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Grex > Agora46 > #234: Go placidly amidst the noise and waste, but reconsider it | |
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russ
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Go placidly amidst the noise and waste, but reconsider it
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Sep 20 04:13 UTC 2003 |
I was reading the BBC web site and found comments to a story
(http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/3116318.stm to be exact)
which reminded me of all the enforced waste we're faced with
in daily life:
Everything in the supermarket is covered in
plastic - there's a company that even sells
bananas and oranges in plastic boxes! I regularly
refuse plastic bags in shops, which seems to cause
a great deal of trouble for the staff. In
Debenhams, they tried to tell me that I had to
take a bag. It was only when I said I wouldn't buy
the product if they made me take a bag that they
relented.
...
Whilst with other fruit and veg, you can just put
as much as you want in a bag, all organic fruit
and veg is pre-packed in plastic. It's just daft
when you could end up harming the environment more
by buying organic than not!
These comments were in regard to plastic recycling, but one
could easily find many more bits of enforced waste and other
ridiculousness just by looking around.
So look around. What's wasteful and could benefit from rethinking?
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| 21 responses total. |
jaklumen
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response 1 of 21:
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Sep 20 04:52 UTC 2003 |
There is obvious stuff out there that is just pretty wasteful--
certain foodstuffs that just have *way* too much packaging. Nabisco
Lunchables have got to be the worst offenders and I think they were on
some list as such.
I'd imagine a lot of the convenience foods are heavy on the packaging,
and any other product that supposedly saves time. And the more
dispoable it is, well, no-brainer.
I myself need to remember to take a canvas bag to the grocery store,
especially where the one we go to allows you to bag your own. (No
need to ask or make a hassle.) I hate having to deal with excess
plastic bags, so I'd think I'd remember by now.
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slynne
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response 2 of 21:
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Sep 20 09:53 UTC 2003 |
Haha, the grocery store you go to *lets* you bag your own groceries? At
the ghetto grocery store near my house, the cashier rolls her eyes and
has this great "oh how I suffer" look if you dont bag your own
groceries. She doesnt ask you if you want paper or plastic either. You
get what you get.
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other
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response 3 of 21:
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Sep 20 11:05 UTC 2003 |
Boxes on toothpaste tubes. They could shrinkwrap a safety seal around
the cap.
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oval
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response 4 of 21:
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Sep 20 14:35 UTC 2003 |
here you have to bag your own shit. and you have to pay for the plastic bag.
so people generally bring their own bag. inside the supermarket they also have
machines which give you money for recycling large plastic bottles and beer
bottles.
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twenex
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response 5 of 21:
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Sep 20 16:06 UTC 2003 |
Shouldn't that be "Go plastically"?
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keesan
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response 6 of 21:
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Sep 20 19:23 UTC 2003 |
We buy our produce at the farmer's market and freeze excess for the winter
(in reusable plastic bags or boxes) and we buy our grains and beans via a
buying club (in 25-50 pound paper bags which we find other uses for). Jim
says we take in more trash than we put out (boomboxes and the like, and most
recently a battery powered electric lawnmower, bikes) and fix it and get it
back into use. Yet somehow I keep accumulating plastic bags (which I give
to people selling at the market) - I wonder where they come from?
Bread comes in bags - get a bread machine.
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jaklumen
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response 7 of 21:
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Sep 20 22:17 UTC 2003 |
resp:2 Haha?!? Shit, the prices are lower because you bag 'em. Check
it 'out, that's how WinCo, based in Boise, ID, operates.
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jp2
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response 8 of 21:
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Sep 20 23:46 UTC 2003 |
This response has been erased.
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tod
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response 9 of 21:
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Sep 21 15:09 UTC 2003 |
This response has been erased.
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tsty
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response 10 of 21:
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Sep 21 17:24 UTC 2003 |
for some of the plastic containers, i wait until the cashier is ready to
run the credit card or receive cash frmo my hand and then calmly state:
"i'll be happy to pay for all this as soon as you remove what i'm
buying from these plastic tombs, in which i have no interst whatsoever."
cashier usually has mental meltdown at the immediate prospect (cause
*they* cant stand the damn thigns eitehr) or att the prospect of stalled
checkout line.
always gotten the service i need - some times with store-rancor though.
gee, whoda thunk it?
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happyboy
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response 11 of 21:
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Sep 21 17:39 UTC 2003 |
passive aggressive bullshit.
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mcnally
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response 12 of 21:
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Sep 21 20:26 UTC 2003 |
re #3: I imagine a big part of the reason for the boxes is that they're
much easier to stack on store shelves than tubes would be..
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russ
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response 13 of 21:
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Sep 22 00:32 UTC 2003 |
(Another reason for boxes around tubes is to prevent sharp
edges from puncturing them, causing losses and making a mess.)
More ridiculousness I see every day: waste designed into
architecture. Take lighting. I have not worked or shopped
in a single modern building that was actually designed to
use daylight! Even when the sun is flooding down outside
these buildings take pains to filter it out at the windows
so it doesn't glare, and then they fix the darkness with
ceiling or hanging fixtures.
The costs are considerable. For every watt of light a typical
fluorescent fixture makes roughly 3 watts of heat, which in
turn requires at least one more watt of air-conditioning to
pump outdoors; that comes out to roughly 1.3-1.5 watts total
for every watt fed to the light fixtures. Sunlight is roughly
50% visible and 50% infrared, so even if the IR isn't filtered
you'd get only half as much total heat. Another alterative is
to accept the same heat load but get twice as much light. Good
lighting is supposed to improve productivity as well, which
also adds to the bottom line.
Lots of businesses pay time-of-day rates, so the rates they're
paying for the need to use electric lighting on hot, sunny
summer days would probably make daylighting pay for itself.
Why aren't they doing it? Shortsightedness and lack of will
to change, I guess.
I'll really know energy-consciousness has arrived when every
computer workstation has two fiber-optic cables running to
it: one to carry data to the computer, and one to carry
captured sunlight to the LCD. (You want BRIGHT?)
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rcurl
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response 14 of 21:
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Sep 22 00:47 UTC 2003 |
I think office managers want consistent lighting, night or day, summer or
winter, clear of stormy. You can't get that with sunlight alone. However
things could be better arranged so that sunlight is used more when it is
available, and won't cause other problems (harsh and shifting shadows,
color imbalances, heat, etc).
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jaklumen
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response 15 of 21:
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Sep 22 02:47 UTC 2003 |
Indeed. But I wonder about the initial costs, especially where you'd
have to renovate.
I currently work at Richland (WA) City Hall, which could really stand
a remodel for some natural lighting in places-- so much of the
building is just dark. For that matter, I don't think many of the
fixtures are fluorescent. I think there are some incandescents that
could be replaced with compact fluorescents, and even the standard
tubes could be updated.
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tod
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response 16 of 21:
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Sep 22 03:15 UTC 2003 |
This response has been erased.
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