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Friday, August 8, 2008

Day 220 - Friday 8/8/08

Today's Haul:

  • 1 broken glass carafe - recycle *
  • 1 glass carafe plastic top - repurpose
  • 1 sticker from fish monger - garbage
  • 1 muffin wrapper - worms
* Have to check if this is recyclable or not but i believe it can be

Day 219 - Thursday 8/7/08

Today's Haul:

  • 2 studio passes - worms
  • 1 tea bag - worms
  • 1 tea bag cover - worms
  • 5 ozs receipts/bills - worms/recycling
  • 1 piece scotch tape from passes - garbage
  • 1 set of film sides - worms/recycling
  • 1 staple from film sides - garbage

Thursday, August 7, 2008

Radio is a Sound Salvation

Things have been jumping here since the 6 month mark and i've been fortunate enough to do a bunch of radio shows.  The most recent, BBC Outlook, went up today and is quite funny if you ask me.  Waiting on a lot of MP3s but some of the others are listed below.  I'm still shocked that people want to hear what i have to say, but at least it gets more people thinking about things, so for the moment, I'll keep talking.


Thanks

Dave





Aluminum Cans

I was at a restaurant with a friend yesterday and was feeling really low on energy. It was hot, so I ordered a coke, something which I rarely do. As you can see from yesterdays haul, the coke came not in a glass, but in a can. Now I'm the first to admit that if it comes in a glass there is still waste involved, but it is not anything that i can quantify, and not specifically as a result of me as those bags of Coke goo get used for many many drinks. But the can is another thing entirely. I think I posted a piece about aluminum cans a while ago, but I figured it might be high time to throw it up again. Think you know how much energy goes into that can? I thought I had an idea, but boy was I wrong. Read on.

Read More...

Day 218 - Wednesday 8/6/08

Today's Haul:

  • 1 cardboard backing from video tape package - recycle
  • 1 plastic packaging from videotape package - recycle
  • 2 videotape plastic wraps - recycle
  • 1 plastic pasta bag - recycle
  • 1 soup tetrapak box - recycle
  • 2 metallic emergen c packets - garbage
  • 1 aluminum soda can - recycle

Tuesday, August 5, 2008

Day 217 - Tuesday 8/5/08

Today's Haul:

  • 1 beer bottle w/top - recycle
  • 1 emergen-c metalic packet - garbage
  • 1 paper bag - worms
  • 1 muffin tissue - worms
  • 2 muffin cupcake holders - worms
  • 3 sugar packets - worms
  • 1 used q-tip - worms
  • 1 paper table cloth - worms
  • 1 cardboard cereal box - recycle
  • 1 wax cereal bag - recycle
  • 1 large plastic bag - repurpose

Monday, August 4, 2008

Day 216 - Monday 8/4/08

Today's Haul:

  • 1 beer bottle w/top - recycle
  • 1 cardboard beer 6 pack holder - recycle
  • 1 plastic safflower oil bottle PETE 1 - recycle
  • 1 paper napkin - worms

Sunday, August 3, 2008

My Friend Anya's Mother In Law (a bit off topic)

A tad bit off topic, but i figured it's for a good reason. The woman you see at the right holding the bananas is Lucie, the mother in law of my dear friend Anya (and mother Anya's coolio husband Max). Lucie is holding the bananas for the profile pic of her blog Green Bananas Cancer Blog which as you can guess, details her fight with cancer, pancreatic cancer to be specific (you'll have to see why the bananas for yourself). In spite of the heavy reason for it's existence, it's actually a really good read since Lucie seems to be a pretty cool lady, a good writer, and a fair bit funny to boot.


Anyway, as she writes in her blog, she's always happy for folks to stop in and offer some good thoughts and the occasional bad (or good) joke. Anya emailed me just the other day to say that the surgery that Lucie had to remove her tumor failed and they're all in need of a few good jokes around there, (although as you can see by the most recent post, apparently Lucie's spirits are doing well). So I thought I'd throw this out there and ask anyone with a moment to drop on by her site and shoot her a joke or two and some good thoughts as well.

