1. With cellulosic ethanol, yard waste is actually potential gas for your e85 vehicle.

What if you live in an apartment?

How about the Hydro 4000...

Posted by: John Bailo on May 15, 2008 05:07 PM

2. Puget Consumers's Co-op (aka PCC) saying they are discontinuing plastic bags at check-out, but they still ask you if you want your meat in plastic. They still offer plastic bags for all your produce in the produce dept., and they sell all manner of plastic bags for trash, food storage, etc.

Posted by: Michele on May 15, 2008 05:12 PM

3. So, composting is good. Just take your organic wastes, put them into a lovely compost frame and enjoy your brie and chablis while nature goes to work.

Well, what's that there nature thing doing in the compost frame? You mean, it's rotting the organic matter and turning it into methane and spewing it into the atmosphere?

Shhh, our rulers downtown [they quit being our 'representatives' long ago] have decreed that this is the direction we're going. Just generate your share of methane and don't ask questions.

Relax and enjoy it.

Posted by: Insufficiently Sensitive on May 15, 2008 05:46 PM

4. IS@3,

When the material is put into a landfill, it is buried and devoid of oxygen. This causes decomposition (anaerobic fermentation) which will produce methane gas.

When you compost at home, you expose the organic waste to oxygen (ah, the smell of it!) and it produces humus, ammonia, water, heat and CO2.

As far as Don's request for paradoxes, this webpage isn't really one of those, but it did make me chuckle a bit considering the source.

Posted by: Smoley on May 15, 2008 06:11 PM

5. Many years ago when they first suggested that people could compost yard waste (as then everybody was throwing into the trash can), they said it was verboten to put in your organic household waste as it attracted rats and other vermin in addition to making some disagreeable oders.

My, how things have changed.

When you get right down to it, we should be throwing all manner of yard and household waste into the trash. Get every last bit of it into landfills and start harvesting the methane for electricity generation. But that won't happen because there is no pain in that. If those boobs really cared about the planet, the environment and our quality of life they'd put two and two together. But it's too easy. The bloviators downtown and in Olympia want us to be inconvenienced as much as possible to drive home the point of our illegitimate occupation of the planet. We are the breakout species you see and must be punished.

Posted by: G Jiggy on May 15, 2008 06:30 PM

6. Well, Seattle should adopt an ordinace that all restaurants in the city boundary are required to compost all food scraps, paper towels, napkins, paper plates, etc.

Then, we will see Seattle turn into the movie set for the remake of Ben, if they ever do one.

Posted by: DopioLover on May 15, 2008 06:51 PM

7. Well, the salmon industry has been declared a disaster, and they don't want to kill the sea lions who eat thousands of them every year. So instead, they trap them, and then they die anyway. Not of gunshots wounds, as it was widely reported everywhere (the horror!), but from heat stroke* from being in the cages.

*presumably caused by global warming

Posted by: Palouse on May 15, 2008 08:52 PM

8. The environmental paradox of bicycling is a pretty good one too. But I can't take credit for that. Read here.

Posted by: Palouse on May 15, 2008 09:07 PM

9. Re-cycling is wasteful. Except for metals, it takes more energy to sort through and recycle trash rather than just dumping it in a landfill.

The environmentalists just cannot grasp this fact.

Posted by: Bill K. on May 15, 2008 09:29 PM

10. Enviromental Paradox.

Enviro's opposed nuke power and hydro power, nuke and hydro power is the one power source that could have reduced C02 in a major way.

Enviro's opposed DDT to save the birds, West Nile is wiping out rare birds in a major way

Enviro's burned down the U of W research facility containing a seed bank of rare plants and trees

Enviro's have opposed every waste water treatment facility in the Northwest

Enviro's oppose fire fighting, burned down the greatest park in America, Yellowstone still looks like a Christmas tree farm - with virtually only one type of tree. Enviro's lie and say the fire was necessary to open pine cones, trust me, I know pine cones, picked them up when I was there, and they open just fine with out fire

Enviro oppose sea lion culling, yet seal have been killing off our salmon in record numbers all the while blaming fishermen.

