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    21st Century Ideas: Reduce your waste!

    reusing, not wasting

    Started by: Exarche Raves:7

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    This discussion is to discuss ways to reduce the waste you create on a daily basis. With everything that is happening we need to lower our impact on the increasing burden of the waste disposal industry. Everything your throw away has to be transport and processed somewhere. We should make more efforts to reuse our packaging and work toward bringing less of it home.

    I want to add to this. Consumer waste is one thing. But the vast majority of waste is not created by consumers, but by manufacturers. I challenge anyone in a position to do so to make business decisions that reduce waste. Stop using so much packaging in your products. retool industrial processess to be more efficient. Find someone who can use the byproducts of your industry, and places that can take your overstock, rejects, and the like and put it to good use. And for the love of god, stop locking dumpsters.

    As individuals, I believe we have to lead by example here. Re-evaluate every product that goes into your trash and find ways to reuse it. Remember those old toilet paper roll inserts? Back in 2013 a group in Minnesota realized that reusable metal inserts were an efficient replacement. Further, and this was amazing, they went ahead and collected the empty cardboard inserts and used them to insulate an two entire houses! Brilliant!!

    I'm proud to have helped bring online one of our corps biggest FLGC ships - Floating Liquefaction and Gas Carriers; it annoyed me so much to see gas flaring on the old platforms when I used to work there in the new millenium and I am glad the economics finally came good for a solution. Its a pretty ok place to work - still can't avoid the weather and I sunburn in seconds in the open but at least its usually parked next to a different piece of the coast each time I go there. My next trick, I'm hoping to get to work on some of the geothermal taps to crack the last bits of Canadian heavy oil - what last drops we've got should be used for fuel or feed stock or something; its all precious and its just wasteful to burn so much energy just to make a fraction transportable - at least most of our refineries are solar-augmented now.

    I just have this feeling if there was a fee to remove waste- from anyone, at any level, of any amount - if the fee was significant enough the problem would begin to self-resolve. Back in 2008 I used to recycle stuff out into separate bins for the garbage collectors - who didn't give a rat's ass if I did or not. My bill was always the same for pick up regardless of what was bagged to go where (if it even ever did).

    As consumers we need to be aware of the waste in manufacture of items - in particular the manufacture of things that utilize huge amounts of water. Have you seen The Story of Stuff. I think it should be required viewing for EVERYONE - it's on youtube - the whole movie. Well worth sitting down for. So from there as a consumer you need to ask yourself how much went into producing this? Then support businesses that DO repurpose and reuse materials. Unless you're at a point where energy efficiency is your main goal don't replace your electronic and computer devices! Support a business that'll keep your existing hardware running efficiently. Support businesses that DON'T rely on planned obsolesence....and kill your tv. If you aren't exposed to advertising in nearly the same way you won't have any idea about all the "needs" they try and convince you of.

    I don't know if I could do it, but I knew of someone who carried all her garbage in a grocery bag, on her arm, for a week. Everyone asked about it and that experiment really brought awareness to the amount we discard daily.




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