Cheerful Curmudgeon » Ecology

Opt Out of Paper Phone Books

Art Zemon — Sat, 02 Jul 2011 13:32:16 +0000

Free to Good Home: Unused Phone Books

I don’t know how well it works (yet) but I just used the National Yellow Pages Consumer Choice & Opt-Out Site to decline all five of the big books that have been delivered to our doorstep annually. Several years ago, we cut the cord and terminated our AT&T home phone service, switching to a VOIP service for a fraction of the cost. About two years ago, we stopped using even that, switching to just our cell phones. We do still have the old home phone number but pay just $5.00 per month now to have it forwarded to both of our cell phones.

The only reason that we have been getting paper phone books is that our business still maintains a phone number with AT&T… solely for the purpose of maintaining a listing in the phone book. Having that number has bestowed the privilege on us of receiving the Big Books which no one actually uses. Writing this post has me thinking that it is probably time to port that final number to our VOIP provider since I cannot remember the last time that a legitimate customer looked us up in either the yellow or the white pages.

It’s amazing how hard it is to change life-long habits. Dropping our satellite TV subscription a decade ago seemed huge but turned out to be a non-event. I think that cancelling our last wired-line phone service, and our last phone book entry, will be the same.

We have come a long way since the early 1970s when my dad listed himself in the Chicago phone book at Zeke Zzzypt. That only lasted a year, though, because he got too many crank phone calls. You can still find traces of his gag if you search the internet for “Zeek Zzzypt.”

Innovative Transportation Ideas

Art Zemon — Thu, 07 Apr 2011 12:32:17 +0000

Gas prices jumped again: $3.89 today and I know that Missouri’s prices are lower than many. I should count myself lucky; I work from home so I burn a lot less gas than most of my friends. I struggle to hang onto that warm, fuzzy feeling when I fill up my plane, though. The last load of avgas cost $5.66 per gallon.

Beyond the cost of fuel, my inner ecologist wants to do the right thing for our planet. It might be time to sell the minivan and buy a more fuel efficient Fiat 500 (for ecological reasons only, I assure you ). Sure, the van needs brakes and tires but there is nothing else mechanical wrong with it. I am simply irked to use 6,000 pounds of steel to haul one or two people around town burning another gallon of gas every 18 miles. Common wisdom says: Replace the gas hog! But should we really? Might our planet be better off if we keep driving this thing? It has already been manufactured. It has already been transported from the factory in Korea to Missouri. If we keep driving this van, no new coal needs to be mined. No new iron ore. No new paint.

Here’s a wild idea. Could we, along with a few of our neighbors, form a large-car co-op? Could each family own a small, fuel efficient car while sharing one large van? It would certainly take some life style adjustments, a need to coordinate our Costco trip with the neighbor’s Home Depot run but it might be OK. How much better for the ecology to reduce the quantity of cars on the road rather than simply shave away at the size of the cars.

Electra One in Solar Hangar

PC-Aero of Germany is launching a cool concept for personal aircraft. The Electra One electric airplane will be sold with a hangar with solar panels. Even with Germany’s weather, the hangar will be able to provide “fuel” for 300 hours of flying per year. I like these outside-the-box ideas, especially when they involve engines and airplanes and skipping the gasoline entirely. As airplanes go, my Piper Arrow is pretty fuel efficient, getting 16-17 MPG at 150 MPH but flying 100% on solar energy sounds very tempting as avgas races toward $7.00 per gallon.

Are we finally reaching the point where we will rethink how we build roads, cities, and neighborhoods? Will we finally design our world to accommodate transportation by means other than personal cars?

Out of fashion: Green lawns

Art Zemon — Sun, 22 Aug 2010 23:14:54 +0000

If you have a lawn, check out Out of fashion: Green lawns at USA Today.

Beautiful Chemical-Free Lawn

Art Zemon — Sat, 22 May 2010 13:42:04 +0000

My venture into natural lawn care has produced a beautiful lawn, far exceeding my expectations. Let me tell you what I have done and then relate a funny (but true) story from Wednesday evening.

