Waste and Life on the Planet

June 3, 2008 Man is the single most active producer of waste and not recycling of that waste may be our downfall especially if we consider nuclear waste in the equation.  Other than our ability to read and write our production of waste is what makes us man.   As a resident of Utah and those of Nevada which many believe are not human residents these states has been deemed the perfect place to dump nuclear waste.  Its waste and given some thought we should be able to recycle it not just dump it.   We have learned to recycle much of our waste, it was something else before it became waste and it can be made into a new product if we understand the basic elements utilized.. » read more

Some Homes Worth Less Than Their Copper Pipes

April 1, 2008 BROCKTON, Massachusetts (Reuters) - Shards of broken glass outside the basement window of 31 Vine Street hint at the destruction inside the three-story home. Thieves smashed the window to break in and then gutted the property for its copper pipes -- a crime that has spread across the United States as the economy slows and foreclosed homes stand empty and vulnerable. "They cut it here and then pulled it right out of the wall," real estate broker Marc Charney said, pointing to broken plaster near a wrecked baseboard heating system in the 2,774-sq-ft home in Brockton, Massachusetts, a working-class city of 94,304 people. Similar stories are unfolding nationwide as a glut of home foreclosures coincides with record highs in the price of copper and other metals. Real estate brokers and local authorities say once-proud homes coast-to-coast are being stripped for copper, aluminum, and brass by thieves.. » read more

Metal Boom Spurs Cape Town Crime as Statues, Rail Tracks Vanish

March 28 (Bloomberg) -- Cape Town city officials erected six- foot bronze statues of Coline Williams and Robert Waterwitch on the sidewalk of a shopping precinct after the two South African anti-apartheid guerillas were killed in a 1989 bomb blast. The 600-kilogram figures (1,320 pounds) were snatched by thieves this month, and found five days later in a scrap yard in the suburb of Bonteheuwel. Police said they were sold for less than 10,000 rand ($1,247), or 3 percent of their original cost. Record copper and steel prices are fueling a South African crime wave that's targeted monuments, rail tracks, street lights and cables. With 3,000 unlicensed scrap-metal dealers in Cape Town alone, politicians plan to regulate the industry while companies turn to advertising to dissuade robbers.. » read more

The World's Rubbish Dump: A Garbage Tip That Stretches From Hawaii to Japan

Tuesday 05 February 2008     A "plastic soup" of waste floating in the Pacific Ocean is growing at an alarming rate and now covers an area twice the size of the continental United States, scientists have said.     The vast expanse of debris - in effect the world's largest rubbish dump - is held in place by swirling underwater currents. This drifting "soup" stretches from about 500 nautical miles off the Californian coast, across the northern Pacific, past Hawaii and almost as far as Japan.     Charles Moore, an American oceanographer who discovered the "Great Pacific Garbage Patch" or "trash vortex", believes that about 100 million tons of flotsam are circulating in the region. Marcus Eriksen, a research director of the US-based Algalita Marine Research Foundation, which Mr Moore founded, said yesterday: "The original idea that people had was that it was an island of plastic garbage that you could almost walk on.. » read more

City Sues Man For Cancelling Trash Service

2008-01-29 SAN CARLOS - A man who claims to have reduced his waste to nearly nothing out of concern for the environment now faces a lawsuit from San Carlos for canceling his garbage-collection service. Eddie House, 53, says he was shocked when he was served with a lawsuit Sunday at his Cedar Street home. The lawsuit, filed by San Carlos Deputy City Attorney Linda Noeske in San Mateo Superior Court on Jan. 22, seeks a permanent injunction forcing House to maintain garbage service. City officials are also seeking to recoup from House the costs of the lawsuit.. » read more

Continent-size Toxic Stew of Plastic Trash Fouling Swath of Pacijfic Ocean

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Subaru Factory Sends Nothing to the Dump for 3 Years

The Subaru assembly plant in Indiana celebrates three years of operation without taking out the trash. It sends nothing to a landfill. Raw materials go in, cars - and little else - come out. Subaru says it has recycled or reused 97 percent of its excess or leftover materials like steel, plastic, wood, paper and glass. The other 3 percent supplies electricity for the Indianapolis area through the steam generated and captured during incineration.. » read more

Munictions Dumpgin at Sea

It is no secret that the U.S. military has used the ocean as trashcan for munitions in the past. Peter discussed at the Old DSN how federal lawmakers were pressing the US Army to reveal everything it knows about a massive international program to dump chemical weapons off homeland and foreign shores. "The Army now admits that it secretly dumped 64 million pounds of nerve and mustard agents into the sea, along with 400,000 chemical-filled bombs, land mines and rockets and more than 500 tons of radioactive waste - either tossed overboard or packed into the holds of scuttled vessels.. » read more

Our Oceans Are Turning Into Plastic... Are We?

"Except for the small amount that's been incinerated...and it's a very small amount---every bit of plastic ever made still exists!"*******A vast swath of the Pacific, twice the size of Texas, is full of a plastic stew that is entering the food chain. Scientists say these toxins are causing obesity, infertility.. » read more

Human Waste To Plug Extinct Auckland, New Zealand Volcano

Auckland has come up with a novel plan for getting rid of hundreds of thousands of tonnes of human waste - use it to fill one of its many extinct volcanos, then turn it into a regional park. Local authority-owned Watercare Services announced this week that it had signed a $25 million, 30-year deal with Puketutu Island's owners to dump the 61 tonnes of biosolids - cleaned, treated and dried human waste - produced by its Mangere treatment plant each week. The waste would be dumped on a side of the volcanic island that had been extensively quarried in the past 50 years. The island's original volcanic cone formation could also be rebuilt using the biosolids, subject to public opinion, spokesman Clive Nelson said. The other side of the island was once home to former Dominion Breweries owner Sir Henry Kelliher - and New Zealand trotting great Cardigan Bay - but is now held by a charitable trust and used as a wedding reception lounge.. » read more

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