Thanks, and now, back to the trash.

Dave


Harvard Towers

I was working on a tv show the other day with my friend Karen (looking inquisitively you at the left there) who I hadn't seen in a while.  As the day progressed, Karen and I got to talking about what I had been up to with my life, the blog, the trash hoarding, the gyre, and a whole host of other things (lots of down times on sets sometimes).  I guess I made an impression on her because the next day she posted this on her blog.


She basically went home, started thinking about what i had been talking about and decided that she was going to cancel her cable tv.  Now we hadn't been talking about that, so you'll have to read for yourself why she did it (it's a really funny post), but the thing that i love about this is how each of us, in our own way, can do better, be better, consume less, whatever you want to call it.  It just takes recognizing what we are doing, and if you're like Karen, taking a stand once you've come to the realization that you're not happy with things as they are.

Thanks for the post Karen and keep spreading the word!

Dave


A note about the tallies

At the beginning of every month I try to do an honest tally of all the junk in the basement so that i can track where I am at and what has changed. A good friend pointed out to me that some of my numbers seem to fluctuate and indeed, they do seem to do so. I just finished tallying for last month and to go by the numbers, the bags seems to be getting lighter.

While I try to be as vigilant as I can, perhaps my methodology may explain something. At the end of every month I take a bathroom scale down to the basement and weight myself. While this helps me keep down what i eat (or at least should), it does let me know where I'm at for the moment. Then I pick up each piece, one by one, weigh myself holding it, and then subtract my weight, giving me the final weight. While this is an inexact science, it's the best i have at the moment. Since the scale only goes by half pounds, I find myself changing the 2.5 pounds of plastic bags to 2 pounds this month. My guess is that with plastic bags being so light, I am actually around the 2.25 weight and depending on how I stood one month or where my weight was, I could be off by .5 lbs.

All of that said, this is merely a benchmark and not rocket science, so i think it's all good. At the end of the year I'll borrow a serious scale and see what the numbers are exactly, but until then, bare with me and thanks for keeping me on top of things!

dave

Week 30 Pics






Day 215 - Sunday 8/3/08

Today's Haul:

  • 1 beer bottle w/top - recycle
  • 1 plastic sample cup - recycle
  • 1 tetrapak millk jug - recycle
  • 2 plastic berry containers - recycle
  • 2 cardboard crayola boxes - recycle
  • 1 cardboard top to party favors - recycle
  • 2 staples from cardboard top - garbage
  • 1 plastic bag from party favors - recycle
  • 1 cardboard pizza box - worms
  • 1 glass juice bottle w/top - recycle
  • 1 paper plate - worms
  • 1 paper plate liner - worms
  • 1 paper napkin - worms

Day 214 - Saturday 8/2/08

Today's Haul:

  • 1 plastic pasta bag - recycle

Day 213 - Friday 8/1/08

Today's Haul:

  • 2 paper studio passes - worms
  • 1 piece scotch tape - garbage
  • 4 sugar packets - worms
  • 1 price sticker from fish monger - garbage
  • 1 set of film sides - worms
  • 1 staple from film sides - garbage

Day 212 - Thursday 7/31/08

Today's Haul:

  • 2 paper studio passes - recycle
  • 1 piece chewing gum in wrapper - garbage
  • 1 piece scotch tape from studio passes
  • 1 paper napkin - worms
  • 1 movie popcorn bucket - garbage
  • 2 paper movie tickets - worms
  • 1 cardboard candy box - worms
  • 1 handful unpopped popcorn kernels - worms
  • 2 sugar packets - worms
  • 1 piece camera tape - garbage

Day 211 - Wednesday 7/30/08

Today's Haul:

  • 1 laundry detergent bottle HDPE 2 - recycle
  • 1 beer bottle w/top - recycle
  • 1 cardboard six pack holder - recycle
  • 1 cardboard tofurkey pack - recycle
  • 1 plastic tofurkey packaging - reycycle
  • 1 aa battery - e waste
  • 1 lightbulb - e waste
  • 1 glass spaghetti jar w/top - recycle
  • 1 ice cream container w/top - garbage