I had a soil analysis performed by the University of Missouri extension and, while waiting for the results, I applied some corn glutten as a combination pre-emergent herbicide and fertilizer. See My Lawn, Naturally for details. The soil analysis told us that the dirt is fine, an unexpected pleasure, and that the only thing we need to do is add a bit of fertilizer in the late summer or early fall. I had expected at least one more round of fertilization, probably to add nitrogen, so I am delighted to save the effort and money. This does bear out the advice that I read in so many places: have your soil analyzed. Without knowing the condition of your lawn, how can you intelligently decide what treatment it needs?

We set the mower to a higher setting, up to 4 from 3. The taller grass crowds out weeds; they cannot even get started. I have read that it will be more drought tolerant, too, but this spring has been so soggy that drought has been the farthest thing from my mind. I tried setting the mower all the way up, at 5, but that was so tall that the grass was forming seed heads within a few days of mowing. Mown at 4, the lawn looks lush and green from a distance. Walking on it is kind of cool because the grass is so deep and springy.

I have been very careful with the weed-whacker, trimming the edges to the same height as the rest of the lawn. I used to be a mad man with a trimmer in my hand, gleefully slashing everything in sight down to the ground so that I wouldn’t have to deal with it again. Turns out, that is exactly the wrong thing to do. By cutting the vegetation short, the weeds grow more easily than the grass, which leads to more weed-whacking and a never-ending need for herbicides and weed-whacking all around the edges of the lawn. By simply leaving the grass as long at the edges as it is in the middle of the yard, very few weeds have gotten hold, even next to the curbs and the driveway.

Candy spent an hour, on two occasions in early April, pulling dandelions. In hindsight, I am not sure it was worthwhile but we were worried that the dandelions would get out of control. Next time they raise their yellow heads, I think we will just watch and see what happens. The grass has dealt with everything else so well that it will probably fend off most of the dandelions, too. I actually like dandelions so if I have some of them, I’ll be a happy camper. And since we don’t have any chemicals on our lawn, they may well end up in our salad bowl.

In addition to these four things (one application of fertilizer, mowing taller, weed-whacking taller, and pulling a few dandelions), we have done nothing else to the lawn except enjoy it.

On Wednesday evening, Candy and I were sitting on the patio enjoying the evening and the results of having mowed and weed-whacked. A guy came walking along the street; he was passing out fliers for lawn care service. Since we were within easy chatting distance of the curb, he stopped to chat and to try to sell his service to me.

Guy: What are you doing to take care of your lawn?

Me: Natural lawn care.

Guy: You put that down yourself?

Me: Yup. The lawn looks pretty good, doesn’t it?

Guy: Well, yeah, every lawn looks good this time of year.

Me: Do you see any weeds?

Guy: Looks silently at the lawn

Me: Why would I put anything else on a lawn that looks this good?

Guy: Continues to stare silently at the lawn

I had not realized just how well our grass can take care of itself until that moment. Here was a guy who wanted to sell us something, probably for a very reasonable price, and he clearly had nothing to offer in the face of cool, lush, green, objective evidence. As for me, I will just keep enjoying my yard and wondering why so many people around me pour so many dollars and chemicals onto the dirt outside their homes.

Recycling Without Trucks or Gasoline

Art Zemon — Sun, 28 Mar 2010 17:25:22 +0000

We have several “tufts” of tall-grass around the edge of our patio. Last year, I tried letting it go au naturel, which is a technical term meaning: I let it be and didn’t tend it at all. I didn’t like that. It looked scraggly pretty much all the time. So this year, I went back to the annual ritual of cutting down the dead stems from last year’s “crop.”

It seemed kind of absurd to me, as I chopped and bagged yesterday, that I was about to pay to have a truck haul this stuff away and then pay another truck to bring some compost to me. That’s an awful lot of gasoline and pollution (and expense) just to get these clippings back into the soil.

I think I have this problem licked. I took 12 feet of hardware wire, made a circle out of it, artfully applied a few cable ties to keep it in shape, and dumped in all five yard waste bags of the tall-grass clippings. I also threw in a couple scoops of organic lawn fertilizer, since these clippings are high in carbon but low in nitrogen. Then I tossed in this morning’s coffee grounds and a couple of sprigs of pine tree (just for flavoring). If it ever stops raining and I can mow, I’ll dump the grass clippings from the first mowing in, too. (The rest of the year, I’ll just mulch the clippings back into the lawn.)

