DON'T THROW IT AWAY!

I found a great website - greenergadgets - which has a list of what to do with electronics we don't want. There are enough companies now dealing with e-waste that we can no longer throw our unwanted products into landfill and claim ignorance about proper disposal.

What to do

For all of us wondering what the hell we're going to do about PEAK OIL, here is an article referencing some ideas, comments, and people who are starting the change right in their homes.

It's a better idea to use the things we already have before buying more things labeled "green" because the energy it takes to create more objects far exceeds the energy already used to make a regular product. For example, why throw out all your incandescent light bulbs for fluorescents when that would double the waste. Don't get me wrong, I believe in the dollar vote and I think we should purchase more responsibly, so here is a company - TerraCycle - that is reusing plastic bottles and containers to house their own product which is good for the earth and creates no waste. Check out their website, see how they got started and what initiatives the company is generating.

House Swap

See how they do it in Cuba. Yes, the government owns their housing, but, they don't have mortgages. It might sound like madness to us, but i think it's a very creative barter system to trade houses instead of buying them. One may not always get what they want, but how many of us feel completely satisfied with our own housing situation in our current system? In the future, we might have to take some cues from Cuba's house trading system when building materials in the U.S. might become unavailable and there are a glut of houses already in existence.

Gleaned information on PEAK OIL

Peak Oil is the point in time at which the maximun global petroleum production rate is reached, after which the rate of production enters its terminal decline.
Peak Oil is also known as the Hubbert theory, after Dr. Marion Hubbert, a geophysicist working for Shell, who predicted the U.S.'s oil peak would happen by 1970 (which it did - although we were only able to see this in retrospect around 1980). He also predicted a worldwide peak in the early 21st century. "The only reliable way to identify the timing of any production peak, including the global peak, is in retrospect."
Crude oil is a naturally occurring, flammable liquid found in rock formations consisting of hydrocarbons and other organic compounds. Fossil fuels (oil) is created through biogenic processes. Petroleum is the raw material for pharmaceuticals, solvents, fertilizers, pesticides and plastics.
Our economic growth is driven by oil consumption and our entire financial order is predicated on growth. Our high dependence of most modern industrial transport, agriculture and industrial systems on oil will cause post-peak production decline and have negative implications for the global economy. The combination of declining production and increasing domestic consumption leads oil exports to decline faster than oil production is falling. If peak oil production has already occurred or will occur shortly, proactive mitigation may no longer be an option and a chain reaction will stimulate a collapse of global industrial civilization. Peak oil is concerned with the growth of consumption.
The total supply of oil will be cut by 50% in 7 years (2015). We use approximately 84 million barrels of oil per day. In 2010 we may need an additional 50 million barrels per day. In the mid 19th century we extracted 50 barrels of oil for every 1 barrel of oil. Today 1-5 barrels of oil are recovered for 1 barrel of oil equivalent: BOE (measure of energy). EROI: Energy Return on Energy Investment.
The Green Revolution increased grain production by 250% between 1950-1984, provided by fossil fuels in the forms of fertilizer (natural gas), pesiticides (oil), and hydrocarbon fueled irrigation.
Part of the solution is something no one wants applied to themselves, as everyone seems to believe it is their inalienable right to reproduce. To achieve sustainable economy world population will have to be reduced by two-thirds. Without population decrease, the agriculture crisis will begin in 2020, becoming critical in 2050.
We are mining non-conventional oil because all of the easily extracted oil is gone and our new, desperate measures of extraction from tar sands, heavy oil, oil shale and biofuels are not going to sustain us for long. Bitumen (asphalt), a mix of organic liquids of highly condensed hydrocarbons, is the residual bottom obtained from fractional distillation of crude oil which we currently use for paving roads, waterproofing materials and roofing. We are now upgrading bitumen to crude oil because there ain't much else. There is a study that offers the idea that within 15 years (2023) all the world's oil supply will come from unconventional sources.
ASPO, the association for the study of peak oil and gas, is a network of scientists in global institutions and universities with an interest in determining the date and impact of the peak and decline of the world's production of oil and gas. "All of the easy oil and gas in the world has been found - the hard part is now finding and producing oil from more challenging environments AND as peak oil is concerned with the amount of oil production over time, the amount of recoverable reserves is important as this determines the amount of oil that can potentially be extracted in the future."
The amount of oil discovered each year peaked in 1960 and our reserves peaked in 1980. Reserves are tricky and prone to false information and could actually be speculative resources.
Ten calories of fossil fuels are required to produce every one calorie of food eaten in the U.S.

