camp: San Bernardino County, California
First,
the stuff from today while it’s fresh in my mind. This morning, we went to the
community center in San Bernardino County, California, where they were
collecting hazardous waste and having a market where people bring random stuff
and sell it. I love the community interaction this fosters. I feel like so much
of the excitement of going shopping is just finding something new, something
you didn’t have before. And so much global resource consumption would be cut if
American did this kind of stuff more instead of just buying new crap. I want to
get involved in efforts like this—freecycling, dumpster diving, barter
economies, local currencies and grassroots flea market type things. I think
building these systems and methods of interaction is incredibly important and
has the potential to be so much fun. There’s so much adventure in going to an
open air market or digging through someone else’s trash, so much satisfaction when
you find something worth having. Kids love discovery. Just have to get them
when they’re young and they’ll be sold for life.
Hazardous
waste fascinates me. And makes me want to be a chem major. It’s so strange that
all medical waste is labeled a biohazard and disposed of by incinerating it.
Even HIV-infected blood is harmless after a few hours in the open air. Burning
plastics releases dioxin into the air, something much more pervasive and scary.
And yet, we can’t stick used dressings in the normal trash. God, I want to
design better plastics. Non-petroleum based substances that don’t contain BPA
or any other endocrine disruptors, that don’t release dioxin or any other
carcinogens, even when burned. I wonder how old the idea of hazardous waste is.
Even waste isn’t that old—maybe a century, one and a half at the most. I’m
impressed that they can recycle so much of it—I think he said 60-70%, including
the electronics. I need to learn more about semiconductor manufacturing.
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