With some judicious “stirring” of the pile, I should have some compost in June or July, without the use of trucks or gasoline.

My Lawn, Naturally

Art Zemon — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 23:02:02 +0000

I’ve got over 7,300 square feet of grass outside my house. Who knew? Not me, that’s for sure!

Yesterday, I picked up a bag of Concern Weed Prevention Plus from Worm’s Way in Olivette, MO. I did that because, almost a year ago, our lawn care company stopped showing up to care for our lawn. (Conveniently, they also stopped sending bills.) In between the vanishing gardener’s last visit and yesterday’s purchase, the lawn did it’s natural lawn-ish thing and I mowed as usual. We had a few more weeds by autumn but the sky did not fall and the world did not end.

Some time in late fall, I listened to a podcast on natural lawn care, featuring Paul Tukey, author of The Organic Lawn Care Manual. I liked what I heard. Tukey’s ideas jibe nicely with my ideas of how the world ought to run; little things like a lawn ought to be able to pretty much take care of itself, without the regular addition of lots of synthetic chemicals. As far as I know, darned close to 100% of the grasslands in the world got that way without man’s help. When I drive through Yellowstone and enjoy the pastures, I am quite sure that no one spread weed ‘n’ feed on them.

Tukey’s point is that you can have a gorgeous lawn by nurturing the natural eco-system in the soil. If you do that, you don’t need all of the synthetic fertilizers and pesticides because nature is really good at taking care of itself pretty much all the time. Our lawns require all the artificial chemicals because the artificial pesticides have killed off not just the pests but pretty much all of the insects and bacteria and fungi which used to live in the soil. Grass is just one part of a complex environment; it can’t live in bare dirt alone. So the choices are either artificially support the grass or rebuild the eco-system of which grass is just one component. Tukey went on to explain that, in the long run, natural lawn care is actually less expensive because the lawn needs fewer dollars of stuff dumped onto it, less watering, and less mowing. In that context, natural lawn care made a bushel of sense to me.

I borrowed a copy of The Organic Lawn Care Manual from the library and read it. Then I bought my own copy to keep. I read bunches of stuff from the University of Missouri Extension web site on natural lawn care. I learned about the benefits of soil samples and compost tea and corn gluten and clover and a dozen other goodies. I was all psyched up and ready to work magic on my lawn. There was just one problem: it was December. So I waited. My favorite pass-time. Not.

The weather finally did start to warm up, as it is wont to do, and that brought me to Worm’s Way, our local organic gardening store (and source of great beer making supplies, too). I stopped in yesterday, largely for information, and was tickled to see piles of both organic pre-emergent herbicide and organic lawn fertilizer. The clerk helpfully told me that the herbicide would treat 1,700 square feet and the fertilizer would treat 2,500 square feet. I’ve got a small-ish lawn so I bought a bag of each. I guessed that would do it for me.

Before I dumped the bag of herbicide in the drop spreader which has been mouldering on a top shelf of the garage for years, I did a little more reading. Just how was I supposed to know how to set the spreader and how much stuff I would need? The answer, doh!, was to start by measuring the yard, then set the spreader for a lighter setting than the herbicide’s instructions called for, and keep criss-crossing the yard until the appropriate amount of stuff had been distributed. That seemed much easier than trying to get the spreader set exactly right so that I would exactly run out of stuff exactly as I finished walking the yard exactly one time.

Candy and I measured our lot: 120′ x 100′ = 12,000 square feet. Whoa. That was a much bigger number than I expected.

Then we subtracted the spaces which are not grass:

Driveway: 1,000 sq. ft.
Garage & porch: 861 sq. ft.
House: 2,275 sq. ft.
Etc.

When all was said and done, I learned that we have 7,384 sq. ft. of lawn. Believe it or not, in all the years that I have lived in homes surrounded by lawns, in all the years that I have owned lawns, this is the first time that I have known how much lawn I have to care for.

