Extracting resources from under the ground is an expensive and environmentally harmful thing to do. It’s also political challenging in many places to open (or expand) new mining operations, the recent court ruling in Panama demonstrates this. For decades we’ve been tossing perfectly good metals into landfills, so why not
Continue readingTag: waste
Things Are Good: Reducing Food Waste by Setting Goals
The best way for a regional government to reduce food waste is to set goals. Previous and common efforts focus on messaging and even in increasing the cost of managing food waste for households. New research shows that simply setting food waste reduction goals is enough and even better than
Continue readingScripturient: Council Votes to Waste More Tax Dollars on Personal Vendetta
Just when you thought our council could not get any more petty or puerile, they lower the bar again. Last night, in a 7-2 vote, our punishment-obsessed council voted to spend yet more of your tax dollars on the Saunderson Vindictive Judicial Inquiry (aka the SVJI). Yes, that’s right: they
Continue readingScripturient: More Lawyers, More Costs, More Secrecy
Monday night, council will once again scurry behind closed doors like cockroaches to avoid the light of public scrutiny to hear yet another virtual presentation from lawyers about the Saunderson Vindictive Judicial Inquiry (aka the SVJI). And, of course, it will cost the taxpayers again to help The Great Leader
Continue readingThings Are Good: Turning Sewage into Something Useful
Today is World Water Day and what better way to celebrate than by talking about sewage? The Stockholm Environment Institute, an international non-profit research and policy organization, released a report on how we can better handle human waste. When it comes to basic sanitation there is plenty of good news
Continue readingScripturient: Collingwood’s Version of QAnon: the SVJI
A story in CollingwoodToday titled, Council orders CAO to sift through old COLLUS documents kept by EPCOR shows just how far into the conspiracy pit they have dug themselves. They are so totally obsessed with the events of a decade ago, that they happily continue to waste administrative staff time
Continue readingScripturient: Will Madigan Pay for Inquiry Costs?
In a recent story on CollingwoodToday about the Saunderson Vindictive Judicial Inquiry (SVJI), Councillor Bob “Lapdog” Madigan commented that he wanted, “…those who are responsible for this need to be held accountable.” Since neither the inquiry nor the OPP found anything illegal or criminal in the proceedings (no charges have
Continue readingThings Are Good: The Right to Repair in Europe
One of the largest markets in the world will soon be demanding manufactures to let consumers repair what their products. You may have bought a product like a cellphone that gets minor damage which you can’t repair yourself, so you need to send it back to the manufacturers for an
Continue readingThings Are Good: Floating Trash Bins a Great Success, May Influence Policies
We’ve been following the installation and study of Seabins in Toronto for a while now. Good news just keeps happening from these floating garbage cans! Floating trash collectors were put in the Toronto harbour a few years ago and the research team behind the project keeps finding interesting things. The
Continue readingWritings of J. Todd Ring: Stop Flushing Away Our Future
This is a short article on a subject of critical importance to ecology, food security, water security, and our future. There are many ways that we are busily flushing away our future. (See Requiem For The American Dream, A Short History of Progress, When Technology Fails, Koyaaniskatsi, Baraka, The Road
Continue readingThings Are Good: Emissions are Down, and They can go Lower
Carbon emissions continue to drop due to the economic slowdown and are on track for an 8% reduction for 2020. This is good news for the planet as it gets a brief break from all the waste we’re dumping into the atmosphere. Still, it has revealed that individual actions alone
Continue readingThings Are Good: A List can Cut Down on Food Waste at Home
Smart people have been following the advice from health officials to limit trips outside the home to slow the spread of COVID-19, which means bigger grocery trips. This sounds innocuous until you realize that since this is a time a lot of people are regularly cooking at home they don’t
Continue readingThings Are Good: Toronto’s Food Waste Powers its Garbage Trucks
Toronto’s garbage trucks are being fuelled by the very thing they are picking up on their routes. The trucks pick up food waste (in a separate bin from recycling and trash) and transport them to a holding facility where the food further decomposes. Since 2015, Toronto has been working to
Continue readingThings Are Good: Floating Garbage Bins Succeed in Toronto
@PortsToronto Infrastructure VP Chris Sawicki talks to media about how our new Seabins work to capture rubbish from #singleuseplastics to #microplastics smaller than a grain of rice. pic.twitter.com/ZWMClUIJzZ — PortsToronto (@PortsToronto) October 10, 2019 Toronto just announced that the Seabin trial project was a success and now they are expanding
Continue readingThings Are Good: Living a Zero-Waste Life is Getting Easier
Zero waste living seems like an impossibility given the amount of packaging everything is put in. Ordering a small item can lead to 10x the packaging of the item itself. The use of packaging seem so out of control that we can’t avoid it. We can. Back in 2010 a
Continue readingThings Are Good: These Companies Convert Waste to Profits
Both the food and clothing industry produce tons of waste, waste which has traditionally been dumped into landfills. One company is taking food waste and mixing it with special bacteria to breakdown the food faster to create entirely new products. Another company is sourcing fabrics to create clothing, therefore diverting
Continue readingThings Are Good: Reducing Waste in Food Courts
Poor waste management presents more than just food waste in food courts located in mass or offices. The waste of time, money, and energy plague most of these food operations. In yet another example of how being more efficient with waste saves more than the planet, the CBC took a
Continue readingThings Are Good: How to Deal with Problematic Recyclables
Recycling programs still can’t recycle every consumer good, which means that we still need to think about what we put in the blue box (or whatever colour it is where you live). Some plastics are too hard to recycle and some containers too hard to clean. The CBC recently ran
Continue readingThings Are Good: Stick it to Straws
People are more aware than ever before about the damage to our planet caused by plastics. The whole life-cycle of plastics causes harm from collecting non-renewable oils to the long lifetime of most plastic products. Plastic has even been found at the bottom of the Mariana Trench (video below)! Of
Continue readingThings Are Good: EU Launches Urban Mining Project
The European Union’s newest mining project focuses on urban areas throughout the continent. Their ProSUM project built a database of metals, chemicals, and materials brought into the EU market over the last ten plus years; the idea is that the produced goods can be “mined” again. It’s a really novel
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