The 81st Race for the Rain Forest Thread

ehBeth, I just saw on this evenings news that you may be getting RAIN tomorrow - be very careful, clear ice is really slick.

Sue, good articles, thanks!

Autumn for the Sierra's and the Bay area are normal so far. Not much rain though - and no snow for Tahoe. Cold temps, clouds, that's it.

Propane costs have skyrocketed, at the same rate car fuel has. California's paying almost 4.00 a gallon {premium} at the pumps - the Sierra's. The bay area and Sacramento's paying more for fuel. Propanes piped to the house, just the same as natural gas, from fuel lines. Less expensive because there arn't delivery truck fuel charges, but still, the bill increased 20 percent last month.

Neat photos, ehBeth. Please drive carefully though.

Teeny, i hope i understood when you said you wearn't receiving notifications for rainforest clicks. The only time Care2 sends notices is for alerts or if you missed a days clicking, or if they've delivered a messsage to your Care2 email and will send notification.

Early clicking here.

Piped propane? Good idea. Took a look around the internet and found a site that reported propane contract prices, by week, for each county in NC. Prices are going down while Suburban Propane claims that they are going up. I see a confrontation in my future with my supplier.

Electricity and natural gas is regulated, but not propane or oil.

December 3, 2007
Editorial
A Bag Problem Blossoms
Now that the leaves have finally fallen, a new decoration becomes more visible on the nation's many deciduous trees: those plastic bags that float high into tree limbs and flutter noisily with each autumn breeze. Despite this unappealing vision, a ban of all plastic bags would be hard to champion, although the earth would be a greener and healthier place without them. What this unsightly airborne litter does offer is an opportunity for industry and consumers to think a lot harder about how much such convenience is costing the planet.

Plastic bags are as much or more trouble than they are useful. Up to 100 billion are used each year in this country, and they make bringing groceries home (or even protecting a newspaper from rain) so easy. But they also choke wildlife, create litter and overload dumps for generations to come. It also takes 12 million barrels of oil to make a year's supply.

The plastic bag, like the plastic water bottle, has plagued environmentalists for years but has only recently worried consumers. It may be that the fear of global warming is now so, well, global that people are trying to do their bit by subtracting from the earth's garbage load.

Whatever the cause, lawmakers across the country are proposing bans on plastic bags or ordering up studies. The most dramatic action has come in San Francisco, where a voluntary recycling program for plastic bags turned out to be a dud (less than 5 percent were recycled). So the city banned plastic bags in large grocery stores last month and in large pharmacies by April. It may take some time to figure out whether this effort really works. At best, the industry could find a way to make better bags that only last for a while.

Already the market is responding to this public worry. Some stores are giving discounts or rewards for shoppers who bring their own bags. Others charge for each bag a customer uses. Many stores provide recycling bins for their plastic bags, although in most cases they are about as easy to spot as the discount cereals.

The Natural Resources Defense Council recommends neither paper nor plastic. Plastic pollutes and floats toward the nearest naked branch, but 10 billion paper bags each year use about 14 million trees. The council suggests that if you can't bring your own bag, the best choice is one you will, for sure, either reuse or recycle.

Tree Free paper
Tree Free Paper
November 2002

http://www.ucsusa.org/publications/greentips/1102-tree-free-paper.html

From its invention in China in 105 A.D. until very recently, paper was made from plant fibers, like hemp and cotton, or from textile waste. That changed when the wood pulping process was invented in the 19th century, not because wood produced a superior product, but because it solved the problem of scarce raw materials. At the time, most paper in the Western world was made from rags, but supplies were hard to come by. Trees, on the other hand, were plentiful?-particularly in North America with its vast forests. It seemed like the perfect solution.

Today, we know different. Many of the world's biologically-rich forests are disappearing at an alarming rate. Each year an area of tropical forest the size of New York state is lost. A major cause is the expansion of industrial tree plantations, which supply pulp to meet worldwide demand for paper products.

Tree-free production technology is better than ever. In developing countries, a third of the paper produced is already tree-free, according to U.N. estimates, and there is now a budding, if small, tree-free paper industry emerging in the West. The materials used are:

CROPS, including kenaf, an African plant which makes an excellent paper pulp; hemp, a versatile plant and a component in the first papers ever made; flax, the plant used to make linen; and cotton.
AGRICULTURAL RESIDUES, or crop leftovers, such as rice and wheat straw, sugarcane bagasse, banana stalk fiber and grass clippings.
COTTON RAGS, as in the days just before wood became the raw material of choice.
The benefits of using non-wood sources extend beyond saving trees and forest habitat. The production process is itself more environmentally sound, requiring fewer chemicals and less energy.