We went back to Worm’s Way. Between yesterday and today, all but three of the bags of Weed Prevention Plus had evaporated. Fortunately, I needed exactly three more bags so I bought them, hauled them home, and spread the contents on the lawn.

This post is long enough so I’ll stop for today. Look for more installments on natural lawn care as the adventure continues.

Paper or Plastic?

Art Zemon — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 16:17:30 +0000

Scorpio (Oct. 24 – Nov. 21): You will receive word today that you are eligible to win a million dollars in prizes. It will be from a magazine trying to get you to subscribe, and you’re just dumb enough to think you’ve got a chance to win. You’re a really slow learner.
July 12, 1974: I am at a grocery store in Israel, picking up a few things. At the cash register, no one bags my stuff. No one even offers me a bag. I am outraged to learn that, were I to want a bag, I would have to pay for it. Paying for bags, I am told, encourages people to reuse the bags instead of throwing them away.
July 13, 1974: Reuse grocery bags to save a few cents? I guess it makes a little sense. But I’m glad that we don’t have to do that in the United States.
August 24, 1974: I’m back in the US and have completely forgotten about the bags.
February 12, 1983: My local Safeway grocery store asks me whether I want paper or plastic bags. I choose plastic, feel virtuous, and think (briefly) about the Israeli grocery store, nine years earlier.
November 16, 2004: Our landfills are filling up with plastic grocery bags. The trees in our parks are filling up with plastic grocery bags. The ponds in our parks are filling up with plastic grocery bags. The news is full of stories about plastic grocery bags. The Israeli grocery bag concept creeps back into my consciousness (temporarily).
April 23, 2009: US House of Representatives Democrats introduce a bill “aimed at cutting greenhouse gas emissions and curbing toxic pollution by… imposing a 5-cent tax on single-use plastic bags….” (New York Times, New bottle deposit, bag tax bills touted for combating pollution). The Israeli grocery store, from 35 years ago, comes back to mind. I am a really slow learner.

We need fewer plastic bags and fewer paper bags. We need another tax like we need holes in our heads. Here’s a better idea:

Next time you go to the store and you have your groceries put into your reusable canvas bags, ask to speak to the manager. Tell him that you want to pay less for your groceries because the store didn’t have to give any bags to you.

Why should you pay for bags which you don’t use?

Poisoning People with Old Electronics

Art Zemon — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 12:59:34 +0000

This article in Slashdot about the electronic trash that we create hit home. I cannot think of a good way to paraphrase it so here is the whole thing:

Every day, Americans toss out more than 350,000 cell phones and 130,000 computers, making electronic waste the fastest-growing part of the US garbage stream. A lot of the world’s e-waste is exported to Guiyu, China, where peasants heat circuit boards over coal fires to recover lead (a 15″ computer monitor can pack up to 7 lbs. of Pb), while others use acid to burn off bits of gold. Guiyu’s willingness to deal with lead, mercury and other toxic materials generates $75 million a year for the village, but as a result. Guiyu is slowly poisoning itself with the highest level of cancer-causing dioxins in the world. The village experiences elevated rates of miscarriages, and its children suffer from an extremely high rate of lead poisoning. TIME suggests checking out recycling brokers and accredited e-stewards the next time you’re ready to toss a gizmo.

If you are one of my readers who lives in the St. Louis; Kansas City; Las Vegas; or Columbia, SC then I recommend you get in touch with your local EPC office. They demanufacture waste electronics down to recyclable components and they do it safely, right here in the US.

Regardless of where you live, check with your local city and county government. More and more of them are setting up electronic recycling centers. For instance, the St. Charles, MO county will recycle electronics for any resident. There is a nominal cost but paying a few dollars beats the heck out of wondering who’s back yard your old CRT will be dumped in.

Laptop Battery Myth

Art Zemon — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 12:07:48 +0000

Infoworld published 10 power-saving myths debunked. I admit that I assumed this myth was true.

