Offsets - Voting with your Actions

Offset is to compensate for consumption, or to counterbalance the negative side effects from over consumption. To give something in return for a resource that was used in order to sustain an equilibrium, and to avoid decay and waste. Offsetting is a responsibility to do what is good and fair. We must not force other people to suffer from or disrespectful actions that cause damage. And we must not be selfish or be narrow mined about our short term gains that steal from future generations.



You Vote around 100 times Everyday. Everything that you do in life has an effect on the world, and every action that you take is a vote for something, whether that something is good, bad, right or wrong, wasteful or just plain stupid. You have to understand what you are really voting for. Everything that we do is cause and effect. Everyone needs to fully understand the consequences and the benefits of our actions. We have to make our votes count. And if we all vote together, we can change the world. But if we only vote in politics, then we're not voting, we're only conforming to a corrupt and ignorant process that fools people into believing that we live in a democracy. This is far from the truth. We need to stop giving away the responsibility for life to other people, this doesn't work, as everyone can clearly see today, we have a lot of problems, problems that we can solve if we work together, vote together, and share life's responsibilities together.

This is not just about global warming or climate change. This is more about waste, abuse, corruption, and unsustainable practices that is poisoning our earth and killing life on our planet, which in turn is abusing the health, liberty's and freedoms of people who live now and the future generations of people that will follow. There's just too much bad science going around that confuses and distracts the public about the facts. We need to logically inform and educate the public. We should be preparing people for the changes our world will endure instead of wasting time blaming who is at fault. The more time we waste, and the more propaganda we transmit, will only guarantee more suffering and more damage.

"Stupidity is not Sustainable"  "Think Globally, Act Locally" 

If we all choose together to live healthier lives, and live cleaner lives, and live more sustainable lives, then life will eventually be less expensive and more affordable for everyone. So it's about making better choices and making logical decisions. So call it whatever you want. Call it green living or environmentally friendly living, or green ideas, or carbon offsets, or simplicity, or self-managing or thrifty, or low impact living, or just learning to reduce waste. It all adds up to progress and continuous improvements in the quality of life for everyone. Support the good things in life, support good choices, support good advancements and support good technology. And at the same time, work on ways for stopping the bad things in life, things that cause us to make bad choices and bad decisions, and things that create bad behaviors. Don't support bad things or look the other way.

Actions to Reduce your Footprint - Lower Waste and Dependence

Plastics - Ocean Clean Up - Environmental Education 

Reduce - Reuse - Recycle - Water Saving Ideas

Green Building Ideas - Green Building Products

Electric Vehicles - Alternate Fuel Cars - E-Waste

Junk Mail - Landfills - Natural Burial

Food Waste - Compost - Organic

Green Energy Choices - Sustainable Calculator

Regulations and Public Policies will not work without also improving our methods of educating the public about better choices and better options. Choices and options that would ultimately give people more control over their own destiny, and more control over their quality of life.

Ignorance is this worlds biggest killer. People think that because they have money that they have the right to waste and abuse people, time and resources. This thinking is not just insane but this type of selfish dependency makes you vulnerable and puts everyone around you at risk.

Lowering my Carbon Count, or human footprint, has many benefits then just lowering Greenhouse Gases. I save money, I don't pollute the earth that much, I produce less waste and I'm definitely a lot healthier. These are just a few of the things that I have changed in my lifestyle. These are not major changes or sacrifices either, it's just being little more aware and respectful to the environment and to the future generations that will hopefully enjoy this planet as much as I have. So above are just some of my eco-initiatives to make me more eco-conscious, eco-friendly and also help my frugality. I'm a conscience consumer and sometimes a Scuppie. When people become more aware of what Carbon Offset they can use to naturalize their negative impact on the planet then everyone can make a difference without giving up their freedom of choice. Of course choosing actions that do not have a negative impact will save the time and energy of having to seek out a carbon offset, thus making this process obsolete.

My Votes - My Promises - Petitions

"Another factor in maintaining balance involves the element of time. As we peer into society's future, we – you and I, and our government – must avoid the impulse to live only for today, plundering for, for our own ease and convenience, the precious resources of tomorrow. We cannot mortgage the material assets of our grandchildren without asking the loss also of their political and spiritual heritage. We want democracy to survive for all generations to come, not to become the insolvent phantom of tomorrow." Dwight D. Eisenhower On Jan. 17, 1961.

I know that a lot of my efforts are being neutralized by other peoples negative actions. That's why I do multiple things. Not only do I treat the diseases and threats, I also work on the cure and long term goals. I'm not only responsible for my local surroundings, I'm also responsible for the entire planet, the entire system as a whole. Everything is connected, as long as you know where the connections are the strongest and where the connections are the weakest. You need to maintain the strong connections while improving the weak connections. Live, Learn, Love and Progress...Let's get on with this. Environmental Quotes and Sayings.

Votes - Choices - Options

1: Transportation

You don't need to have your own car or bike, you can just share one.

I gave up my car in June 2008. I either Bike, Walk, ask for a Ride, Car Pool, Borrow a Car, Rent a Car, Limousine, Big Bus, Paratransit, Micro-transit, Bus, Shuttle Van, Trains, or other Public Transportation Services. When I ride my bike I'm voting for cleaner air, cleaner water and cleaner soil. I'm voting for better health. I'm voting for less noise and traffic. I'm voting to stop murder by oil. I'm voting for life. (86% of American workers drive to work).

Undriving - Highway to Boulevards - Green Highways - Maps

Freeway Removal is an urban planning policy to demolish freeways and create mixed-use urban areas, parks, residential, commercial, or other land uses. Such highway removal is often part of a policy to promote smart growth, transit-oriented development, walkable and bicycle-friendly cities. In some cases freeways are retained as less intrusive and expansive boulevards, retained as freeways within tunnels beneath a city, or relocated through less densely-developed areas.

On-Demand Transport

Demand Responsive Transport is flexible routing and scheduling of small/medium vehicles operating in shared-ride mode between pick-up and drop-off locations according to passengers needs.

When you need a Ride there are many alternatives, but that depends on where you live.
Shared Transport Car Pooling
Go Loco
Hitchsters
Carpooling
Bla Bla Car Trusted carpooling Connecting people who need to travel with drivers who have empty seats.
Lyft
Uber 5 million rides everyday.
In China, on Didi, the ride-sharing platform, 11 million rides taken every day.
Side
Yellow Cab
Rideshare Directory
E Rideshare
Ride Amigos rideshare matching and transportation options.
Carpool World
Rideshare
Am Ride Hire a Driver to Drive Your Car.
Zip Car  Rent a Car by the Hour.
Luxe uses a phone’s GPS to offer a personal parking valet in crowded cities.

Researchers at MIT found that just 3,000 four-person cars could serve 98 percent of the demand currently being met by almost 14,000 taxis. How many taxis does a city need? A taxi dispatching approach could cut the number of cars on the road while meeting rider demand. Fleet of autonomous 3-D printed boats could service cities to reduce road traffic.

Car Sharing

Car Sharing is a model of car rental where people rent cars for short periods of time, often by the hour. They are attractive to customers who make only occasional use of a vehicle, as well as others who would like occasional access to a vehicle of a different type than they use day-to-day. The organization renting the cars may be a commercial business or the users may be organized as a company, public agency, cooperative, or ad hoc grouping. Carsharing services are available in over 1,000 cities in several countries.

Condo complexes, businesses and apartments can group share cars.

Peer-to-Peer Car Sharing is the process whereby existing car owners make their vehicles available for others to rent for short periods of time. Peer-to-peer carsharing is a form of person-to-person lending or collaborative consumption, as part of the sharing economy. The business model is closely aligned with traditional car clubs such as Streetcar or Zipcar, but replaces a typical fleet with a ‘virtual’ fleet made up of vehicles from participating owners. With peer-to-peer carsharing, participating car owners are able to charge a fee to rent out their vehicles when they are not using them. Participating renters can access nearby and affordable vehicles and pay only for the time they need to use them.

Auto Insurance for Personal Vehicle Sharing - AB 1871 Bill. - Liability, Collision and Comprehensive Coverage Policy, with a deductible. Supplemental Liability Protection will pay for damage you do to others’ vehicles or property. A typical limit is $1 million. If you have no auto insurance (for example, if you don’t own a car), you should buy this. Credit cards often provide coverage for rental cars, assuming you have used the card to pay for the rental and the rental is in your name. You’ll automatically have this coverage if it’s included with your credit card — no need to call or sign forms. But it is secondary coverage, meaning your own auto insurance policy will pay out first. Call your credit card issuer to confirm the details. Personal Accident Insurance covers medical costs for you and your passengers if you’re involved in an accident. This includes ambulance, medical care and death benefits. Loss-Damage Waiver (LDW), also called a collision damage waiver (CDW), gets you off the hook for any damage to the rental vehicle or theft of the car. It’s technically not insurance but rather a waiver that says the rental car company won’t come after you.

How to start your own car Sharing Program.

Electric Car-Sharing Service begins in Singapore. 1,000 of its cars, and 2,000 charging points (spread out over 500 stations) in Singapore by 2020.

Relay Rides
Car 2 Go
Drive Now
Wheelz
Get Around Rent a Car from Someone Nearby
Buzz Car
Youth Transit Alliance
Get Around
Carsharing
Personal Vehicle Sharing
Monitor Car Driving and Location
My Key
Truvolo
Gumtree or Craigslist are websites that are also good for finding car shares. 
Rent Cars
Fractional Ownership

EZ10 Driverless Electric Shuttle has already been deployed in 20 countries across Asia-Pacific, Middle-East, North America and Europe. Carries up to 15 passengers, access ramp for wheelchairs, fixed or on demand routes, 45 mph top speed.

Toyota e-Palette Concept - CES 2018 - Self Driving Vans (youtube) - Autonomous Cars

There are also people and companies that will pay you to drive someone's car from point A to point B.

Bike Sharing

Bicycle Sharing System is a service in which bicycles are made available for shared use to individuals on a very short term basis. Bike share schemes allow people to borrow a bike from point "A" and return it at point "B". Many bike-share systems offer subscriptions that make the first 30–45 minutes of use either free or very inexpensive, encouraging use as transportation. This allows each bike to serve several users per day. In most bike-share cities, casual riding over several hours or days is better served by bicycle rental than by bike-share. For many systems, smartphone mapping apps show nearby stations with available bikes and open docks. List of Bicycle Sharing Systems (wiki)

Every apartment complex and every condo complex should have its own Bikes to Share.

Jump Bikes electric bike-share service. At $2 for 30 minutes.

Uber Bike Rent a convenient, easy-to-use electric assist bike provided by JUMP using your Uber app.

Mobike is the World's First & Largest Smart Bike Share.

Dockless Bike Share does not require a docking station. With dockless systems, bicycles can be parked within a defined district at a bike rack or along the sidewalk. Dockless bikes can be located and unlocked using a smartphone app.

Gobee bike conveniently locate a Gobee bike near you and ride to a destination of your choosing – completely unshackled dockless bikes.

Mass Destruction' Of Dockless Bikes In France - Lime Bike

Donkey Bike Share App 24/7 Bike Rental - Find a bike near you and unlock with your phone.

Social Bicycles
Shareable
We Cycle
Bike Share Everywhere
25 Best Bike Share Programs In The World
Zagster
Republic Bike
Citi Bike 101
BikeShare
Bike Sharing Info-Graph (image)
Spinlister Rent a Bike

If you do use a car get regular tune-ups and properly inflate the tires. Same for bikes. Biking Knowledge.

Sixty percent of Americans live in areas with Unhealthy Air Pollution Levels. Health effects from air pollution include changes in lung function, coughing, heart attacks, lung cancer and premature death. 

Maximizing Bike-Share Ridership: New research says it's all about location. 10% increase in bike-availability levels increases ridership by 12%.

"You can make a choice, but sometimes you don't have a choice until someone gives you a choice."

Micromobility refers to a range of small, lightweight vehicles operating at speeds typically below 25 km/h (15 mph) and driven by users personally. Micromobility devices include bicycles, Ebikes, electric scooters, electric skateboards, shared bicycles, and electric pedal assisted (pedelec) bicycles. Initial definitions set the primary condition for inclusion in the category of micromobility to be a gross vehicle weight of less than 500 kilograms (1,100 lb). However, the definition has evolved to exclude devices with internal combustion engines and those with top speeds above 45 kilometres (28 mi)/h.

2: Media

You don't need cable TV. I have no Cable TV or Satellite TV Service since August 2007. (Cord Cutter) I connect my Computer to my 50 inch screen TV using a HDMI Connection, which makes the picture high definition quality. A Digital Subscriber Line, or DSL high speed Internet connection provides all my News, TV, Movies and so much more. I only see and read things that interest me with a lot less commercials. I also have a lot more to choose from and it's always on my time schedule which makes it very convenient. This saves me money on the electric bill and saves me a lot of time that would normally be wasted watching TV. The only down side is that sometimes I can't watch certain live sports broadcasts so I go to a sports bar or visit my friends house who is still paying for cable. So it's not a TV anymore it's called a Monitor. And the Internet is the best source to connect to.  In 2013 the average time Americans spend with digital media each day will surpass traditional TV viewing time.

Video Sites - TV Links - News Links
Energy Saving Tools - Internet Connections and Tips
Disable My Cable

I use the Internet to do things digitally that saves a lot of money, time, resources and reduces waste.
Electronic Paper - Jet Book - E Books

Telecommuting, Teleconferencing, Digital Newspaper, Digital Books and Music. - American Consumer Institute has calculated the world will save roughly 1 BILLION tons of carbon in the next ten years by operating on the Internet. 

Buy, Sell or Rent Used Text Books - Online Education

Pay it Green - Eco Geek
Energy Saving Screen Savers
Greener Computing
Bike Powered Generator
How To Info, Dictionaries, Research, Health & More - News Websites

If printing, using the Garamond Font with its thinner strokes can reduce ink consumption. Eco Font.

3: Conserve Energy - Reduce Waste

Lower the heat Thermostat and wear a sweater and thick socks in the winter months. Use extra Blankets. 

Winterization - Energy Conservation

Open the windows more in the summer months and use a Quite Fan to Stay Cool instead of Air Conditioning. 

Green Building Products - Green Building Ideas

Environmental Education - Green Ideas Info-Graph (image)

Turn off Electronic Power Siphons by using a power strip with a on and off switch. They are also known as Phantom loads, standby power or vampire power. These are devices that still consume electricity while they are turned off or in standby mode, which is also called vampire power, vampire draw, phantom load, ghost load or leaking electricity ("phantom load" and "leaking electricity" are defined technical terms with other meanings, adopted for this different purpose), refers to the way electric power consumed by electronic and electrical appliances while they are switched off (but are designed to draw some power) or in a standby mode.

Calculating the Cost of Standby Features. To calculate the annual cost of an energy vampire, you need to know a few pieces of information: An estimate of the standby power consumed by that device. An estimate of the amount of time that the device remains in standby mode. Your electrical cost per kilowatt hour (kWh).

Energy Saving Power Strip
Home Energy Audit
Electricity Usage Monitor

Use appliances that are Energy Star certified. LCD Televisions use less energy then plasmas.

Ink jet printers tend to be more energy-efficient than laser printers. 

Green Products

Keeping a Refrigerator full uses less energy.

Green Power - Hohm
Energy Guide - Solar Powered Concert Stages
Brushfire Records - Green Jobs

Energy Audit - Energy Assessments

Use LED light bulbs and turn off lights and electronics when not in use. - LED's

Put PC into Hibernation Mode when not in use. Saves energy and extends the life of the PC. - Computer Tools 

I also Host my Website on servers that are Powered by 100% Wind Energy

Wash clothes in cold water instead of hot. Also try to buy eco friendly clothing that has organic cotton or other organic fibers
I don't wash my clothes as much as I use to. No need to wash clothes when they're not dirty or smelly.

