In case you missed this NYT piece on recycling in housing projects, here’s a link to the text and a peek at the companion video. These women—going door to door trying to get their neighbors to buy into the idea of a recycling program for their project—are amazing.
Archive for July, 2009
Paper, Plastic and Persistence
Sunday, July 12, 2009Cheap
Sunday, July 12, 2009Cheap: The High Price of Discount Culture is a new book out that looks pretty cool. It’s written by Atlantic writer Ellen Ruppel Shell and has a nifty teaser video on Amazon and YouTube. Ah, new media.
13,699
Saturday, July 11, 2009Thirteen thousand, six hundred and ninety-nine people die each day from preventable diseases related to water. Artist Christine Destrempes decided to represent this daily loss of human life by stringing together 13,699 clear plastic bottle caps and arranging them in a powerful installation.
13,699
According to the artist:
The choice of using plastic bottle caps calls attention to other related environmental issues surrounding bottled water, such as privatization, depletion of aquifers, the environmental impact of plastic waste, the use of fossil fuels in making plastic, the carbon footprint of shipping bottled water, and the leaching of plastic into our water sources. Purchasing bottled water turns a basic human right into a commodity, affecting access for people in developing countries, as well as here in the United States.
Photos of the actual installation are available here. Thanks to Elizabeth Royte—author of the must-read Bottlemania: How Water Went on Sale and Why We Bought It—for the informaiton on this project.
City Harvest
Friday, July 10, 2009Now I know a blog is no place for fundraising, but I wanted to share a free way to give money to an amazing organization whose mission is fully in line with that of everydaytrash.com. City Harvest, New York City’s premiere food rescue organization, gets $5 for every new Facebook fan to join their page by Tuesday.
Every pound of food City Harvest distributes is a pound of would-be-trash averted. Click here to help rescue food from restaurants and make sure it gets to hungry families.
Swedish freegan makes headline news
Friday, July 10, 2009Sweden’s second to largest TV news program, Aktuellt, tonight interviewed a Swedish freegan, who invited a team into his home, claiming everything he and his accomplice eat comes from dumpsters. For tonight, for the grand effect, they brought all the bread they would’ve been able to eat, should they want to. Check about nine minutes into this 30 minute episode of Aktuellt. For those who understand Swedish (or are very interested), a full ten minutes of on-site segments and studio discussions await.
Capellagården
Wednesday, July 8, 2009Sometimes I search YouTube for trash terms. This morning, punching in “upcycle” led me to this amusing chronicle of an craft and design class in Sweden upcycling waste into designer dinner tables. Rock on.
Water world
Wednesday, July 8, 2009
Girls selling water and corn by the roadside in Northern Malawi/Leila Darabi
Summertime. It’s hot and more conscious of my need for water. I suspect I’m not alone in this heightened awareness. For one thing, I’ve been seeig more water stories lately. For staters, some group is building swimming pools out of dumpsters in Brooklyn. Amazing.
Also, I read this morning that a town in Australia has plans to become the first municipality to ban plastic water bottles. They’re pissed about a big water company coming in to drain their resevoir and are fighting back with this piece of legislation.
And in London, I read in this article found via Elizabeth Royte’s blog, the council of Hackney has bought enough bottled water from the fairtrade company Thirsty Planet—which donates a portion of sales to water access in Southern Africa—to build a water pump in Malawi. As Royte points out, charity bottled water is a bit deceptive. The council of Hackney could always have served tap water at meetings and sent money not spent on bottled water directly to Malawi. Agreed.
Gallons and gallons of raw sewage
Tuesday, July 7, 2009Is it just me, or have we seen a trend in raw sewage spill the last couple of weeks?
First, there was 94,000 gallons, spilled out in a creek in Spartanburg, South Carolina, on June 17th. According to a commentator, this is really a small amount compared to the water that flows through the creek in question during one hour, so no worries.
Secondly, a couple of days later, on June 20th, a slightly more drastic 120 million gallons of raw sewage was spilled in Lake Michigan, Illinois. The Chicago Area Sea Kayakers Association informed the kayaking community that they should be worried.
Thirdly, 1,000 gallons of raw sewage spilled out in Newport, Oregon, yesterday. After cleaning up, city officials “posted notification of the spill”.
This makes you wonder, right? Are we seeing the early stages of some nationwide conspiracy so spill raw sewage everywhere, or are these just accidents and coincidences? If you want to join the conspiracy believers, you will benefit from this brake-down of risks, cut and pasted from Wisegeek (my italics):
The pathogens in raw sewage can contaminate ecological systems in addition to sickening humans and animals. Raw sewage typically contains viruses and bacteria as well as health-harming microorganisms. For example, this type of waste is known to contain E.coli and hepatitis A; cholera is another well-known pathogen in raw sewage.
Besides being exposed to bacteria and viruses, a person exposed to raw sewage may develop a range of illnesses, including gastroenteritis, which is marked by diarrhea, vomiting, and abdominal cramping. The sometimes-fatal Weil’s disease is another common problem, which causes symptoms that resemble the flu and can lead to liver and kidney damage. Occupational asthma, caused by inhaling certain organisms, is another risk of exposure. Even the skin and eyes are not immune, as infection can develop here as well.
Danger, huh? On top of this, raw sewage apparently smells quite foul… On a final note, while we’re on the subject, take time to read about the sewage world sensation that occurred in April of this year. And if you here of more spills of raw sewage, tip us off would you?
Holy trash in Brooklyn
Sunday, July 5, 2009As its hot and weekendish all over, your dear Swede is paralyzed. Good then that friend from home, Anna, ventured out with my camera and documented this cute piece of street trash divinity.
Holy trash Brooklyn style
The Beaches of Agnès
Wednesday, July 1, 2009Agnès Varda, director of the amazing documentary Les Glaneurs et la glaneuse (The Gleaners and I), has a new film out—what appears to be a fantastical, memoir-documentary about her life as a New Wave pioneer, wife and lover of Jacques Demy and all-around badass. Here’s the trailor.
And here’s A.O. Scott‘s piece on the project and its creator. In it, he calls Les Glaneurs et la glaneuse “a personal and philosophical inquiry into the practice of gathering what has been discarded or passed over.” And it is. Because Varda made it. In France. If anyone else had tackled the project, it would have been a movie about freegans and politics and all that is wonky and dull and without the fun of a wacky French/Belgian woman inserting herself into the action as a very present narrator. In short, it would have been no fun at all and noone would remember that in France, they have a crazy law that requires farmers to open their farms up to the public after harvest to collect leftover food. I can’t wait to see what the rest of her life/career was like.
Anyway, since this post is only tangentially trash-related, I’m throwing in this link from a few months back on urban gleaning. Check it out now if you missed it then.
everydaytrash 