#Environment#Ecology#Waste#SupplyChains: "Material World is one of a spate of recent books that aim to reconnect readers with the physical reality that underpins the global economy. Conway’s mission is shared by Wasteland: The Secret World of Waste and the Urgent Search for a Cleaner Future, by Oliver Franklin-Wallis, and Cobalt Red: How the Blood of the Congo Powers Our Lives, by Siddharth Kara. Each one fills in dark secrets about the places, processes, and lived realities that make the economy tick.
Conway aims to disprove “perhaps the most dangerous of all the myths” that guide our lives today: “the idea that we humans are weaning ourselves off physical materials.” It is easy to convince ourselves that we now live in a dematerialized “ethereal world,” he says, ruled by digital startups, artificial intelligence, and financial services. Yet there is little evidence that we have decoupled our economy from its churning hunger for resources. “For every ton of fossil fuels,” he writes, “we exploit six tons of other materials—mostly sand and stone, but also metals, salts, and chemicals. Even as we citizens of the ethereal world pare back our consumption of fossil fuels, we have redoubled our consumption of everything else. But, somehow, we have deluded ourselves into believing precisely the opposite.”"
I saw a post from someone saying goodbye to the kids on the school #bus that she had driven for several years and expressing happiness about her new job driving a #garbage truck where she will earn double the income.
Like education, #waste management is a very important thing. But still, the thought that we value driving trash around twice as much as driving kids around... It's a bit bleak.
12yo needed a new, slightly bigger, bike. Got one from a second hand bike shop. Old one works fine and is too good for scrapping, but isn't worth anything. So, a quick photo, up on Olio, and two days later another kid has a bike.
Meanwhile, a neighbour collected a stack of food "waste" from a local supermarket. Thanks to Olio, we've had pastries with our afternoon cup of tea and have bananas to go under custard later.
I found this deflated Mylar balloon on a nature reserve this morning.
Come on, folks. It’s 2024.
I’m pretty sure your seven-year-old could celebrate their birthday without these portable natural disasters.
Why haven’t these been banned? 😒😡
@gerrymcgovern I deleted 79,125 'promotional' emails from my Gmail account yesterday.
Didn't think I really needed them.
Didn't think they were useful.
Why do I get so many of these completely useless messages?
Why is so much time and energy expended on these hopeless things that most people completely ignore?
And why should we keep storing them, year after year?
Challenge: How do I eat a whole pineapple in two days? 🍍 😋
Pure luxury from the Zero Waste Box: a pineapple, lots of grapes and tens of mandarins. It's hard to believe that #supermarkets used to throw this away (which is now banned in France). A #ZeroWaste box in our #supermarket costs 3 EUR for 2 kg of "ugly" or overripe vegetables/fruits. The very ripe pineapple smells delicious!
Ancient woodland closed after years of illegal dumping of commercial waste, in Ashford
Illegally dumped commercial waste covers Hoad's Wood, a 199-acre site of protected ancient woodland that has seen industrial-scale illegal dumping since 2020 reaching heights of 12 feet and leading to its recent closure as campaigners continue their fight to have the site cleared, in Ashford, Britain. REUTERS/Chris J. Ratcliffe
A while back, in response to a horror story from @gcluley about an Amazon order that went badly wrong, I mentioned we were trying Temu for the first time. Some asked to report back about our experience.
The order process was smooth, with an expectation set of a delivery date of last Saturday, 6th. We could track the order at every step, and saw a week earlier that it had arrived in the UK and cleared customs. Then tracking went silent.
Three days later, a box appeared on the tracking page
2/...
This article addresses multiple reasons why it's a bad idea to toss apple cores, orange peels, nut, etc. into the wild. They don't biodegrade on their own (as many of us think), and cause harm to #wildlife in various ways.
Unlike other #nuclear#states , #France has chosen to reprocess its nuclear #waste on a massive scale, first at La Hague and then partly in... #Russia .While this saves 20% of #natural#uranium in #French nuclear #power#plants ,the #choice is politically highly questionable, since not only has it already accumulated 100 tonnes of #plutonium stored in France, which represents an enormous #risk , but it also contributes to financing the #Russian#state and, consequently, its #war in #Ukraine .
28-MAR-2024
Study finds landfill point source #emissions have an outsized impact and opportunity to tackle U.S. waste #methane
Largest measurement-based landfill methane assessment to date identifies major emission sources missing from traditional accounting that can be prioritized for mitigation
"Our world is increasingly plastic. Back in the 1950s, humanity produced just 5 million metric tons of plastic per year; today it’s 400 million metric tons."
@KnowableMag reports on the 175 nations that are working on an international agreement that would tackle the vast amounts of plastic waste in the environment.
Was it Nancy Meyers or HGTV that made Americans obsessed with decanting their groceries into matching clear containers? Whatever the cause, Jaya Saxena has had enough of it. "As you know by virtue of not being able to buy yogurt by the handful, most food is sold in containers," she writes. "But for many people, these containers are not good enough. So they have built a whole online world dedicated to the purpose of showing you what other types of containers to put your groceries in." Here's her story for Eater.