Hemp - Hemp Sisters - Hemp Products - Wear Pact

Stain Removal 101 - Green Products

Recycle old Clothes you're not wearing anymore or not using.  The average American will still trash 81 pounds of unwanted garments this year, that's 26 Billion Pounds of Clothing a Year, which equals 26 billion pounds of textiles annually added to landfills.

Bluejeans Go Green
Thread Up - Us it Again
Kaight - Salvation Army
Goodwill - Donation Drop Off Locations

Bamboo is also soft and dries faster, and it's a renewable resource. Soy fabric is warm, biodegradable, and resists bacteria.
Turn worn-out Cotton into Rayon.

Air dry dishes instead of heat drying dishes when using the dishwasher. When using Natural Dishwashing Liquid. I noticed the sponge never gets that horrible odor that it gets from those name brand dishwashing liquids.

I use the same dish, bowl and utensils and just wash them after each use. I use to be an idiot and keep using other plates and utensils till I filled the dishwasher, now I never use the dishwasher. I use only cold water when washing the dishes.

4: Conserve Water

Don't run the water when brushing your teeth. Leaky faucets wastes about 3,000 gallons of water a year. Depending on the type of shower head, taking a four-minute shower instead of an eight-minute shower could also save almost 10 gallons of water. 

Water Conservation Technologies - Rain Catchers

Clean Water Rights

Use natural Cleaners - Green Products - Maid Organic

Toilet or Bidet? - Dishwashers or Hand Washing Dishes?

Tip: Use old soap slivers in a Hand Soap Dispenser or in a Loofah Soap Pouch, or use it to make new Soap Bars.

In the US alone, over 10 million trees and 21 billion gallons of water are consumed each year to create paper receipts. "I tell stores not to print my receipt or I have them send it to my e-mail address."

5: Food - Healthy - Sustainable - Organic

I'm trying to eat only organic food and locally grown food. Locally organic grown foods have less impact on the environment and also help support local small farmers who care more about the health of people and the health of the land then a lot of these big farms. I eat less red meat and high fatty foods too. Meat eaters contribute seven times more greenhouse gas emissions then vegetarians. Studies have shown red meat requires 28 times more land to produce than pork or chicken, needs 11 times more water, and results in five times more emissions. Meat lovers’ diets cause double the climate-warming emissions. It takes just 441 gallons of water to produce one pound of boneless beef—or about 110 gallons for a quarter-pound hamburger. Food Waste.

Food for Thought app tallies the nutritional data and carbon footprint associated with each food item and with the overall meal, such as the amount of calories in a salad and the amount of water that would be used in growing the lettuce.

Dietary greenhouse gas emissions of meat-eaters, fish-eaters, vegetarians and vegans in the UK

Eating Healthy - Eating Right
Eco-Trip - Knudsen
Nutrition - Documentaries

Organic Farming
Whole Foods
Organic Food Info
Organic
Organic Consumers Association
Organic Trade Association
Organic Lawns
Organic Grain Quinoa
Organic Connect Mag
In Organic We Trust
Organic Food Truck
Organic Consumer Safety
Spectrum Organics

Lesser Evil Snacks No genetically modified ingredients, No refined sugars, No refined salt, No antibiotics and or hormones, No preservatives, No artificial flavors or colors, No hydrogenated oils, No meat products (only lacto-ovo vegetarian or vegan)* Only Organic Dairy.

Fair Trade - Seeds

Foraging (wild foods) - Wilderness Family Naturals

Superior Touch
The Green Micro Gym
Whole Living
Eat This, Not That! (amazon book)
Eden Foods
Living Foods
Eat Raw
Raw Food Chef

Growing your own food can help lower the food bill and also help you eat more healthy.
Eating Healthy, Exercising and Sleeping Well are also very important.

City Garden Tips

The National Gardening Association says the average 600-square-foot garden costs $70 to plant (24.5 feet by 24.5 feet), and produces about 300 pounds of fresh produce that's worth around $600. That's a $530 return on your investment.

Earth Box Garden Kit (amazon)
Grow Box (amazon)
Square Foot Gardening (amazon)

Greenhouses - Garden Tools - Balcony Garden

Farming - Composting

Sustainable Landscaping 

Cooking Tips - Recipes - Portable Stoves

When cooking on a Kitchen Stove use the right size burner to match the size of the Frying Pan and keep Pots covered so the heat setting doesn't have to be that high. Reheating Leftovers on a stove can sometimes use less energy then a Microwave. Cooking large batches of food saves energy because it takes less energy to reheat leftovers then cooking a meal from scratch. Soaking your pasta in a bowl of water for an hour before dinner will reduce boiling pasta time to almost 1 minute.

Food Waste - Wasted Food

American Supermarkets are throwing away nearly two million tons of fresh food every year, 30% of our food, the same for the UK, enough food to feed over 10 million people a year. The true cost of this waste is passed on to customers in prices and the environment in landfill, while the supermarkets' profits continue to soar. 30 percent of the U.S. food supply goes to waste — 133 billion pounds of it every year, equivalent to $161 billion. 1,249 calories per day for each and every American. That's 62 percent of the recommended 2,000-calorie adult daily diet. 45 percent of all food waste happens in the home. E-Waste.

World population consumes around 10 per cent more food than it needs, while almost nine per cent is thrown away or left to spoil.

Wasted Food (PDF) - Food Wasted Info-Graph (image) - Food Waste Info-Graph (image)

Gleaming (leftover harvest farm food)

Misunderstanding Food Date Labels linked with Higher Food Discards. Confusion about when to worry about food safety is widespread.

Food Preserving - Food Labels - Food Security

The Coronavirus Pandemic waged a silent war across the country. Because of the lack of planning and preparations, American farmers were forced to pour out milk, crush eggs, toss fresh fruits and vegetables, euthanize livestock and plow under perfectly robust crops. Meanwhile, financially beleaguered Americans are lining up at food banks in unprecedented numbers, humanitarian leaders fear a global starvation pandemic is burgeoning, and grocery store shelves are sparsely filled. In Maryland, Delaware farms to destroy 2M chickens due to plant staffing shortages. A large portion of our food is now produced for restaurants, hotels, schools, and institutional users, about 50 percent A lot of the food supply chain was built to supply commercial and retail foodservice outlets. So the need to quickly repurpose production practices and distribution systems in the space of a few weeks is absolutely necessary.

Supermarkets lost about $15 billion annually in unsold fruits and vegetables alone, and throw away, on average, 12 percent of produce and 7 percent of meat and poultry.

French Law Forbids Food Waste by Supermarkets Since 2016. France has become the first country in the world to ban supermarkets from throwing away or destroying unsold food. Forcing them instead to donate it to charities and food banks. Of the 7.1m tonnes of food wasted in France annually, 67% is binned by consumers, 15% by restaurants and 11% by shops. Each year 1.3bn tonnes of food are wasted worldwide. French Food Waste Law Changing How Grocery Stores Approach Excess Food. French supermarkets must donate to food banks by law. Americans waste some 200 billion pounds of food a year. That's enough to fill up the 90,000-seat Rose Bowl stadium every day.

Food Cowboy - Crop Mobster

Food Finder saving wasted food from stores.

About 40 percent of food in the United States today goes uneaten. The average American consumer wastes 10 times as much food as someone in Southeast Asia — up 50 percent from Americans in the 1970's. Yet, 1 in 6 Americans doesn't have enough to eat, says the U.S. Department of Agriculture. And food waste costs us about $165 billion a year and sucks up 25 percent of our freshwater supply. Why are Farmers Dumping Milk, Even as People Go Hungry? farmers have no distribution network to sell their food — even though many others would want it.

People Dying from Over Eating while People are Starving.

Food waste is the largest source of municipal solid waste in the U.S. and the most destructive type of household waste in terms of greenhouse gas emissions, the researchers report.

More than 1 billion metric tons of food is lost or wasted each year, never making it from the farm to fork. The energy we put into growing this food that nobody ever eats contributes 3.3 billion metric tons of annual carbon dioxide every year. Food too expensive to be purchased will rot in the warehouse. Food too unprofitable to harvest will be lost in the field. Food loss at the production and distribution level accounts for two-thirds of global food waste in a world where more than 800 million people are chronically hungry.

Cold Chain is a temperature-controlled supply chain. - Supply Chain.

A Third of the World’s Food is being Wasted.

The Food Loss and Waste Accounting and Reporting Standard (or FLW Standard) is a global standard that provides requirements and guidance for quantifying and report­ing on the weight of food and/or associated inedible parts removed from the food supply chain—commonly referred to as “food loss and waste” (FLW).

Roughly 133 billion pounds of food go uneaten each year in the U.S., according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Just Eat It: A Food Waste Story people live on nothing but discarded food.

Reducing Household Food Waste. Researchers employed a values-based intervention in an attempt to reduce household food waste in 53 families in the Phoenix area. In the United States, where food is relatively easy to come by for most of the population, roughly $165 billion worth of it is wasted every year. That's enough to fill 730 college football stadiums. And of the food that is wasted, the majority of it is at the household level. if you can show people how much they're wasting and what that means in terms of dollars and cents or lost opportunities for their kids to eat nutritious fruits and vegetables, then you have put value back in the food, and that could potentially drive down food waste.

APPS that Help Reduce Food Waste
Food-app Reduces Food Waste
App for Food Waste
Gocopia
Food Recovery Network
Campus Kitchens
DC Central Kitchen
Pare Up App
Food Cloud
Stop Wasting Food movement Denmark
Waste No Food
ZERA Food Recycler turn today’s food scraps into tomorrow’s fertilizer, within 24 hours.
Food Share Filter
Other Apps
We the Feedies
Tango Tab

Call or text WhatsApp us on 99625 18992 , and someone will pick it up.

Ample Harvest enables millions of growers in this country to donate excess garden produce to a local food pantry.

Still Tasty Be alerted when your food expires and know when food should be used up.

Reta get reminded before your food expires. Food Preserving Knowledge.

Food Cowboy uses mobile technology to safely route surplus food from wholesalers and restaurants to food banks and soup kitchens instead of landfills.

Leftover Swap view the available leftovers around you, make your selection, and arrange for pick-up or delivery.

Fridge Pal App scan barcodes or enter manually to keep track of what you have at home. Get reminders for expiry dates.

FoodKeeper can help consumers use food while at peak quality and reduce waste. The storage times listed are intended as useful guidelines and are not hard-and-fast rules. Some foods may deteriorate more quickly while others may last longer than the times suggested. The times will vary depending on the growing conditions, harvesting.

Green Egg Shopper Reduce food waste by never missing 'Use by' dates. A comprehensive shopping list app with solid built in features to let users manage shopping lists, reduce food waste, watch expenses, and avoid overbuying. Helps save MONEY, FOOD, and ENVIRONMENT in 3 simple steps.

Denmark opens first Food Waste Supermarket selling surplus produce Looking at Food Waste.

Food to Donate - Feeding The Starving

Food Stamps - Food for Thought

Half the Food from Farm to Fork is Wasted...Food industry loses 8% in Production, Trucking Wastes 4%, Grocery Stores Waste 6%, Restaurants Waste 15% and Homes Throw Away 25%.

Commercial Food Waste Ban

About 40% of the planet's crops currently are fed to animals, so if we eat less meat, we will have more food.

California caterers, hotels and Restaurants throw out roughly 1.5 million tons of perfectly good food. Restaurants dump tens of thousands of tons of edible food every year. The vast majority of California's 90,000 restaurants and eateries do not participate in Food Donation Programs.

520,000 tons of food waste is generated annually in Connecticut

Last Week Tonight with John Oliver: Food Waste (HBO) (youtube)

The next food movement? Maybe garbage-to-plate dining (youtube) - Manhattan restaurant Blue Hill, chef Dan Barber is turning food waste into cuisine.

Refed collectively reduce food waste at scale.

Food Shift Movement

People Donating Food are Protected from law Suites under the Food Donation Act (PDF) 

Good Samaritan Law offer legal protection to people who give reasonable assistance to those who are, or who they believe to be, injured, ill, in peril, or otherwise incapacitated. Whistle Blowing.

Child Nutrition Act signed on October 11, 1966, helps meet the nutritional needs of children.

Fighting Hunger Incentive Act of 2014 provided an enhanced tax deduction for businesses that donated their food inventory to charitable organizations.

The average American throws away 33 pounds of food each month. Households waste up to a third of food bought.

Reuters Food and Agriculture Summit

Farmers can lose some 30%-40% by weight of all food grown. Millions of tons of fruit and vegetables rot in fields and orchards or are plowed over each year.

Gleaming - Composting - Waste to Energy

Farming Knowledge

Some foods from harvesting are thrown away just because of appearance and size. Food Waste.

The average person needs to eat around 700 lbs. of food a year. 

Home Garden

Change.org reports that Americans throw away 96 billion pounds of food every year, or 263 million pounds a day. Break it down even further, and you've got 11 million pounds of food trashed every hour, or a ton and a half each second.

Love Food Hate Waste

USDA and EPA Join with Private Sector, Charitable Organizations to Set Nation's First Food Waste Reduction Goals

Ways to Make Food Last Longer when Storing
Food Preserving - Food Dehydrator

Food Expiration Dates - Shell-Life

A study found that up to 30% of vegetables in the UK were not harvested because of their physical appearance. The report also found that between 30% and 50% of the four billion tonnes of food produced around the world each year went to waste. It suggested that half the food bought in Europe and the US was thrown away. The Institution of Mechanical Engineers said the waste was being caused by poor storage, strict sell-by dates, bulk offers and consumer fussiness, poor engineering and agricultural practices, inadequate transport and storage infrastructure through to supermarkets demanding cosmetically perfect foodstuffs and encouraging consumers to overbuy through buy-one-get-one-free offers. The report also found that huge amounts of water, totaling 550 billion cubic metres, were being used to grow crops that were never eaten. Water for food production could reach 10 to 13 trillion cubic metres a year by 2050. 

Tristram Stuart: Global Food Waste Scandal (youtube)
Food Waste - A Story of Excess (youtube)

End Food Waste

Inside the 1.3 billion tons of food wasted every year worldwide is 45 trillion gallons of water, and Meat, of course, requires more water in its production than any other food.

America could Feed 800 Million People from the Grain that Livestock Eat 

Factory Farms

The contribution of food waste to global and European nitrogen pollution

Europeans throw away 90 million tons of food each year costing $130 billion every year. 40 tons of food have been given away via the network Food Sharing.

Cutting food waste by a quarter would mean enough food for everyone, says UN. With the global population rising, wastage of products including 45% of all fruit and vegetables and 20% of meat is one of the greatest challenges to achieving food security. Each year 1.3bn tonnes of food, about a third of all that is produced, is wasted, including about 45% of all fruit and vegetables, 35% of fish and seafood, 30% of cereals, 20% of dairy products and 20% of meat. Meanwhile, 795 million people suffer from severe hunger and malnutrition.

The environmental impact of food loss and waste is high. The carbon footprint of food produced and not eaten is estimated at 3.3 gigatonnes of CO2, meaning that if food waste were a country it would rank as the third highest national emitter of greenhouse gases after the US and China. About 1.4bn hectares, or close to 30% of available agricultural land, is used to grow or farm food that is subsequently wasted. And more surface and groundwater, or “blue water”, is used to produce wasted food around the globe than is used for agriculture by any single country, including India and China. - PDF.

To Cut Food Waste, Spain's Solidarity Fridge Supplies Endless Leftovers communal refrigerator shared by citizens in Galdakao.

