off topic What I do to reduce my environmental footprint...

[Weave]

41 minutes ago, Eleven said:

Very informative and interesting video.  Thanks.

I disagree that one person cannot make a difference.  One person can lobby, can run for office, can turn a company around.  Self-empowerment.

As for California emission standards, I'm old enough to remember the car prizes on The Price Is Right being described as having "California emissions."  It was a great move by a bunch of one persons in California to bring the automotive industry in line.

I do wonder how effective our $0.05 bottle fee is in New York.  It's time to raise it to a quarter, and also to stop exempting sports drinks and such.

NYS bottle return law is a joke if you consider it as a recycling law.  It is a litter law.  Nothing else.  Clear glass gets recycled at a higher rate than colored glass, and think of what percentage of glass bottled beverages use clear glass.  Overall, something in the neighborhood of 40% of all deposit law glass actually gets recycled.  The rest gets crushed and landfilled.  There isn't enough profit in recycled glass to improve that figure.  An additional $0.20 deposit won't change that.  We need to incentivize use of recycled glass if we are going to affect real change.

[thewookie1]

22 hours ago, EichSnipe said:

Some places around here have stopped serving plastic straws unless you specifically request one. 

I mean we aren’t quite California... but this is catching on.

 

 

Plain stupid idea, straws are necessary in many cases to actually drink your drinks. Especially if your driving and don’t want to limit your vision of the road.

Solar panel tech needs to achieve a higher level of price value along with the “shingle” design to truly become worth while. An investment that would take 35 years to pay itself off is worthless if the tech itself will be outdated with 4 years and equipment will be at under 80% efficiency by year 20. 

In the end however we can’t do a whole lot; China and India are spewing toxic fumes into the air like we did during the 1940’s and aren’t in any rush to fix that. 

Not to mention I’d like less government; not big brother demanding I recycle everything possible into a organized system.

[Weave]

12 minutes ago, thewookie1 said:

Plain stupid idea, straws are necessary in many cases to actually drink your drinks. Especially if your driving and don’t want to limit your vision of the road.

Solar panel tech needs to achieve a higher level of price value along with the “shingle” design to truly become worth while. An investment that would take 35 years to pay itself off is worthless if the tech itself will be outdated with 4 years and equipment will be at under 80% efficiency by year 20. 

In the end however we can’t do a whole lot; China and India are spewing toxic fumes into the air like we did during the 1940’s and aren’t in any rush to fix that. 

Not to mention I’d like less government; not big brother demanding I recycle everything possible into a organized system.

Not sure how to say this without sounding snarky, it's not meant that way.  Re-read the straw portion of Eichsnipe's post.  He said many places have stopped serving plastic straws "unless you specifically request one". You can still get your straw.  You just need to ask for it.  Nothing stupid about that.  Might just eliminate some unneeded landfill material.  It is efficient.  The engineer in me appreciate that.

I agree with your comments re: solar panels.  The pay off period is too long for me to jump into investing in them.  And I have concerns about long term efficiency and durability.  It's too big an investment for me to be an early adopter.  And by the time we can say with real world data what the durability and efficiency will be at the point the investment has paid off, I'll be an old man.

I think environmental controls is the perfect example of what national level government should be involved in.  Keep them out of my bedroom, church, and pasttimes.  But our environment as a whole IS a state and national level interest.  Without it, we'll be spewing fumes like we did in the 40's too.

 

Edited August 5, 2018 by Weave

[dudacek]

The plastic is the issue, not the straws. Use paper straws. Or a reusable metal straw in your travel mug.

13 minutes ago, thewookie1 said:

Plain stupid idea, straws are necessary in many cases to actually drink your drinks. Especially if your driving and don’t want to limit your vision of the road.

 

[thewookie1]

1 hour ago, Weave said:

Not sure how to say this without sounding snarky, it's not meant that way.  Re-read the straw portion of Eichsnipe's post.  He said many places have stopped serving plastic straws "unless you specifically request one". You can still get your straw.  You just need to ask for it.  Nothing stupid about that.  Might just eliminate some unneeded landfill material.  It is efficient.  The engineer in me appreciate that.

I think environmental controls is the perfect example of what national level government should be involved in.  Keep them out of my bedroom, church, and pasttimes.  But our environment as a whole IS a state and national level interest.  Without it, we'll be spewing fumes like we did in the 40's too.

