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POPSMade entirely from trash, Semakau Island, Singapore Started as a garbage disposal dump - today it is an island, where birds nest and people play, oblivious of the fact that the entire island is made of rubbish! 66 bird species have been recorded here. Along with various marine life (corrals, sponges, starfish, etc), all the animals have been fooled into thinking its a natural island! Singapore has been incinerating its waste here since 1999.
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POPSHey Coffee Drinker, replace That Paper Cup
And of course, trees are elegant and amazing organisms that deserve better than to be pulped into coffee cups -- think Stradivarius. Forests generate value with an ease industry will never replicate. The unmeasured economic value provided by Canada's boreal forest for things like water filtration and air purification has been has been estimated at $93 billion. That is two and a half times as much as the combined economic value of the forestry, mining, oil and gas and hydroelectric industries in the boreal forest. This would represent eight per cent of Canada's entire GDP, and trees don't need a pension or health care. And yet we keep grinding them up -- North America uses 60 per cent of the world's paper cups, 130 billion of them per year. Those cups require about 50 million trees and 33 billion gallons of water, which could sequester 9.3 million tonnes of CO2 and quench 550,000 drought-stricken citizens of the state of Georgia, without even asking them to lower their ridiculous consum
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POPSThe Poison Arrow: Corn-Based Ethanol The government seeks policy that stimulates industry, growth, wealth creation; corn production is near, easy, and most importantly: large-scale. Can we keep trying to fuel an ever-upward curve of consumption with fragile oil replacements like food crops? So far, the answer seems a resounding no. Meanwhile, we’re turning the Pacific into a garbage dump, and hoarding seeds for “doomsday”.
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POPSContinent-size toxic stew of plastic trash fouling swath of Pacific Ocean "The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is particularly dangerous for birds and marine life, said Warner Chabot, vice president of the Ocean Conservancy, an environmental group. Sea turtles mistake clear plastic bags for jellyfish. Birds swoop down and swallow indigestible shards of plastic. The petroleum-based plastics take decades to break down, and as long as they float on the ocean's surface, they can appear as feeding grounds. "These animals die because the plastic eventually fills their stomachs," Chabot said. "It doesn't pass, and they literally starve to death." The Greenpeace report found that at least 267 marine species had suffered from some kind of ingestion or entanglement with marine debris. Chabot said if environmentalists wanted to remove the ocean dump site, it would take a massive international effort that would cost billions. "
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POPS Digital Waste Worth More Than Gold, Copper Ore Another /. post.. but interesting story. While sorting & processing "digital waste" may be very lucrative for many developing world business, I wonder how many of these business are actually US/Canada/etc owned & are just exploiting cheap labor...
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POPSFire fighters Vs. Giuliani This is a must-read article for anyone who'll be voting in the 2008 election, or anyone without a sufficient sense of moral outrage against NYC Mayor Giuliani.
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POPSTurning trash into power via plasma heating This is pretty incredible! Imagine your town's garbage dump being the source for all of the heating and electricity you need. This scientist is using super hot plasma to convert pretty much anything into energy!
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POPSUnwanted Pets I can't imagine letting this happen to my dog/cat (we have one of each).
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