What started as a father-son weekend project turned into Ridwell, which aims to keep hard-to-recycle items out of landfills.
(Courtesy Ridwell)
The innocent question that changed Ryan Metzger’s life came the summer his son turned six. That’s when Owen asked about the ever-expanding bag of old batteries in the junk drawer.
“What’s going to happen to them, Dad?” he asked. “What are we supposed to do with them? We’re learning about recycling in school. Where do these get recycled?”
“Um,” Metzger said. “I don’t know.”
He knew where to get batteries, of course. And there were always instructions on correctly using them. But instructions on what to do when they died? Not so much. That’s why he fell into the habit of stuffing dead batteries into a drawer filled with all the other small, disused stuff that the family wasn’t sure what to do with.
“It’s heavy, Dad.” Owen waved the bag of batteries around.
It was pretty full, Metzger had to admit. Detritus from flashlights and old toys, smoke alarms and remote controls, with a crusty one that came out of an old toothbrush, these batteries were one of many types of problematic garbage. They had no obvious final resting place, much like garden chemicals, old phones, light bulbs, car parts, cooking grease … a ton of stuff, really, now that Metzger thought about it. You weren’t supposed to put any of that in the recycling bin. But you couldn’t put it with the landfill-bound trash, either, although that’s what many people ended up doing out of desperation or not caring or habit — or assuming (incorrectly) it would all somehow get properly sorted out by this impenetrable, mysterious entity called the waste management system.
“There’s got to be a place for old batteries,” Metzger assured his son. “Let’s find out.”
It took three phone calls to find a business near their Seattle home that would take their old batteries and ensure that they were actually recycled instead of just dumped somewhere.
Father and son decided to drive to this battery recycler so that Owen could make the delivery. On impulse, they asked a few neighbors if they had stashes of old batteries, too. Several did, so Ryan and Owen took those as well.
Owen was so delighted by this accomplishment that he and his father decided to make a regular project out of hauling one different type of problem trash every weekend to the right recycler, offering to do the same for neighbors in their Queen Anne section of Seattle. So they started gathering bent clothes hangers one weekend, burned-out light bulbs the next, and then plastic bags, wraps, pouches, bubble wrap, and Styrofoam, none of which plays well with community recycling programs. Demand kept expanding block by block as word got around about his little father-and-son project. Soon he had to create a subscriber email group to track it all, with a message going out each week on what sort of trash would be picked up next and when to leave it outside for pickup. They dubbed this “Owen’s List.”
Around this time, grateful subscribers to Owen’s List who had long felt guilty about their secret trashiness started offering the duo money. A few suggested they charge for the service. “I’d gladly give up a couple lattes a month in exchange for you taking care of this,” one neighbor said. “I bet a lot of people would.”
Could that be true? Could their father-and-son hobby become a business that would let him leave his tech job behind and do something to help save the world? Seattle residents took pride in living in one of America’s greenest cities, but would they really pay extra every month to change their trashy habits and help Owen’s List patch a gaping hole in the waste and recycling system?
Metzger renamed the service Ridwell, to better explain its mission at a glance, and then set out to find out. (snip-MORE)
How much fossil carbon is stored in our stuff?
Ellen Phiddian December 21, 2024
Human-made materials – the “technosphere” – are a deep store of fossil carbon – and possibly a ticking time bomb.
That’s according to a fascinating new study published in Cell Reports Sustainability.
“We have no idea of how much carbon has been accumulated in the technosphere, how long it stays and what might happen to it once it is released,” says co-author Professor Klaus Hubaeck, a researcher at the University of Groningen, the Netherlands.
The researchers found that the technosphere accumulated 8.4 billion tonnes of fossil carbon from 1995-2019.
Were all this carbon to be burned and sent into the atmosphere, it would be equivalent to 30 billion tonnes of CO2. The world’s annual greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere over that period were roughly 770 billion tonnes.
“Carbon is used as a feedstock everywhere in our daily items, even the laptop I type on, and we were wondering if there is a potential time bomb of all that carbon contributing further to climate heating as it gets released to the atmosphere,” Hubaeck tells Cosmos over email.
