And no, I’m not talking about the West Village jazz club. The British organization called the Village Underground is a new charity that’s reusing long-forgotten tube carriages (or subway cars to those of us on this side of the Atlantic) by turning them into studio workspaces and small shops for start-up businesses.
via the eco street blog
see also this amusing resource on the underground
It seems there has been yet another death by trash this week. A seventh person died yesterday from the ill effects of toxic waste dumped in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire. Earlier this week the entire parliament resigned over the scandal. The ministry of health now estimates 1,600 others are sick from “fuel slops” dumped by a ship described in varying news reports as “Panamanian” “Greek-owned” and “Dutch-based”, though I suppose it could be all three. The UN and French officials have confirmed that 400 tons of the toxic waste was dumped at several sites around the city.
Despite the known risks, trashpickers are returning to work.
I just read on the Grist List (yet another kick-ass sidebar link) that McDonald’s has changed the packaging it uses for McFlurry ice cream to something more “hedgehog friendly”. Clicking through to the article, I learned that hedgehogs were squeezing into the containers and getting stuck inside.
It seems there is an entire organization in the UK dedicated to saving hedgehogs from just this sort of garbage-related peril and what’s more, they have a rival group out to kill the little guys.
Just goes to show you, under every trash lid is an entire world of quirks, nuance and issues. How does “Hedgehog Wars” sound as a working title for the first everyday trash documentary production?
After seeing yesterday that Waste Management and the Teamsters were joining forces, I noticed the following headline on Solid Waste.com (one of many excellent sources of information and amusement linked from the side bar):
“Teamsters Appoint Morales Director of Solid Waste, Recycling”
You see, in my sleepiness, I misread Morales as morals, so you can imagine my surprise when I clicked through to discover that Morales is a person and not a sense of right or wrong.
I was also surprised to see that Jimmy Hoffa’s son is president of the Teamsters (yeah, I know, where have I been) and that he rose to power after a scandal called Teamstergate knocked out the competition. I think I vaguely remember this ‘gate, but man do I need a Labor 101 course or to spend some quality time on wikipedia, the poor woman’s grad school.
It’s down to three finalists over at the Umbrella Inside Out competition and there’s still time to vote!
In trash news this week:
The U.S. Senate Finance committee is currently considering the Recycling Investment Saves Energy (RISE) Act, a tax bill introduced by Senator Jeffords of Vermont in July. Jeffords proposes we offer companies tax incentives to recycle and reuse materials and that we make buying recycling equipment tax free. The bill has a long way to go before it’s even considered by the full Congress and may go through many changes from the Senate Finance Committee or even get tossed out. Meanwhile, the solid waste industry supports the plan and has sent Jeffords a letter to make sure he tucks in juicey perks.
Last week, my friend Kimberly suggested I add a category to everyday trash that would cover those killed by trash or in trash related incidents. My hesitation isn’t that I think the material is lacking, on the contrary it’s everywhere, but rather a fear of trivializing the seriousness of death by trash. As Kimberly pointed out to me today, it’s no picnic to live in the away to which other people throw their unwanted things.
Today’s the day when Treehugger has promised to start posting the five finalists from their inspired Umbrella Inside Out contest. The idea is to make good use of all those umbrellas thrown away due to poor contruction and turn them into either a better umbrella or fashion item. Either way, the winner will be shown at an ethical fashion show in Paris.
Sidenote: When I was little, my mother read an article about a man who went around collecting broken umbrellas after rain storms and made them into kites. She got us some kite-making books from the library and the next time it rained, we walked around the neighborhood picking discarded umbrellas out of corner trash baskets. I made a bat kite from a black umbrella. She made a more beautiful, but less flyable red box kite. I don’t remember how long it took us, but I do remember many afternoons in the park flying our creations. Also, I remember the pride I felt as a child explaining to anyone who asked that we had made our nifty kites ourselves from things we picked out of the trash.
Today was the last day to drop off registered entries in the Waitakere City Council Trash to Fashion show in New Zealand. If last year’s winners are any indication, competition this November should be fierce.
From the promotional website of the very next book I plan to read:
“In Garbage Land, acclaimed science writer Elizabeth Royte leads us on the wild adventure that begins once our trash hits the bottom of the can. Along the way, we meet an odor chemist who explains why trash smells so bad; garbage fairies and recycling gurus; neighbors of massive waste dumps; CEOs making fortunes by encouraging waste or encouraging recycling–often both at the same time; scientists trying to revive our most polluted places; fertilizer fanatics and adventurers who kayak among sewage; paper people, steel people, aluminum people, plastic people, and even a guy who swears by recycling human waste. With a wink and a nod and a tightly clasped nose, Royte takes us on a bizarre cultural tour through slime, stench, and heat-in other words, through the back end of our ever-more supersized lifestyles.”
The good people of BioCycle magazine and the Earth Engineering Center of Columbia University have been tracking the ebb and flow of America’s municipal solid waste—as in all private and commercial trash that isn’t construction debris—since 1989. Their recently released 2006 report (affectionately known as the SOG), reveals that overall Americans recycle about one-third of our waste and send nearly two-thirds to landfills. Only seven percent is burned and less than one percent is burned for energy.
New York dropped from first to third on the list of states that export the most trash, following Jersey at number two and the surprising front-runner of Maryland. Who knew? Changes in the way in which exported trash was counted this time around contributed to some of this drop, the authors explain, as a couple million tons of construction debris was knocked off the Empire State’s tally. Even so, as of 2004, New York remained the third most squeamish state when it comes to dealing with our own garbage. Interestingly, our recycling rate is above the national average, though with states like Alabama sending nearly 90% of their trash to landfills, the bar wasn’t set all that high.
This concludes the dry numerical portion of the blog. At least for the moment.
Glass coke bottles sanded into elegant bracelets, dinner plates made from traffic lights, a briefcase of stacked take-out chopsticks…Great Green Goods is your one-stop shop for trendy gifts on the web. It’s a shopping blog of recycled materials that spans hippie to chic, compiling new and inspired items from green designers around the world. Whether shopping for that millionth friend’s wedding, your strung-out-chic boyfriend in Williamsburg or your European grandmother, there is something made from someone else’s trash that would make the perfect present!
In trash news this week:
I threw away my journals last year. All of them. From the little girl diaries with locks and keys to the ferociously-filled marble notebooks of my college years. Mine was a many-volumed collection of angst and, in a moment of psychological cleansing and studio space-making, I decided I had been hauling around the emotional and physical baggage of those books for too long.
I nearly lost my resolve the next day when I came home to find the steps in front of my building littered with ripped out pages from the cloth-covered journals I favored in high school, the ones I filled all the way through on thick one-sided pages then flipped over and filled one-sided the other way. My stomach churned.
I’d like to think it was a bum who opened the trash can and, angry that my adolescence could not be redeemed for nickels, tore the pages from the journals and threw them on the ground before stomping away. I’d also like to think he or she did all of this without pausing to make out words from the scribbling and that none of my creepy neighbors had the foresight to pick up the pieces and invade my fifteen-year-old self by skimming a few lines.
It’s a romantic concept, garbology, to examine a culture by looking at what it throws away. Someone reading closely that night on West 104th Street would have learned an enormous amount about the relationship, over time, between a young woman and her cloth-covered books.
everydaytrash 