Garbology : Chapter Ten

"Chico and the Man" not only catches my attention, but confuses me on how Chico is an importance. Well, ChicoBag's pitch is a reusable bag made from recycled material. This item is imported from China! Doesn't China make millions off of our trash? Well I think that explains how they make this item called ChicoBag. I personally believe reusable bags are great! I don't understand why people don't use them. Maybe from my personal experience, its probably because we forget, it can't hold enough items, or just are too lazy to carry it around. Sounds dumb and reasonable, but it is true. Its coming from my mouth because my parents do this all the time! Yes the bags are helpful and prevent a plastic bag getting brought out, but these reusable bags don't hold much and sometimes will rip from the amount of stuff put in there! I believe many people just want a plastic bag after they buy there groceries and want to get out of there. Plastic bags can hold more and are more reasonable to use, but they do affect the environment. ChicoBag had a "14 percent annual growth" (Humes 212). This shows how much these companies are worth. If these bags do grow, it can severely help the environment and save people money as well as time.

Garbology : Chapter Nine

"Pick of the Litter" clearly states that he is talking about recycling. Recycling in my opinion is very helpful and useful to yourself if you like making cash. Its a great way to make an extra couple of dollars as well as help the environment. It can be a hassle, but its worth it for yourself and everyone else! "Recology the opportunity to stake a claim as one of the nation's recycling pioneers." (Humes 193) I believe Recology is a way to go program. Its supposed to be an encouragement program to help corporate waste management. Now will people follow through or agree to this? I personally believe only those who "care" will actually pay attention and put in the effort. I like the fact that Yale University puts in the effort to make sculptures about recycling. I'm guessing, they believe that smart people know everything and so they turn to Yale. Yale has the idea to help promote recycling like it will help. Honestly, I believe promoting recycling will make people less likely to recycle because they will think its dumb.

Garbology : Chapter Eight

"Decadence Now" is such an attraction to the reader. Humes right away describes how he saw Avocado laying around the dump, while it still being green. Like what is this? We are throwing away precious food that we can use or eat! If its green, then that means it can either be mutated, just like McDonald's food is, or its just that natural. I'm shocked that we would throw away food. It could also mean that it just doesn't decompose. We should use the facts from this Avocado as advice to how to make things not decompose. I feel as the information about alcohol beverages only adds to the issue that they are bad in the first place. "Alcohol consumption  was among the most dramatic deviations between survey and trash can," (Humes 172). Well, I think this is quite obvious as Alcohol is very common in the U.S. People drink alcohol everyday and its a daily use item some people need to function. He says that 20 percent reported seven or fewer beers. Well the issue states that they are just throwing away the bottles instead of recycling them. Many issues come with Alcohol, but many would not think the environment would be one of them.

Garbology : Chapter Seven

I personally feel that "The Trash Trackers" title sucked me in. Anyways, MIT is trying to use Smart Trash as a way to help out the crisis that is happening. "Smart trash had enough battery life to last up to thirty hours of constant motion." (Humes 150). My question is, why don't we use this stuff now? It obviously seems like it can save us a lot of energy and be extremely helpful! Again, the answer would be cost. I feel like E-Waste is extremely bad and harming us so painfully. Cell Phones are one of the biggest issues of E-Waste but yet cell phones are a daily use item that we must all use. "Its more illusion than reality," (Humes 155). This absolutely blew my mind. Maybe all this E-Waste and usage is all an illusion. I personally believe its a reality because we can see this happening right in front of us. Smart Trash can be the key to our problems, but how far will we go with this? "Smart trash provides an inking of the power over waste that could be achieved," (Humes 157). Smart trash could be the next level stuff if we just work hard enough and provide a reasonable way to persuade all humans for smart trash.

Incinerator as Eye Candy

I'm surprised that we actually do care about the planet. It amazes me how we are trying not to pollute the air and are doing everything we can to make it beneficial to the environment. "Contain a series of filters and scrubbers that remove almost all of the offending pollution," (Article). We are trying to put the effort in so we don't pollute the air. They even state that the "pollution and emissions control system take up almost as much floor space as the incinerators," (Article). It's crazy how the best products are small and compatible while the ones that cause harm are kinda huge in size. Yet, I can only imagine the cost of all this only to help the planet not be polluted. They state that these energy plants also create heat as well as electricity. Heat and electricity can be useful on so many levels! They use the heat and electricity for us! They state that they send us the heat and electricity only for us to use. This is excellent as the resources are being used more effectively. I find this a good project as it only benefits us in the future instead of breathing all the harmful products that can potentially kill us in the future.

Articles 10/2

It amazes me how a 19 year old is looking for solutions to solve the ocean trash crisis and others just sit there. This man has a pretty bright idea. The only problem I see in it could result in it being a total failure. I think it could be a total failure because no one might want to fund it. The cost of this could be quite high and could be a problem. We don't know if it will last in the ocean. The waves, currents, and storms could be a huge issue for this. I suggest he does multiple experiments, small ones in particular, before actually trying to get this huge project to work. I see how he wants to anchor it and basically the project will clean up the waste. Its a fantastic idea, but I personally think the scale is too big and won't work. I believe it won't work because the fact that you have to get workers to actually set this up in the middle of the ocean and it could take days or months to actually start this. I'm also surprised that our trash has raised 100 times since about 40 years ago. That's crazy and it's safe to say that we are producing and buying a lot more than we actually need. Our production rates are extremely high for the sake of money. The picture shows how our trash is lining up at shores because of the wind currents. The picture is disgusting and it just shows that we throw out our trash in the ocean and doesn't bother us to where it ends up. We need to get our act together before we become a dump of our own that's too big for us to handle.

Garbology : Chapter Six

It's amazing how much trash is actually in our ocean. People think we just have small piles of trash floating around the sea. "Described as a kind of floating island of debris twice the size of Texas," (Humes 130). That is a huge number a trash just floating around. Yet we believe nothing can we done. Plastic particles are conatining chemicals and now are getting into the ocean. Funny, how I wrote about this. We claim that it's threatening our ecosystem and ourselves! We know we throw plastic away in the trash and that its causing harm, yet we still do it. "80 percent of the trash at sea is from land sources rather than ships," Humes (135). Interesting how the ships that bring us the products don't actually produce the trash. This chapter consisted of talking about plastic issues and how they are affecting us. We use so much plastic for little reason. We simply throw away all plastic that we see and sometimes, we don't even recycle which is sickening to the environment. I'll be the first to admit, I sometimes don't recycle but I have since I started reading the first chapters.

Garbology : Chapter Five

 I find it interesting how we use our ocean as trash. We think, the ocean is the solution to all our problems, so we just dump it. Project Kaisei seems like a really good idea, except the fact that it will cost a ton. I also am kinda confused on how this Project will last at sea. The sea isn't nice and calm all the time. There are thunderstorms and huge waves that can disrupt this project. We should really think twice before we put this into affect. I also am fascinated at the wind currents and how the trash is basically being moved around the world. A lot of our trash also sinks to the bottom affecting the fish and the bottom of the ocean. I see that our plastic sometimes doesn't float and just sinks. We should really be careful on what we throw into the ocean as we don't know what the future outcome can be.