Enviro's oppose the vaccination of Yellowstone buffalo, hurting the buffalo through the required culling of them when they wander near the nearby cattle ranches

Enviro's oppose genetic plant research, which has led to less land under cultivation, returned to it's natural state.

Enviro's oppose capitalism, yet capitalist countries did more for the environment than any atheistic commie country ever did. E.Europe and China were the most polluted places in the world.

Posted by: John McDonald on May 15, 2008 09:49 PM

11. Enviro's fought to get rid of the California offshore rigs, now they can't because so much natural sea life depends on those pilings.

The Caribo like the Alaska Oil pipeline, what else is warm when you are freezing your pelt off in -40F weather and provides shade when you are sweltering in a fur coat.

How about the time the Sierra Club Director in E. Washington clear cut his property?

Enviro's refuse to allow replanting near St. Helens results in years of unnecessary erosion, miles of barren ground, and a lot less life.

Enviro's love leather, but don't eat meat.

Enviro's love pot, but hate tobbaco

Enviro's love to travel to exotic places, spreading foriegn viruses and bacteria in pristine places (this the real reason frogs around the world are dying of viruses, not because of a 1C increase in temp)

Posted by: John McDonald on May 15, 2008 10:11 PM

12. "It's a nice, easy way to do your part to save the environment"...

ROFLMAO!

Repackage the collection of garbage and sell it as school lunches...

Think of the money not wasted on the parasitic wastrels...

Posted by: juandos on May 16, 2008 12:31 AM

13. Here is a story that is interesting. It appears that the US Army has Portable Biorefinery's that uses trash as fuel.

The tactical biorefinery is a portable machine that can convert food waste and inorganic trash into electricity.

Purdue University researchers created a unique hybrid design for the U.S. Army. It uses three distinct technologies to perform its magic: a bioreactor that uses enzymes and micro-organisms to turn food waste into ethanol, a gasification unit that turns plastics, paper, and other residual waste into methane and low-grade propane and a modified diesel engine that can burn gas, ethanol, and diesel fuel in variable proportions.

It gets a kickstart from a small amount of diesel, then the army chef comes and pours the mess tent garbage in. The resulting ethanol displaces the diesel fuel, which only continues in a very low quantity "drip".

http://news.softpedia.com/news/U-S-Army-Portable-Biorefinery-Uses-Trash-as-Fuel-51484.shtml

Military Technology over the decades has ead the way in innovation and yet some on the left would love to see funding of our military (not just war funding either)

Posted by: TrueSoldier on May 16, 2008 01:14 AM

14. The last post should have read:

Military Technology over the decades has ead the way in innovation and yet some on the left would love to see funding of our military CUT(not just war funding either)

Posted by: TrueSoldier on May 16, 2008 01:16 AM

15. #4:

First, you deny that a backyard compost-o-matic will ever go anaerobic. That's like telling your girlfriend your contraceptive is 100% effective. Tell a trial lawyer that you GUARANTEE it will never produce methane.

Next, you give us this:
When you compost at home, you expose the organic waste to oxygen (ah, the smell of it!) and it produces humus, ammonia, water, heat and CO2.

What you just declared, in your scientific triumph, that it's politically correct to spew ammonia, water+heat = vapor, and CO2 into the atmosphere (that is, when not spewing methane).

Dude! Water vapor is the biggest greenhouse gas in existence, and CO2 is the club that anticapitalist greenies use to beat people whose lives are vastly improved by use of internal combustion engines. How can you sleep at night?

Posted by: Insufficiently Sensitive on May 16, 2008 06:20 AM

16. Paradoxes abound.

It is apparent that Enuts lack an understanding of science, nature and economics. Therefore my favorite paradox is the battery. Not the AA or AAA but the battery array powering electric cars. For some reason Enuts believe refilling the "tank" by plugging into a wall socket consumes less energy than filling up at the gas station. They fail to understand that at least the same amount of energy is required to move equal weight down a highway regardless of the fuel. And of course extraction of the minerals to produce the battery is not a clean mining operation. And finally buried batteries remain in the landfill for many years producing obnoxious sediments. And the real whooper is the cost for the new batteries.

Surely one must be committed to the Enut religion to ignore the battery folly. But it feels good as you drive down the road knowing you are doing your part to save the planet.

