Thursday, August 30, 2012
Friday, June 22, 2012
To watch: Bag It The Movie: Is your life too plastic?
For the past two or three trips to my local video store I've been eyeing the film Bag It. It's often hard to decipher if eco-films are going to be informative or preachy. Erin of the blog Reading My Tea Leaves is raving about this film. Perhaps that's just the nudge I need to get on it.
Also the bar conditioner she is holding up in the photograph is only OK through my eyes (and hair). It definitely didn't give me the soft feel I get from many bottled conditioners.
Also the bar conditioner she is holding up in the photograph is only OK through my eyes (and hair). It definitely didn't give me the soft feel I get from many bottled conditioners.
The Dumpster Project
Meet Mac Premo, the founder of The Dumpster Project. He showcases his own personal items and posts stories about them as posted on his the dumpster project. It's pretty astounding but perhaps this is just taking sentimental hording to a new level. Good on him for making money off of it!
Monday, June 11, 2012
Wednesday, June 6, 2012
Sunday, June 3, 2012
One Plastic Beach short
When I found this video on a couple that have been picking up plastic along a Northern California beach. It's pretty impressive to see what we lose, intentionally or unintentionally and to consider the interests in picking themn up.
For years, my Great Aunt Kay has been picking up trash around her Distillery Distrinct, downtown Toronto digs. She always has a show and tell session when we visit and I gotta say, THE THINGS SHE FINDS! This little film reminds me a lot of her interest and finds around her neighbourhood.
It's one part interesting, one part sickening.
For years, my Great Aunt Kay has been picking up trash around her Distillery Distrinct, downtown Toronto digs. She always has a show and tell session when we visit and I gotta say, THE THINGS SHE FINDS! This little film reminds me a lot of her interest and finds around her neighbourhood.
It's one part interesting, one part sickening.
Sunday, May 13, 2012
The Weakerthans' John K. Samson's new album Provincial has a song on it called "When I Write My Master's Thesis"
Exclaim! session
Exclaim! session
Monday, April 30, 2012
Timm Scheider's 'They Live'
This is the work of German artist Timm Schneider. Do you think I could argue that Timm Schneider's project gives rubbish/waste bins agency??
This is the work of German artist Timm Schneider
Saturday, March 31, 2012
University of Guelph Abattoir
I just learned what an abattoir is yesterday. Basically, it's a fancy way of saying slaughter house...
I also just learned a week before that on the University of Guelph campus there's an abattoir open to the public for viewing the slaughter of animals they're using for research.
I am a meat eater, but I'm weak as jelly... Look at this little nugget!!!!
I also just learned a week before that on the University of Guelph campus there's an abattoir open to the public for viewing the slaughter of animals they're using for research.
I am a meat eater, but I'm weak as jelly... Look at this little nugget!!!!
Heartbreaking. But I'm so interested to learn more about the food I eat...
Robin Nagle... yet again
I'm just going to announce to the internet world that I am in absolutely academic love with Anthropologist Robin Nagle. She's pretty bang on with what I'm studying.
NYC
The city employees who sweep your streets and collect your garbage? You know them as sanitation workers. But think of them also as “folk sociologists,” Robin Nagle says. She’s serious.
“They can give you a demographic and sort of a sociological and anthropological interpretation of a given block or a given section of the city that’s remarkably detailed,” said Dr. Nagle, who teaches at New York University. “Accurate? I don’t know. But I would bet my boots it’s pretty spot on.”
By vocation, Dr. Nagle is an anthropologist. By inclination, you could consider her also a trashologist. Should that word ever come into being, she’d qualify for it as much as anyone.
She has long been fascinated by the stuff that people throw away, and even more so by the men — there are women, but men are more the norm — whose lot in life is to haul it away. In 2006, the city’s Sanitation Department went so far as to name her its anthropologist-in-residence, an unpaid position that enables her to study at close range a group of workers she believes are absurdly underappreciated.
No question, the 7,775 rank-and-file men and women on the Sanitation Department’s payroll are collectively the Rodney Dangerfield of the city’s uniformed forces. The tabloids are practically incapable of typing the words “firefighter” and “police officer” without tacking “hero” alongside. Not so with sanitation workers, though theirs is an arduous and potentially hazardous assignment, day in and day out.
When a cop or a firefighter dies on the job, the city drapes itself in black. When a sanitation worker loses his life — and it happens more often than you may realize — the death tends to migrate quickly toward the back pages.