Pumpkins of almost any variety have flesh high in fiber and beta carotene. Their seeds, delicious when toasted or baked, can be rich in vitamin B-12, potassium and protein. The problem is that people didn't eat the vast majority of the 1.91 billion pounds of pumpkins grown in the U.S. in 2014. Instead of throwing away pumpkins in landfills, they make great livestock feed. You can also donate your curved pumpkins to compost at your local farmer's market, or compost them yourself.

Food waste also comes from people who eat food, but do nothing important with the energy produced by the food. Like eating food but doing nothing except watching TV shows that don't benefit you or anyone else. Like eating food and then polluting the earth. Like eating food and doing things that indirectly kill people. If you knew that you were going to kill someone, why did you eat first? That's food waste. It's like eating the last meal before being executed, what's the point, the last thing you should be doing is putting things in your head and in your heart, and not putting things in your mouth.

People are also eating more food then they need, thus 1.9 Billion People are Over Weight and Obsess. Most foods we don't need, too much salt, sugar, bad fats and cholesterol, and highly processed foods with low nutritional value.

"No need to tell your kids anymore to finish their vegetables because kids are starving in Africa, which was an ignorant and humiliating statement to begin with, it's better to state the facts, tell them they are not just wasting food, they are in fact wasting all the time, people, energy, water and resources that went into making this food available for you to eat, so you are not just wasting food, you are wasting life. So if you are not hungry now then please save it for later, and please never forget, if you want to make the most out of what life gives you, then don't waste the opportunity that millions of people have given you, and please don't waste all the things that mother earth provides for us, this is everyone's responsibility."

Eleven months is the average age of an apple in a grocery store in the United States. This is because of cold storage where they can control temperature, gases (oxygen, carbon dioxide and nitrogen) and humidity; All kept at specified levels. Apples take in oxygen and give off carbon dioxide as starches in the flesh change to sugar. In sealed CA rooms, this respiratory process reduces the oxygen level to slow the ripening process. Temperature is around 32 to 36 degrees Fahrenheit. Humidity is maintained at 95 percent. Exact conditions in the rooms are set according to the fruit variety. Fruit picked too early will not store well in CA nor will those that are picked past their proper maturity.

Controlled Atmosphere (CA storage) - Cold storage warehouse fails to protect workers from hazardous gas exposure (OSHA)

6: Composting

Compost is organic matter that has been decomposed and recycled as a Fertilizer and Soil amendment. Compost is a key ingredient in Organic Farming. Carbon, Nitrogen, Oxygen, Water.

Compost Tea - Fungal Compost - Mushroom Soil

Biodegradation is the disintegration of materials by bacteria, fungi, or other biological means. Biodegradable is distinct in meaning from compostable. Biodegradable means that a product can be consumed by microorganisms. Compostable means that an object can easily break down under composting conditions.

Biodegradable is something that is capable of being decomposed by bacteria or other living organisms so that it can be safely reused by the earths soil without leaving any toxic residues. Green Products - Bio-Plastics - Plastic Waste.

Naturally degradable bioplastics with new route to PHAs chemical catalysis for an existing class of biomaterials.

Decomposer are organisms that break down dead or decaying organisms, and in doing so, they carry out the natural process of decomposition.

Decomposition is the process by which organic substances are broken down into much simpler forms of matter. The process is essential for recycling the finite matter that occupies physical space in the biome. Bodies of living organisms begin to decompose shortly after death. Animals, such as worms, also help decompose the organic materials. Organisms that do this are known as decomposers. Although no two organisms decompose in the same way, they all undergo the same sequential stages of decomposition. One can differentiate abiotic from biotic decomposition (biodegradation). The former means "degradation of a substance by chemical or physical processes, e.g., hydrolysis. The latter means "the metabolic breakdown of materials into simpler components by living organisms", typically by microorganisms. Bioaccumulation - Biosorption.

Chemical Decomposition is the separation of a single chemical compound into its two or more elemental parts or to simpler compounds. Chemical decomposition is usually regarded and defined as the exact opposite of chemical synthesis. In short, the chemical reaction in which two or more products are formed from a single reactant is called a decomposition reaction. Half-Life

Microbiology of Decomposition is the study of all microorganisms (mainly bacteria and fungi) involved in decomposition, the chemical and physical processes during which organic matter is broken down and reduced to its original elements. Decomposition microbiology can be divided between two fields of interest: Decomposition of plant materials; Decomposition of cadavers and carcasses.

Inert Waste is waste which is neither chemically nor biologically reactive and will not decompose. Examples of this are sand and concrete. This has particular relevance to landfills as inert waste typically requires lower disposal fees than biodegradable waste or hazardous waste. This type of waste coagulates in the environment and can cause serious problem, much like filling up of areas, but they are also relatively less harmful than plastics as they don't give out harmful residues after hundreds of years. Half-Life.

Mulching is a layer of material applied to the surface of an area of soil to conserve moisture, to improve the fertility and health of the soil, to reduce weed growth, to enhance the visual appeal of the area. Anaerobic Digestion.

Peat is an accumulation of partially decayed vegetation or organic matter. It is unique to natural areas called peatlands, bogs, mires, moors, or muskegs.

Sphagnum is a genus of approximately 380 accepted species of mosses, commonly known as "peat moss". Accumulations of Sphagnum can store water, since both living and dead plants can hold large quantities of water inside their cells; plants may hold 16–26 times as much water as their dry weight, depending on the species. The empty cells help retain water in drier conditions. Hence, as sphagnum moss grows, it can slowly spread into drier conditions, forming larger mires, both raised bogs and blanket bogs. These peat accumulations then provide habitat for a wide array of peatland plants, including sedges and ericaceous shrubs, as well as orchids and carnivorous plants. Sphagnum and the peat formed from it do not decay readily because of the phenolic compounds embedded in the moss's cell walls. In addition, bogs, like all wetlands, develop anaerobic soil conditions, which produces slower anaerobic decay rather than aerobic microbial action. Peat moss can also acidify its surroundings by taking up cations, such as calcium and magnesium, and releasing hydrogen ions. Under the right conditions, peat can accumulate to a depth of many meters. Different species of Sphagnum have different tolerance limits for flooding and pH, so any one peatland may have a number of different Sphagnum species. Individual peat moss plants consist of a main stem, with tightly arranged clusters of branch fascicles usually consisting of two or three spreading branches and two to four hanging branches. The top of the plant, or capitulum, has compact clusters of young branches. Along the stem are scattered leaves of various shapes, named stem leaves; the shape varies according to species. The leaves consist of two kinds of cells; small, green, living cells (chlorophyllose cells), and large, clear, structural, dead cells (hyaline cells). The latter have the large water-holding capacity.

Composting Info - How to Compost - Composters

Biodynamic Compost is a holistic, ecological, and ethical approach to farming, gardening, food, and nutrition.

Fertilizer - Waste to Energy - Biogas System for Home Energy Supply

Indoor Composter (amazon)

Composting Ordinance (wiki) - Composting Council

Avoid Common Composting Mistakes - Organic Land Care (Backyard Trench Composting)

Share Waste connects people who wish to recycle their kitchen scraps or Food Waste with their neighbors who are already composting, worm-farming or keep chickens. Now you can divert waste from landfill while getting to know the people around you! Residential Compost Collection Program - Project Compost

Composting turning Food Waste into Fuel and Plastic Composting Food Waste instead of burying it in a landfill produces far less methane.

High-Tech Electronics Made from Autumn Leaves. New process converts this organic biomass waste matter into a porous carbon material that can be used to produce high-tech electronics. The dried leaves were first ground into a powder, then heated to 220 degrees Celsius for 12 hours. This produced a powder composed of tiny carbon microspheres. These microspheres were then treated with a solution of potassium hydroxide and heated by increasing the temperature in a series of jumps from 450 to 800 C. The chemical treatment corrodes the surface of the carbon microspheres, making them extremely porous. The final product, a black carbon powder, has a very high surface area due to the presence of many tiny pores that have been chemically etched on the surface of the microspheres. The high surface area gives the final product its extraordinary electrical properties.

Human Body Composting (green burials)

Bio-Bag - Manures - Chicken Manure - Grow NYC

Vermicompost (worms)

Biome Solutions. Soil invertebrates are likely to contribute to the decomposition process. Together with bacteria, fungi, and other microbes, these organisms make up a complex food web or energy pyramid with primary, secondary, and tertiary level consumers.

Tertiary Consumers: (organisms that eat secondary consumers). centipedes, predatory mites, rove beetles, fomicid ants,
carabid beetles

Secondary Consumers: (organisms that eat primary consumers). springtails, some types of mites, feather-winged beetles
nematodes, protozoa, rotifera, soil flatworms.

Primary Consumers: (organisms that eat organic residues). bacteria, fungi, actinomycetes, nematodes, some types of mites, snails, slugs, earthworms, millipedes, sowbugs, whiteworms.

Organic Residues: leaves, grass clippings, other plant debris, food scraps, fecal matter and animal bodies including those of soil invertebrates.

Composting Toilets

Night Soil is a euphemism for human feces collected at night from cesspools, privies, etc. and sometimes used as a fertilizer. Another definition is "untreated excreta transported without water (e.g. via containers or buckets)" - Soil Testing.

Zera makes food scraps into tomorrow's ready-to-use, homemade fertilizer.

Biosolids describes several forms of treated sewage sludge that is intended for agricultural use as a soil conditioner. Although sewage sludge has long been used in agriculture.

7: The Power of "RE"

Recycle - Reclaim - Recover - Reduce - Repurpose - Reuse - Reshape - Rework - Repair - Rebuild - Reevaluate - Reimagine - Rethink - Reinvent - Redesign - Restore - Reliable - Recombination - Reboot - Remix - Refuse and Remove unsustainable Products and Services. Be Resourceful. Don't waste Resources.

You are free to choose, but you are not free from the consequences of your choice....

What every consumer needs to know.....

Waste Hierarchy is the evaluation of processes that protect the environment alongside resource and energy consumption to most favorable to least favorable actions. The hierarchy establishes preferred program priorities based on sustainability. To be sustainable, waste management cannot be solved only with technical end-of-pipe solutions and an integrated approach is necessary.

Zero Waste means reducing, reusing, recycling, and composting with nothing going to landfill or incineration.

Recycling

Recycling is the process of converting waste materials into reusable objects to prevent waste of potentially useful materials, reduce the consumption of fresh raw materials, energy usage, air pollution (from incineration) and water pollution (from landfilling) by decreasing the need for "conventional" waste disposal and lowering greenhouse gas emissions compared to plastic production. Recycling is a key component of modern waste reduction and is the third component of the "Reduce, Reuse and Recycle" waste hierarchy.

Recycling Resources - E-Waste

Recycling needs to be Government funded because a private business will not make much money from recycling, even knowing that the benefits of recycling far out way the cost of not recycling. Important and valuable activities sometimes need to be subsidized and incentivized.

Recology ships more than 30 large containers six days a week from Recycle Central to paper mills, glass plants, and other manufacturers that purchase specific recycled materials. San Francisco’s Transfer Station.

Closed Loop Recycling protects the quality loss for new product rather than the reduced functionality. Also, closed loop recycling system contains various benefits that reduces the engagements of original materials and protect the environment. The closed recycling loop is formed by collecting recyclable materials, transforming into a new product and arranging the waste back into consumer circulation. It extracted post-consumer waste or byproduct of other process then recycles these items and produces into new products, such as recycling magazine or newspapers to produce other types of paper or paper-board. It also ensures the recyclable resources are valuable and they are able to be recycled and re-purposed into the same products. Closed loop recycling system is a sustainable concept that certain recycling and recovery measures to maintain the materials are useful as long as possible and reduce the burdens of the environment. It means the materials can be recycled indefinitely with no degradation of quality and properties, this major condition allows the recyclable product conversion of the same product as pre-consumer. The most suitable materials of closed loop recycling are aluminum, glass and plastic as they will not lose the quality during the recycling and reproducing process. Furthermore, biodegradable disposal is another phase of closed loop recycling system that unrecyclable materials and byproduct which is useless in production will be break down into natural materials return to the environment without pollution and deleterious impacts. Closed loop recycling technique is repeatedly recycling and reusing materials instead of down cycling, its process is to maintain material engaged in a loop arrangement to support a circular economy. Recycling and reusing throughout the whole process rather than used only once and turned into waste. The principles of the process are collection, manufacturing and supplying, and the collection phase is to divert and gather recyclable materials to support the operation of the process.

Companies should be fined or penalized for using packaging that can not be recycled or is too difficult to recycle.

Circular Economy is an economic system aimed at minimizing waste and making the most of resources. In a circular system resource input and waste, emission, and energy leakage are minimized by slowing, closing, and narrowing energy and material loops; this can be achieved through long-lasting design, maintenance, repair, reuse, remanufacturing, refurbishing, and recycling. This regenerative approach is in contrast to the traditional linear economy, which has a 'take, make, dispose' model of production. Proponents of the circular economy suggest that a sustainable world does not mean a drop in the quality of life for consumers, and can be achieved without loss of revenue or extra costs for manufacturers. The argument is that circular business models can be as profitable as linear models, allowing us to keep enjoying similar products and services.

Upcycling also known as creative reuse, is the process of transforming by-products, waste materials, useless, or unwanted products into new materials or products of better quality or for better environmental value.

Downcycling is the process of converting waste materials or useless products into new materials or products of lesser quality and reduced functionality. Downcycling aims to prevent wasting potentially useful materials, reduce consumption of fresh raw materials, energy usage, air pollution and water pollution. Its goals are also lowering greenhouse gas emissions (though re-use of tainted toxic chemicals for other purposes can have the opposite effect) as compared to virgin production. A clear example of downcycling is plastic recycling, which turns the material into lower grade plastics.

All Garbage should have a deposit-return system that would give incentive to recycle all garbage and to force manufactures to make recyclable materials that can be returned for a fee. Consumers recycle more when they think about how their waste can be transformed into new products.

Single-Stream Recycling refers to a system in which all paper fibers, plastics, metals, and other containers are mixed in a collection truck, instead of being sorted by the depositor into separate commodities (newspaper, paperboard, corrugated fiberboard, plastic, glass, etc.) and handled separately throughout the collection process. In single-stream, both the collection and processing systems are designed to handle this fully commingled mixture of recyclables, with materials being separated for reuse at a materials recovery facility (MRF). The single-stream option replaces the dual-stream option, which is where people separate certain recyclable materials and place them in separate containers for collection.

Waste Sorting is the process by which waste is separated into different elements. Waste sorting can occur manually at the household and collected through curbside collection schemes, or automatically separated in materials recovery facilities or mechanical biological treatment systems. Hand Sorting was the first method used in the history of waste sorting.

Pre-Sort Recycling or Sorting Recyclable Materials reduces recycling contamination. Everyone should know the recycling rules in their area.

Recycling Guidelines - Organize - Home - Building Recycling.

Recycling Contamination occurs in recycling when non-recyclables are placed in the wrong recycling bin or container. Contamination can include anything from food waste to plastic bags. Different recycling systems allow for different materials to be recycled and consider different materials as contaminants.

Aspirational Recycling: When Good Intentions Have Harsh Consequences. When communities fail to educate the members of their community, then community members will make costly mistakes that will erode the system and do more harm than good.

Only about one-tenth of all solid garbage in the United States gets recycled. Only 5.7% of all plastics are recycled every year.

2016 the U.S. was exporting almost 700,000 tons of trash a year to China alone. Overall, China imported 7 million tons of waste from around the world.

Kerbside Collection is a service provided to households, typically in urban and suburban areas of collecting and disposing of household waste and recyclables. It is usually accomplished by personnel using purpose built vehicles to pick up household waste in containers acceptable to or prescribed by the municipality.

