Shallow Thoughts : tags : environment

Akkana's Musings on Open Source Computing and Technology, Science, and Nature.

Fri, 07 Feb 2025

Construction Sites Covered with Plastic

[A school building under construction, covered with clear plastic wrap] Periodically in Los Alamos county we try to pass an ordinance to make retailers charge for #plastic bags, so people use fewer of them and we don't end up with plastic bag litter floating around all over the county.

But plastic bags are a nonissue compared to the new practice of covering whole buildings with plastic wrap during construction.

I've noticed it before, late last year when there was some sort of construction going on on the guard tower that stands near the east edge of town on NM 502. The entire tower was covered with plastic for months.

But between wind and the fierce UV at over 6000' elevation, plastic doesn't last long outdoors. So on the guard tower, the plastic shredded in just a few days, and they had to replace it several times a week. I'm sure the same will be true of the new plastic wrap on Piñon school.

Surely there must be a better way?

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[ 10:11 Feb 07, 2025    More misc | permalink to this entry | ]

Mon, 06 Apr 2020

F is for Food Waste

I keep seeing people claim that 40% of consumer food in the US is thrown away uneaten, or hear statistics like 20 pounds of wasted food per person per month.

I simply don't believe it.

There's no question that some food is wasted. It's hard to avoid having that big watermelon go bad before you have a chance to finish it all, especially when you're a one- or two-person household and the market won't sell you a quarter pound of cherries or half a pound of ground beef. And then there's all the stuff you don't want to eat: the bones, the fat, the banana peels and apple cores, the artichoke leaves and corn cobs.

But even if you count all that ... 40 percent? 2/3 of a pound per day per person? And that's supposed to be an average -- so if Dave and I are throwing out a few ounces, somebody else would have to be throwing out multiple pounds a day. It just doesn't seem possible. Who would do that?

When you see people quoting a surprising number -- especially when you see the same big number quoted by lots of people -- you should always ask yourself the source of the number.

Read more ...

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[ 20:08 Apr 06, 2020    More science | permalink to this entry | ]