“I’m not saying that we should take away anything from Police or Fire,” Dr. Nagle said, “but let’s share the love a little bit.”
Even among themselves, sanitation workers have an image problem.
“One of my central questions,” Dr. Nagle said, “is what is it like to wear a uniform and do a job that is basically stigmatized to the point where I know many men — not so much the women, but the men — who won’t let their neighbors know what they do for a living. When pressed, they’ll say they ‘work for the city.’ ”
Plain and simple, she says, sanitation workers deserve more respect. She is convinced, as is the department, that one solution would be a sanitation museum.
New York doesn’t have one, and that is startling when you think about it. We have museums dedicated to the police, to firefighters, to mass transit, to various ethnicities, to skyscrapers, even to sex. But oddly, there is nothing devoted to sanitation, though we cannot live without it. It’s plainly more important than sex.
(No way, you say? Then try this simple test. Can you get through the day without having sex? O.K., now ask yourself if you can get through the day without having to toss something into the garbage. We rest our case.)
To plant the seed of a future museum, Dr. Nagle and an N.Y.U. colleague, Haidy Geismar, put together a monthlong exhibition on the history and importance of the Sanitation Department. The department provided space in a warren of offices that it has on West 20th Street.
THE show, which closed on Sunday, included photographs and equipment, old uniforms, posters describing sanitation’s role in city life and a smattering of mongo — sanit-talk for objects that were tossed onto the rubbish heap but were deemed worth rescuing by trash collectors.
On the exhibition’s final weekend, Dr. Nagle gave lectures on the department’s evolution and the city’s smelly past. “It’s difficult,” she said, “to convey the ripeness, the stench, of New York through most of its history.” Just as well.
As for a museum, it won’t materialize right away, she and Dr. Geismar said the other night in response to questions from an audience of 60 or so. There are financial and political obstacles. Within the department itself, Dr. Nagle said in an interview, not everyone has been good at “lifting their eyes to the horizon and thinking about something longer-term.” But a museum, she predicted, will rise some day.
Without an effective sanitation force, New York would not be the great city it is, she said, but that basic fact is easily overlooked if the streets are swept and the trash is picked up.
“One of the side effects of doing the job well,” Dr. Nagle said, “is that it creates its own invisibility.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/15/nyregion/15nyc.html?_r=1
NYC
Collecting the Trash: Its Science and Value
Robert Stolarik for The New York Times
Robin Nagle, an anthropologist at New York University, among the trucks she likes to praise.
“They can give you a demographic and sort of a sociological and anthropological interpretation of a given block or a given section of the city that’s remarkably detailed,” said Dr. Nagle, who teaches at New York University. “Accurate? I don’t know. But I would bet my boots it’s pretty spot on.”
By vocation, Dr. Nagle is an anthropologist. By inclination, you could consider her also a trashologist. Should that word ever come into being, she’d qualify for it as much as anyone.
She has long been fascinated by the stuff that people throw away, and even more so by the men — there are women, but men are more the norm — whose lot in life is to haul it away. In 2006, the city’s Sanitation Department went so far as to name her its anthropologist-in-residence, an unpaid position that enables her to study at close range a group of workers she believes are absurdly underappreciated.
No question, the 7,775 rank-and-file men and women on the Sanitation Department’s payroll are collectively the Rodney Dangerfield of the city’s uniformed forces. The tabloids are practically incapable of typing the words “firefighter” and “police officer” without tacking “hero” alongside. Not so with sanitation workers, though theirs is an arduous and potentially hazardous assignment, day in and day out.
When a cop or a firefighter dies on the job, the city drapes itself in black. When a sanitation worker loses his life — and it happens more often than you may realize — the death tends to migrate quickly toward the back pages.
“I’m not saying that we should take away anything from Police or Fire,” Dr. Nagle said, “but let’s share the love a little bit.”
Even among themselves, sanitation workers have an image problem.
“One of my central questions,” Dr. Nagle said, “is what is it like to wear a uniform and do a job that is basically stigmatized to the point where I know many men — not so much the women, but the men — who won’t let their neighbors know what they do for a living. When pressed, they’ll say they ‘work for the city.’ ”
Plain and simple, she says, sanitation workers deserve more respect. She is convinced, as is the department, that one solution would be a sanitation museum.
New York doesn’t have one, and that is startling when you think about it. We have museums dedicated to the police, to firefighters, to mass transit, to various ethnicities, to skyscrapers, even to sex. But oddly, there is nothing devoted to sanitation, though we cannot live without it. It’s plainly more important than sex.