Myth No. 7: Notebook batteries just wear out. There’s not much you can do to make them last longer.
Fact: Many laptops with nickel-cadmium batteries come with a battery-reconditioning utility that drains the battery fully, then brings it back to a full charge. Laptops with lithium-ion batteries aren’t afflicted with the same memory problem as those powered by NiCad batteries. However, unlike NiCad batteries, lithium batteries prefer to be only partially discharged: Running them all the way down will shorten their life span. The calibration utility for lithium batteries actually just re-calibrates the capacity measurement to reflect the loss of capacity over time; it doesn’t affect actual battery life. Battery life for either type of battery can be prolonged greatly by removing the battery when the unit is plugged into AC power. This approach is recommended if your laptop supports it and power outages are infrequent in your area.

Since my last laptop battery cost well over $100, I will certainly be pulling the battery out of the machine when it is on AC power. Since most cell phones use lithium-ion batteries, I presume that the advice about not letting them run all the way down applies to cell phones as well as to laptops.

Celebrate Earth Day

Art Zemon — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 13:32:28 +0000

It’s Earth Day so celebrate.

Go and get yourself a glass of clear, cool, refreshing water.

Sip and savor the cool wetness as it trickles back along your tongue.

Do your teeth feel cold, too?

Take a deep gulp.

Ahhhhh. That satisfies, doesn’t it?

Now celebrate again because you didn’t pay $0.79 for that privilege; it was free.

Now celebrate again because you didn’t toss a plastic bottle into the trash.

Now celebrate again because the glass of water you drank did not require three more glasses of water to produce and bottle.

Now celebrate again because the glass of water came to you without the use of diesel fuel to drive a truck.

How Many Lightbulbs Does it Take to Change the World?

Art Zemon — Wed, 30 Aug 2006 12:46:32 +0000

What if you could save money and do good by just changing a lightbulb? You can.

Compact fluorescents emit the same light as classic incandescents but use 75% or 80% less electricity.

What that means is that if every one of 110 million American households bought just one ice-cream-cone bulb, took it home, and screwed it in the place of an ordinary 60-watt bulb, the energy saved would be enough to power a city of 1.5 million people. One bulb swapped out, enough electricity saved to power all the homes in Delaware and Rhode Island. In terms of oil not burned, or greenhouse gases not exhausted into the atmosphere, one bulb is equivalent to taking 1.3 million cars off the roads.

That is from How Many Lightbulbs Does it Take to Change the World? One. And You’re Looking At It. on FastCompany.com.

We have several of these compact flourescent lightbulbs (CFL) in our house and they… well… they just work: no fuss, no muss. Honestly, sitting here in my chair and typing this, I cannot remember where we put them.

Next time you are at the store, buy one of these things. It’s a no brainer. The bulb will cost you less than $3 and the electricity savings will pay for it in about five months. Take it home and stick it in a light socket. Then forget about it for several years. The next time one of your regular lightbulbs burns out, try to remember where you put the CFL. Then consider whether you want to put an old-fashioned lightbulb back in, or switch another light to a CFL.

Whooping Crane Chicks Return to the Midwest

Art Zemon — Mon, 03 Jul 2006 13:03:48 +0000

The whooping crane has been in serious trouble for a long, long time. The situation is so dire that several groups of people, including the Whooping Crane Eastern Parntership, have taken to hand raising them and teaching them to migrate by leading them with ultralight aircraft. Yes… you read that right. These folks fly ultralight airplanes to teach the birds how to migrate.

Guess what: it worked. First Wild Whooping Crane Chicks Hatch in the Midwest in 100 Years.

Open Minds

Art Zemon — Wed, 19 Apr 2006 12:21:10 +0000

Patrick Moore, one of the founders of Greenpeace, has an interesting editorial in the Washington Post titled Going Nuclear. He begins,

In the early 1970s when I helped found Greenpeace, I believed that nuclear energy was synonymous with nuclear holocaust…. Thirty years on, my views have changed, and the rest of the environmental movement needs to update its views, too, because nuclear energy may just be the energy source that can save our planet from another possible disaster: catastrophic climate change.

Moore’s essay is important for two reasons. Obviously, he has something to say about nuclear energy and he has some valid points.

More importantly, he demonstrates that continuing to re-evaluate our opinions and changing our minds are beneficial activities. He also shows us that publicly admitting that we were wrong is a positive thing, not a humiliation.

