How will you celebrate Exploit-the-Earth Day?
Posted by Ritter on April 21, 2008
Perhaps I shall combine all my trash, be it glass, paper, plastic, whatever, into a single garbage can without even so much as a passing thought to consider dividing it up into separate bins. My little town provides recycling containers. I have a bright red one. I use it as a cover for a pail of sidewalk de-icing salt. Works fine. I guess you could say I’ve recycled my recycling bin.
Gosh, golly, imagine if everyone would do this; we could cut the number of garbage trucks on the road in half. Save the Earth: Stop Recycling Now!
But wait! This just in: Wind farms are a-comin’ — I’ll just set my bright red recycling bin underneath one of these avian Cuisinarts and collect pâté. Hot off the wing.
Google wants to know what I will do for Earth Day. I told them.
UPDATE: 4/23 — Apparently Google was unimpressed with my suggestions. However, some of the other ideas are pretty funny. I wonder how these slipped by the Google greenie gatekeepers?
From Jody in Slovenia: Use an old fashoned encyclopedia instead of google so the server farm energy useage falls.
From Don in Slovenia: Light a wood burning fire and turn down the A/C to 68.
Gotta love those Slovenians!
phroedrick said
“Well, well, well, another Earth Day has drawn to a close,” I thought as I pushed the button to roll down my car window and toss a Milky Way wrapper out. I gave it a moments pause, and thought, “what the fuck.”
The mushy hearted think observing days such as Earth Day, by doing some inconsequential act–perhaps picking up garbage while walking to their office in down town San Francisco and heaving it onto the top of an overflowing city trash bin, where it just falls off and back onto the street–makes a difference. Gosh, Billy Bob, I sorta remumber uh thing I hurd, somthin like, ‘too littyle two layt’.
The main point the mushy hearted, the unconscious sleep walkers of the world, and the just plain walking dead are missing is this: ANY ORGANISM POPULATION WILL PERISH WHEN THEIR EXCREMENT REACHES A CERTAIN CRITICAL MASS. For example yeast excretes alcohol from eating sugar. When the alcohol reaches about 13% the yeast chokes and all yeasties die.
There is likely an ‘event horizon’ as with the black holes in the Universe as researched by Stephen Hawking and other quantum physicists of genius caliber, where when caught at the event horizon of becoming extinct in our own excrement, or just prior to reaching it and being sucked in to be crushed under tremendous gravity, many would like to do something about it and nothing can be done; Essentially not sufficient thrust to escape the enormous pull of the black hole’s gravity.
Hey, just get down on your knees, lean forward, place your head on your knees, cover the back of your neck and kiss your ass good bye. See, we’re there, baby! My, you have come a long way baby.
Most of the rest of the world does not give a shit about being, ‘green,’ or ‘Earth Day,’ (hey California the world is mostly a smoking section) as they are busily engaged in trying to put some corn meal in their mouths and feed the bourgening population of their existence in the third world, including places like Southern California’s San Fernando Valley (there they do it with drive by shootings, purse snatching, and robbery), the agricultural lands of Idaho (Americans will not pick potatoes or any other crop as stooping over is not possible with the huge bellies so many have), lots of places in Texas and so on. The foregoing is not a reference to Caucasian, Asian, American-Africans, or South Sea Islanders. The need for food and basic services is driving the daily destruction of the rain forests.
Why doesn’t the Sierra Club jump in between those with the chain saws and flame throwers and the trees, herbs and plants with enormous possibility to bring new drugs for the relief of sicknesses we now have no way to treat. One does not have to walk a country mile to understand these mushy-headed folks would have to go to places deep in South America and other places where if you interfere you get shot to death, period; No arrest, arraignment, no phone call, no lawyer (the only plus), no trial, and no appeal process of over twenty years. They simply shoot to kill on the spot. Yes, the Sierra Clubbers would find themselves between the rock of those they are trying to stop, and Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, which if memory serves has physical survival, shelter and food as the foundation of the pyramid. Sierra Clubbers are stupid, yet not dumb when it comes to sensing terminal situations.
Get this and let it sink in: The Sierra Club only wishes to roadblock progress in countries, and the open ocean, where they can be fairly well assured they won’t get shot to shit by doing so. Just once wouldn’t it have been nice to see one of those fuckers in the boats between whaling vessels and the whales harpooned by some guy just tired of being fucked with. On international waters, like Vegas, what goes on there stays there.
