Traveling through an ocean garbage dump the size of Texas (Photo: seacat.wordpress.com)

In the Pixar film “Wall-E,” pollution has run rampant, to the point where the Earth is uninhabitable. Much of this pollution comes straight from the waste inherent in our high-speed consumer culture of convenience. As a result of their sloth, humankind have been forced to evacuate the planet and live a complacent life among the stars.

And what should we learn?

The movie is meant to draw our attention to the responsibility we have to maintain our world for future generations. There will come a time when we must take to the stars and look for new places to continue the spreading of our race. I’m not saying it will be exactly like “Wall-E,” “Dune” or any other science fiction stories we’re familiar with, but astronomic events will eventually rob Earth of its ability to sustain life. There are numerous astronomers and scientists who believe this, so I’m not a lone voice in the wilderness here. I’d bet short term loans and payday loans with no faxing on it, if I were a betting man…

But let’s not rush to muck things up!

That’s exactly what the Great Pacific Garbage Patch represents: our lack of care, moving us ever closer to the day when life will be choked away by all the garbage. I include apocalypse/”Rapture”-type cults among this garbage… it’s just garbage that chokes out the intellect instead of birds, plants, fish and asthmatics.

Paul Rogers reports for MercuryNews.com that scientists are doing all they can to learn more about “one of the most glaring examples of waste and environmental pollution on Earth,” the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. For those of you who don’t know what this is, it’s a place 1,000 miles west of California and north of Hawaii where all the trash from our sewers and storm drains flows. It’s “a massive vortex of floating plastic trash estimated by some researchers to be twice the size of Texas,” says Rogers.

It’s everywhere

Mary Crowley, co-founder of the nonprofit expedition Project Kaisei, believes that it’s high time something be done about this serious threat to life in the Pacific Ocean.

“More and more now, you see signs of marine debris and plastic everyplace. You can be at very remote beaches, and you’ll see plastic bottles, barrels, toys and a lot of plastic fishing nets,” she said.

I say more effort should be made to clean up such waste and recycle it, whenever possible. If you want to start such an effort in your community, take that first step. It may take a little bit of money to get it off the ground (biodegradable advertising signs, a Web site, etc), and if you need a cash boost to get that going, payday loans with no faxing and short term loans are available right here.

Find a new use for plastic – fast!

It’s unclear exactly when the Great Pacific Garbage Patch began to form or what its exact boundaries are, but it is know that the plastic that forms the bulk of it will not decompose in the traditional sense. Exposure to sunlight will eventually break it down into small pieces, but that could simply make it more difficult to clean up. Truly, many scientists believe that cleaning up the Great Pacific Garbage Patch will be impossible. The last hope may be that it can be converted into some sort of fuel.

Studying the harm done

Crowley and other researchers like Miriam Goldstein aim to study the size of the garbage patch and how it affects ocean wildlife.

“We are going to try to target the highest-plastic areas we see to begin to understand the scope of the problem,” said Goldstein. “The team of graduate students will be studying everything from phytoplankton to zooplankton to small midwater fish.”

The danger of confetti

That’s what the plastic essentially breaks down into. According to Rogers, there are billions of pieces of tiny plastic floating just below the surface of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Not only are the smaller pieces much harder to collect, but they’re much more likely to be consumed by wildlife like sea birds and fish. The plastic then fills their stomachs without providing nutrients. This often leads to death of the animal. Furthermore, plastic pieces can absorb toxic chemicals, which migrate up the food chain and eventually make it to humans.

And more frightening bits

Plastic fishing line, some of them from drift nets that are several tons in weight, entangle thousands of sea turtles, whales and marine mammals each year. In addition to this, plastic junk carried by the currents of the North Pacific Gyre include cigarette lighters, floats, toothbrushes, bottle caps and more. Some of the junk is decades old.

To put the amount of waste in perspective, scientists point out that for every pound of plankton in the center Pacific Ocean, there are as many as six pounds of marine litter as seen in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. That’s about 46,000 pieces of plastic litter for each square mile of the oceans, according to a 2006 United Nations study.

What can we do?

Full cleanup may be impossible, so in the time we have left on Earth before space travel makes a mass exodus possible, we must be responsible. Try to recycle your plastic waste, or only use products that break down in the environment. Dispose of waste properly, too – don’t just chuck it down the drain or into the ocean. Also, whenever the opportunity comes about to help fund scientific studies and projects designed to help combat such problems, donate if you can.