These are easy things to suggest but can be hard to do in real life. My own opinions tend to calcify into pronouncements-from-on-high over time. Once that happens, not only do I fully expect you and everyone else to kow tow to my superior knowledge, but I begin to believe in my own infallibility. After taking that step, the last thing I want to do is stand up in front of my friends and eat humble pie.

Today I am standing in front of the mirror, looking deep into my own eyes, and saying, “If Patrick Moore can do it around nuclear energy and in the Washington Post, I can do it, too. After all, I’m only human. I admit that many of my opinions are wrong and that I can still learn. I can even do it in public view.”

This is a big mirror. Won’t you join me?

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Mazda Plans Dual-Fuel Car in Japan

Art Zemon — Fri, 17 Feb 2006 12:30:33 +0000

I have always liked the looks of the Mazda RX-8 but lamented the lack of a convertible roof. Now I have another reason to like the car. One of these days, I might have to buy one. FOXNews.com: Mazda Plans Dual-Fuel Car in Japan

Mazda said the RX-8 Hydrogen RE, based on its popular RX-8 sports car, gets around these problems [poor availability of hydrogen fueling stations] by running on gasoline in the absence of a hydrogen fuelling station, and using existing engine parts and production facilities to lower costs.

Transitioning to Greener Fuels

Art Zemon — Tue, 15 Nov 2005 14:17:25 +0000

If only we could stop using fossil fuels, polution levels would plummet, colicky babies would be cured, my Husky dog would shed less, and world peace would prevail. Hydrogen, solar power and electricity offer tantalizing alternatives to gasoline, natural gas, and coal. There are lots of problems with switching to hydrogen, including the cost of producing it, the difficulties in storing and transporting it, the safety issues, and the almost complete lack of infrastructure for dealing with it. Solar power seems perpetually bogged down in poor efficiency. Electricity comes with its own set of problems, largely involving the weight and bulk of the batteries, as well as the cost (both economic and ecologic) of manufacturing the batteries.

For a long time, we burned non-renewable fuels for pretty much all of our energy needs while heartily wishing that we could switch to something better. Alternative fuels are now quietly entering mainstream use and it is easy to miss the transition. The trick has been to use the alternative fuel to supplement the traditional fuel, rather than to replace it wholesale.

If you doubt that we will ever get away from petroleum products or you wonder what you can do about it, here are three stories which might lift your heart a bit.

First, Wired News reports that Truckers Choose Hydrogen Power

Hundreds of semitrailer trucks zipping along North American highways are now powered in part by hydrogen. These 18-wheelers make hydrogen as they go, eliminating the need for high-pressure, cryogenic storage tanks or hydrogen filling stations, which, by the way, don’t yet exist. These truckers aren’t just do-gooders. They like Canadian Hydrogen Energy’s Hydrogen Fuel Injection, or HFI, system because it lets them save fuel, get more horsepower and, as a bonus, cause less pollution.

The HFI system uses electricity to generate hydrogen from distilled water. The hydrogen boosts the efficiency of the diesel engine while reducing polution and operating costs.

Second, Wired News also reports on Huge Solar Plants Bloom in Desert.

Stirling Energy Systems is planning to build two separate solar farms, one with the capacity to generate 500 megawatts of electricity in the Mojave Desert near Victorville, California, for SoCal Edison, and a 300-megawatt plant in the Imperial Valley, near Calexico, California, for SDG&E….

…traditional coal or gas plants typically generate 500 to 1,000 megawatts, and that current solar farms are much smaller — generally in the 35- to 80-megawatt range. At the end of 2004, the United States had only 397 megawatts of solar-energy capacity, according to the U.S. Department of Energy’s Energy Information Administration.

The switch to solar power is happening on a commercial level, not through traditional photovoltaic cells but by resurecting the 200 year old Stirling engine and technology we all used as children: using a magnifying glass (or mirror, in this case) to focus sunlight to generate heat. The result is about 30% efficient, three times what photovoltaic systems achieve.

Last, we are all aware of the hybrid automobiles now commonly available. They do not make economic sense, as demonstrated by OmniNerd in his article Is a Hybrid Worth It?, but they do make ecologic sense.