Materials Recovery Facility is a specialized plant that receives, separates and prepares recyclable materials for marketing to end-user manufacturers. Generally, there are two different types: clean and dirty materials recovery facilities.

How Sweden is turning its waste into gold (youtube) - Sweden recycles nearly all of its waste with only 1% of its waste going to Landfills. And the waste that is not recycled gets incinerated to produce electricity and heating.

Solid Waste Recycling Facts - EPA (PDF)

Municipal Solid Waste is a waste type consisting of everyday items that are discarded by the public. "Garbage" can also refer specifically to food waste, as in a garbage disposal; the two are sometimes collected separately.

72% of Americans do not know plastics are made from petroleum and 40% believe petroleum plastics will biodegrade at some point. (Insight Marketing and ADM study, April 27, 2007).

Singularity University Student Projects - UpCycle (youtube) - 10% of U.S. oil consumption - approximately 2 million barrels a day - is used to make plastic. (Insight Marketing and ADM study, April 27, 2007) 

Plastic does not biodegrade, but instead goes through the process of photo degradation, where it turns into plastic dust.
(Waste study, Agalita Foundation for Marine Research)

Unwasted: The Future of Business on Earth(youtube)

Disposable Item Time in Months to Biodegrade: Recyclable products when composted properly: 2-3 months. Cotton Rags: 1-5 months. Paper: 2-5 months. Rope: 3-14 months. Orange peels: 6 months. Cigarette butts: 12-144 months. Paper milk cartons (plastic coated): 60 months. Plastic bags: 120-240 months. Leather shoes: 300-480 months. Nylon fabric: 360-480 months. Tin cans: 600-1,200 months. Plastic 6-pack holder rings: 5,400 months. Glass bottles: 12 million months (that means you can use the same glass your entire life, and then pass it on to future generations). Plastic bottles: Forever. List above is from World Wise.

Pollution and Hazardous Waste - Biodegradation

In the U.S., 4.39 pounds of trash per day and up to 56 tons of trash per year are created by the average person. Every year we fill enough garbage trucks to form a line that would stretch from the earth, halfway to the moon. Each day the United States throws away enough trash to fill 63,000 garbage trucks. Almost 1/3 of the waste generated in the U.S. is packaging. Disposable diapers take centuries to biodegrade. The average baby soils about 8,000 of them before toilet training kicks in, adds up to 3.7 million tons of municipal waste each year, up from 350,000 tons in 1970. That means that 2.3 percent of landfill waste in the U.S. is diapers.

Americans throw away 2.5 million plastic bottles every hour. Garbage Patch - Commodification (wiki) - Every year, Americans make enough plastic film to shrink-wrap the state of Texas. Americans throw away enough aluminum cans to rebuild our commercial air fleet every three months, and enough iron and steel to supply all our nation's automakers every day. Throwing away one aluminum can wastes as much energy as if that can were 1/2 full of gasoline. In the U.S., an additional 5 million tons of waste is generated during the holidays. Four million tons of this is wrapping paper and shopping bags.

Americans receive almost 4 million tons of junk mail every year. Most of it winds up in landfills. Americans toss out enough paper and plastic cups, forks and spoons every year to circle the equator 300 times. The average American office worker goes through around 500 disposable cups every year. Nearly 44 million American workers purchase or eat lunch out every weekday. As of 1992, 14 billion pounds of trash were dumped into ocean annually around the world. Forty-three thousand tons of food is thrown out in the United States each day. Sixty-five billion aluminum soda cans are used each year.

In 40 years, less than 10% of plastic has ever been recycled. Oil and gas companies who are the makers of plastic, have known that all along, even as they spent millions of dollars telling the American public the opposite, as way to fend off plastic bans and to keep its sales growing at the cost of peoples lives and the environment. Their own internal records dating back to the 1970s show that industry officials long knew that recycling plastic on a large scale was going to reduce their profits. The industry now produces many more different and more complex kinds of plastics that are more costly to sort, and in many cases, can't be recycled at all. Efforts to reduce plastic consumption are mounting nationwide, but any plan to slow the growth of plastic will face an industry with billions of dollars of future profits at stake. For decades, Americans have been sorting their trash believing that most plastic could be recycled. But the truth is, the vast majority of all plastic produced can't be or won't be recycled. Plastic production overall is now expected to triple by 2050, and once again, the industry is spending money on ads and public relations to promote plastic and recycling. If the public thinks the recycling is working, then they're not going to be as concerned about the environment.

Repurpose

Repurpose is to reuse something for a different purpose. Sometimes altering something to make it more suited for a different purpose. Adapt for use in a different way. Creativity - Positive Thinking.

Repurposing is the process by which an object with one use value is transformed or redeployed as an object with an alternative use value. This kind of activity is as old as human civilization. Multi-Use.

Rehash is old material that is slightly reworked and used again. Present or use over, with no or few changes. Go back over.

Adapting is to change and modify oneself to new or different conditions. Make fit for, or change to suit a new purpose. Adaptation is to enhance the fitness and survival of individuals by adapting, learning and changing to ones environment.

Flexibility in engineering refers to designs that can adapt when external changes occur. Machine flexibility is the different operation types that a machine can perform. Material handling flexibility is the ability to move the products within a manufacturing facility. Operation flexibility is the ability to produce a product in different ways. Process flexibility is the set of products that the system can produce. Product flexibility is the ability to add new products in the system. Routing flexibility is the different routes (through machines and workshops) that can be used to produce a product in the system. Volume flexibility is the ease to profitably increase or decrease the output of an existing system. At firm level, it is the ability of a firm to operate profitably at different output levels. Firms often use volume flexibility as a benchmark to assess their performance vis-à-vis their competitors. Expansion flexibility is the ability to build out the capacity of a system. Program flexibility is the ability to run a system automatically. Production flexibility is the number of products a system currently can produce. Market flexibility is the ability of the system to adapt to market demands.

Reuse

Reuse is to use an item again after it has been used. This includes conventional reuse where the item is used again for the same function, and creative reuse where it is used for a different function. Some of the world’s biggest companies, including Unilever, Nestlé, and PepsiCo, are rolling out reusable packaging for certain products in an attempt to phase out single-use plastics — and to alleviate their own reputations as polluters. Reuse Info-Graph (image).

Reusable Packaging is manufactured of durable materials and is specifically designed for multiple trips and extended life. A reusable package or container is “designed for reuse without impairment of its protective function.” Resealable Packaging is any type of packaging that allows the consumer or user to reseal or reclose the packaging. Often packaging needs to be resealed in order to maintain product freshness or prevent spillage. Reusable packaging allows for multiple uses which can help reduce waste. Restaurant Take Out.

Reusability is the use of existing assets in some form of a particular process, like within the software product development process. Assets are products and by-products of the software development life cycle and include Code, software components, test suites, designs and documentation. Leverage is modifying existing assets as needed to meet specific system requirements. Because reuse implies the creation of a separately maintained version of the assets needed, it is preferred over leverage. Subroutines or functions are the simplest form of reuse. A chunk of code is regularly organized using modules or namespaces into layers. Proponents claim that objects and software components offer a more advanced form of reusability, although it has been tough to objectively measure and define levels or scores of reusability. The ability to reuse relies in an essential way on the ability to build larger things from smaller parts, and being able to identify commonalities among those parts. Reusability is often a required characteristic of platform software. Reusability brings several aspects to software development that do not need to be considered when reusability is not required. Reusability implies some explicit management of build, packaging, distribution, installation, configuration, deployment, maintenance and upgrade issues. If these issues are not considered, software may appear to be reusable from design point of view, but will not be reused in practice. Software reusability more specifically refers to design features of a software element (or collection of software elements) that enhance its suitability for reuse. Many reuse design principles were developed at the WISR workshops. Candidate design features for software reuse include: Adaptable, Brief: small size, Consistency, Correctness, Extensibility, Fast, Flexible, Generic, Localization of volatile (changeable) design assumptions (David Parnas), Modularity, Orthogonality, Parameterization, Simple: low complexity, Stability under changing requirements. Consensus has not yet been reached on this list on the relative importance of the entries nor on the issues which make each one important for a particular class of applications.

Fungible is a product or service that is freely interchangeable with another in satisfying an obligation. Freely exchangeable for or replaceable by another of like nature or kind in the satisfaction of an obligation or purpose.

Restore - Renovate - Recreate

Retrofit is to add a component or accessory to something that did not have it when manufactured.

Retrofitting refers to the addition of new technology or features to older systems. Power plant retrofit, improving power plant efficiency / increasing output / reducing emissions. Home energy retrofit, the improving of existing buildings with energy efficiency equipment. Seismic retrofit, the process of strengthening older buildings in order to make them earthquake resistant. Benefits of a retrofit: Saving on investments while benefiting from new technologies. Optimization of existing plant components. Adaptation of the plant for new or changed products. Increase in piece number and cycle time. Guaranteed spare parts availability. (Replacement and Modernization - R&M)

Improvisation is the process of devising a unique method of solving a problem due to lack of time or resources. In a technical context, this can mean adapting a device for some use other than that which it was designed for, or building a device from unusual components in an ad-hoc fashion. Improvisation in engineering is to solve a problem with the tools and materials immediately at hand. Hacking.

Secondary Market refers to the market for any used goods or assets, or an alternative use for an existing product or asset where the customer base is the second market. Aftermarket (automotive) (wiki). New improved parts.

Reduce

Reduce is a process of elimination that involves reducing the amount of waste produced in society and helps to eliminate the generation of harmful and persistent wastes, supporting the efforts to promote a more sustainable society. Waste minimization involves redesigning products and/or changing societal patterns, concerning consumption and production, of waste generation, to prevent the creation of waste. Moderation.

Recycling Resources

Recycling Hotline Earth 911
1-800-CLEANUP
Recycling Facts
EPA Disposing Appliances Responsibly
Call 2 Recycle
Free Cycle
Reverse Logistics (supply chain)
Recycling Info
Memory X
CG
E.C.A.
Green Dot
Freedom Recycling
Green Plug
Recycle
Renew
Recycle Beds
Recycle (UK)
Ecocycle
Recycle Facts
Ferris Wheel Recycling Center
Recyclaholics

Plastic Bank exchange of plastic for money.

Get Paid to Recycle - Recycle Bank

Greenopolis
Urban Mining
Money Saving Ideas
The Giving Keys
Recycle 4 U
Terra Cycle
Ban the Bottle
National Recycling Coalition
Mattress Recycling
Furniture Recycling
Corporate Recycling
Upcycling
Carpet Recovery
Quest Recycling
Textile Recycling
Hip-Cycle
Green Ideas 
Recycling Facts and Figures
Single Stream Recycling
Reusable Surplus Building Materials
Make a Home Foundation
Repurposed Materials Inc.
Eco-Cycle
i Recycle Phone App Locates recycling places nearby 
I use a pay as you go Smartphone. Saves money and lowers the risk of brain tumors and low sperm count from Microwaves.
Product Stewardship Safely Disposing of Hazardous Products
Resource Efficiency Experts
Environmental Awareness
Converting packing peanuts to battery components
Avoiding Planned Obsolescence
Green Products
Recycle Tennis Balls
Reverse Vending Recycling Machines
Super Grinder! Red Giant Eats a Car in Under 2 Minutes
Giving furniture a second life with IKEA
Tytec Recycling tyres into Reclaimed Steel, Diesel Oil and Carbon.

Electronic Waste - e-waste

Recycle old Electronic Devices - PDF
Electronic Recyclers
E Recycle
Scraps
Biodegradable Electronics (wiki)
Buy and Sell old Electronics
My Green Electronics
Electronics Recycling
Electronics Take Back
No Dirty Gold
The Story of Electronics (2010) (youtube)
Fixing Old Electronics
E-Waste Electronics Recycling NYC Gadget Trash
Electronics Reuse Conference discovers new techniques for refurbishing and recycling electronics efficiently and cost effectively.
Pulling valuable metals from e-waste makes financial sense.

Battery Recycling

The most toxic place on earth - Agbogbloshie (youtube) - More than 6,000 people live on Africa's most toxic rubbish tip, people whose fate begins on our doorstep. In Europe and the USA, the commodity Mafia smuggles containers full of used electrical appliances through customs and in doing so, earns a huge share in a billion-dollar business: trade with resources and illegal scrap. Broken computers, televisions or refrigerators arrive in Ghana's harbours on a daily basis. They are stripped bare in Agbogbloshie and burned. The copper that they peel out of burning cables is worth no more than a few cents for the children of Agbogbloshie Accra.

E-Waste Global Graphic (image) - E.P.A

Safer Disposal of Printed Circuit Boards that are composed of 30% metallic and 70% nonmetallic particles. Metallic components can be recovered from crushed circuit boards by magnetic and high-voltage electrostatic separations, leaving behind nonmetallic particles including resins, reinforcing materials, brominated flame retardants and other additives. Scientists have linked compounds in brominated flame retardants to endocrine disorders and fetal tissue damage.

Biodegradable displays for sustainable electronics. Functioning of the display is based on the so-called electrochromic effect of the initial organic material. When voltage is applied, light absorption is modified and the material changes its color. Electrochromic displays have a low energy consumption and simple component architecture compared to commercially available displays, such as LED, LCD, and E-paper. Another advantage is that these displays can be produced by inkjet printing in a customized, inexpensive, and material-efficient way. Moreover, this process is suited for scaling with a high throughput. The materials used mainly are of natural origin or biocompatible. Sealing with gelatine makes the display adhesive and flexible, such that it can be worn directly on the skin. Compostable Electronics for Printing.

Degradable Electronic Components created from Corn Starch. Degradable Poly(lactic acid)/Metal-Organic Framework Nanocomposites Exhibiting Good Mechanical, Flame Retardant, and Dielectric Properties for the Fabrication of Disposable Electronics.

Revolution electronics recycling company that specializes in the reuse and recycling of e-waste across Canada.

Computer Recycling or e-waste recycling is the disassembly and separation of components and raw materials of waste electronics. Although the procedures of re-use, donation and repair are not strictly recycling, they are other common sustainable ways to dispose of IT waste.

Breakthrough in Dissolving Electronics Holds Promise for Biomedicine.

Researchers develop 3-D-printed biomaterials that degrade on demand.

The waste from discarded electronic gadgets and appliances has increased by two-thirds in East Asia over five years since 2012, posing a growing threat to health and the environment unless proper disposal becomes the norm. The United Nations University says China is the biggest culprit with its electronic waste more than doubling.

Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment Directive is the European Community Directive 2012/19/EU on waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) which, together with the RoHS Directive 2011/65/EU, became European Law in February 2003. The WEEE Directive set collection, recycling and recovery targets for all types of electrical goods, with a minimum rate of 4 kilograms per head of population per annum recovered for recycling by 2009. The RoHS Directive set restrictions upon European manufacturers as to the material content of new electronic equipment placed on the market. The symbol adopted by the European Council to represent waste electrical and electronic equipment comprises a crossed-out wheelie bin with or without a single black line underneath the symbol. The black line indicates that goods have been placed on the market after 2005, when the Directive came into force. Goods without the black line were manufactured between 2002 and 2005. In such instances, these are treated as "historic WEEE" and fall outside reimbursement via producer compliance schemes.

Researchers looked at the life cycle of a mobile phone and found that in the United Kingdom alone, there are 85 million unused phones sitting around, containing $170 million worth of gold among their internal parts. For every 1 million cell phones that are recycled, 35,274 pounds of copper, 772 pounds of silver, 75 pounds of gold, and 33 pounds of palladium can be recovered. But we’re only recycling 8 percent of our phones.

