Plastics pollution

[Joe]

Makes me sick to see what we are doing.
What can we do to slow down the growth and spread of this pollution?

[JUDD]

Better recycling technology, for one. Better use of paper technology for another.

[Joe]

How many of you guys drink from those little plastic bottles of purified water?
How many, and what size do you drink in a week?
What do you do with those bottles when you finish?
Have you thought about ways to minimize pollution from these little bottles?
What ideas/strategies do you implement?

[JUDD]

I fill up a 1.5 L SmartWater bottle each morning. I paid $2 for it at WalMart and just keep filling it up. I've had the same one for about a year now.

[CleanLiving]

I recycle plastics only. All other forms of recycling other than metals are a waste of time and counterproductive.

Coincidentally, God in his infinite wisdom created a microbe that eats plastic. The Japanese just recently made this discovery. God was recycling before we ever thought about it.

[Joe]

Is this true?
I have wondered. But not seen or heard of this discovery.
I was about to fund a dredger out there in the currents to pick up my share.

[CleanLiving]

https://m.phys.org/news/2016-03-newly-bacteria-plastic-bottles.html

Joe, you're a smart man. Recycling was really about helping corporations to minimize the amount of raw material they would need to produce their products. So they brainwash people to give back the material so they can keep reusing it and make more profit.

Do you really save electricity by buying special light bulbs and appliances that are energy efficient? Did your light bill go down?
The light bulb conspiracy.....

[Joe]

Great find. There's hope. But like alot of bacterial reactions it's sensitive to temperature, 86F in this case.

In this case corporations are ignoring the problem, hoping the public won't blame them, which we will; which leads back to what I was wondering what do we use as a population for drinking water? And if only a small % escapes recycling - and it does - where does it end up if not our waterways? And then the sea floors and the stomach of sea life?

I like Judd's way of refilling one of these1.5 L SmartWater bottle,
I do that too cuz I'm cheap. I run a small distiller for my water, refill a plastic bottle til it gets moss/algae growing in it then toss it and use another one. Lately though switched to glass bottles with wide mouths for easy cleaning.
I'm gonna try to apply 'Never' to those little plastic bottles again.

How about you guys?

I sit a McDonald's in the afternoon a watch Pierre the squirrel dig through all the trash, mountains of plastic trash. I think most people are oblivious to pollution of plastics; the fact that it takes 1,000 years to degrade.

What about all the gallon jugs of prespray, rinse agets, deodorizers, etc you guys go through?
Where do they end up?
I know I've tossed a few thousand in my day, never really knowing/caring. I doubt it all gets recycled.

My way of selling you guys drums is a good way to help that problem but only a few of my customers have ever taken to it and I doubt any of them have done it for the right (conservation) reasons.

The whole subject makes me sick.
.

[CleanLiving]

Well, let's just nip this in the bud. How about we ship our empty containers back to you and save the new container altogether. Wait, that probably cost more to ship so the added cost of shipping outweighs just buying a newly filled container.

Here's a video that illustrates that even though we recycle, it's the corporations that have the most responsibility to use the plastic that we send their way. They don't use the recycleable plastic because it's cheaper to make new plastic. https://youtu.be/XCYTN2BVK1Q

[CleanLiving]

Stay away from eating McDonald's! I saw you were at a McDonald's in your post.

[Joe]

So the best answer is don't use plastic bottles at all.?.?.?
Because in the end you're
1 adding to landfill,
2 supporting PET products, clothes or carpet.
3 adding pollution to our waterways.

What alternatives do we have?

Do you care?

[CleanLiving]

I think for the time being the best alternative is to use bio-plastic. It is a plastic that has a low shelf life before it starts to decompose. There are alot of manufacturers of this material, but your product has to be compatible using it as a container. So milk would be a good item to store in a bio plastic because the milk would expire before the bio plastic would.

There are even more alternatives coming down the pipeline like liquid wood, keratin microchips, and starch based polymers.

I certainly care about being more responsible with our waste products and try to do my part by recycling.

I like making conversation that helps to get people's minds involved on the issue. Hopefully they join the conversation and begin to be part of the solution.

[Joe]

A no carpet cleaning friend sent me this link.

plastic fibers in tap water
https://orbmedia.org/stories/Invisibles_plastics

Haven't heard from him in months.
Apparently we're ALL thinking about this problem more & more.
It's obviously not gonna go away on its own and that's the real problem.

So, just signed up for emails from this organization called 'orb'.
What a goofy name, but what a noble mission?

Answered honestly their survey questions.
Basically I'm an Idiot, answering 'No' to most of their questions.
How about you?
Thought provoking, disturbing, scary, feeling invaded, feeling helpless, feeling guilty.
How about you?

Then I look at the clothes I have on - ALL PLASTIC.
I think back on my past clothing, used to love Levis, now I don't even own a pair.
Used to love wool, now don't own a stitch.
Got away from it years ago reading how to dress for remote Alaskan fishing trips - would take my hard earned money and fly up there for long fishing trips - Learned to dress in layers, layers of plastics, polyesters, Polartec, etc
It's been a way of life for me all these last 30 years or so. Never gave it a moments thought until this article.
How about you?

