Materials and Waste
To Burn or Not to Burn?
When I see all those dumpsters and trash cans in front of rural and remote homesteads and farms, I think that is so stupid to be hauling and burying wrappers and papers to a landfills hundreds of miles away when most of that crap can be burned safely on site, with a trip a few times a year to the county transfer station for the cans and glass and a few miscellaneous things. But alas the activists are more interested in punishing rural folk. ♻
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The Mafia’s Iron Grip on Waste Management
The Plastic Industry’s Long Fight to Blame Pollution on You
Plastic production really began in earnest in the 1950s. It’s hard to remember, but we once got along without it. Of course, plastic offered great convenience, and its production skyrocketed. In 1967, when Dustin Hoffman was advised to go into plastics “The Graduate,” there were 25 million tons of plastic produced. These days, we’re making 300 million tons. At this point, the plastics industry is worth $4 trillion and almost half of what it's producing is single-use plastics — things that will be used once and almost instantly become trash.
Public outrage at this problem erupted in 1970, with the first Earth Day, and the industry has been successfully dodging the issue ever since. Through advertising, public outreach campaigns, lobbying, and partnerships with non-profits designed to seem “green,” plastics industry organizations have been blaming “litterbugs” for the growing menace and promoting the idea of recycling as the solution, while at the same time fighting every serious attempt to limit plastic production.
The price of green energy | DW Documentary
Electric vehicles, wind and solar power: The age of fossil fuels is grinding to a halt. At the same time, demand for other raw materials is rising. It’s a billion-dollar business, with serious environmental consequences.
These days, rare-earth metals like graphite, copper and lithium are key components in many hi-tech products. These include not just smartphones and laptops, but electric vehicles and wind power plants, as well. Despite being key to an environmentally-friendlier future, the extraction process for these rare metals often completely fails to take into account workers’ health and safety or basic environmental standards.
China is a market leader in the mining and trading of rare-earth metals. The negative consequences can be seen in places like the province of Heilongjiang. Here, toxic residues from the graphite extraction process can be found several kilometers from the graphite mines. Copper and lithium, used in the production of batteries, are mined on a huge scale in Chile and Bolivia.
The global trade in raw materials is a burgeoning billion-dollar business. But reserves are finite. That’s why consumption should be reduced and recycling quotas for these sought-after resources increased.