Fair-Phone aims to develop smartphones that are designed and produced with minimal environmental impact.

Recycle your Cell Phone - Donate Cell Phone - Envirofone

The End of Ownership (VPRO Backlight, 47:52)

Reverse Logistics (supplies) - Planned Obsolescence

Warning: Make sure that the electronic recycling company you're using is not sending electronic waste to foreign countries. About 50 million tons of electronic waste were generated worldwide in 2012, that number could grow to 65.4 million tons of e-waste by 2017, with the majority of the waste in the world coming from manufacturing and production. Basel Action Network tracked electronic waste donated to recycling centers in the U.S., and found out that 40 percent of it ended up in dumps in Hong Kong. Poison

Environmentally friendly way of extracting gold from waste electronics has been discovered by Scottish based chemists. (youtube) (7% Gold, 300 tons).

Mail - Junk Mail

Mail is a system for physically transporting postcards, letters, and parcels. Postal Service can be private or public, though many governments place restrictions on private systems. Since the mid-19th century, national postal systems have generally been established as a government monopoly, with a fee on the article prepaid. Proof of payment is usually in the form of an adhesive postage stamp, but a postage meter is also used for bulk mailing. Modern private postal systems are distinguished from national postal agencies by the terms "courier" or "delivery service". Postal authorities often have functions aside transporting letters. In some countries, a postal, telegraph and telephone (PTT) service oversees the postal system, in addition to telephone and telegraph systems. Some countries' postal systems allow for savings accounts and handle applications for passports. The Universal Postal Union (UPU), established in 1874, includes 192 member countries and sets the rules for international mail exchanges. List of National Postal Services (wiki).

USPS: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO) (youtube)

Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act requires the United States Postal Service to make annual payments of between $5.4 billion and $5.8 billion to the Postal Service Retiree Health Benefits Fund from 2007 to 2016. This provision of the law has been highly controversial, as no other federal agency is required to pre-fund future retirees' health benefits in this manner. The consequences of this funding requirement have been blamed for the perilous financial condition of the Postal Service, but no consensus has been reached on its fiscal effects, given other contributors such as stiff competition and other economic circumstances. In June 2011, the United States Postal Service had to suspend its weekly payment of $115 million into the fund because it had reached $8 billion in debt and the retirement plan had a surplus of $6.9 billion.

Postal Regulatory Commission is an independent regulatory agency created by the Postal Reorganization Act of 1970. Like the Postal Service, it was defined in law as an independent establishment of the executive branch. The Postal Reorganization Act of 1970 created the PRC—originally named the Postal Rate Commission—to set the rates for different classes of mail by holding hearings on rates proposed by the USPS. From 1970 through 2006, the PRC also had oversight authority over the USPS in areas besides rates changes. Specifically, that additional oversight consisted of conducting public, on-the-record hearings concerning proposed mail classification or major service changes and of recommending actions to be taken by the postal Governors.

1.7 Million Packages are stolen or go missing every day, adding up to more than $25 million in lost goods and services,
90,000 Packages Disappear Daily in N.Y.C.

Express Mail is an expedited mail delivery service for which the customer pays a premium for faster delivery. Express mail is a service for domestic and international mail, and is in most nations governed by the country's own postal administration. Since 1999, the international express delivery services are governed by the EMS Cooperative.

Universal Postal Union was established by the Treaty of Bern of 1874, is a specialized agency of the United Nations (UN) that coordinates postal policies among member nations, in addition to the worldwide postal system. The UPU contains four bodies consisting of the Congress, the Council of Administration (CA), the Postal Operations Council (POC) and the International Bureau (IB). It also oversees the Telematics and Express Mail Service (EMS) cooperatives. Each member agrees to the same terms for conducting international postal duties. The UPU's headquarters are located in Bern, Switzerland.

"No Free Papers or No Handbills" Tell your mail carrier to stop putting junk mail in your mail box. Place this note on or in your mailbox.

Junk Mail Stoppers - Get Rid of Junk Mail (wikihow) - Postal Service by the Numbers

Post No Bills refers to many city laws which forbid the posting of handbills, or any type of signs on public or private property.

Ban the Phonebook and save 5 million trees each year. (19 billion catalogs = 53 million trees 56 billion gallons of waste water).

Do Not Call (spam emails)

Catalog Choice - Donate Magazines - Opt Out Prescreen - Direct Marketing

Some Postal Service Workers when delivering the mail put the mail letters in the mailbox so that the letters fall out when you open the mail box. What kind of scumbag would do that? They're mad because I ask them not to give me unsolicited mail. So they think that they have a right to be a scumbag because I don't want waste and abuse. Ignorance. Postal workers are being abused and they are taking it out on people. They need to improve training and add education knowledge as part of the training.

Going Postal is an American English slang phrase referring to becoming extremely and uncontrollably angry, often to the point of violence, and usually in a workplace environment. List of Postal Killings (wiki)

Fragging is the deliberate killing or attempted killing by a soldier of a fellow soldier, usually a superior officer or non-commissioned officer (NCO).

All that garbage that comes in the mail. Junk Mail should be a crime. People should not be allowed to use peoples time and use our resources to send people something in the mail they don't need. What a waste of paper to spend it on useless information. And the news-papers are not any better. News-Papers have about 10% useful information, with the other 90% is of the information being irrelevant. This garbage and waste should not be forced on people. It's disrespectful to waste resources and it's disrespectful to waste peoples time with Useless Information, especially when some images are degrading to humans on several levels. All printed media should be 90% useful information. And the other 10% should be clearly labeled as irrelevant information. This would increase everyone's knowledge about their community and offer everyone a chance to communicate important information. When people are more informed about their surroundings, the surroundings will always improve because they are now more aware of the possibilities. That's just natural, so why are we acting so unnatural? Save the Post Office (but not the scumbag workers who make them look bad).

Landfills - Waste

Waste Collector is a person employed by a public or private enterprise to collect and remove refuse (waste) and recyclables from residential, commercial, industrial or other collection site for further processing and disposal. (Garbage Man).

Waste Disposal is all the activities and actions required to manage waste from its inception to its final disposal.

Amsterdam Doesn't Have Garbage Days. With the underground containers found in most neighborhoods in Amsterdam.

Landfills is a site for the disposal of waste materials by burial and the oldest form of waste treatment (although the burial part is modern; historically, refuse was just left in piles or thrown into pits). Historically, landfills have been the most common method of organized waste disposal and remain so in many places around the world. Also known as dump, rubbish dump, garbage dump or dumping ground.

There is No Away. When you through something away it does not mean that it goes away. In reality, you are just giving your problem or trash to someone else. And what they do with that waste may do more damage then it needs to. So your waste will eventually come back to haunt you and cause a disease that you will die from. So don't transfer problems, learn how to solve problems so that you or anyone else has to deal with that problem ever again. The U.S. produces more than 250 million tons of waste per year—30 percent of the world’s waste, though it makes up only 4 percent of the Earth’s population.

Food Waste - Water Waste - Trashopolis S02 E04: Los Angeles (youtube)

Hazardous Waste is waste that has substantial or potential threats to public health or the environment. Characteristic hazardous wastes are materials that are known or tested to exhibit one or more of the following hazardous traits: Ignitability, Reactivity, Corrosivity and Toxicity. Listed hazardous wastes are materials specifically listed by regulatory authorities as hazardous wastes which are from non-specific sources, specific sources, or discarded chemical products. Hazardous wastes may be found in different physical states such as gaseous, liquids, or solids. A hazardous waste is a special type of waste because it cannot be disposed of by common means like other by-products of our everyday lives. Depending on the physical state of the waste, treatment and solidification processes might be required. Radioactive Waste.

Municipal Solid Waste commonly known as Trash or Garbage in the United States and Rubbish in Britain, is a waste type consisting of everyday items that are discarded by the public. "Garbage" can also refer specifically to food waste, as in a garbage disposal; the two are sometimes collected separately. In the European Union, the semantic definition is 'mixed municipal waste,' given waste code 20 03 01 in the European Waste Catalog. Although the waste may originate from a number of sources that has nothing to do with a municipality, the traditional role of municipalities in collecting and managing these kinds of waste have produced the particular etymology 'municipal.'

By-Product is a secondary product derived from a production process, manufacturing process or chemical reaction; it is not the primary product or service being produced.

Joint Product is a product that results jointly with other products from processing a common input. A joint product can be the output of a process with fixed or variable proportions.

Waste Management are the activities and actions required to manage waste from its inception to its final disposal. This includes the collection, transport, treatment and disposal of waste, together with monitoring and regulation of the waste management process. Waste can be solid, liquid, or gaseous and each type has different methods of disposal and management. Waste management deals with all types of waste, including industrial, biological and household. In some cases, waste can pose a threat to human health. Waste is produced by human activity, for example, the extraction and processing of raw materials. Waste management is intended to reduce adverse effects of waste on human health, the environment or aesthetics. Waste management practices are not uniform among countries (developed and developing nations); regions (urban and rural areas), and residential and industrial sectors can all take different approaches. A large portion of waste management practices deal with municipal solid waste (MSW) which is the bulk of the waste that is created by household, industrial, and commercial activity.

Waste Hierarchy The evaluation of processes that protect the environment alongside resource and energy consumption to most favorable to least favorable actions. The hierarchy establishes preferred program priorities based on sustainability. To be sustainable, waste management cannot be solved only with technical end-of-pipe solutions and an integrated approach is necessary. The waste management hierarchy indicates an order of preference for action to reduce and manage waste, and is usually presented diagrammatically in the form of a pyramid. The hierarchy captures the progression of a material or product through successive stages of waste management, and represents the latter part of the life-cycle for each product. The aim of the waste hierarchy is to extract the maximum practical benefits from products and to generate the minimum amount of waste. The proper application of the waste hierarchy can have several benefits. It can help prevent emissions of greenhouse gases, reduces pollutants, save energy, conserves resources, create jobs and stimulate the development of green technologies.

New Garbage-Sorting Bots - Max-AI Waste Sorting Robot

Safe and Sustainable Recycling - Recycling

Sanitation (city management)

Incinerated is a waste treatment process that involves the combustion of organic substances contained in waste materials. Incineration and other high-temperature waste treatment systems are described as "thermal treatment". Incineration of waste materials converts the waste into ash, flue gas and heat. The ash is mostly formed by the inorganic constituents of the waste, and may take the form of solid lumps or particulates carried by the flue gas. The flue gases must be cleaned of gaseous and particulate pollutants before they are dispersed into the atmosphere. In some cases, the heat generated by incineration can be used to generate electric power.

Nations Generate 1.3 Billion Tons of Waste. That’s expected to soar to 4 billion tons by 2100. Seventy percent of U.S. municipal solid waste gets buried in Landfills. 108,234 tons of waste per day is incinerated.
Landfills continue to dwindle in number. In 1979, there were an estimated 18,500 landfills in the nation. In 1988, there were
8000 landfills, in 2005 there were 1,654. (EPA figures)

3 million working refrigerators are thrown away annually in the U.S. 1.5 computers are thrown away annually, with 90% still working. Electronics Recycling.

1.5 Million Tires are Dumped Every Year

Destructive Distillation is the chemical process involving the decomposition of feedstock by heating it to a high temperature; the term generally applies to processing of organic material in the absence of air or in the presence of limited amounts of oxygen or other reagents, catalysts, or solvents, such as steam or phenols. It is an application of pyrolysis. The process breaks up or 'cracks' large molecules. Coke, coal gas, gas carbon, coal tar, Buckminsterfullerene, ammonia liquor, and "coal oil" historically, are examples of commercial products of the destructive distillation of coal.

Depolymerization plant India - waste plastic and used tires to fuel (youtube)

The Mafia Is Trashing Italy (video)

Dioxin are compounds that are highly toxic environmental persistent organic pollutants (POPs). They are mostly by-products of various industrial processes - or, in case of dioxin-like PCBs and PBBs, part of intentionally produced mixtures.

Each American exerts three times as much pressure on the natural environment as the global average.

America is home to 5% of the world's population, yet it consumes 1/3 of the Earth's timber and paper; making paper the
largest part of the waste stream at 37.5% of the total waste stream. Packaging adds 29 million tons of non-biodegradable waste to landfills every year. 11.8% of all US annual municipal solid waste is plastic.

The Average American Creates 4.5 pounds of Trash per Day.

Activist Wears A Month's Worth Of Trash To Visualize Our Wasteful Habits (youtube) Trash Me with Rob Greenfield.

Clean Air Council - Waste to Energy - Plastic Waste

The Crayon Initiative Every year, up to 75,000 pounds of crayons get thrown away by restaurants and schools.

We are Swimming in Garbage, a tsunami of waste that is poisoning the land, the air, the water and the animals we eat.

Municipal Solid Waste (MSW)—more commonly known as trash or garbage—consists of everyday items we use and then throw away, such as product packaging, grass clippings, furniture, clothing, bottles, food scraps, newspapers, appliances, paint, and batteries. This comes from our homes, schools, hospitals, and businesses. 

Pollution (toxins - poison)

Landfill Diversion is the process of diverting waste from landfills. The success of landfill diversion can be measured by comparison of the size of the landfill from one year to the next. If the landfill grows minimally or remains the same, then policies covering landfill diversion are successful. For example, currently in the United States there are 3000 landfills. A measure of the success of landfill diversion would be if that number remains the same or is reduced. In 2009, it was recorded that the national average of landfill diversion in the United States was 33.8%, while San Francisco had implemented the most effective policies and had recorded a landfill diversion rate of 77%. By diverting landfills we can preserve our natural resources.

Americans Generated about 251 Million Tons of Trash in 2012. The average person generates 4.3 pounds of waste per day. Approximately 55% of 220 million tons of waste generated each year in the United States ends up in one of the over 3,500 landfills. Current Global MSW generation levels are approximately 1.3 billion tonnes per year, and are expected to increase to approximately 2.2 billion tonnes per year by 2025. Waste by Country (wiki) - Municipal Solid Waste (PDF)

Japanese town Kamikatsu will be Zero waste by 2020, No Trash. At the moment they have 34 categories of recycling. 80% of there waste gets reused, recycled and composted, and only 20% goes to landfill.

Use recyclable paper products and if you have to use Paper Towels buy the ones that can give smaller pieces. I never but paper towels anymore. I use a dish towel, hanky or cotton dinner napkins instead of paper towels. EPA studies indicate the average American generates about 1,600 pounds of trash per year more than half goes to a Landfill.

Reclaimed Timber
Forest Preservation - Trees
Hemp Products
Seventh Generation
Green Field Paper
Cardboard Design
Humus (soil)
Living Paper
Turn your beer bottles into glass cups 5 easy steps

China — more than 520,000 tons of Garbage a day. Incinerators burning the garbage are well below EU standards, and our technology is ahead of incinerators in the U.S..The heat from burning garbage at more than 1,000 degrees Celsius produces enough electricity to power more than 140,000 homes. China's pledge to burn 40 percent of its garbage by 2020, because most incinerators in China are operated by private companies burning garbage at the equivalent of $3 a ton. World Bank report, in eight years, the Chinese will throw away nearly 1.4 million tons of garbage per day — twice as much as garbage as Americans are expected to generate.

Zero Waste Sending nothing to landfill is a foreseeable future.

No Impact Man
No Impact Project
No Impact Film
Green Products
Whittled Down
Carbon Neutral Lifestyle with Doug Fine (youtube)
Small Homes
Low Impact Living
Sustainability 
Minimizing Entropy
Living Trash Free

The average American produces more than four pounds of trash and recyclables per day, about 1,500 pounds per year.

My first year of living trash-and recycling-free, I produced a little more than seven and a half pounds of waste.