 

While true that you can request one, it's a bit of a hassle. Especially if you are ordering food for a multitude of people. Though I do appreciate the landfill sentiment; the whole environment/green energy initiative causes me quite the internal struggle because I'm both a die hard conservative while also loving the green technology sector and wishing we'd do something about deforestation and such.    

I have 0 problems with the government preventing us from going back to 1940's standards or paying attention to the environment as a whole. I just don't want them trying to strong arm us into paying more for plastic bags, (good for diaper disposal) or trying to get companies to charge us more in result of widespread overly costly rules that are merely meant to discourage. A large company  won't often be discouraged by any fines or penalties when they can merely shift it to the consumer.

 

[LTS]

32 minutes ago, thewookie1 said:

While true that you can request one, it's a bit of a hassle. Especially if you are ordering food for a multitude of people. Though I do appreciate the landfill sentiment; the whole environment/green energy initiative causes me quite the internal struggle because I'm both a die hard conservative while also loving the green technology sector and wishing we'd do something about deforestation and such.    

I have 0 problems with the government preventing us from going back to 1940's standards or paying attention to the environment as a whole. I just don't want them trying to strong arm us into paying more for plastic bags, (good for diaper disposal) or trying to get companies to charge us more in result of widespread overly costly rules that are merely meant to discourage. A large company  won't often be discouraged by any fines or penalties when they can merely shift it to the consumer.

 

I don't mind a company shifting the cost of their fines for environmental idiocy to the consumer.  Hopefully it reduces everyone's desire to support that company.

Plastic bags are nasty.  Just plain nasty.

Simply put we generate too much garbage.  Even recyclable materials are only recycled part of the time.  You can feel good about recycling until you find out most of it ends up in a landfill because the commodity market for recyclable garbage is down and no one wants to buy the waste.

We buy too much... period.  Our lifestyles have adopted to this and until we change we are in a cycle of destroying the planet.  The concept of grocery shopping and storing food in containers for days to weeks creates waste.  The concept of just picking up your pre-made food at Wegmans.. waste.

It's nasty... I am guilty of over-consumption... but I am starting to try and change all of that. 

[Weave]

I dunno. If asking for a straw is a hassle....... seems like a petty complaint to me.

[Eleven]

7 hours ago, Weave said:

NYS bottle return law is a joke if you consider it as a recycling law.  It is a litter law.  Nothing else.  Clear glass gets recycled at a higher rate than colored glass, and think of what percentage of glass bottled beverages use clear glass.  Overall, something in the neighborhood of 40% of all deposit law glass actually gets recycled.  The rest gets crushed and landfilled.  There isn't enough profit in recycled glass to improve that figure.  An additional $0.20 deposit won't change that.  We need to incentivize use of recycled glass if we are going to affect real change.

I'm not concerned about glass.  I'm concerned about plastics. 

7 hours ago, thewookie1 said:

Plain stupid idea, straws are necessary in many cases to actually drink your drinks. Especially if your driving and don’t want to limit your vision of the road.

 

First, what?  Get a lid.  Second, if you can't get a lid, get a permanent straw.

7 hours ago, dudacek said:

The plastic is the issue, not the straws. Use paper straws. Or a reusable metal straw in your travel mug.

 

Correct.  Also, at least one local company I know of is working on vegetable-based straws that will have no flavor, but will have the texture of plastic straws.

4 hours ago, Weave said:

I dunno. If asking for a straw is a hassle....... seems like a petty complaint to me.

It's not exactly like Oliver Twist asking for more porridge, is it?  Pretty simple.  "May I have a straw?"  Done.

 

AND FOR THAT MATTER...I don't need a plastic drink stirrer, either.  I drink two things at restaurants:  club soda on ice (doesn't need a stirrer) and whisky on ice (doesn't need a stirrer).  Both of these beverages already are fine.  I can swirl my glass if I need to, or the restaurant can give me an organic stirrer, like wood or something.

Edited August 5, 2018 by Eleven

[ubkev]

Read this little guy today. 

https://www.gq.com/story/billionaires-climate-change/amp?__twitter_impression=true

If I'm reading this correctly we're making no difference at all and the answer seems to be to eat the rich.