(No way, you say? Then try this simple test. Can you get through the day without having sex? O.K., now ask yourself if you can get through the day without having to toss something into the garbage. We rest our case.)
To plant the seed of a future museum, Dr. Nagle and an N.Y.U. colleague, Haidy Geismar, put together a monthlong exhibition on the history and importance of the Sanitation Department. The department provided space in a warren of offices that it has on West 20th Street.
THE show, which closed on Sunday, included photographs and equipment, old uniforms, posters describing sanitation’s role in city life and a smattering of mongo — sanit-talk for objects that were tossed onto the rubbish heap but were deemed worth rescuing by trash collectors.
On the exhibition’s final weekend, Dr. Nagle gave lectures on the department’s evolution and the city’s smelly past. “It’s difficult,” she said, “to convey the ripeness, the stench, of New York through most of its history.” Just as well.
As for a museum, it won’t materialize right away, she and Dr. Geismar said the other night in response to questions from an audience of 60 or so. There are financial and political obstacles. Within the department itself, Dr. Nagle said in an interview, not everyone has been good at “lifting their eyes to the horizon and thinking about something longer-term.” But a museum, she predicted, will rise some day.
Without an effective sanitation force, New York would not be the great city it is, she said, but that basic fact is easily overlooked if the streets are swept and the trash is picked up.
“One of the side effects of doing the job well,” Dr. Nagle said, “is that it creates its own invisibility.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/15/nyregion/15nyc.html?_r=1
Thursday, March 15, 2012
Dear Toronto -
Six ways to go wrong when recycling
• Single polyethylene plastic shopping bags, while recyclable, can clog sorting machines. They are picked out as garbage. Toronto advises stuffing many bags into one, and tying it shut.
• Toronto has no current recycling market for plastic overwrap and plastic clamshell food containers, which differ from recycling-ready plastic items such as ice cream tubs or pop bottles. Clean polystyrene (Styrofoam) food containers are blue bin worthy.
• Propane cylinders, of whatever size, will explode if processed at a recycling plant. Cylinders should be taken to a household hazardous waste depot.
• Loose shredded paper cannot be sorted efficiently with other fibre products. Toronto asks recyclers to bag shredded paper before the blue bin.
• Liquid and food residue contaminates otherwise recyclable containers. While trace amounts of waste can be extracted during the sorting process, a half-full bottle of soap, for example, will be sent to garbage. Scrub down liquid residue from food and detergent containers.
• Glass from mirrors, windows, light bulbs and eye glasses have a different melting point than glass from food containers and jars, and cannot be processed by Toronto’s recycling facilities.
• Single polyethylene plastic shopping bags, while recyclable, can clog sorting machines. They are picked out as garbage. Toronto advises stuffing many bags into one, and tying it shut.
• Toronto has no current recycling market for plastic overwrap and plastic clamshell food containers, which differ from recycling-ready plastic items such as ice cream tubs or pop bottles. Clean polystyrene (Styrofoam) food containers are blue bin worthy.
• Propane cylinders, of whatever size, will explode if processed at a recycling plant. Cylinders should be taken to a household hazardous waste depot.
• Loose shredded paper cannot be sorted efficiently with other fibre products. Toronto asks recyclers to bag shredded paper before the blue bin.
• Liquid and food residue contaminates otherwise recyclable containers. While trace amounts of waste can be extracted during the sorting process, a half-full bottle of soap, for example, will be sent to garbage. Scrub down liquid residue from food and detergent containers.
• Glass from mirrors, windows, light bulbs and eye glasses have a different melting point than glass from food containers and jars, and cannot be processed by Toronto’s recycling facilities.
Monday, February 13, 2012
Arts gal goes Engineer: Treatment of Hazardous Waste
I don't know how I've done it but I've found myself tutoring math and taking an engineer course. Not bad for the gal that scraped by math in high school!
This class tackled different forms of treatment of hazardous waste... The big thing I noticed was how complex handling both hazardous and solid waste is. I've always known waste management was within the scope of engineering, but it was really nice to see how it is applied. As a social scientist, I feel somewhat limited with my knowledge of waste management, it's really nice that I've found a Professor who has so warmly welcomed me into his class. Given, I am auditing, it's kind of a nice way to listen in on class lectures without the stress of performing will.
That said instructor is Professor Brajesh Dubey, a Civil Engineer born in India and has bounced from New Zealand to Florida to East Tennessee, finally meeting me here in Guelph. His research has recently focused on e-waste and landfills of many sorts. It's really interesting to hear the technical side and Professor Dubey definitely has a few tid bids he can share.