Sweden sends less than 1% of household trash ends up in landfills. This is in part due to the 32 waste-to-energy (WTE) plants that have been set up across the country.

A cow's flatulence could fill a 55-gallon (250-litre) bag with methane in one day.

Textiles. We’re buying more than 80 billion new items of clothing each year, and we’re tossing nearly as much to make room for them. We purchase 400 percent more clothing today than we did 20 years ago. An estimated 14.3 million tons of textiles were generated in 2012. The average American tosses 82 pounds of textile waste each year, which adds up to 11 million tons of the stuff from our country alone. Textiles aren’t biodegradable, which means they sit in landfills for at least 200 years. As a result, they release harmful gases into the air. Clothes - Sustainable Clothing.

Textile Recycling is the process of recovering fiber, yarn or fabric and reprocessing the textile material into useful products. Textile waste products are gathered from different sources and are then sorted and processed depending on their condition, composition, and resale value. The end result of this processing can vary, from the production of energy and chemicals to new articles of clothing. Due to a recent trend of over consumption and waste generation in global fashion culture, textile recycling has become a key focus of worldwide sustainability efforts. Globalization has led to a "fast fashion" trend where clothes are considered by many consumers to be disposable due to their increasingly lower prices. The development of recycled technology has allowed the textile industry to produce vast amounts of products that deplete natural resources. Textile recycling techniques have been developed to cope with this increase of textile waste and new solutions are still being researched. Recently, certain clothing retailers have embraced this recycling effort and now publicly advertise products that are made of recycled textile material in accordance with shifting consumer expectations. Wear Donate Recycle.

Consumables - Consumerism - Consumptionism

True Cost Movie - Disposable Products.

Mountains of Paper Waste could lead to new U.S. Manufacturing Jobs. About 50 million tons of Lignin -- or structural part of a plant -- piles up each year as waste from the U.S. paper and pulping industry, only about 2 percent of the lignin waste is currently recycled into new products making carbon fiber material. Through fractionation, we separated lignin into different parts, and then we found that certain parts of lignin are very good for high quality carbon fiber manufacturing "And the entire supply chain is in the United States, which means the jobs would be here. The biomass is grown, harvested and transported here.

Plastic Waste Pollution

I never buy bottled water, I use a reusable water bottle and filter the water if needed.

Recycle Your Brita Water Filter Cartridges and Plastic Pitchers
Gimme 5 Locations.

People spend 90 billion dollars a year on bottled water. Stop buying bottled water. If having a party or sport function try having an advertiser supply reusable water bottles. Pens and Sports Bottle World are two companies that will print anything on a reusable water bottle. Americans thrown away 30 billion plastic bottles every year and 30 million everyday.

Bamboo Bottle - Biodegradables

Use a reusable grocery bag or a backpack when food shopping and buying food.

Reuse this Bag - Green Movers - Custom Grocery Bag

Tasini is a foldable reusable bag inside and attached to a keychain.

Ban Single-Use Plastic. Swap out plastic for reusable and biodegradable straws and cutlery. Europe produces 25 million tons of plastic waste annually with less than 30 percent of it recycled. 2014, Americans wasted about 33.6 million tons of plastic, approximately only 9 percent of which was recycled.

Coca-Cola Named The World’s Most Polluting Brand … Again - Coca-Cola's plastic secrets | DW Documentary (youtube) - Evil Partnerships with Oil (collusion - sellout).

Americans toss 185 pounds of plastic per person each year while also going through 13 billion pounds of paper towels as a nation.

US Geological Survey Finds It's Raining Plastic in The Rocky Mountains - It is Raining Plastic.

Bees Wrap is the natural alternative to plastic wrap for food storage. Bee's Wrap is made of GOTS-certified organic cotton, sustainably sourced beeswax, organic jojoba oil, and tree resin. This combination of ingredients creates a malleable food wrap that can be used again and again. Wash your Bee's Wrap in cool water with a mild dish soap. Beer bottles made of paper could be a reality soon. No Plastic Waste.

Polydiketoenamine or PDK is a polymer discovered in 2019 that can be recycled over and over without loss of performance. Researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory studied PDK and published the results of the study in Nature Chemistry in April 2019. Submersion in an acidic solution breaks down the polymer to its original monomers and separates the monomers from additives. Replaced static covalent bond with a dynamic covalent bond.

Polyhydroxyalkanoates or PHAs are polyesters produced in nature by numerous microorganisms, including through bacterial fermentation of sugars or lipids. When produced by bacteria they serve as both a source of energy and as a carbon store. More than 150 different monomers can be combined within this family to give materials with extremely different properties. These plastics are biodegradable and are used in the production of bioplastics. They can be either thermoplastic or elastomeric materials, with melting points ranging from 40 to 180 °C. The mechanical properties and biocompatibility of PHA can also be changed by blending, modifying the surface or combining PHA with other polymers, enzymes and inorganic materials, making it possible for a wider range of applications.

Polyethylene Terephthalate commonly abbreviated PET, PETE, or the obsolete PETP or PET-P, is the most common thermoplastic polymer resin of the polyester family and is used in fibres for clothing, containers for liquids and foods, thermoforming for manufacturing, and in combination with glass fibre for engineering resins. It may also be referred to by the brand names Terylene in the UK, Lavsan in Russia and the former Soviet Union, and Dacron in the US Bio-PET is the bio-based counterpart of PET. The majority of the world's PET production is for synthetic fibres (in excess of 60%), with bottle production accounting for about 30% of global demand. In the context of textile applications, PET is referred to by its common name, polyester, whereas the acronym PET is generally used in relation to packaging. Polyester makes up about 18% of world polymer production and is the fourth-most-produced polymer after polyethylene (PE), polypropylene (PP) and polyvinyl chloride (PVC). PET consists of polymerized units of the monomer ethylene terephthalate, with repeating (C10H8O4) units. PET is commonly recycled, and has the number "1" as its resin identification code (RIC). Depending on its processing and thermal history, polyethylene terephthalate may exist both as an amorphous (transparent) and as a semi-crystalline polymer. The semicrystalline material might appear transparent (particle size less than 500 nm) or opaque and white (particle size up to a few micrometers) depending on its crystal structure and particle size. The monomer bis(2-hydroxyethyl) terephthalate can be synthesized by the esterification reaction between terephthalic acid and ethylene glycol with water as a byproduct (this is also known as a condensation reaction), or by transesterification reaction between ethylene glycol and dimethyl terephthalate (DMT) with methanol as a byproduct. Polymerization is through a polycondensation reaction of the monomers (done immediately after esterification/transesterification) with water as the byproduct. What is Polyethylene terephthalate (or PET)? (youtube).

New way of Recycling Plant-Based Plastics instead of letting them rot in Landfill. Scientists have developed new way to break down plant-based plastics into their original building blocks, potentially allowing products to be recycled repeatedly without a loss in the quality of the plastic.

Plant-Based Plastic is a type of bioplastic that is created from agricultural scraps, often from corn, sugarcane, wheat or food waste. The term 'plant-based' refers to the source of the material itself, not how the resulting plastic will behave after it's been thrown away.

Bioplastic are plastic materials produced from renewable biomass sources, such as vegetable fats and oils, corn starch, straw, woodchips, sawdust, recycled food waste, etc. Bio-Plastics can be made from agricultural by-products and also from used plastic bottles and other containers using microorganisms. Common plastics, such as fossil-fuel plastics (also called petrobased polymers) are derived from petroleum or natural gas. Not all bioplastics are biodegradable nor biodegrade more readily than commodity fossil-fuel derived plastics. Bioplastics are usually derived from sugar derivatives, including starch, cellulose, and lactic acid. As of 2014, bioplastics represented approximately 0.2% of the global polymer market (300 million tons).

Sonali Bag or Golden Bag or Jute Polymer or Eco-friendly Poly Bag is a cellulose-based biodegradable bioplastic alternative to plastic bags, particularly polythene bags, developed in Bangladesh by Mubarak Ahmad Khan. The cellulose used in Sonali Bags is extracted from jute, a major vegetable fiber crop grown across the globe.

Rent Moving Boxes - Green Products - Made in America

Environmentally-friendly' tableware harms marine animals. Research also reveals that bioplastics do not degrade rapidly in a marine environment.

It takes 12 Million Barrels of Oil to make 88.5 Billion Plastic Bags. Half the amount of plastic made since 1950 was manufactured in the last 13 years.

Toxic Free Canada - War Waste

Hazardous chemicals such as bromine, antimony and lead are finding their way into food-contact items and other everyday products because manufacturers are using recycled electrical equipment as a source of black plastic, according to a new study.

Use Tupperware or Pyrex Glass Containers instead of Zip Lock Bags, Aluminum Foil or Plastic Wrap for food storage.

Bulk is Green

Biodegradable Compostable 13 Gallon Tall Kitchen Bags
Biodegradable’ Plastics Are A Big Fat Lie

United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP)

New Biomaterial could replace Plastic Laminates, greatly Reduce Pollution. Paperboard coated with the biomaterial exhibited strong oil and water barrier properties. The coating also resisted toluene, heptane and salt solutions and exhibited improved wet and dry mechanical and water vapor barrier properties.

Scientists have made a next-generation plastic that can be recycled again and again into new materials of any color, shape, or form. Researchers have designed a recyclable plastic that can be disassembled into its constituent parts at the molecular level, and then reassembled into a different shape, texture, and color again and again without loss of performance or quality.

If I could get Unpackaged Food and pick up my food in Reusable Containers I could cut down on trash. - Take-Out.

There's more than enough plastic on the planet already to make all of our products for the next century. We just need to recycle, just like life does already.

Plastic Recycling is the process of recovering scrap or waste plastic and reprocessing the material into useful products. Since plastic is non-biodegradable, recycling is a part of global efforts to reduce plastic in the waste stream, especially the approximately 8 Million Metric Tonnes of waste plastic that enter the Earth's ocean every year. This helps to reduce the high rates of plastic pollution. People around the world use more than a Trillion Plastic Bags every year. They're made of a notoriously resilient kind of plastic called polyethylene that can take decades to break down.

Only 2 Percent of the 78 Million Tons of Manufactured Plastics are currently Recycled into similar products because polyethylene (PE) and polypropylene (PP), which account for two-thirds of the world's plastics, have different chemical structures and cannot be efficiently repurposed together. 40 percent of plastics winds up in landfills.

Humans have created 8.3 Billion Metric Tons of Plastics since large-scale production of the synthetic materials began in the early 1950s, and most of it now resides in landfill and the natural environment. Global production of plastics increased from 2 million metric tons in 1950 to over 400 million metric tons in 2015. If current trends continue, roughly 12 billion metric tons of plastic waste will be in landfills or the natural environment by 2050. 42 percent of plastic goes for packaging.

Plastic-Bottle-Cutter Tool that strips plastic strings from plastic bottles that reuses plastic bottles of all kinds, turning them into convenient universal handy ropes.

Agilyx breaks down plastic into pellets that can make products and polystyrene into oil.

Plastic Roads (mixing recycled plastic when making new roads helps them last longer with no potholes)

Polymer Additive could Revolutionize Plastics Recycling.
Repreve.
Recycling Plastic Bottles into Polyester Yarn on "How It's Made" (youtube)

Neri Oxman: Design at the intersection of technology and biology (video and text)

Chitin is a long-chain polymer of an N-acetylglucosamine, a derivative of glucose, and is found in many places throughout the natural world. It is a characteristic component of the cell walls of fungi, the exoskeletons of arthropods such as crustaceans (e.g., crabs, lobsters and shrimps) and insects, the radulae of molluscs, and the beaks and internal shells of cephalopods, including squid and octopuses and on the scales and other soft tissues of fish and lissamphibians. The structure of chitin is comparable to the polysaccharide cellulose, forming crystalline nanofibrils or whiskers. In terms of function, it may be compared to the protein keratin. Chitin has proved versatile for several medicinal, industrial and biotechnological purposes.

Chitosan is a replacement for plastics that is 100 percent recyclable.

Scientists at NUS have developed the world’s first Aerogel made from Recycled Plastics. Constructed from old soft-drink bottles, the aerogel could find useful applications in everything from sound proofing to oil spills, and could also be a novel way to combat the global plastic waste epidemic.

Commodification is the transformation of goods, services, ideas and people into commodities, or objects of trade.

2 Million Die Every Year around the world from Polluted and Contaminated Water.  Article 31 - Water Safety.

The U.N. estimates that it would take 30 billion dollars to bring safe clean drinking water for everyone on the planet.

Lignin - Free Flo - Project Kaisei The Plastiki - Tapped the Film

The Story of Bottled Water (2010) (youtube)

Only 7 Percent of Plastic Waste in the United States is Recycled each Year.

Plastic 2 Oil

Bioplastic Created from Shrimp Shells - Bio-Plastics

California Bans Plastic Bags

Bag it 2011 (video on hulu - 1 hr. 18 min )
Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation
Our campaign to ban plastic bags in Bali (video and text)

Oil from Plastic
Man Transforms Plastic Containers Back Into Oil (youtube)
Fuel From Plastic Waste (youtube) - Cynar Plastic Energy Limited
Pyrolysis (wiki)
Roads Made of Recycled Plastic
Seabin Project

Billions of pounds of plastic waste are littering the world's oceans. Now, a Ph.D. organic chemist and a sailboat captain report that they are developing a process to reuse certain plastics, transforming them from worthless trash into a valuable diesel fuel with a small mobile reactor. They envision the technology could someday be implemented globally on land and possibly placed on boats to convert ocean waste plastic into fuel to power the vessels.

Millions of tons of plastic waste could be turned into clean fuels, other products. Chemical conversion process could transform polyolefin waste.

Nineteen National Parks – from the Grand Canyon to Zion – have banned the sale of plastic water bottles, replacing them with refillable bottles and free tap water. In Zion National, they're eliminating 60,000 bottles a year.

Saltwater Brewery Has Created Six-Pack Holders That Can Be Eaten By Marine Life.

Plastic Made Annually: 30 million tons in the USA, 5 million tons in the UK and 1.5 million tons in Australia.

Sawatdee Silibagz - Silicone Rubber

"Pollution Starts at your Front Door"

Great Pacific Garbage Patch, has been growing since 1950. Floating toxic plastic garbage, twice the size of Texas, is growing in the pacific between California and Hawaii. Garbage Island (video).

The Ocean Cleanup OVER 5 TRILLION PIECES OF PLASTIC CURRENTLY LITTER THE OCEAN. Trash accumulates in 5 ocean garbage patches, the largest one is between Hawaii and California.

Plastic Paradise: The Great Pacific Garbage Patch (2014) (video)

Plastics are in 90 percent of Seabirds Guts.

Aegean Rebreath

Countries that Pollute the Oceans the most.

The Trash Stew is 80 Percent Plastic and Weighs more than 3.5 Million Tons.

Midway Journey - Great Lakes.

Plastic Rain Is the New Acid Rain. Researchers find that over 1,000 metric tons of microplastic fall on 11 protected areas in the US annually, equivalent to over 120 million plastic water bottles. Invisible menace is actually blowing through the air and falling via raindrops: Microplastic particles, tiny chunks (by definition, less than 5 millimeters long) of fragmented plastic bottles and microfibers that fray from clothes, all pollutants that get caught up in Earth’s atmospheric systems and deposited in the wilderness. After collecting rainwater and air samples for 14 months, they calculated that over 1,000 metric tons of microplastic particles fall into 11 protected areas in the western US each year. That’s the equivalent of over 120 million plastic water bottles.

Micro-Plastics

The majority of the plastic in the oceans are micro-plastics, which are consumed by small fish who are then eaten by the fish that people will eat. 5 Trillion Plastic Pieces - Brain Damage in Fish affected by Plastic Nanoparticles.