Yes, the battery stands as the lasting symbol for Enuts.

Posted by: Snuffy on May 16, 2008 06:52 AM

17. Swamee says that Pattycakes Murray and Cantdowell will, possibly this week, co-sponsor a bill to list the common Puget Sound rat an endangered specie because not enough composting is going on quick enough....

Mayor Nickles, your sandwich is ready. Don't worry garbage whackos, there will be nothing left to recycle of that doomed sandwich...

Posted by: Hank on May 16, 2008 06:52 AM

18. John Bailo @1 mentioned cellulosic ethanol. This is one area where I think the energy companies should put more effort into, since it doesn't require the use of crops. The fact that E85R cellulosic ethanol made for forest decay (dead trees, and other underbrush) from the Black Hills recently powered Team Corevette to victory in American LeMans series is good news. Maybe cellulosic ethanol will get more attention. It can also help stop forest fires (as Smokey Bear says).

Posted by: tc on May 16, 2008 07:27 AM

19. IS@15,

Whoa, easy Rubble. I'm just telling you the difference between the two methods of organic decomposition. I'm not preaching or recommending anyone start a compost pile in their yard.

You're right, that if you don't frequently flip the pile to get oxygen to the decaying debris, it will generate methane as it would in the landfill.

While CO2 is the most prevalent greenhouse gas, it's not the worst. Methane traps 21 times as much heat as CO2. More about that here. We tend to hear a lot about CO2 because it's the by-product of the fossil-fueled internal combustion engine, which the eco-nazis want to eliminate at all costs. People that jog breathe more heavily and generate more CO2 than I do when sleeping on the sofa, but no one is calling for the elimination of exercise to save the planet. Go figure.

Hypocrisy abounds, however I sleep at night just fine. Then again my food scrap "problem" is taken care of by the appetite of a 4-legged composting machine known as "man's best friend". He continues to generate CO2 though, so maybe I should still be a bit restless. :)

Posted by: Smoley on May 16, 2008 08:09 AM

20. How about Dan Evan proudly touting the Growth Management Act which supposedly steers growth to the urban area and then goes bonkers when he is not allowed to subdivide his rural property? Kind of environmental paradoxes, though maybe not in keeping with the topic.

Also, I have always said salmon tastes better since it became an Endangered Species.

Posted by: swatter on May 16, 2008 08:42 AM

21. Smoley #19:

You tell us, While CO2 is the most prevalent greenhouse gas, it's not the worst.

Here's a sincere quibble. I wasn't just inventing slogans with "Water vapor is the biggest greenhouse gas in existence". The lordly polemical commune at Wikipedia agrees:

On earth, the most abundant greenhouse gases are, in order of relative abundance:
water vapor
carbon dioxide
methane

And looking at the Seattle Public Utilities photo of their Green Cone Food Composting Bin, it's naive to imagine that it wouldn't run anaerobic - that's a solid plastic oxygen barrier all around the decomposing organic material. It's a splendid methane generator.

I call paradox, purely on its deadbrained design.

Yes, you can bully your teenager into visiting the back yard and turning over the bin with the grass clippings every two days. But many teenagers are actively hostile at bullying, and even the most politically correct adult will let that chore slide from time to time.

Posted by: Insufficiently Sensitive on May 16, 2008 09:39 AM

22. This topic could be the focus of many websites.

The winner of this challenge is easily the plight of San Diego.

In the early 90s the City of San Diego was releasing metropolitan waste directly into San Diego Bay.

Citizen activists sued the city to stop the waste release.

Then Environmental activists sued the city because the delicate "waste based" ecology of that part of the bay was being harmed.

Posted by: Bart Cannon on May 16, 2008 02:01 PM

23. And by interesting coincidence with relation to pollution in San Diego Bay, today's Seattle Times contains an article about Lake Washington's own three-spined stickleback. A fancy minnow.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2004418397_stickleback16m.html

It was thriving in the "once fetid lake", but now that the lake has been cleaned up, it has had to struggle to adapt to its new "improved" environment.

And THAT'S always been key to dealing with environmental change for both man and beast. ADAPTATION.

Posted by: Bart Cannon on May 16, 2008 02:25 PM

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