The Cellphone Disposal Debacle

My current cellphone has fallen apart. There is a thick crack running down it's center and the digit 5 no longer responds to pressure, making it impossible to dial a number not already in my contact list that contains the letters JKL. In my bottom drawer at home, where all my odds and ends retire, live my two previous cellphones. I haven't known what to do with them, so I've carried them around for years to different homes, waiting for the time when I'll know exactly the best option for their retirement . I guess I will go and purchase a new one or a previously used one which makes me wonder where cellphones go to die. Being such a small piece of technology, I contemplated how many I would go through in my lifetime; how much personal waste I would create by upgrading phone technology every couple of years. What's true is that those gadgets sometimes break, as their shelf life is not considerably lengthy. What's also true is that most people don't wait for that phone to break down - the allure and the financial reality of a new product is more of the reason why we have mountains of used cellphones that our world is trying to come to terms with. This is what I discovered: 1.2 billion phones were sold in 2007, and in the U.S. we toss out cellphones on average every 12 months.
Ok. So what are our options? A company called Collective Good exists so that people can send in their unwanted cell phones which are then either resold to people who cannot afford new phones or sold as scrap. Portions of the sale are then donated to one of 500 charities selected by the phone's original owner. Also, GreenPhone.com exists, as a place to send your unwanted cellphones, free of charge, and, in return, receive a check with an amount depending on its make and model. The free postage is available by downloading from the website or one can turn them in at any FedEx Kinko's or Staples. ReCellular is America's largest reseller of cellphones ending up in 40 other countries where they are refurbished and resold. Their phones come from Verizon, AT&T, Sprint.
"The United States Geological Survey estimates that in 2005 there were already more than half a billion old phones sitting in American drawers. That added up to more than $300 million worth of gold, palladium, silver, copper and platinum."
Just don't throw them in the trash. All of them leach lead. Besides potentially leaching lead into our environment via landfill, that is, if they reach true landfill- many end up in the water, burned or in other self-designated dumps - there are more than 200 chemical compounds living inside every phone. According to the United States Geological Survey, they estimate that in order to obtain the gold used in the circuitry of cellphones, over 220 pounds of waste is created. There is a company in Belgium which takes in dead electronics and extracts precious metals such as gold and copper through a smelter and acid baths.
We have some options. The most important is to use our current phones until they can no longer dial the number 5.

Can big companies save the environment?

Clorox has bought Burt's Bees, a natural cosmetics company, for $913 million. Although we think of the Clorox company being a haven for toxic household products, according to the NY Times, Clorox is in the process of remodeling their image into a green company with not only Burt's Bees, but also their own line of green products. The debate is whether a noxious chemical company can uphold the standards of healthy, natural skin products. Selling out seems to be Burt's Bees crime, but the company's former creator and owner, Roxanne Quimby, with the money from the sale of her company, has bought over 100,000 acres of land for preservation. And you can't really shake a stick at that. People who create natural, organic, sustainable, eco-friendly companies who then go on to sell out out to bigger businesses have the opportunity not only to pave the road for more green products and entrepreneurs, but turn their profit into larger environmental gains. These industrial, corporate giants who absorb the smaller, trend setting companies are then responsible for upholding the purchased companies' values, ingredients, etc. This is where money and small groups of people have the chance to shape the behavior of larger amounts of people in more positive ways. Burt's Bees/Clorox is now setting its own standards through buying offsets for 100% of their carbon emissions, trying to have zero landfill trash in 12 years, producing a Clorox brand 99% natural household detergent, and by policing other companies' assertions that their product are "organic" or "natural".