Gas-electric hybrids are the most fuel-efficient passenger cars on the road and ecologically there isn’t a more viable option. Until something big changes, though, the industry-high efficiency can’t economically offset the steep sticker price.

The hybrid cars are not huge losers, dollar-wise, and they are a green option available to many of us.

I do have hope for the ecology of our planet, though we may still be surrounded by crying infants and mounds of Husky fur. Achieving world peace is left as an exercise for the reader.

Double the Cost of Trash

Art Zemon — Thu, 01 Sep 2005 14:15:18 +0000

I’ll admit it. I throw away stuff that could be recycled. Actually, I throw away lots of stuff that could be recycled. I do it because I’m lazy and cheap.

Whew! It feels good to get that off my chest.

I suspect that there are many, many other people like me who simply find it more convenient and significantly less expensive to toss glass, paper and metal into the trash than to get it to a recycling center. This came to the forefront of my little brain a few weeks ago when I opened a letter from Waste Management which said in part,

Due to the low amount of customer participation in regards to our curbside recycling program, and with the rising cost of doing business, we have found it no longer feasible to provide weekly recycling service.

Beginning August 1st, 2005:

The scheduled pick up of your curbside recyclables will be changed to every other week…. Your monthly rates will be unaffected….

Your friends at Waste Management of St. Louis, West.

Fine!, I angrily figured. Now I get to pay the same amount for the joy of keeping twice as much junk in my garage, waiting for the truck to get around to picking it up. Worse, if I miscount the weeks and miss a recycling pick-up, I will have to keep four weeks worth of stuff around. It was the last straw. I asked Candy to call Waste Management and cancel our recycling service. The receptionist glumly asked her, “Is this because of the letter we sent out?” At least I’m not alone it choosing to fill up the local landfill.

I assuaged my conscience by buying a larger plastic tub for recycling paper. I can haul that over to the local elementary school and dump it in a big, yellow bin. They take it all, from newsprint to cardboard. Kudos to the Francis Howell School District for making this service available to the public.

It still bothers me, though. I’d love to recycle. I just need a way to do it conveniently. Or throwing something away needs to be a bigger pain in the ass than recycling. In a nutshell, I need incentive!

I came up with this idea: What if the cost of throwing things away was increased and the monies used to subsidize the cost of recycling? What if it cost twice as much to throw away a pound of glass as to recycle it? What if my current $60 trash bill jumped to $120, unless I jumped on the recycling bandwagon?

So how about it, Waste Management? Why not jiggle your rate structure around. Fix it so the cost to my family will stay roughly the same as long as we recycle but jump higher if we choose not to. Subsidize my ecology-mindedness with the slovenly habits of your other customers. Eventually, enough of us will get a clue and recycle. There will not be enough trashers to support us recyclers so maybe the economics will stop working. On the other hand, maybe by then you will not need as many trash trucks on the road and will save some money on that end of the business.

Gentle readers: What do you think? Leave your comments here and share this essay with your friends.

Grizzly-sized Catfish Caught in Thailand

Art Zemon — Fri, 01 Jul 2005 12:51:28 +0000

Thanks to Slashdot for this story, Grizzly-sized Catfish Caught in Thailand, about a 646 pound catfish that has been caught in Thailand.

Here is the original story, at National Geographic.

I wonder if the fisherman was noodling for it.

Renewable Energy Done Right

Art Zemon — Mon, 16 May 2005 20:11:07 +0000

From Wired News comes this thought provoking story titled Brazil Schools U.S. on Renewables. I love the concluding paragraph of the story:

Consumer acceptance of ethanol in Brazil has grown for financial reasons, according to Felipe Atoline, a Sao Paulo forestry engineer who now drives an ethanol-only car. Many Brazilians were unhappy when the government mandated that all gasoline fuel be mixed with 26 percent ethanol in the 1990s, but rising gasoline prices have convinced many Brazilians to buy cars that run on 100 percent ethanol or convert their gasoline-powered cars, Atoline said.

Boy would I love to put locally grown (I live in the midwest) and produced ethanol in my cars and spend less than I do for gasoline.