MetaFilter posts tagged with waste

Where your recycling goes

caddis — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 08:57:50 -0800

Your cafefully separated recycling heads to the dump. Reporters in D.C. follow some of the trucks around town and watch them dump the trash and the recycling together into the same truck. (previously)

Teach, Bundanoon, teach!

flapjax at midnite — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 16:18:47 -0800

Australian town bans bottled water.

Lunar Leftovers.

gman — Thu, 14 May 2009 15:03:46 -0800

How the Moon Became a Trash Can. "The biggest trash can outside of earth's atmosphere is in fact the moon."

Do not dig or drill before 12,000 AD

never used baby shoes — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 20:23:23 -0800

The site must be marked: What is here is dangerous(?) and repulsive to us. This message is a warning about danger...This place is best shunned and left uninhabited. Full document describing the marking plan here(pdf).

These Come From Trees

nthdegx — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 08:18:12 -0800

These Come From Trees "Testing shows a 'These Come From Trees' sticker on a paper towel dispenser reduces paper towel consumption by ~15%"

Doody Calls

itchylick — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 06:58:22 -0800

So you want to own a dog, but without all the hassles of dog ownership? Well, there's always doggy daycare, dog walkers and even bakeries that cater to Cujo. But in the end, you're still stuck with the worst chore of all - picking up all the yard mines that Poopsy has left for you. Not anymore.

Whirling Vortex of Stupidity

chuckdarwin — Mon, 24 Sep 2007 02:40:27 -0800

The North Pacific Trash Vortex - Researchers have discovered a Texas-sized area of (mostly plastic) rubbish floating in the Pacific Ocean. On the most recent episode of QI, Fry posed this question: "what is the largest man-made object in the world?" The answer: The North Pacific Trash Vortex. The North Pacific sub-tropical gyre covers a large area of the Pacific in which the water circulates clockwise in a slow spiral, which tends to force any floating material into the low energy central area of the gyre. Given its size, I tried looking for a satellite image of it, but have failed so far. Anyone know of one?

Infrastructure Report Card

homunculus — Fri, 03 Aug 2007 23:15:25 -0800

The American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) published their latest Infrastructure Report Card in 2005. America's infrastructure got a D. The ASCE estimate that it will cost $1.6 trillion over a five-year period to bring the nation's infrastructure to good condition. They also have a Critical Infrastructure blog. [Via Gristmill.]

Let's hope it doesn't start a flood.

miss lynnster — Sat, 14 Jul 2007 19:57:43 -0800

Millions of tax dollars melting away... guess Katrina victims didn't need ice after all.

The Things We Throw Away

criticalbill — Sat, 19 May 2007 07:02:48 -0800

Excellent 8,000 word essay on waste disposal in the endlessly superlative LRB. Andrew O'Hagen goes bin-raiding with Freegans, talks up Zero Waste, rides with the (contraversial) Harrow binmen, meets the Community Recycling Network, tramps over the Calvert Landfill Site and pays a visit to the London Waste EcoPark Recycling and Energy Centre aka the Edmonton Incinerator. Doesn’t meet any mafia though. 8,000 words and none wasted.

yamaiga.com

hama7 — Sun, 13 May 2007 19:47:44 -0800

廃道レポート・東北の廃道・旧道・国道・県道・林道.

Everyone Poops (Don't Drink the Water)

spitbull — Sat, 12 May 2007 05:39:25 -0800

Swimming with the fishes' feces. Too bad it wasn't whale feces. After a hard day at the fish farm you might need a drink. Or maybe all this just makes you hungry. Maybe it's just the ocean's way taking revenge on humans. We do so like to shit where we eat.

For the public good, or just out of a job?

vhsiv — Wed, 25 Apr 2007 08:46:25 -0800

25 y.o. whistle-blower. Last Fall, a 24 y.o. by the name of Justen Deal, blew the whistle on what he perceived to be profligate waste by his employers. As an IT guy at Kaiser-Permanente, he'd seen a $442 million database project scrapped by the new CEO and replaced by a sweetheart deal for one of the CEO's former contractors. Internal estimates placed Kaiser's losses on this new contract at $1.2 billion dollars per quarter [more inside]

Converting Garbage into Energy

jonson — Sat, 17 Feb 2007 07:22:29 -0800

Mr Fusion - coming soon. Startech Environmental Corporation's "Plasma Converter" works like "the big bang in reverse," creating nothing out of something. With the ability to break down any type of material (other than nuclear waste) into component molecules and and actually generate energy in the process, we may be at the twilight of the landfill industry. Via.

