Green Guilt

The Phactors  bought themselves a new TV.  It's a bit of an understatement to say that the technology has changed considerably in the last 25 years. As hard as it is to believe our still fully functional TV was 25 years old. By the standards of the industry, our new TV is far, far from the biggest, fastest, highest res, smartest TV you can buy.  Now here's the problem: TVs are not very green, and no one is even trying to figure out how to recycle them.  It costs money just to  recover a few materials, and while paying is OK with us, no one wants to help.  It hurts environmentally conscious people like us to be forced to recycle a perfectly good, functional appliance that doesn't recycle very well. When you ask a sales assistant (Do you have any questions?), "How well does this type of TV recycle?" They give you a quite strange look. Such a concept had never ever entered their mind before. And what is the expected functional life of this TV? And you know they're thinking, "Well, Grandpa, since you've bought a model that is already outmoded by about 2 years, it's about 6 months."  No one else seems to care. Manufacturers of such things have no environmental ethic at all, and if you were to require them to build in a recycling plan and front load it into cost, there would be a huge outcry.  "It would make our product too expensive!"  This is an example of letting the environment pay part of the cost, and it then results in the public subsidizing of an environmentally unethical business. Just as if there isn't enough money out there in all the programming, delivery, receiving, aspects of the industry combined to pay for the environmental cost of recycling TVs.  There just isn't a will to do anything.  And it leaves the tiny  portion of their market that has an environmental ethic suffering from green guilt, while enjoying greatly improved image quality.

Green Hamburg

Kudos to Hamburg, Germany's 2nd biggest city.  They decided to curtail the use of Keurig style coffee pods because of the waste they generate.  Over packaging is a serious problem, individually wrapped items within a larger package, and then within still another box or bag. Although TPP proclaimed the Keurig coffee maker the least green new appliance some time ago (couldn't find the link), its popularity has continued to rise probably because of the diversity of easy to make coffee/tea beverages, one cup at a time. What this means of course is that every 5 or 6 g of coffee or tea comes wrapped in 5-6 g of packaging (taking into account the outer packaging as well).  Such little things are almost impossible to recycle, and they quickly pile up as waste. Not many places, and certainly not cities or states in the capitalism worshipping USA would ban such a popular product and appliance. Some expensive alternatives exist; TPP's car dealership has a machine that will make upon demand several different types of coffee drinks starting with whole beans! Surprisingly the latte is quite credible. Probably too expensive for the average consumer. But this is where manufacturers feet are not being held to the fire because we all are subsidizing the Keurig product with our taxes so that some people can have convenient caffeine diversity. All products should be priced to include the cost of decommissioning the product and disposing of its waste, i.e., If the consumer pays up front, and then wasteful appliances and products would reflect their real cost to society.  Flat screen TVs are presently entering a new generation, and the newer, better models are fairly cheap, but what is happening to the old TVs? Well, the Phactors are still watching one of them. But the rest are piling up at recycling centers and no one is paying for their recycling, so your new TV was subsidized by everyone's taxes. These are costly items to recycle, and you should not be able to just throw them out. Same goes with toxic waste products. Their price should reflect the cost of their safe disposal.  You see we really don't have a capitalist system in the USA, we have a subsidized system where people and the environment pay so that products will remain cheap on the purchasing end and manufacturers won't have to deal with the messy business of dealing with the waste created by their own products, and avoid any cost that might lower their profits. So it's good to hear of a city with some guts.

Upcycling rather than recycling

Alternatives to waste, alternatives to over consumption, alternatives to filling more land-fills are always welcome ideas, and here's a very nice and interesting video of upcycling in Greece.  Now TPP figures that many of you are pretty conscious of and maybe even conscientious about recycling.  Further many of you are in one way or another associated with universities.  Now where else would be a better place to initiate the concept of upcycling than in a university town?  You've got the arty types.  You've got the techie types.  You've got the junk generating types!  And they all need jobs and cash.  Upcycling isn't exactly a new idea. 
TPP grew up with old New England farmers who never threw out anything.  When you needed something, you visited your junk pile, found some bits and pieces, and built it.  The manner, and the creative way these people upcycle is impressive and shows what some imagination can do?  So pass this on; upcycle it so to speak. 

Clever Affordable Housing

You might not want to live in one of these tiny houses, however if you were without shelter, and had little money, these are pretty amazing. It would cure your too much stuff problem. Didn’t realize our garden shed was potential rental property, and the knotty pine paneled 2nd floor of our garage (who knows why; it was done decades ago) could be a community center.

A new app: Use your cell phone to plant trees

The luddite part of the Phactor really dislikes cell phones (something mentioned in passing before); they're even harder to get away from than fast food joints. In the olden days you had to step into a phone booth to make a call when away from home or office; now with no privacy what so ever, everyone gets to find out just how pathetically uninteresting your life really is. So using your cell phone to plant a tree strikes me as most excellent idea. In a win-win situation, old cell phones (only old ones?) are mailed in and recycled rather than planted in a land fill where nothing will ever grow again, and the materials finance tree plantings. But they used an image of a damaged seedling on their web site! Come on people, show a cell phone shoved into the dirt, along with the obnoxious twit holding it. Let's see what grows.