Weekword=Recycling via Elisabeth

My weekword is late as usual :)

I'm really such a fan of recycling-conceptually and practically in a wide range of arenas, including the obvious use for helping reduce the amount of garbage put into landfills. So keeping in mind my science nerdiness, I thought I would cover two parts of recycling that stand out most for me.

First off, recycling plastics seems for the most part, a fairly easy process to work through and seems simple enough to keep up with. You look at the container, make sure that the recycling label is there, toss it in your recycling can when you're done with it, and you're doing your part for the environment, right?

Not so easy I'm afraid. Plastic islands are a real thing floating along in our oceans.
BPA is leaching from plastic bottles into the environment, and into our bodies, including children.
BPA has been tested quite heavily on animals in labs with terrible results, and is linked to changing the sex of amphibious species.
Wild animals by the hundreds of thousands are dying every year from eating plastic and feeding it inadvertently to their offspring.
The amount of waste we (humans) produce is unbelievable, and recycling aluminum, paper, plastic does not mean it goes away.

Quick perspective fact: 2 million plastic water bottles are used in the U.S. every 5 minutes.

The movie Tapped covers the impact the bottled water industry makes on our environment, our health, and human rights in developing companies. It's free to watch on Hulu and you can instant queue it on Netflix. It's informative, thought provoking, full of relevant information for day to day life, and a life lesson we all need.




This is a wonderful wonderful video from TED:


Please watch these videos. 
As hard as it is to see-we can change this, every single one of us, everyday.

You can find more information by looking up The Great Garbage Patch.

This is the Kaisei Project-I was able to attend several lectures from the researchers from Scripps here in CA who participated in this voyage and research. It's really so important for us all to be informed so we can make good decisions for our future.


Project Kaisei  North Pacific Gyre
Uploaded by anniecrawley. - Watch feature films and entire TV shows.



Okay, and now for a more creative idea of recycling...

These mushrooms are visitors outside of my office door on the college campus I work on, and fun guy (fungi hehehee) friends to hang out and look at while walking the puppy. They also happen to be a super cool example of natural recyclers! Mushrooms, in particular the mycelium that compose them, recycle a huge amount of organic nutrients in the soil as well as carbon and nitrogen. They aid in the decomposition of organic matter like dead animals and plants, can be ground down to be used as natural insecticide, and have been shown to be able to break down chemical waste and oil in bioremediation efforts. So dance in a fairy ring when you are lucky enough to see one and thank those happy little mushrooms for helping us work on our recycling efforts!

P.S. Out here in California, we are so good at recycling, we decided to even recycle our governor :)

Please go visit Elisabeth and the other bloggers who participated this week, and have a great Saturday!!