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I work in an almost paperless office. Everything is saved on the computers and at the end of every day the secretary walks from one computer to the next backing up the whole thing. I have never asked her where she keeps the backup device, whatever it is. But watching this obsessive backing up got me thinking about my own computer at home. I applied for a Personal Loan and went to the local computer shop and bought myself a back-up device which I now use about once month.

The old days

Remember how things used to be in the office? I started working when I left school at the age of 18. It was a small engineering office and the suite of offices was wall-to-wall paper. At 5 every evening, at the end of the day’s work, everyone had to arrange all the paper on their desks in neat piles and carry it to a fire-proof strong room, which had a door like Fort Knox, where it would be locked up overnight. Who exactly is being obsessive! No one ever talked about saving paper and in fact, when I think back, we wasted a lot of paper on meaningless tasks. But that’s how the world was back then.

Paperless

According to Melinda Stoker, director of marketing for Xerox Corporation’s DocuShare business unit, decreasing paper usage or going “paper light” is a strategy that reaps several positive results. “If the U.S. cut its office paper use by roughly 10%, or 540,000 tons, greenhouse gas emissions would fall by 1.6 million tons. That would be the same as taking 280,000 cars off the road for a year.” Nowadays “going green” is a trendy option for companies and organizations are finding real value in reducing their carbon footprint, with benefits that include significant cost savings and increased worker productivity.

Home printing

Years ago I rushed out and bought a color printer. I was frantically busy with new projects and I didn’t notice that I was ordering color ink refills every week. The cost of these got lost in the cost of everything else and when you’re making money, who cares? When the rush was over I noticed what was going on. I bought a black and white laser printer and things returned to normal. After a couple of months I found that I was hardly printing at all and the only user was my wife. That has stopped too and these days we rarely print. Each time we do, I pray that the printer hasn’t forgotten its role in life.

Around the U.S.

Melinda Stoker says that we should all take a look around the office and evaluate how workers use paper documents. She has provided some statistics related to paper usage in the U.S.:

• The average office worker prints 10,000 pages per year and wastes 1,410 pages.
• The average cost of a wasted page is six cents.
• A company with 500 employees spends $42,000 on wasted print-outs a year.
• Only 49% of office workers say they recycle at work.
• Every ton of recycled paper saves three cubic meters of landfill space.
• It takes 10 times more energy to manufacture a piece of paper than to create another print or copy.
• Stoker recommends that companies deploy a “paper light” document management strategy.

A new video called “The Story of Stuff,” created and hosted by Annie Leonard, has become popular in classrooms across the United States. “The Story of Stuff” analyzes the cycle of consumerism, from extraction to disposal.

“We’re using too much stuff,” Leonard explains. She says the linear system of consumption can’t be sustained indefinitely on a finite planet.

Out of sight

“The Story of Stuff” explores waste, toxins, pollution and the economy. She talks about how, in the distribution part of the process, big-box stores go to great lengths to keep costs down. For the most part, this means externalizing costs.

That means we are using natural resources and polluting air in other countries. Leonard teaches this and many other lessons about how money and prices affect people in other countries.

“Our primary identity has become that of being consumers,” Leonard says.

So next time you’re looking at getting a cash advance to buy something disposable, you might want to reconsider.

Disposable society

Leonard explains that 99 percent of consumer goods are disposed of within six months. Our planet can’t support this amount of waste much longer, she says.

She also stresses that products are designed this way on purpose. Manufacturers in the 1950s, at the beginning of the consumer era, purposely created goods that would need to be replaced in short order.

Throwing it all away

Leonard encourages a few solutions to ending this dangerous cycle of consumerism. Her first, and most important, solution is that people just stop buying stuff. She discusses perceived obsolescence, which makes people throw out stuff that is still perfectly functional to replace it with new stuff.

She also stresses recycling. Recycling will help, but it won’t solve the problem on its own. Using sustainable goods and refusing to continue the cycle of consumption and disposal is the only way to reduce waste, toxins and depletion of natural resources.

She says: “What we really need to chuck is that old-school, throwaway mindset.”

By the people, for the people?

Leonard also discusses the government and its relationship with corporations, which creates the motivation behind the campaign to convince Americans to continue buying more and more stuff.

We have had it pounded into our heads that we must shop, shop, shop in order to sustain the U.S. economy. Spending money and “feeding the system” have been proposed as the answer to our economic problems.

Prioritizing

If we followed Leonard’s advice and just stopped buying stuff, would our economy collapse? Yes, it probably would. However, Leonard also points out that as consumerism has gone up, overall happiness has gone steadily down.

