It is now widely known that if we don't change the system we will run out of non renewable energy!
We need to turn over to nature elements but what can be done to persuade the people in power?
Recycling why cant these be people who collect weekly like refuse collection is!
Any ideas on getting this to work!
I'm in the U.K.but there's no reason that there can't be a universal answer!
Love and Peace,
SHONA!!
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07-14-02, 12:57 PM
babthrower
Of course you can press your municipal government for pick-up service, but they'll tell you they can't offord it without raising taxes, and most voters don't want higher taxes.

Want to know the best way? Make the recycling business more profitable. It's not very profitable, and that's because shoppers don't look for 'recycled material' tags on the stuff we buy.

Another thing people can do is have their recycled material as clean and well-sorted as possible, and to use a recycling depot which looks well-organized. This reduces recycling costs. For example, newsprint paper goes into one stream, and stationery-quality paper into another. If they're mixed, it all has to go into the newspaper stream, which is worth less per pound. (Of course labor is far too expensive to justify hand-sorting of paper refuse.)

By making the recycling industry more profitable by (1) buying recycled stuff and (2) helping the industry by handling our own refuse carefully we can increase competition in the industry, which inevitably leads to competition for the stuff. Then we can ask for pick-up service.

07-14-02, 01:06 PM
frankvan
In my town, Baltimore, Maryland, we do recycle, by the same people who collect our garbage. We collect every two weeks plastics, glass, bottles and cans, and newspapers. It is a local thing in most of the U.S. Where we lived previously, a small town, there were several large containers strategically placed and we voluntarily brought our recyclables there.
I think the most persuasive argument to use with the people in power is at the ballot box.

07-16-02, 10:55 AM
Lighteningrodd
When it comes to the environment, there a lot of things that we have not perfected yet. Much of the research & development is rather slow because the market is weak in some of these areas.

Solar power and wind power are things we have been knowing about for years. Yet we have only skimmed the surface of its potential.

Right now, recycling centers are popping up all over the U.S. And I am certainly glad to see it. Yet this is a whole new market still in infancy. It has a lot of growing pains to go through. And much of the recycling is not so much for the benefit of conserving our natural resources. It is for the benefit of conserving our landfill space.

When it comes to our dependence on petroleum, we are still on the oil habit for the long haul. The world has run on petroleum for many years. It will not be an overnight thing to go to something else. And once again, market forces will dictate what direction will be taken. And what the emerging technology will bring.

07-16-02, 12:19 PM
babthrower
I think the best thing anyone can do to help the environment is to buy an alcohol- or hydrogen- burning car, or one of the hybrids. I admit I still run a gas-guzzler, but when it crumbles into dust I will buy one. I have never wanted to be the first kid on the block to buy new technology, better let the bugs get fixed first, but in this case I'll make an exception.

07-21-02, 07:53 PM
mahal
To me, the single most environmentally unfriendly act is reproduction. We're not in trouble because we're not using wisely; we're in trouble because we're 6 1/4 billion strong and our appetite for resources is growing.

How easy do you think it would be to enforce world-wide birth control?

07-21-02, 08:14 PM
babthrower
Well, China imposed it on a billion people. They were roundly criticized for it at the time. But I see that the year 2000 famine that would have occurred in China, based on their predictions made forty years earlier of what the Chinese population would have been WITHOUT birth control, did not occur.

But we have problems in the overpopulated (1) middle east, south America, eastern Europe and Africa. We send foreign aid. We send emergency food and medical supplies. (Well, to everyone except the Palestinians.) We 'intervene' when the competition erupts into warfare.

No praise for China. I guess we prefer wartorn, famine stricken people who make no effort to solve their own problems, but wait instead for war, disease and starvation, the traditional methods, to stabilize the population. I guess we despise people who do the most logical thing to help themselves without foreign aid.

(1) Overpopulated in terms of the area's ability to feed and house its people, to heat and light their homes, and provide a ray of hope for the young.

07-22-02, 09:36 AM
MiranndaGrey
Babthrower, I must say that I think your comments regarding China's resolution to control its population is rather short sighted. A wide spread practice as a result of this restriction is infanticide. Many female babies are drowned or in some other way murdered in order for the family to produce a son, who is of more "value." Resorting to genocide can hardly be the lesser of two evils. Not to mention that there has been a clear upset in the balance of male to female distribution. This upset has its own set of consequences which have yet to be fully realized. For these reasons, I would estimate, the practice of implementing government sponsored birth control policies is not a very prevalent one.

07-22-02, 12:24 PM
babthrower
Yes, one consequence is an imbalance in the number of males/females in Chinese society, which itself is a birth control measure deferred to another generation. I am 'even as we speak' trying to research the actual numbers. I suspect that the number of female babies that were killed to make way for the more preferred sex was exaggerated in the usual way that we slandered all communist nations during the Cold War. (Not all of us knew we were being fed a lot of propaganda, so it was unconscious propaganda, and not done maliciously.) But I don't know the facts, so its only a suspicion. I will check it out and report back.

07-22-02, 12:54 PM
babthrower
The population is skewed, all right. 116 male children for every 100 female children in China. (Normal ratios in the rest of the world are 105 male children for every 100 female children born.)

Also the tendency varies from province to province, with rural provinces (where males are even more valued) showing generally higher rates, and urban areas showing generally lower.
(Sex can be detected earlier in pregnancy now, and the unwanted girls aborted with less risk to the mother than previously.)

So I guess they made a choice: death by abortion for lots of potential chinese, or death by starvation when the inevitable famine came. Which would you choose?

09-06-02, 05:10 PM
MkStfnz
People are not motivated to help the environment because it can cost too much money. If helping the environment were less expensive, people would be more willing to help.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: DorianGreyed,