It's really just recycling on a new timeframe.
British experts predict that there will come a time, somewhere around 2020, when we'll return to our stinking, festering landfills to mine for plastic. As resources become in shorter supply and the price of oil continues to climb, all our decades of flagrant waste will provide new sources of "raw" materials.
As Peter Mills, director of New Earth Solutions, was quoted as saying, the really great thing about plastic is that it never biodegrades: "Once plastic is in a landfill site, it pretty much sits there doing nothing -- and the beauty of that is that you're able to go back and recapture it in the future."
It had to be just a matter of time before someone figured out that a vast quantity of the earth's resources are back underground, where we put them after a mere one use. It's hopeful, actually. All that time we thought we were throwing things away; as it turns out, there is no "away" (as some have perpetually warned) and that's actually a very good thing. It means we might have a shot at recapturing some of what we lost in past mistakes.
The era of waste is far from over; in fact the folks studying the potential for landfill mining think it will become profitable within another ten years or so only because we'll continue our lifestyles of buy and discard, and with 9 billion people and millions more cars, we won't be able to keep it up without dipping into our old trash.
Thursday, August 28, 2008
Wednesday, August 27, 2008
Monday, August 25, 2008
Lost No More: Fulfilling the British Colonialists' Dream
"Chinese engineers build new highway to 'lost' Kenya"
Chinese engineers are building a highway in Kenya. They are investing time and resources to lay a swath of asphalt connecting small villages in a country that is not their own.
It seems an unlikely combination; why would China care about the road quality in remote Kenyan countryside? They cite a boost in tourism, bolstering local economies, and exploring resource potential. The usual stuff. In the Reuters article, China is described as a benefactor: "where Britain and post-independence Kenyan governments failed, China is leading the way: helping to build a major trade route that will open up the northern half of Kenya, a region that has been effectively sealed off for 100 years."
But what's it to them if Kenya stays "lost" or not? What is "lost" anyway?
When did simply living a life become no longer enough: that if we don't belong to the global economy, we're lost? To me, the lost places have retained a part of our humanity that the industrialized world has left behind. They're the places where people continue to live the same way year after year, surviving; where change is slow and technology hasn't outstripped the ethical ability of people to control it. They are our cultural wildernesses. And like natural wilderness, I want to know they exist, whether I ever visit them or not. I want to imagine that there might be a place on this earth that Coca-Cola has not yet reached; that is free of televisions, riding lawnmowers, automatic breadmakers, strip malls, subdivisions, superhighways, and matched luggage.
Maybe Lost Kenya is such a place. The author describes desolate scenic beauty, donkey trains wending through mountains and volcanic rock in shimmery heat. Little connection with the outside world.
And maybe it's not. Maybe the Lost Kenyans already yearn for the material goods of the Western world (brought this time, ironically, from the Orient), the creature comforts of running water and electric lights. Maybe they are filled with gratitude for the jobs and tourists this road will bring. Maybe their eyes will glaze with visions of automobiles and Ritz crackers, and they won't realize until it's too late that the Chinese don't really have their best interest in mind.
A change has started in the world. Just like colonial Britain, China has been reaching out tentacles to the rest of the world, securing a hold on the things its citizens want. With a population of 1.3 billion people and rising, where will those desires end? As with all its other world-dominating forebears, the force of China's wants will be exercised in the small places. Slowly, the donkey trains will become less frequent, and Lost Kenya will stop being a blank spot on the map. But as more and more places become "found," what have we really lost?
Chinese engineers are building a highway in Kenya. They are investing time and resources to lay a swath of asphalt connecting small villages in a country that is not their own.
It seems an unlikely combination; why would China care about the road quality in remote Kenyan countryside? They cite a boost in tourism, bolstering local economies, and exploring resource potential. The usual stuff. In the Reuters article, China is described as a benefactor: "where Britain and post-independence Kenyan governments failed, China is leading the way: helping to build a major trade route that will open up the northern half of Kenya, a region that has been effectively sealed off for 100 years."
But what's it to them if Kenya stays "lost" or not? What is "lost" anyway?
When did simply living a life become no longer enough: that if we don't belong to the global economy, we're lost? To me, the lost places have retained a part of our humanity that the industrialized world has left behind. They're the places where people continue to live the same way year after year, surviving; where change is slow and technology hasn't outstripped the ethical ability of people to control it. They are our cultural wildernesses. And like natural wilderness, I want to know they exist, whether I ever visit them or not. I want to imagine that there might be a place on this earth that Coca-Cola has not yet reached; that is free of televisions, riding lawnmowers, automatic breadmakers, strip malls, subdivisions, superhighways, and matched luggage.
Maybe Lost Kenya is such a place. The author describes desolate scenic beauty, donkey trains wending through mountains and volcanic rock in shimmery heat. Little connection with the outside world.
And maybe it's not. Maybe the Lost Kenyans already yearn for the material goods of the Western world (brought this time, ironically, from the Orient), the creature comforts of running water and electric lights. Maybe they are filled with gratitude for the jobs and tourists this road will bring. Maybe their eyes will glaze with visions of automobiles and Ritz crackers, and they won't realize until it's too late that the Chinese don't really have their best interest in mind.
A change has started in the world. Just like colonial Britain, China has been reaching out tentacles to the rest of the world, securing a hold on the things its citizens want. With a population of 1.3 billion people and rising, where will those desires end? As with all its other world-dominating forebears, the force of China's wants will be exercised in the small places. Slowly, the donkey trains will become less frequent, and Lost Kenya will stop being a blank spot on the map. But as more and more places become "found," what have we really lost?
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