Homeless people have been given recycling jobs in the US. The UK government is trying to encourage more people to recycle their waste and reduce the UK's waste mountain. Figures suggest 60% of all household waste could be recycled or composted, but the largest nation in the UK, England, appears to be reusing only 17.7%.

Curbside Recycling

earth911.org/recycling/curbside-recycling/
Curbside recycling now serves half of the U.S. population, providing the most convenient means for households to recycle a variety of materials.
While all curbside programs differ, the most commonly included materials are The Big Five: aluminum, glass, paper, plastic and steel.
If curbside recycling isn’t available in your area, consider starting your own recycling program.

Recycling Process
Collecting and processing secondary materials, manufacturing recycled-content products, and then purchasing recycled products creates a circle or loop that ensures the overall success and value of recycling.

Recycling Activities in Asia, Oceania and South America

http://www.sony.net/SonyInfo/Environment/recycle/asia/index.html
Sony promotes various recycling programs in Asia, Oceania and South America. Sony Korea Corporation collects and recycles PCs, televisions and audio products in line with recycling legislation that came into force in the Republic of Korea in 2003. In recent years, the number of pieces of electronic equipment collected directly through Sony Store outlets and service centers has increased. Similarly, Sony Taiwan Limited has continued collection and recycling of televisions and PCs in accordance with legal requirement established in 1998. In fiscal 2006, Sony Brasil Ltda. launched its own end-of-life battery collection program in cooperation with retailers. Batteries are collected through collection posts set up by Sony Brasil at Sony retailers across the country. Collected batteries are turned over to a recycling firm, where they are disposed of in an appropriate manner.

According to http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/kids/greenhouse.html The greenhouse effect is the process in which the emission of infrared radiation by the atmosphere warms a planet's surface. The name comes from an incorrect analogy with the warming of air inside a greenhouse compared to the air outside the greenhouse. The greenhouse effect was discovered by Joseph Fourier in 1824 and first investigated quantitatively by Svante Arrhenius in 1896.[1]
The Earth's average surface temperature of 15 °C (59 °F) is about 33 °C (59 °F) warmer than it would be without the greenhouse effect.[2] Global warming, a recent warming of the Earth's lower atmosphere, is believed to be the result of an enhanced greenhouse effect due to increased concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. In addition to the Earth, Mars and Venus have greenhouse effects.

So why is this a natural disaster if we can't see it or necessarily feel its effects?

The average global temperature has increased by almost 1 degree F over the past century; scientists expect the average global temperature to increase an additional 2 to 6ºF over the next one hundred years. This may not sound like much, but it could change the Earth's climate as never before. At the peak of the last ice age (18,000 years ago), the temperature was only 7ºF colder than it is today, and glaciers covered much of North America!Even a small increase in temperature over a long time can change the climate.

Tornado Watch?

ATLANTA, Feb 13, 2008
From PRNewswire via COMTEX
"-- When a tornado hit Evansville, Indiana two years ago injuring 230, one survivor said, "I didn't hear the siren."
As a result, Ms. Pamela Harrell invented the Tornado Alarm System (TAS) which operates much like a smoke alarm ($35). The TAS will be shown at the International Home and Housewares Show.
"The TAS only sounds its siren when the National Weather Service issues a tornado warning," says Ms. Harrell.
After it is plugged in, county code selected and frequency tuned, installation is complete."

Not all American residents that are in danger of tornados live close to a siren system. Some towns don't have enough funds to buy a siren at all. It kills me to hear that the state of California spends $34 million on "security" for our governor, but entire communities in other states cannot protect their own people. The Governator is safe from poparazzi, but hundreds of people die from a natural disaster that they could have escaped if only they were warned.
Oh how we prioritize!

Real Seismic Activity

I decided to investigate what the actual effects of an Earthquake are. Here is what howstuffworks.com (my favorite website when I need to know the basics on anything) has to say about earthquakes and their impact:

Every year, earthquakes cause thousands of deaths, either directly or due to the resulting tsunamis, landslides, fires, and famines. Quakes occur when a fault (where Earth's tectonic plates meet) slips, releasing energy in waves that move through the ground.
Scientists measure the strength of tremors on the Richter scale, which assigns magnitude in numbers, like 6.0 or 7.2. A 5.0 tremor is equivalent to a 32-kiloton blast, nearly the explosive power of the atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki in 1945! Going one whole number higher -- such as from 5.0 to 6.0 -- reflects a tenfold increase in the amplitude of waves. Here are some of the most destructive earthquakes in recent history.

Missouri: December 16, 1811 The New Madrid fault -- near where Missouri, Kentucky, Arkansas, and Tennessee meet -- witnessed an 8.0 or greater magnitude quake nearly 200 years ago. The shaking spread so far that church bells reportedly rang in Boston, more than 1,500 miles away! It had dramatic effects on the area's geography, lifting up land enough to make the Mississippi River appear to flow upstream. Fortunately, the sparsely populated area suffered only one death and minimal property damage.
The Great San Francisco Earthquake caused $524 million in damage and killed 3,000 people.

San Francisco: April 18, 1906 The Great San Francisco Earthquake -- a 7.8 magnitude tremor -- brought down structures across the Bay Area. In San Francisco, buildings crumbled, water mains broke, and streetcar tracks twisted into metal waves. But the majority of the 3,000 deaths and $524 million in property damage came from the massive post-tremor fire, which spread rapidly across the city in the absence of water to quell the flames. People as far away as southern Oregon and western Nevada felt the shaking, which lasted nearly a minute. 3. Southern USSR: October 5, 1948 This earthquake in Ashgabat, Turkmenistan, killed around 110,000 people, more than two-thirds of the city's population at the time. The 7.3 magnitude rumbling reduced much of the city to rubble and was one of the most devastating quakes to hit Central Asia. In 2002, the government of Turkmenistan commemorated the devastating event by issuing special coins featuring images of President Suparmurat Niyazov and his family members -- most of whom died in the 1948 quake.

Southern California: January 17, 1994 The 6.7 magnitude Northridge tremor left 60 people dead and caused an estimated $44 billion in damage. The rumbling damaged more than 40,000 buildings in four of California's most populated and expensive counties: Los Angeles, Orange, Ventura, and San Bernardino. The earthquake, which was felt as far away as Utah and northern Mexico, luckily struck at 4:30 a.m., when most people were not yet populating the region's crowded freeways, office buildings, and parking structures, many of which collapsed.

A Seismic Shift in Hollywood?

Hollywood’s Seismic Shift
Can an industry upended regain its sense?
By Rachel Abramowitz, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

“...I’m coming into the office and surfing the Web and doing crossword puzzels and reading,” says Oscar-nominated screenwriter and director Scott Frank. Pre-strike, he had his day packed to the nanosecond, writing his own scripts and doctoring others’ scripts for films rushing toward production. Lately, he’s been picketing and procrastinating. “Every time I sit down to write, I end up going online. It’s pathetic. Everybody feels totally discombobulated. It’s like the way people feel after a natural disaster. People have lost their routines around which they organize their lives.”


I found this article while perusing the LA Times and had to laugh at one writers' heightened sense of self. He compared the writers strike to an earthquake in the way that in has impacted lives. I understand that the writers strike is nothing to scoff at, but has it really reached the level where families have been uprooted, lives and livelyhoods lost? Maybe it has. Maybe the writers are so 'discombobulated' that they simply have to start over. The strike has wiped their lives clean and now the will begin anew. Let's just hope that the writing, not just the writers, is fresh.