Eco & Energy

So you want to help the planet, do good things but can't seem to stop flying or having less kids?  Try biochar - it's an ancient miracle addition to soil that just may be a tipping point for our very tired soil AND is the process reduces the need for one of the BIG BIG culprits in CO2 levels increasing.  The majority most foods' carbon footprint is in the chemical fertilizers used to 'grow' the animals, fruits and vegies.  While all the attention is on the bad boys of the fossil fuel industry the biggest polluter of them all - the chemical industry - is getting a pass.  Our media considers this too boring to report on, since it won't sell more clicks, ads, or print. So here's all you need to know about biochar:  This is a new(?) miracle soil amendment that is rocking through farmlands around the globe - especially in the USA midwest.  Archeologists first discovered the concept of biochar when they unearthed some Aztec & Mayan ruins and found rich, n...

I am constantly impressed with our ingenuity.  And that's why I am a bit optimistic about our future on this planet.  While technology will not be solving most of our issues, it can contribute in a positive way.  In the 70's the term 'appropriate technology' became a buzz word.  To this day we are still trying to define what that means.  The best example of good appropriate technology is LED light bulbs.  They last a long time (until most manufacturers downsized their run hours from 100,000 hours to 20,000 hours - gee, I wonder why? ) Here's another one:  using our discarded plastics as road beds.  Not that we need more roads, but those colored (especially green) plastic bottles that can't be recycled back into something useful are being Vietnam to build roads.   Turns out that other Asian countries have also done this... when will the USA and Europe start doing that? I also found an interesting link on Vietnam's supermarket packaging....

I've talked about climate change (CC) a lot over the last two decades.  I am no longer a fervent believer in the mainstream, pop media version of CC - it's fear and scarcity based.  i think our whole media is becoming the 3rd political party, the 3rd rail, whatever you want to call it.   Fear mongering sells clicks, ads and stuff - and there's a lot of profit in it.  I'm a lukewarmer on CC: yes it's real, yes the world is warming up, yes humans are a major contributor, BUT we have no idea of what's going to happen.  We're extrapolating a whole bunch of loosely based assumptions on top of each other and crying 'fire' in a very crowded theater.  I say this with a background in modeling and statistics.   I remember getting into tensors in advanced algebra/calculus (i was a couple credits away from a math degree) and how difficult it was to predict weather patterns (in 27 dimensions!) and that was in the late 1970's.  Sure we've gotten...

There are so many chemicals in our everyday lives. And if you avoid a few of the most toxic ones - that bio-cumulate - you'll be miles ahead on many different fronts.  Smelling like a rose may be harmful to your health. Let's start with the fact that we don't know anything about the non-commercial characteristics of 95% of the chemicals used.  There are over 300,000 chemicals used in commercial processes, 85,000 chemicals are currently in the EPA database, and we know almost nothing about 75,000 of them.   The EPA requires  detailed information about a chemical only if one site produces more than 11,340kg of one chemical - wow!  and it's even bigger than that:      54,973,018. That’s how many registered organic and inorganic substances there were in the world when I wrote this sentence (in 2002) , according to the  Chemical Abstracts Service  (CAS). The  Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA)  gives the EPA in the U...

By now you've probably heard that China stopped taking the world's garbage about a year ago.  And that is a good thing.  Glass and aluminum have not been affected, but China is no longer accepting plastics. https://www.wired.com/story/the-worlds-recycling-is-in-chaos-heres-what-has-to-happen/?BottomRelatedStories_Sections_5 Perspective I'd like to take a BIG step back and repeat a bold statement I made for over 10 years - since I interned in Hamburg Germany with Dr. Braungart at EPEA (Cradle-to-Cradle originator):    There is no such thing as recycling.  Only pure steel and Nylon 66 can withstand repeated recycling cycles without losing their inherent structure.  All other recycled materials need to have something (usually toxic chemicals) added to refurbish them into something useful and durable.  So that 'thing' you buy made out of recycled plastic bottles had a whole bunch of yuk added to them to make them durable, stable and useful in t...

Everyone is familiar with downsizing.  Whether your company has downsized, or you've downsized to a smaller home of car.  There are countless lists about simplifying your life, decluttering, minimalism, etc.  The latest fad list is Maria Kondo's 15 minutes of fame with the concept of only keeping what you love... but there's something even more beneficial to you and the planet:  downshifting, as in slowing down.  The biggest barrier to downsizing is peer pressure.    Try driving 65mph on a freeway when everyone else is doing 75mph+.  And if you can do that, then try driving 50mph in a 65mph speed zone.  How do you feel?  Do you feel like everyone is passing you by?  Do you feel less fulfilled, inferior, poorer, unhappy, frustrated?  How long before you join back into the rest of the traffic flow.   That's what it's like to downshift.  It runs counter to all our societies' messages. and  T...