Microplastics in Rivers - War Waste - Synthetic Fibers

Plastic waste Disintegrates into Nano-Sized Particles known as Nanoplastics. The sun's UV rays contribute to the degradation, as do waves, which cause plastic waste to grind against stones on the water's edge, against the sea floor or against other debris. Plastic nano-sized particles are a few millionths of a millimetre, i.e. extremely small particles, so small that they have been shown to reach far into living organisms' bodies and can enter the brains of fish and that this causes brain damage which probably disturbs fish behavior.

Microplastics are small plastic particles in the environment. While there is some contention over their size, the U.S. National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration classifies microplastics as less than 5 mm in diameter. They come from a variety of sources, including cosmetics, clothing, and industrial processes. Toxins.

Simulated sunlight reveals how 98% of plastics at sea go missing each year. They found that simulated sunlight increased the amount of dissolved carbon in the water, making those tiny plastic particles tinier. Trillions of plastic fragments are afloat at sea, which cause large "garbage patches" to form in rotating ocean currents called subtropical gyres. As a result, impacts on ocean life are increasing and affecting organisms from large mammals to bacteria at the base of the ocean food web. Despite this immense accumulation of plastics at sea, it only accounts for 1 to 2 percent of plastic debris inputs to the ocean. The fate of this missing plastic and its impact on marine life remains largely unknown.

Marine Scientists find Toxic Bacteria on Microplastics retrieved from tropical waters. When these tiny pieces of plastics are ingested by marine organisms, they may accumulate and be transferred up the food chain.

Scientists find Highest ever Level of Microplastics on Seafloor. Researchers have found the highest levels of microplastic ever recorded on the seafloor, with up to 1.9 million pieces in a thin layer covering just one square meter. We discovered that microplastics are not uniformly distributed across the study area; instead they are distributed by powerful seafloor currents which concentrate them in certain areas.

Micro-Plastic Particles threaten Fish Larvae. Researchers have found that larval fish exposed to microplastic particles during development displayed changed behaviors and stunted growth which lead to greatly increased mortality rates. The researchers discovered that larval perch that had access to microplastic particles only ate plastic and ignored their natural food source of free-swimming zooplankton.

Mussels, oysters and scallops have the highest levels of microplastic contamination among seafood, a new study reveals. The research -- led by researchers at Hull York Medical School and the University of Hull -- looked at more than 50 studies between 2014 and 2020 to investigate the levels of microplastic contamination globally in fish and shellfish.

Plastic is blowing in the wind. The discovery of microplastics in the air above the ocean reveals the spread of this hazardous pollution. As the plastic in our oceans breaks up into smaller and smaller bits without breaking down chemically, the resulting microplastics are becoming a serious ecological problem. The researchers detected high levels of common plastics -- polystyrene, polyethylene, polypropylene and more.

Food Quality Effects on Zooplankton Growth and Energy Transfer in Pelagic Freshwater Food Webs.

Natural environmental conditions facilitate the uptake of microplastics into living cells. The environment is polluted by microplastics worldwide. A research team has now discovered that microplastic particles find their way into living cells more easily if they were exposed to natural aquatic environments, i.e. fresh water and seawater. Biomolecules occurring in the water are deposited on the microplastic surfaces, which promote the internalization of the particles into cells.

An estimated 24,000 tons of plastics are Ingested by Fish in the North Pacific alone each year.

Fish Food is consumed as food in virtually all regions around the world. Fish has been an important source of protein and other nutrients for humans from time immemorial. In culinary and fishery contexts, fish may include shellfish, such as molluscs, crustaceans and echinoderms. English does not distinguish between fish as an animal and the food prepared from it, as it does with pig vs. pork or cow vs. beef. Some other languages do, as in the Spanish peces versus pescado. The modern English word for fish comes from the Old English word fisc (plural: fiscas) which was pronounced as it is today. English also has the term seafood, which covers fish found in the seas and oceans as well as other marine life used as food.

Seafood is any form of sea life regarded as food by humans. Seafood prominently includes fish and shellfish. Shellfish include various species of molluscs, crustaceans, and echinoderms. Historically, sea mammals such as whales and dolphins have been consumed as food, though that happens to a lesser extent in modern times. Edible sea plants, such as some seaweeds and microalgae, are widely eaten as seafood around the world, especially in Asia (see the category of sea vegetables). In North America, although not generally in the United Kingdom, the term "seafood" is extended to fresh water organisms eaten by humans, so all edible aquatic life may be referred to as seafood. For the sake of completeness, this article includes all edible aquatic life.

Fisheries and aquaculture support the livelihoods of an estimated 540 million people and is the most-traded of food commodities, worth a record $102 billion in 2008. world production of fish and fish products rose from 140 million tonnes in 2007 to 145 million tonnes in 2009. Fish contributes to at least 50 percent of total animal protein intake in some small island developing states.

Somewhere between 15 trillion and 51 trillions pieces of plastic litters the world’s oceans, that’s three to 10 times more plastic than scientists had previously estimated.

Humans leak a staggering 8 million metric tons of plastic into the ocean each year, according to research published in Science Magazine. If our behavior doesn’t change, Ocean Conservancy says, we’ll double that rate in just 10 years.

China, Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam are spewing out as much as 60 percent of the plastic waste that enters the world’s seas

Water Wheel Garbage Skimmer (youtube) - Since May 2014, it has removed 40 tons of trash from the harbor. Solar-Powered

Floating Water Drone Eats Garbage Waste Shark Aquadrones in the port of Rotterdam.

2 young scientists Break Down Plastic with Bacteria (youtube)

Galleria mellonella, commonly known as a wax worm can transformed the plastic into ethylene glycol, which is commonly used in antifreeze. The process of biodegrading both beeswax and polyethylene involves breaking strong carbon bonds bacteria in its gut.

How the oceans can clean themselves: Boyan Slat at TEDxDelft (youtube)
Boyan Slat Robotic Ocean Vacuum
Ocean Gyre's
Floating Boom Cleans Ocean
The Los Cerritos Wetlands Stewardship Program
Cleaning the Oceans one Marina at a Time

Coastkeeper and Surfrider Foundation volunteers cleared nearly five tons of trash from San Diego beaches this year, nearly a ton more than last year, organizers said. In 82 cleanups, 6,489 volunteers cleaned 9,544 pounds of trash in 2013, the organizations stated in a year-end report. That’s 1,950 more pounds than they collected in 2012.

What if you could turn plastic trash into cash?: David Katz (video and text)

Marine Debris is human-created waste that has deliberately or accidentally been released in a lake, sea, ocean or waterway. Floating oceanic debris tends to accumulate at the center of gyres and on coastlines, frequently washing aground, when it is known as beach litter or tidewrack. Deliberate disposal of wastes at sea is called ocean dumping. Naturally occurring debris, such as driftwood, are also present. With the increasing use of plastic, human influence has become an issue as many types of plastics do not biodegrade. Waterborne plastic poses a serious threat to fish, seabirds, marine reptiles, and marine mammals, as well as to boats and coasts. Dumping, container spillages, litter washed into storm drains and waterways and wind-blown landfill waste all contribute to this problem. In efforts to prevent and mediate marine debris and pollutants, laws and policies have been adopted internationally. Depending on relevance to the issues and various levels of contribution, some countries have introduced more specified protection policies.

Beach buoys deployed to detect water contamination
Whale Shaped Floating Garden Cleans the Worlds Rivers
Stemscopes
Ocean Protection
Plastic Oceans
The Ocean Cleanup (Boomy McBoomface)
Plastic Waste Solutions
Sea Steading Floating Cities
Blue Seed

Enzyme that Eats Plastic. A bacterium that naturally evolved to eat plastic. About 1m plastic bottles are sold each minute around the globe and, with just 14% recycled, many end up in the oceans where they have polluted even the remotest parts, harming marine life and potentially people who eat seafood.

Plastic-Eating Enzyme PETase can digest plastic up to six times faster. PETase breaks down polyethylene terephthalate (PET) back into its building blocks, creating an opportunity to recycle plastic infinitely and reduce plastic pollution and the greenhouse gases driving climate change.

Man-Made Pollutants found in Earth's Deepest Ocean Trenches - Air Pollution

Structural and functional studies of a Fusarium oxysporum cutinase with polyethylene terephthalate modification potential.

8: Death - Die with Dignity - Ashes to Ashes, Dust to Dust

Dispose of my body with respect to me and with respect to my family and with respect to my friends, and with respect to the planet and future generations. And when I die, of course I will not stop being Eco-friendly. I will be buried in an biodegradable casket in a Green Cemetery with no Headstone and no Formaldehyde. Every year Americans bury enough steal from caskets to build the golden gate bridge. The U.S. buries about 90,272 tons of steel caskets, 1.64 million tons of reinforced concrete vaults and 827,060 gallons of embalming fluid, talk about waste and abuse, poising the land and wasting resources is not a good way to honor the dead. Each year, 2.6 million people die in the United States, and most are buried in a cemetery or cremated, impacting land use and contributing to climate change. By 2030, estimates say that 70 percent of dead bodies will be cremated nationwide. Some choose it for the lower cost, while others choose cremation for environmental reasons. I thought of being cremated, but why waste the energy and cause pollution when the worms need to eat too. In India each traditional cremation consumes nearly 900 pounds of wood. CO2.

End of Life Care - Obituary - Grieving - Death

Dissolving the Body: A Scottish company called Resomation is offering a new way to cremate: using Alkaline Hydrolysis, also known as water cremation. In the process, a body is placed in a silk bag and loaded into a machine filled with a mixture of water and potassium hydroxide, set to 356 degrees Fahrenheit. The chemicals and temperature break down the body into its chemical components. In 3-4 hours, a family gets back bone ash (similar to traditional cremation using fire) — and the company says the machine uses only 1/8 of the energy required for cremation and doesn't emit mercury into the air.

I want my dead body to become Compost: Urban Death Project, my final resting place, recycled, just like life does naturally. Recomposition Core that will return human nutrients to the ground. Designer Katrina Spade created the idea for a several-storied building, within city limits, in which a collective pile of bodies can compost over time and ultimately be used as fertilizer. "The living carry loved ones up a ramp, and lay them into the wood chips," she says. "As the body is transformed, it moves downward into the core. The living take their energy to start the bodies of the dead to give new energy through the composted soil." Weeks or months later, a family could return to take home some of the composted soil. Urban Death Project Kickstarter Video (youtube).

Recomposition Center turns Loved ones into Compost. The decomposition process takes four weeks. The 10-bay recomposition center accommodates one memorial service at a time; allowing only two services a day, to ensure families won’t feel rushed. Once the compost is finished, families can pick up some of the soil to take home—but there’s no guarantee it comes exclusively from their loved one. (Decompiculture). Could this process keep up with the Death Rate?

Composting Livestock Farm Animals
Carcass Composting
Animal Mortality Management

Necrobiome is the community of organisms associated with a decaying corpse. The process of decomposition is complex, and aside from microorganisms such as bacteria, other organisms help to decompose the cadaver including fungi, nematodes, and insects as well as larger scavenger animals. The process of decomposition is fundamental to the cycle of life. As death ensues, the microbial ecosystem that lived off the living organism collapses and, nourished by the decomposition, a new and changing microbial ecosystem establishes itself. It has been noted that there is first a shift from aerobic to anaerobic bacteria leading to putrefaction and bloating. A shift back to aerobic bacteria occurs in the abdominal cavity when it gets opened. Bacteria come from the body as well as the environment. It has been difficult to study the necrobiome as the vast majority of its bacteria do not grow well in the laboratory environment. Our understanding of naturally occurring necrobiomes is further complicated by the fact that different portions of a corpse may be in different stages of decomposition. However, the ability to apply advanced sequencing has helped researchers to investigate and monitor the necrobiome. The composition of the necrobiome appears to change in a predictable way representing “a microbial clock” —apparently regardless of season, species, or soil type. The speed of the decomposition is, however, temperature dependent. It has been suggested that the predictability of the sequence of changes of the necrobiome may be useful in forensics to help determine the time of death.

I would like to Combine a Natural Burial or Composting with a Tree.
Poetree Burial Planter. Maybe a fruit tree?
A fully biodegradable urn designed to convert you into a tree after life
Memorial Trees
Bios Incube is the world´s first system designed to help grow the remains of your loved ones into trees.

Infinity Burial Suit returns your body to the earth without harming the environment. Jae Rhim Lee: Mushroom Burial Suit (youtube)

Loop Living Cocoon is a living product, grown from mycelium: the underground fungal network of mushrooms.

Everyone should have a mock funeral done by family and friends, and vise versa. This way everyone can get a glimpse of how they will be remembered, and also understand all the responsibilities of a funeral, a memorial and burying a loved one.

Preparing yourself for Death (how I wish to die)

Home Funerals
Home Funeral Alliance
Home Funeral Directory
National Funeral Directors Association

Natural Burial

Natural Burial is the practice of burying deceased remains directly into the soil without the use of contaminating materials such as embalming chemicals, metal, plastic, and concrete. It currently occurs in small country cemeteries or church cemeteries across Tennessee. Currently the average funeral and burial costs about $13,000 with many exceeding $15,000. In the United States today, more than 800,000 gallons of embalming fluid containing toxic chemicals are buried in the earth every year—along with 100,000 tons of steel and copper and 1.6 million tons of reinforced concrete vaults. The use of embalming fluids and concrete vaults that hold coffins are creating permanent damage to Tennessee’s environment. Natural burial is the palatable alternative– and even gives those families considering cremating the remains a viable inexpensive burial solution.

Conservation Burial Ramsey Creek preserve in 1998, the first “green cemetery” in the United States.

Burial at Sea is the disposal of human remains in the ocean, normally from a ship or boat. Must be 3 miles from shore and wrapped in a sheet and tied down with weights like a concrete block that can help form an artificial reef such as the Atlantis Reef.

Green Burials - Green Burial Council Steelman Town Cemetery

Body Bag is a non-porous bag designed to contain a human body, used for the storage and transportation of corpses. Body bags can also be used for the storage of corpses within morgues. Before purpose-made body bags were available, cotton mattress covers were sometimes used, particularly in combat zones during the Second World War. If not available, other materials were used such as bed sheets, blankets, shelter halves, ponchos, sleeping bag covers, tablecloths, curtains, parachute canopies, tarpaulins, or discarded canvas—“sealed in a blanket”—slang. However, the subsequent rubber (and now plastic) body bag designs are much superior, not least because they prevent leakage of body fluids, which often occurs after death. The dimensions of a body bag are generally around 36 inches by 90 inches (91 cm by 229 cm). Most have some form of carrying handles, usually webbing, at each corner and along the edges. In modern warfare, body bags have been used to contain the bodies of dead soldiers. Disaster agencies typically have reserves of body bags, both for anticipated wars and natural disasters. During the Cold War, vast reserves of body bags were built up in anticipation of millions of fatalities from nuclear war. This was the subject of Adrian Mitchell's protest poem "Fifteen Million Plastic Bags". (a body bag is also known as a cadaver pouch or human remains pouch).

Eco Coffins - Creative Coffins Colorful Coffins 

Funeral Planning

Funeral History Museum

Bacterial Toxic Remediation

Infinity Burial Project
Order of the Good Death
E Funeral

Eternal Reef combines a cremation urn, ash scattering, and burial at sea into one meaningful, permanent environmental tribute to life. An Eternal Reef is a designed reef made of environmentally-safe cast concrete.

Life Gem turns ashes into diamonds and hair into diamonds, a full line of cremation jewelry, rings, and pendants.

Launching a symbolic portion of cremated remains into Earth orbit

Living Headstones with QR Codes Having a memorial website for your decease doesn't need a headstone? 