NEXT: A TALE OF TWO CITIES–Valencia, California
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Residents in the city of Valencia, CA (Southern California) get three garbage cans. One is green and is only for yard trimmings, and as everyone has a gardener, the only responsibility of the home owner is to drag it to the curb every week for pick up.
The next one is Gray–this one is for all manner of rotting garbage a family piles up over the week. With the high temperatures in this city during ten months of the year it does rot and smell. The resident must drag this bin of death to the curb for pick up.
The third and final bin is blue. The blue one is for recyclables–glass, aluminum, steel, plastic bottles, paper, cardboard and all manner of other stuff such as that. If you think it belongs in the blue bin, the garbage collector is not going to argue. Yes, it must be dragged to the curb also and all of this on the same evening! Oh, yes, the bins are supplied free of charge to residents.
This makes recycling pretty easy. The gardener fills the green bin. The resident throws anything conceivably recyclable into the blue bin, and fills the ominous gray bin with any other effluent that one is in need of ridding from their territory. The hardest part is dragging them to the curb and then back into the side yard.
Yard trimmings go to composting–a good idea. Garbage goes to land fill somewhere (of course, in no one’s back yard), and the recyclable stuff goes to a sorting area where it is separated, packaged and sold to various recyclers. Garbage companies have a profit motivation here and they do it.
A Tale of Two Cities–Belmont, California
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This small, expensive area in which to live is serviced by a company not at all like Valencia. Yes, there is a push for recycling, and yes some people diligently try to recycle. For all the trouble residents take to make the program work, it does not do so.
Reason? The garbage company does not give free bins–one must buy their own. The recyclable materials must be separated into distinct categories and placed in plastic containers much the same as a four gallon plastic case for milk.
These fuckers are dumb, dumb, dumb. Here’s how it works. You put glass in one, your paper in another, and aluminum in another. See, now YOU’RE in the garbage sorting business making $0.00 per hour. Cardboard boxes must be broken down and folded to not less than thirty-six inches square–if one can’t get to square you just make it as small as possible.
So, let’s play the garbage game: IF your recyclables are properly sorted and cardboard proper folded to the size required by the Garbage Gestapo, the collector takes it away. Sorry, cardboard not of the small, proper dimension just stays in front of the house. Now, as for glass–if one aluminum can or some plastic straw blows into this container overnight they do not take the glass away and it sits in front of the house; Ditto for aluminum cans. Finally, paper–mostly it’s fine–HOWEVER, if one uses a shredder and places the shreddings in a plastic bag on the paper bin–yes, you win a trip to Belmont–it stays in front of the house.
One then drags the recycle containers into the side yard, scratches their head, resorts the items, waits two weeks, then drags them back to the street again to wait for the Garbage Gestapo to judge again.
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Back to Earth Day–I lived in Valencia and Belmont. In Valencia, recycling was easy, albeit dragging three full bins of crap to the curb was tedious. The nice thing was it all went away. Then I dragged the bins back to the side yard and started the entire process over again.
When I lived in Belmont, and after a few run-ins with the Garbage Gestapo (reminded me of Alice’s Restaurant) I stopped recycling all together. Now I don’t give a royal rat shit about recycling. If you want me to recycle, get this, my job is making garbage and paying with my earnings to have it hauled away. I am NOT in the garbage biz, hence I don’t provide free garbage sorting so it can be conveniently hauled away and sold to recyclers without the garbage having to do their inherent job and sort it. Screw that.
Finally, THE EARTH IS THE BIGGEST RECYCLING MACHINE THERE IS. IT HAS RECYCLED EVERYTHING THE ELEMENTS, PRIOR RESIDENTS OF OTHER SPECIES HAVE DONE TO IT, AND IT WILL RECYCLE THE LOWLY HUMAN.
Nothing lasts forever, even human kind so duck and cover and learn how to swim in chilly water because we are just at the event horizon.
phroedrick said
A comment on Earth Day from Jamaica…
Ranni: Hey man, no problem. For Earth Day, I light up BIG ganga until dee whole ting passes over. No problem at all, no problem, lighten up yourself, lighten up yourself, lighten up yourself… Inhale man an hole dit in till you get dizzy… No problem, den you breathe out and do it again, and again and again… Man, Earth Day not so bad after all… Rastafari lives.