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Part 113: The Environment P5:
July 26, 2004:
In my essay number 111, I touched briefly on our ever growing mountain of waste. We must begin figuring out how to deal with the stuff we now call trash and garbage before it buries us. We are rapidly running out of places to dump it. Years ago when we thought trash was just a problem of logistics we put it in land fills. Of course, it did not degenerate or disappear as we foolishly though it would. It still lays where we put it, and continues to accumulate. Now, we have reached that stage of the, "Not in my backyard," snorting contests.
We did the same with sewage. We thought the Great Lakes and then the oceans were infinite in their capacity to absorb toxic insults. Again we were wrong. The great Lakes are all contaminated and even the ocean is dirty with out waste. Our first solutions did not work, but we are stupidly stubbornly continuing them. This is what must change. We must begin rethinking all of our old solutions. We must begin reclaiming and recycling our waste.
Reclamation is the big thing. We must figure out how to reclaim and reuse our raw materials. We must stop being a throwaway culture. Those notions of disposable everything were short sighted. We must get beyond that kind of thinking and think in terms of reclaiming resources. With honest effort, all of this stuff we think of as waste can be reclaimed and reused. It is simply a matter of engineering. It's a matter of putting qualified people to work on the problem.
As to problems, I believe one major obstacle in dealing with this stuff is our attitude. It is embodied in the key descriptive word, problems. We see problems rather than opportunities. We must begin to see waste products as opportunities. As I said, all of this stuff can be seen as raw material rather than garbage, even coal slurry, pig excrement, old tires, junk cars, and all of the stuff that comes out of American homes every day.
Another obstacle to progress in this area is the common reaction to new ideas. When we offer a solution or an idea, the phrase we are most likely to hear, in one form or another is, "Yeah, but....." This is a way of avoiding change and staying in the same old rut. The way some people use it, yeah but should be a single word. Yeahbut is always about so-called conventional wisdom. This is the way we do it. This is the way it is. This is the way it has always been. It is really anything but wisdom. It is mindlessness.
I get sick to death of "Yeahbut." I have been hearing it all my life, ever since I was a kid trying to express my ideas. Yeahbut and pooh-pooh, in one form or another, are the adult world's standard way of suppressing kids. It is also the establishment's way of avoiding change. I am lead to believe the people who choose these responses are simply dullards. They have been so badly damaged somewhere along the line that they are incapable of entertaining a new idea, let alone hatching one.
The model is the same old same old, hunker down and conform. It starts with the suppression of children and runs through our entire culture. It permeates our culture because it starts with children. We must break that mold and seek solutions. We must begin to look at problems as opportunities in embryo. Our establishment will always think in terms of how it was always done rather than trying to think of a way to do it. Let me make this very clear. I do not think sewage, garbage, and trash are our problem. Our real problem is our government. The establishment is the major obstacle to dealing with all of our problems. We already know that. Before anything else can change, our government must change. We can advocate, work, and hope for that.
In the meantime, let me express some ideas for reusing some of our raw material waste. Recently a friend told me about a lake where lake scum has built up to where the lake is more like a cesspool than a lake. It is probably the result of over fertilization or sewage from the surrounding properties. In either case it's a form of human waste product. The property owners committee is having a shouting contest about it. "How will we get rid of it?" is the cry.
I pointed out that this scum is probably some kind of growing plant and may also be seen as green manure. If it is, it can be harvested and used. I suspect if my friend presents that idea the first thing he will hear is, "Yeahbut....." He will have to be a very good salesman to get them to think of inexpensive methods of harvesting what is probably nothing more than kelp. We shall see.
Now, in another area I have wondered what to do with three of our biggest trash and landfill problems. These are used tires, newspapers, and diapers. I believe newspaper and diapers are mostly cellulose which is a form of plastic. Why can't we combine them with ground up tires and make an environmentally friendly building material to replace treated limber? Treated lumber is going to be much more expensive now.
Recently our government has made a ruling against the sale and use of lumber treated with arsenic. We can set aside for another debate the question of whether the arsenic in treated lumber is really a threat. For now, there are other ways to treat lumber, but they are much more expensive. This has really upped the ante for builders and homeowners. The cost of some projects will become prohibitive.
So why not try to figure a way to use our tires and newspapers to make ground contact building material? Perhaps we can also throw in plastic bottles? Don't say "yeahbut." Say, how can we do that? This comes down to seeking new ways to do something. One method for doing that is called brainstorming.
Brainstorming is a somewhat structured group method for generating solutions to problems or producing new ideas. There are two phases to brainstorming. One is the idea phase where people just blast out their thoughts on an issue and anything goes. No thought or idea is wrong. Nothing is judged. Everything that comes out is recorded. The second phase is the evaluation phase where the ideas produced in the first phase are evaluated. This is where critical judgement comes in and one or more ideas are followed up to see where they lead.
Brainstorming can be done. I know, because I have been involved in cases where it was done. It does not always work and has a bad rap because of that. The thing is, most people who run those brainstorming sessions are not capable of doing it right. That is because most people who do it are managers. They cannot open to the free wheeling kind of thinking that brainstorm requires. They invariable fall back to their old methods and yeahbut. In other words, they cannot stop evaluating long enough to allow the ideas to flow.
For the method to work, the leader must be a dominant who has the talent to draw people out, open to new ideas, and avoid dominating. She or he must be a true leader. As soon as a power dominant enters the scene, the effort will fail. I have seen it. With this power dominant present, a person will offer an idea, then look to the dominant for approval. If the approval is not there, he will shut up and not offer anything else.
Enough on brainstorming. It is just one way of creating solutions.
As to solutions, our trash presents us with many opportunities
to create solutions. I have offered two of my ideas here. I have
offered others in other essays. I will not repeat them here. Suffice
it to say, I believe our trash is really nothing more that an
unused resource. There are many ways to turn it into usable products.
What we need is a concentrated effort to apply sound engineering
principles to the issue.
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