Engineers seem to make the choice that I have come to study. Pretty jazzed.
I just started auditing the class, they're just over a quarter of the way through the course. Sadly, I missed a lot of waste management policy content, basically the stuff that I could really hang on to. I however walked in on the wealth of different methods of handling waste. We tackled a multitude of different methods such as neutralisation, precipitation, oxidisation/reduction. Additionally, we addressed some biological change methods such as stabilisation and solidification, aerobic and anerobic, thermal and chemical bio treatment. I find myself a little confused with the processes, but for the most part, feel pretty at ease with what was presented at the lecture because of my studies on this field to date.
I personally found his talk on incineration to be most fascinating. He stated that there was a lot of resentment towards waste-to-energy methods of handling rubbish. This came as no surprise to me from my research on the recent approval of an incinerator in the Durham Region. However, Professor Dubey emphasised these risks very explicitly in stating that the process of burning waste is very sensitive and needs to be agitated often to ensure that pockets of trash are not being neglected. He stresses the practical role of turbulence for proper air distribution.
I also find it funny that he cited Toy Story 3 and Wall-E as pop culture visuals of incinerators. He validatated that they were real.
Land Disposal Restrictions or LDR were highly being abused by US-Canada transfer... Between 2003-2004, just over twelve years ago, the US were heavily shipping waste to Canada because Canada's land disposal restrictions were significantly more lax than Canada.
He also dropped the name superfund, which I recently encountered from putting together my context paper. Superfunds are sites where waste has been improperly disposed of.
We also broke down the construction of the different layers that a landfill is composed of... There are five or six very complex layers that make up the barrier between the waste and the ground.
He also mentioned soil and optimum moisture content or OMC, which is a measure of disposal of water to best compact it.
Adsorption - the accumulation of molecules of a gas to form a thin film on the surface of a solid.
This class tackled different forms of treatment of hazardous waste... The big thing I noticed was how complex handling both hazardous and solid waste is. I've always known waste management was within the scope of engineering, but it was really nice to see how it is applied. As a social scientist, I feel somewhat limited with my knowledge of waste management, it's really nice that I've found a Professor who has so warmly welcomed me into his class. Given, I am auditing, it's kind of a nice way to listen in on class lectures without the stress of performing will.
That said instructor is Professor Brajesh Dubey, a Civil Engineer born in India and has bounced from New Zealand to Florida to East Tennessee, finally meeting me here in Guelph. His research has recently focused on e-waste and landfills of many sorts. It's really interesting to hear the technical side and Professor Dubey definitely has a few tid bids he can share.
Engineers seem to make the choice that I have come to study. Pretty jazzed.
I just started auditing the class, they're just over a quarter of the way through the course. Sadly, I missed a lot of waste management policy content, basically the stuff that I could really hang on to. I however walked in on the wealth of different methods of handling waste. We tackled a multitude of different methods such as neutralisation, precipitation, oxidisation/reduction. Additionally, we addressed some biological change methods such as stabilisation and solidification, aerobic and anerobic, thermal and chemical bio treatment. I find myself a little confused with the processes, but for the most part, feel pretty at ease with what was presented at the lecture because of my studies on this field to date.
I personally found his talk on incineration to be most fascinating. He stated that there was a lot of resentment towards waste-to-energy methods of handling rubbish. This came as no surprise to me from my research on the recent approval of an incinerator in the Durham Region. However, Professor Dubey emphasised these risks very explicitly in stating that the process of burning waste is very sensitive and needs to be agitated often to ensure that pockets of trash are not being neglected. He stresses the practical role of turbulence for proper air distribution.
I also find it funny that he cited Toy Story 3 and Wall-E as pop culture visuals of incinerators. He validatated that they were real.
Land Disposal Restrictions or LDR were highly being abused by US-Canada transfer... Between 2003-2004, just over twelve years ago, the US were heavily shipping waste to Canada because Canada's land disposal restrictions were significantly more lax than Canada.
He also dropped the name superfund, which I recently encountered from putting together my context paper. Superfunds are sites where waste has been improperly disposed of.
We also broke down the construction of the different layers that a landfill is composed of... There are five or six very complex layers that make up the barrier between the waste and the ground.
He also mentioned soil and optimum moisture content or OMC, which is a measure of disposal of water to best compact it.
Adsorption - the accumulation of molecules of a gas to form a thin film on the surface of a solid.
