Biocrudetech.com

Too many times I see my nieghbour’s garbage full of barely used clothes from their teenage daughters.  Granted, some of it may be too small.  Children grow pretty fast on their way to adulthood.  My beef is that these clothes, boots, etc, are still in great shape.  Why not pass it along?  There are shelters and other organizations that could use those items.  There are people out there with nothing.  Disasters, fires, families disrupted, jobs lost…the reasons go on forever.

The garbage is no place for usable items.  Dig deep and find some generously of spirit.  Go a bit out of your way to make sure your cast aways find a new home where they are desperately needed.

Just because you stick your recycle bin out twice a week doesn’t mean you are doing all you can to help others, and to help save our planet.

This week’s featured article questions the veracity of the ethanol solution.  BioCRUDE has previously argued against the basic premise of creating biomass from feedstock generated just for that purpose.  Think about it.  We are drowning in waste products, and we are using new products, ustilizing precious growing acreage, as feedstock.  We need to harvest the crops, transport them to a central processing area, then we have to distribute the end products from that central area.

The processing involves a thermal/buring process that contributes to pollution and global warming.  The product cannot be exploited by most off grid populations in third world countries because they lack the network to distribute power and fuel.  They have little growing space left.  Acerage now designated for producing food crops would be seriously reduced because the ethanol feedstock is easy to grow, and generates a greater profit.

The United States has invested heavily in promoting and expanding the production of Ethanol.  Is this the right way to proceed?  Of course we favour our own system, but doesn’t it make more sense to use waste products…naturally produced at alarming rates, as feedstock?  To our way of thinking, that solves two problems at one time: creates a renewable energy source while taking care of some waste management issues.

We are going to be exploring the impact of the production of Ethanol on environment and food supply (price?) in the weeks ahead.  Like many things, the idea sounded amazing at first, but once you look at the big picture you start to have second thoughts.

I’m moving in a few weeks.  Only a short distance away, so I don’t have to pack everything like it was going to be shipped by regular post.  The dishes will be packed, thrown in the back seat, and unloaded 10 minutes later.  Only the furniture and heavy boxes of books will be transported by the movers.

Usually I would have wrapped the delicate and fragile stuff in newspaper after having washed the dust off at this end.  Of course this results in them having to be rewashed at the other end, generating many bags of garbage.  Some one suggested lining the box in towels that have to be moved anyway, and then wrapping the fragile things in paper towels.  At the other end they are still clean (saving on water contamination), and you can flatten out the sheets to use for those many cleaning jobs.  I am achieving two things: avoiding doing a second washing of all the items, and using a recylable product TWICE before eliminating it.

It’s a simple, but very intelligent idea.  Thanks to Maureen Bellavance for the great tip!

Green Technology.  It’s a subject you are going to hear about more and more, from Al Gore to Sheryl Crow, from Dr. David Suzuki to some of the most prominent environmentalists in the world.  We are going to keep you abreast of what is going on to improve the health of this planet.