Couldn't even finish studying the email my friend linked to me.
Makes me sick thinking how much I've contributed to this problem, really never even thinking about it before.
How about you?

I had to take a break from it after reading some of the quotes...

There are certain commons that connect us all to each other, air, water, soil, and what we have universally found time and time again is if you contaminate any of those commons, it gets in everything.
Tweet—Sherri A. Mason, PhD.
Chair, Department of Geology and Environmental Sciences
The State University of New York at Fredonia

Whenever you fractionalize a problem, as with the plastic industry not being held responsible for their particular types of waste, there's capacity for that industry then to blame another. So it's waste management; it's not the producer's fault. It's the sewage treatment people’s fault. It's not the actual clothing manufacturer's fault. It's the people who've got the washing machine’s fault. It's somebody else's fault. Generally speaking, it's all of our fault.
Tweet—Mark Browne, Ph.D.
Senior Research Associate
School of Biological, Earth and Environmental Sciences
University of New South Wales

“Since the problem of plastic was created exclusively by human beings through our indifference, it can be solved by human beings by paying attention to it,” Muhammad Yunus, the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize laureate, told Orb. “Now what we need is a determination to get it done — before it gets us.”

[Joe]

Interesting, I'm always getting pictures of wand heads from guys needing help fitting glides and jets and extensions to their wands. This one just this morning.
He just switched from PMF's flat bottom 'ski' glide to my Greenglide style with the curved interface.

"Loving that GG on the mach15. So much better than that ski glide. Only issue we have is there's a gap on the sides due to the wand. I'll be onsite with it in a few minutes and can send a pic of what I'm talking about. Wasn't sure what to use for that. Think I'd heard plumbers goop but not sure and didn't know if that was messy or how it cured and if the glide will still be easy to take on n off for cleaning."

This guy was apologizing for 'filthy Wanda', as if all Wandas aren't filthy?
And JUST LOOK AT THOSE FIBERS. I wonder if any of those are plastic fibers?

btw, the gaping holes in PMF's Mach15 were designed to relieve the 'lock down' of their glide. OMG. Really?
You won't find these gaping holes on any of the wands I make.

[CleanLiving]

Great info Joe!
I honestly believe the consciousness of people is getting greater concerning our environment, political atmosphere, and the human condition.
We are more connected than ever before (I am in South Carolina talking to you in Oregon about plastic pollution).

I have a large trash can on wheels that is designated for recycling. The recycling truck comes once every two weeks. The two things I don't recycle are paper and glass. It's counter productive to do so, but plastics are the most useful recycling material by far.

I had a fellow cleaner tell me the other day that he was cleaning someones outdoor upholstery. He said he saw small dark spots throughout and thought they were mildew. His mildew treatment didn't touch the spots and he didn't understand why. I told him that it could be a bacteria that has been found to eat plastics, particularly Polyester and PET. He thought I was joking until I showed him an article about it.

Not they have even discovered that meal worms eat styrofoam!

Mealworms Can Happily And Safely Eat Styrofoam

I looked up the Orb information online and found an article about plastics in tap water. Sounds like people are ingesting microamounts of it too and digesting it. Not sure of any studies on the health effects of this on humans.

I don't allow myself to get worked up over the plastics problem. I just try to do my part by reduce, reuse, and recycle the plastics I come in contact with and share my thoughts to others to do the same. If not, you will be overcome by anxiousness, and ultimately it will effect your health. When oil became over $145 a barrel, it created a demand for electric run cars for cost savings and less dependence on foreign supply.

When plastics pollution reaches a threshold, it will demand more efforts to deal with the problem. Until then we must continue to find ways to minimize our own contribution to the problem.

*On another note, is there a way to reduce the severity of hurricanes in the Eastern United States and Gulf coast? Some research suggest retaining water on land and reducing the amount of evaporation caused by parking lots, developments, and lack of water basins.

[Joe]

What you're saying is that you're taking matters into your ow hands. Love that.

I made an injection sprayer for all my chemical dispensing when I was a cleaner.
Only problem, the metering tip for extraction detergent/rinsing was smaller than the finest hair, forcing me to filter my water and chems before running through the injector.
Soon as I read that article about plastic microfibers in our water I grabbed one of those filters (120micron nylon funnel) and poured my distilled water through it. Problem solved for now anyway.
Thinking of making Silver Bullet style liners, except smaller with elastic bands to drape over drinking glasses and pitchers. We could filter all liquids this way. Who wants to try one?

Houston is a relatively new piece of land, soil from Pleistocene and younger sediments, washed down the Mississippi, Brazos, etc from the Appalchias and Rockies. Would't take much to completely wash the entire Gulf Coastal plains states (TX. LA, MS) out into the ocean.
Likewise, Florida is nothing but a long sand bar waiting to get washed away in the next 1000 year storm. IRMA is just a summer breeze compared to storms we've had on Earth.
You're not gonna phase Mother Nature.

[Joe]

In case any of you guys care...

there will be a live chat on this subject Oct 17th 10AM-Noon Eastern Time.