Whatever your priorities, it’s an interesting video to watch that holds attention well and contains lots of useful tidbits and points. You can watch “The Story of Stuff” at The Huffington Post, and read about Leonard and order copies of the video at www.storyofstuff.com.

Aerial view of Serenbe

While regular home prices are still slumping further, new homes in an innovative eco-village in Georgia called Serenbe are going up in value.

The small community uses only eco-friendly construction, feeds its residents with crops from farmland right in the neighborhood and has its own water recycling facility.

Safe in Serenbe

Besides the water recycling facility, the community also has regular recycling and composting facilities for residents. Reducing waste and recycling have the added benefit of cutting down on residents’ costs as well.

Their eco-friendly ways have saved residents enough that they don’t have to worry about going out to eat at community restaurant Hil on the Hill, where business is booming.

“We don’t have as much of a roller coaster ride, people are traveling to see us, and they come from the city because of the whole farm-to-table concept,” says restaurant owner Hilary White.

The nearest city is Atlanta, but the community is surrounded by 40,000 acres of dense forest.

Costs organically low

White says the economic chaos that has overtaken just about every facet of life in the greater United States hasn’t affected her restaurant, which isn’t looking for bailout money or cash advance loans any time soon.

She credits her success to her farm-to-table concept, which saves her loads of money on transportation and fuel. The restaurant serves food that comes directly from organic farmland only steps away from the kitchen.

White admits winter causes sales to slump, but the restaurant has no plans to scale back on costs. It seems they are naturally as low as they can get.

Naturally good business

The creators of Serenbe, Marie and Steve Nygren, came across a winning concept with their eco-friendly village, a business venture that still remains profitable. People are still willing to pay for being able to easily live an environmentally friendly life. The Nygrens say their eco-village concept has remained profitable because they were so thorough in their commitment to green living and earth-friendly construction.

“People are looking for what’s important, quality of life, for them and their children,” Steve says.

Pricey but profitable

A home in Serenbe

Houses in Serenbe go for about $350,000. This is higher than the national average, the Nygrens have had no problem filling them. The small village now has about 160 residents, and it’s still growing.

Make Money by Going Green

Recycling and payday loans can make your life and your wallet greener. Recently, there has been a huge push to live greener, and there has been a huge need to save money. You probably didn’t know that the two lifestyles go hand in hand, but they do. Living green is a lot easier than you might expect. There are simple steps you can take to make your life green. One of the easiest green lifestyle habits you can adopt is recycling. When you recycle you can save and even make money while simultaneously helping the environment.

Recycling

Recycling is very simple. If you haven’t already, all you have to do is sign up with your local waste disposal company and they can furnish you with a recycling bin. From there, you just separate out the items from your family’s trash that you can recycle: plastic bottles and bags, cartons, glass jars and bottles, cardboard, newspaper, and aluminum cans. If you want to make a little money, you can keep all your aluminum cans in a separate container. When you have a few bags full of aluminum cans, you can take them to your local recycling center, where they will pay you for turning in the cans. Another simple and low cost way to recycle is bringing reusable shopping bags with you when you shop.

Cell Phone Recycling

One thing you should definitely consider recycling is your old cell phone. Maybe you have more than one? Americans usually replace their cell phone once a year, which means almost 100 million cell phones either get tossed in a junk drawer or the trash every year! So dig out those old cell phones and check out Flipswap. Trade in values for cell phones range from $4-$100. You can clean out your junk drawer, recycle your cell phone, and make a little extra cash all at the same time.

Holiday Recycling

You can even incorporate recycling into your holiday season. Gift wrap and gift boxes are some of the most wasteful things of the holiday season. If you think about it, most people don’t really care what the gift is wrapped in anyway; they just want what’s inside. So instead of purchasing brand new gift wrap and boxes this holiday season, try to find items around your house that can serve as wrapping materials. Extra ribbon, scrap fabric, bows, magazines, newspapers and bags are all great ideas for homemade gift wrap. If your holiday tradition includes a Christmas tree, you can recycle your Christmas tree when the season is over. Call your local recycling facility to learn more about Christmas tree recycling.

Green for Your Wallet – Recycling & Payday Loans

As you’ve just learned, there are simple and low cost recycling habits you can take up that will actually help you make money. Not only are your green habits helping the world environment, they’re adding the good kind of green to your wallet—cold, hard cash. Unfortunately, adding a little extra cash from recycling isn’t going to pay your bills. The economy is still struggling, so it is understandable if making rent or paying bills is tough this holiday season. If you need a little extra green in your budget, you can apply for payday loans to help cover the costs.