Cremation is the combustion, vaporization and oxidation of cadavers to basic chemical compounds, such as gases, ashes and mineral fragments retaining the appearance of dry bone. Cremation may serve as a funeral or post-funeral rite as an alternative to the interment of an intact dead body in a coffin, casket or shroud. Cremated remains (aka "cremains" or simply, "ashes"), which do not constitute a health risk, may be buried or interred in memorial sites or cemeteries, or they may be retained by relatives and dispersed in various ways. Cremation is not an alternative to a funeral, but rather an alternative to burial or other forms of disposal. Some families prefer to have the deceased present at the funeral with cremation to follow; others prefer that the cremation occur prior to the funeral or memorial service. In many countries, cremation is usually done in a crematorium. Some countries, such as India and Nepal, prefer different methods, such as open-air cremation. Earth Friendly Cremations.

"My body? — Oh! — If I could choose, I would to ashes it reduce, And let the merry breezes blow my dust to where some flowers grow." Joe Hill (October 7, 1879 – November 19, 1915).

Donate your Body to Science. Whole-body donation allows for an individual to donate their body to science at end-of-life, for medical advancements. There are more than 100 body donation programs operated by state agencies or medical schools. Whole-body donations must be authorized by the donor prior to death or, after death, by relatives donate to a university, to a state agency or to a non-transplant tissue bank, which includes brokers who sell the bodies. The brokers make money by providing bodies and dissected parts to companies and institutions that use them for training, education and research.
In almost every state, it’s legal to sell the human remains of adults.

Cadaver or Corpse is a dead human body that is used by medical students, physicians and other scientists to study anatomy, identify disease sites, determine causes of death, and provide tissue to repair a defect in a living human being. Students in medical school study and dissect cadavers as a part of their education. Others who study cadavers include archaeologists and artists. The term cadaver is used in courts of law to refer to a dead body, as well as by recovery teams searching for bodies in natural disasters. The word comes from the Latin word cadere ("to fall"). Related terms include cadaverous (resembling a cadaver) and cadaveric spasm (a muscle spasm causing a dead body to twitch or jerk). A cadaver graft (also called “postmortem graft”) is the grafting of tissue from a dead body onto a living human to repair a defect or disfigurement. Cadavers can be observed for their stages of decomposition, helping to determine how long a body has been dead. Cadavers have been used in art to depict the human body in paintings and drawings more accurately.

Cemetery Knowledge

Humans have been burying their dead for 30,000 thousand years. The Death Industry in America is a $15 billion a year industry that includes Funeral Homes, Crematoriums, and cemeteries, but excludes related costs such as Headstones and Crypts.

The average cost of a funeral is $7,323. Almost 2.5 million people died in the United States in 2008, and 1.8 million of these bodies were placed into Coffins. Some 55 million people are reckoned to pass away each year. Most of the 19,500 funeral homes are controlled by Ten Companies. There is an estimated 500,000 Cemeteries in America.

Cemetery is a place where the remains of dead people are buried or otherwise interred.

Lists of Cemeteries (wiki)
List of Cemeteries in America (wiki)
List of Burial Mounds in the U.S. (wiki)
Cemeteries
Family Search Cemeteries
Find a Grave
United States Cemetery Records
Old Graves Photos

Tumulus is a mound of earth and stones raised over a grave or graves. Tumuli are also known as barrows, burial mounds or kurgans, and may be found throughout much of the world. A cairn, which is a mound of stones built for various purposes, may also originally have been a tumulus.

Mass Grave is a grave containing multiple human corpses, which may or may not be identified prior to burial. Although mass graves can be used during major conflicts, in modern times they are more usually seen after events such as a major famine, epidemic, or natural disaster. Mass Graves in Iraq.

Indigent Unclaimed Dead. Protocols From Around The Country For Disposing Of Unclaimed Dead Bodies. The number of unclaimed dead bodies is rising, and every city has a different way of dealing with the problem. 2,000 for a funeral home to bury the body. Missing Persons

Epitaph is a short text honouring a deceased person. Strictly speaking, it refers to text that is inscribed on a tombstone or plaque, but it may also be used in a figurative sense. Some epitaphs are specified by the person themselves before their death, while others are chosen by those responsible for the burial. An epitaph may be written in prose or in poem verse; poets have been known to compose their own epitaphs prior to their death, as did William Shakespeare.

Obituary - Grieving - Death

Pallbearer is one of several participants that help carry the casket at a funeral.

Body Snatching is the secret removal of corpses from burial sites. A common purpose of body snatching, especially in the 19th century, was to sell the corpses for dissection or anatomy lectures in medical schools. Those who practiced body snatching were often called "resurrectionists" or "resurrection-men". A related act is grave robbery, uncovering a tomb or crypt to steal artifacts or personal effects that had been buried with the deceased; however, grave robbery differs from body snatching in that grave robbing does not involve stealing the corpse itself.

"As I approach old age, it seems that most of my social life is the result of funerals. Why do people sometimes come together more in death, then they do in life?"

Autopsy - Cause of Death

Autopsy is a highly specialized surgical procedure that consists of a thorough examination of a corpse to determine the cause and manner of death and to evaluate any disease or injury that may be present. It is usually performed by a specialized medical doctor called a pathologist, which is concerned mainly with the causal study of disease, whether caused by pathogens or non-infectious physiological disorder.

Medical Examiner is an official trained in pathology that investigates deaths that occur under unusual or suspicious circumstances, to perform post-mortem examinations, and in some jurisdictions to initiate inquests. The coroner is not necessarily a medical doctor, but a lawyer, or even a layperson. The types of death reportable to the system are determined by federal, state or local laws. Commonly, these include violent, suspicious, sudden, and unexpected deaths, death when no physician or practitioner treated recently, inmates in public institutions, in custody of law enforcement, during or immediately following therapeutic or diagnostic procedures, or deaths due to neglect.

Pathology is the study of the causes and effects of disease or injury.

Forensic Pathology is determining the cause of death by examining a corpse or Cadaver, which is a deceased body. Forensics. When a human dies it may take hours or a day before all the cells in the body die. Forensic investigators use this information when determining the cause and time of death.

Postmortem is an examination of a dead body to find out the cause of death. An examination and dissection of a dead body to determine cause of death or the changes produced by disease. A discussion or analysis of something (such as an event) after it has ended.

Dissection is the dismembering of the body of a deceased animal or plant to study its anatomical structure. Autopsy is used in pathology and forensic medicine to determine the cause of death in humans. Less extensive dissection of plants and smaller animals preserved in a formaldehyde solution is typically carried out or demonstrated in biology and natural science classes in middle school and high school, while extensive dissections of cadavers of adults and children, both fresh and preserved are carried out by medical students in medical schools as a part of the teaching in subjects such as anatomy, pathology and forensic medicine. Consequently, dissection is typically conducted in a morgue or in an anatomy lab. Dissection has been used for centuries to explore anatomy. Objections to the use of cadavers have led to the use of alternatives including virtual dissection of computer models.

Cause of Death is an official determination of conditions resulting in a human's death, which may be recorded on a death certificate. A cause of death is determined by a medical examiner. The cause of death is a specific disease or injury, in contrast to the manner of death which is a small number of categories like "natural", "accident", and "homicide", which have different legal implications. International Classification of Disease (ICD) codes are often used to record manner and cause of death in a systematic way that makes it easy to compile statistics and more feasible to compare events across jurisdictions.

Between 2003 and 2017, there were nearly 35.2 Million Natural Deaths in the United States. What is Natural?

Manner of Death is a determination, typically made by the coroner, medical examiner, police, or similar officials, and recorded as a vital statistic. Within the United States and the United Kingdom, a distinction is made between the cause of death (sometimes referred to as the "mechanism of death"), which is a specific disease or injury, versus manner of death, which is primarily a legal determination. Different categories are used in different jurisdictions, but manner of death determinations include everything from very broad categories like "natural" and "homicide" to specific manners like "traffic accident" or "attempted or self-induced abortion". In some cases an autopsy is performed, either due to general legal requirements, because the medical cause of death is uncertain, upon the request of family members or guardians, or because the circumstances of death were suspicious. International Classification of Disease (ICD) codes can be used to record manner and cause of death in a systematic way that makes it easy to compile statistics and more feasible to compare events across jurisdictions.

Death Certificate refers either to a document issued by a medical practitioner certifying the deceased state of a person or, popularly, to a document issued by a person such as a registrar of vital statistics that declares the date, location and cause of a person's death as later entered in an official register of deaths. End of Life Care.

---

Tomorrow’s Child

Without a name; an unseen face
and knowing not your time nor place
Tomorrow’s Child, though yet unborn,
I met you first last Tuesday morn.

A wise friend introduced us two,
and through his sobering point of view
I saw a day that you would see;
a day for you, but not for me

Knowing you has changed my thinking,
for I never had an inkling
That perhaps the things I do
might someday, somehow, threaten you

Tomorrow’s Child, my daughter-son
I’m afraid I’ve just begun
To think of you and of your good,
Though always having known I should.

Begin I will to weigh the cost
of what I squander; what is lost
If ever I forget that you
will someday come to live here too.

© Poem by Glenn Thomas

7 Generations - (Looking ahead 140 years)

I have come to terms with the future.
From this day onward I will walk easy on the earth.
Plant trees. Kill no living things.
Live in harmony with all creatures.
I will restore the earth where I am.
Use no more of its resources than I need.
And listen, listen to what it is telling me.

-- M.J. Slim Hooey


"People do not look outside the paradigms they are operating in and thus fail to see the long term consequences."

"Let us sacrifice our today so that our children can have a better tomorrow." A. P. J. Abdul Kalam


This Is Our Dream - Crowd Sourced Poetry

I dream a world that sounds like a gentle "good morning,"
like "sleep tight" at the end of the day,
like Ella scatting,
a world filled with a universal song.
A hallelujah of joyous rejoicing, in this moment's gift of life.

I dream a world in color,
Where nature's artist takes the lead.
Clear, blue oceans and vibrant reefs,
and all creatures thrive with what they need.

Where peace floats from every direction.
Where it's not too late to change the people who hate.
Where race and color are not what the scales weigh.
Where the root of all evil is pulled up,
and the rain pours down until the ground swells with fertile soil.
Where potential is the currency of the day,
and you can be able to see what's next
without being scared.

I dream of that world
The one that lifts the silenced souls from shackles.
Where vision cannot be smothered beneath my eyes beyond my reach
Where what lies waiting aches to teach.

I dream a world where a bridge is arching over troubled waters, built on a foundation of truth.
Where children grow up learning only one kind of division, the long kind.
a world where Sharing kindness is commonplace;
Where deeds are done with heart and zest
Where doing right should be the quest

I Dream A World
Where every day is Earth Day
and pollution is not a thing.
Where we take care of the ocean and the world.

Where masks are only for the ball
that celebrates
A new beginning for us all.

Where we can see every person smile.
Where the coronavirus goes away so we can go to school.
Where people can hug their family and friends whenever they want
Where all have the luxury simply to sit and build a puzzle.
I dream of seeing foxes walking in a field. I would like to walk with them.
That is my wish.

I dream a world where native fish fly free,
Unfettered, many miles to reach the sea.
And those whose sacred presence
On our shores predates
The ships galore that brought
Conquerors, colonists, and slaves in chains.
Where the monarchs butterflies are the only concern we have about migration.
I hunger for that world!

a safe world
for children whose skin is darker than mine.
A beautiful sunrise after the night,
Equity, kindness, color and light.
For my daughter's daughters; for my son's sons.

I dream of a world
Where the problems are the problem, not the people debating them.
Where we lay down our arms so we can reach out our arms
Where we know each other's joys and sorrows
All these days and all the 'morrows
Where The News Brings A Smile

I dream a world straight; crooked paths are only for walking
A world drunk with self-esteem, fearless and ready
A world where you hold onto your dreams, and I'll hold the door
Pass right through, 'cause the world is yours

I dream a world where that world is not a dream,
but awake, vigilant
Community gardens on every corner
No more social media advertisements for body armor
People with mental health issues, accepted as whole
A mosaic of humans not separated by color, opinion, belief

Rusted cages,
empty and unlocked, doors swung open,
guards long since gone home.
Where facts matter.
A world as simple as a poem
Written in pencil, full of mistakes and erasures
On the relentless path to its honest truth.

Where, as soldiers of democracy nurturing us,
teachers are publicly thanked for their service.
I dream of a world transparent.
Walls and floors, built of some durable crystalline material.
Where we know which student is really watching a TikTok video
when we leave the room for a moment.

I dream a world
Where there is quiet
Enough to hear
Each other

The young care for the old,
And the earth is cared for by all.

Where nations' boundaries blur
by a bridge of millions of hands,
reaching across to embrace in oneness.
Where people are as free
as the poet's meter.
And inclusion is real
Not mandated by law, but embraced with zeal

Where I can be black and woman, and be safe
I dream a world where white folks see
All non-white folks in the land of the free
As true heirs to the founders' liberty
From oppression and powerful tyranny;

I dream the world, king dreamed for me
That the paved gold that America promises prospers
Where the playing field is level, the same,
for anyone willing and able.

where we anchor to hope and all it brings

Do you not see it is time to finish what has begun?
A world that we want to live in.

Such is a world I dream of!


Environmental Sayings - Paradox of Our Time - You Can't Do Everything


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Rants

Example of how Rants and Profanity are Ineffective and Ignorant when trying to Explain a Problem...

Why is the price lower to do something bad, and the price is higher to do something good? Why is that corporations and governments make it easy for people to be a scumbags, while making it harder to be a logical thoughtful person? How is it when I want to make a better choice , people want to f*cking charge you more, just because I care about life, well go f*ck yourself you f*cking scumbag, who the f*ck are you trying to profit off other peoples good decisions? Is it that you don't want life to improve? How about educating yourself and stop being an as*hole! - This text was supplied by a Super Ranter Algorithm ™, Ai really does work, wow!

Diatribe is a thunderous verbal attack. Why this type of speech is ineffective?

It's more logical to limit your own mistakes then to spend your life exploiting the mistakes of others. Limiting your own mistakes leads to progress, exploiting the mistakes of others leads to decay. Which is where we are right now in 2017.

Neil deGrasse Tyson said at starmus, If you can Terraform mars and make it livable, then you can also make Earth livable again and repair the damage that we have done in the last 100 years, which would be a lot easier then trying to make mars livable. So I choose earth. Let the scumbags who mass murdered people and poisoned the earth go to mars. They already portrayed this in a few movies so this idea is not that unusual. A working Penal Colony on mars for corporate executives and politicians who have committed mass murder and environmental crimes. We are going to need a lot of spaceships. But of course we would be idiots to waste resources like that. We are better off educating criminals, besides that, Khan might survive on another planet and then comeback to kill us.

Chronic Wasting Disease or Transmissible Spongiform Encephalopathy are a group of progressive, invariably fatal, conditions that affect the brain (encephalopathies) and nervous system of many animals, including humans. The first signs are difficulties in movement. The most obvious and consistent clinical sign of CWD is weight loss over time. Behavioral changes also occur in the majority of cases, including decreased interactions with other animals, listlessness, lowering of the head, tremors, repetitive walking in set patterns, and nervousness. Excessive salivation and grinding of the teeth also are observed. Most deer show increased drinking and urination; the increased drinking and salivation may contribute to the spread of the disease.

Super-Recursive Algorithm are a generalization of ordinary algorithms that are more powerful, that is, compute more than Turing machines. So Ai found an answer, but it's still looking for more possible answers, just incase the first answer was not good enough..which is freaking brilliant, just like a human. What goes around comes around.