Fighting Hezbollah with frikkin' lasers

Skeptic — Tue, 01 Aug 2006 11:50:37 -0800

THEL (Tactical High Energy Laser) is an anti-missile weapon jointly developed by the US and Israel (at great expense) to track and destroy incoming Katyusha rockets. It had even been recently suggested to deploy it in Iraq. Unfortunately, it seems that the program was shelved in September 'cause it doesn't work. You know the rest

Masters in the art of hypertext

bukharin — Tue, 16 May 2006 20:53:42 -0800

Radiohead's inventive use of the Web, integrating music and art with deceptively archaic programming. Cryptic web-labryinths, flickering video-collage (click minotaur), The Byzantine Ziggurat ("THE STRATEGIC DEFENCE INITIATIVE IS A ZIGGURAT IN HYPERSPACE THAT WE DON'T KNOW WHAT TO DO WITH."), a "disturbing focus on psychological profiling," consumer survey, Spin With a Grin, The Eraser. Don't forget to consume.

You blinked! The "accountability moment" for Katrina has come and gone

dinsdale — Thu, 08 Sep 2005 22:29:04 -0800

House and Senate GOP leaders announce the (Republican dominated) "Hurricane Katrina Joint Review Committee" which should ensure that no-one near the top of the (Republican Dominated) chain of command is in any danger of repercussions over the death of a great American city. In fact, it seems likely that incompetence will be richly rewarded: representative Waxman thinks that a Provision in Katrina Emergency Bill Leaves Government Open to Waste, Fraud, and Abuse. But that's nothing! Despite near-universal opprobrium as a dysfunctional bureaucracy led by an unqualified political appointee, FEMA will receive nearly all of the funds approved on Thursday -- $50 billion... (all links via TPM)

Oh My God I Threw Out All This Stuff And I Was Like WEEE!

fandango_matt — Thu, 28 Apr 2005 11:15:00 -0800

The WEEE Man is a huge 3 ton figure standing 7 metres high and is composed entirely of WEEE (Waste Electronic and Electrical Equipment)--from washing machines to mobile phones and electronic toys. The WEEE Man represents the amount of waste a single person in the UK is likely to produce in a lifetime. Measure your own footprint here.

What a waste

knave — Wed, 16 Feb 2005 10:40:19 -0800

Recycling ... Is Garbage. John Tierney looks at the reality of recycling and concludes it is largely a wasted effort.
Appeared in the NY Times in June, 1996.

A Blivet

kablam — Sat, 23 Oct 2004 19:10:40 -0800

A Blivet. More nuclear waste than the planned repository at Yucca Mountain can hold will pile up at reactor sites as the government continues to approve license extensions for power plants, an environmental research organization claimed in a study to be released today. If a repository is built by 2010 in the mountain, 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas, its 77,000-ton capacity will be filled by existing spent fuel awaiting shipment. That's not counting another 9,900 tons that will have accumulated in the meantime from license extensions, according to the study by the Environmental Working Group.

Create Your Own Industrial Contamination

alms — Tue, 16 Mar 2004 08:16:58 -0800

There's Gold in Them Thar PCs. If you're worried about the growing problem of e-waste, if you don't want to ship your toxins overseas, you now have another option. You can recover heavy metals (precious and otherwise) in the privacy and comfort of your own home. Just make sure you leave a window open so you have some fresh air.

Resistance is futile?..

Mossy — Fri, 22 Aug 2003 10:52:13 -0800

Earthstation 5 is a new p2p application purportadly based in Palestine issue a challenge to the MPAA/RIAA. Sounds kind of fishy to me.. I'll stick to Waste with my mates (sharing legal items, of course) for a bit..

Listen, it's the sound of a child's innocence being molested.

XQUZYPHYR — Fri, 06 Jun 2003 09:28:16 -0800

Grinding Nemo. The JWC company, maker of sewage equipment, wishes to issue a press release informing small children everywhere that contrary to scenes in the hit Disney movie, flushing fish down a toilet drain will not set them free in the ocean, but rather melt them with chlorine disinfectant before shredding them into particles with processing machinery. Have a great weekend.

Today's most buried headline

jackspace — Mon, 19 May 2003 09:28:33 -0800

This week's most buried headline could be a real stinker this week for the Pentagon. Apparently over $1 trillion are missing as well as "dozens of tanks, missiles and planes."

magullo — Mon, 10 Jun 2002 08:30:45 -0800

Jaw-drop-inducing link of the day The federal government spent $62 million on a building to store and treat low-level radioactive waste at a California nuclear weapons laboratory, then decided the structure wasn't secure enough. So where is the waste kept now?