That said, even tree-free papers are often bleached with chlorine or chlorine derivatives. The byproduct dioxin is then released into waterways, poisoning fish and the animals (including humans) that consume them. For this reason, it is important when buying paper not only to look for tree-free products, but chlorine-free ones as well. There are two designations for chlorine-free papers:

TCF, or totally chlorine free, meaning paper that is made without chlorine or chlorine derivatives. This applies to virgin paper.
PCF, or processed chlorine free, which means much the same as TCF, except that it applies to recycled paper.
Many tree-free papers are actually blends of non-wood fibers and post-consumer waste (recycled) paper. This is a good thing. Using recycled paper to create new paper saves both water and energy, and helps keep pollution down. So, next time you shop, seek out the tree-free blends marked PCF?-they're the best paper products you can buy. Don't forget to encourage your office supply store to carry these papers if they don't yet. Let the publishers of the magazines you subscribe to know you care, too. That's how to be a real engine of change.

Our layout of shopping centers at the perimeters of populated areas, unlike older established European cities, has shot us in the foot.

Require cars, gas, time, and thus people stock up, instead of walking down the block and stopping at the various shops. Even refrigerators in Europe are small because people shop more often.

I have several tote-type cloth bags that I could use, or I could invest in larger, kind of expandable type. But I would still have to go shopping more frequently.

Thanks for the interesting articles

clicked

Sue,
I watch a lot of brit-coms, on PBS and the refrigerators, look like the "dorm" type, used when our kids attend college! We use the equivalent of a super market, walk-in type, refrigerator here. "Bigger is better", huh? It's why we're so fat! All clicked!

Teeny,

My favorites, on Saturday night here on PBS, are "As Time Goes By". and then "Waiting for God".

Good articles, sue!

Our store offers reusable bags, costing 99 cents each, that hold quite a bit of product. Most grocery stores offer customers a choice. We've seen a variety of grocery carrers from customers visiting the store. People are cognizant of eco friendly products. and its the customer who holds the power deciding how their groceries are packed.

Smiled when reading the European grocery shopping article. Sue, if you didn't drive to the grocery store, you could purchase a wagon! or a moped. Speaking of power driven bikes, there were at least 1000 or more motorcycles for the Toys for Tots gathering that drove through town. Some bikes were decorated to look like Santa's Sleigh with riders dressed like elves! Harleys with Christmas packages. Quite a wonderful sight n' sound.

Propane is a fossil fuel, and although probably the cleanest fuel for homes and farms, the cost is increasing. Fortunately, my company offers a senior discount or other options ie: a set monthly charge. Good for winter, costly for summer months.

You and your 300 friends have supported 2,832,251.6 square feet!

~~~

ahhh, The Vicar of Dibley - gotta love that woman

no no no
yes

~~~

1 Aktbird57 .. 2006 65.020 acres

no, no, no?

I bought, a couple of months ago, a red scooter from a company I discovered on eBay. Then I chickened out, never took it out of the crate, and resold it, for the same money, to the wife of a retired physics professor. They used to both have motorcycles when first married. He has a two-seater motorcycle now, but she wanted her own for when they were at their mountain retreat.

I hope to try again, when I see how much money I have left. The streets around where I live and shop are not wide and safe, like in Duke University and surrounds, but old and narrow.

Morn'n all.


I had a motorcycle while in Alaska. It was great to go riding the backroads surrounding Fairbanks. During the Summer of course.

Clicked, and waiting for rain or snow, neither of which are expected.

Rain for the Sierra's! Hurray!

mumble, grumble, obscenity. mumble....

one of the characters on Vicar of Dibley - his standard response to just about any question

You and your 300 friends have supported 2,832,649.6 square feet!

~~~

1 Aktbird57 .. 2007 65.027 acres

~~~

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Vicar_of_Dibley

Funny, how that reminded me of a story I heard many years ago.

It all happened in Merry Olde England. In a small town named Piddle.

There was a man who started a small business - bottled water. He named his bottled water - Piddle Water. It became a very large business.

One day someone asked him where he started his business. He confessed that he started to fill the bottles with tap water from his kitchen. The person asked from where the water came - he said it all came from the creek that ran through Piddle. Filtered of course.

Another person listening in asked a stupid question - "What if Piddle Creek hadn't run through Piddle?"

He responded, "Well, then, I would have been up the creek without a piddle."