Friday, February 10, 2012
Class time: (over) population thoughts and thinkers
It took three years of post-secondary schooling for me to realise that I can study things I'm passionate about. For some odd reason I started in history, probably because it's a "hard" discipline we are trained to think will take you somewhere. By "hard" discipline I mean that most, if not all schools teach some form of history and additionally, maths and sciences. These are methods of study we are expected to know some form of.
My point here is in my fourth year of post-secondary education and my first year in environment-related studies, I got to thinking about human impact and population levels. My undergrad was a time for me to have simplistic thoughts about very complex issues, I looked at ideas with a lens that I would refer to as "my own ideal world." Now, three years later, a little jaded, but in all honesty no less hopeful. The only real difference is I am a little more hesitant to throw down any of my very bold statements.
In my fourth year of undergrad, I started to subscribe to ideas that paralleled Thomas Malthus and Paul Ehrlich - the world was going to face devastating consequences if population levels continued to rise. I would throw out bold comments stating that people shouldn't live in areas that were simply not sustainable, usually alluding to those who live in the Global South. Again, not so simple.
It's seems like a real economic crunch, although, I really don't want that to be the focus about what I took away from Dr. Evan Fraser's lecture today. I really walked away with a well-rounded perspective on the different interpretations of the population problem. I academically met a fellow by the name of Julian Simon, a Professor of Business administration in the US. He sadly kicked fourteen years ago at the tender age of sixty five. Simon challenged American Biologist Paul Ehrlich in 1980 to a bet that contested resource scarcity over the span of ten years. Simon asked Ehrlich to choose five metals that they would purchase, in turn they would allow their value to mature. Simon claimed that the value would decrease, while Ehrlich believed they would rise. The winner was to receive the profits of the metals, whatever it may be. In those ten years, the world's population grew an astounding 800 million and the price of the select metals dropped significantly. In October 1990, Ehrlich mailed Simon a cheque for $576.07.
The span of this humourous debate is not an accurate capture of the flux of the value of the select metals. The time span really doesn't give justice to value. Not much more to say about it, just good academic chatter.
Cassandra metaphor is a concept that is applied in situations in which valid warnings or concerns are dismissed or disbelieved.
I=PAT does not resonate with me. I have many criticisms that I wish I had the time to drop down on here!
I feel the more I study over-population the more I stray away from fatalism. I am however very afraid of overpopulation and exponential population growth. It's on the back burner for certain.
My point here is in my fourth year of post-secondary education and my first year in environment-related studies, I got to thinking about human impact and population levels. My undergrad was a time for me to have simplistic thoughts about very complex issues, I looked at ideas with a lens that I would refer to as "my own ideal world." Now, three years later, a little jaded, but in all honesty no less hopeful. The only real difference is I am a little more hesitant to throw down any of my very bold statements.
In my fourth year of undergrad, I started to subscribe to ideas that paralleled Thomas Malthus and Paul Ehrlich - the world was going to face devastating consequences if population levels continued to rise. I would throw out bold comments stating that people shouldn't live in areas that were simply not sustainable, usually alluding to those who live in the Global South. Again, not so simple.
It's seems like a real economic crunch, although, I really don't want that to be the focus about what I took away from Dr. Evan Fraser's lecture today. I really walked away with a well-rounded perspective on the different interpretations of the population problem. I academically met a fellow by the name of Julian Simon, a Professor of Business administration in the US. He sadly kicked fourteen years ago at the tender age of sixty five. Simon challenged American Biologist Paul Ehrlich in 1980 to a bet that contested resource scarcity over the span of ten years. Simon asked Ehrlich to choose five metals that they would purchase, in turn they would allow their value to mature. Simon claimed that the value would decrease, while Ehrlich believed they would rise. The winner was to receive the profits of the metals, whatever it may be. In those ten years, the world's population grew an astounding 800 million and the price of the select metals dropped significantly. In October 1990, Ehrlich mailed Simon a cheque for $576.07.
The span of this humourous debate is not an accurate capture of the flux of the value of the select metals. The time span really doesn't give justice to value. Not much more to say about it, just good academic chatter.
Cassandra metaphor is a concept that is applied in situations in which valid warnings or concerns are dismissed or disbelieved.
I=PAT does not resonate with me. I have many criticisms that I wish I had the time to drop down on here!
I feel the more I study over-population the more I stray away from fatalism. I am however very afraid of overpopulation and exponential population growth. It's on the back burner for certain.
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