Human-made materials are often made from fossil carbon sources like oil and gas. Plastics, for instance, are 74% fossil carbon on average. When these items reach end of life, the carbon makes its way back into the environment via dumping – or into the atmosphere via combustion.
The researchers calculated the amount of fossil carbon stored in the technosphere in the year 2011, using economic data to judge how much was flowing in and out of various industries.
They found that most of this carbon was going into rubber and plastic (30%), while 24% was put in bitumen, and 16% in machinery and equipment.
They found that 9% of extracted fossil carbon was stored in the technosphere in 2011, or about 0.4 billion tonnes of fossil carbon.
The team extrapolated these findings to a 25-year time period (1995-2019), which told them that 8.4 billion tonnes of fossil carbon had been accumulated.
Hubaeck says that the technosphere is nearing the stage where it stores more carbon than the natural world.
“We are not far from that turning point. Indeed, the accumulated fossil carbon is in the same order of magnitude, and indeed already higher than that stored in animals.”
What happens to all of this carbon? The researchers estimate that 3.7 billion tonnes of fossil carbon was disposed of over this time period: 1.2 billion tonnes sent to landfill, 1.2 billion tonnes incinerated and sent into the atmosphere, 1.1 billion tonnes recycled, and the rest littered.
“On the one hand, you can consider it as a form of carbon sequestration if this fossil carbon ends up sequestered in landfill, but on the other hand, it poses an environmental hazard, and if you burn it, you increase carbon emissions,” says co-author Dr Franco Ruzzenenti, also from the University of Groningen.
This means it is very important to make sure the waste is being processed properly, according to the researchers. They say that product lifetimes and recycling rates need to increase, and landfill and waste discharges need to be minimised.
“It’s best to avoid or reduce the throughput in the first place,” says Hubaeck.
“Certainly in rich countries, we have too much stuff (whereas the Global South still needs to catch up), we should question the amount of durable products and (inefficient) infrastructure we produce.
“Shifting to bio-based carbon also has environmental impacts, land requirements, biodiversity, and impacts on food prices.”
The researchers say that circular economy strategies are important for reducing the amount of waste as well, alongside managing waste better after disposal.
…to the same legacy media institutions that have fucked us over so badly?
Well, perhaps it’s because outfits like The Bulwark are sponsored by outfits like Jeff Bezos’ Washington Post.
Yeah, that Washington Post. From NPR:
Over 200,000 subscribers flee ‘Washington Post’ after Bezos blocks Harris endorsement
The Washington Post has been rocked by a tidal wave of cancellations from digital subscribers and a series of resignations from columnists, as the paper grapples with the fallout of owner Jeff Bezos’s decision to block an endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris for president…
From the transcript of live ad read in the middle of the above-referenced podcast.
Tim Miller: Hey guys, if you listen to this podcast you care about what’s going on in the world. And you know we’re doing our best here at the Bulwark as we grow, to expand out, reporting, reported commentary no bullshit insight. But, like all of this stuff is based on people doing shoe leather reporting. People going out there and gathering sources and going around the world an… and educating us about what’s happening in the world. And… and one of the places that’s out there still doing that is the Washington Post. Uh, and this podcast is sp… sponsored by The Washington Post. When you go to Washington Post.com slash The Bulwark, our listeners can get an exclusive deal to subscribe for just 50 cents per week for your first year. Uh…if you listen to us you know the great work the Washington Post does on a bunch of topics…
It goes on. And on. And on. Bezos is definitely getting his money’s worth.
Because, as we have discussed on this blog several hundred times before…
(snip)
(I posted about this earlier, there is success, so I’m posting a funny-serious one about it. Sometimes we win when we step up. -A)
One thing we know Trump was for sure looking forward to for his second term was getting to kill more federal death row prisoners. During the last months of his first term, he went on a full-on killing spree, with his administration carrying out 13 federal executions after a 17-year hiatus.
To put things into perspective, of the 13 prisoners executed prior to his administration, two of them were Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. Only 37 federal death row prisoners were executed between 1927 and 2019, so 13 in six months was quite the bloodbath.
Alas, his dreams have been dashed, for President Joe Biden has announced that he will commute the death sentences for nearly all of the prisoners on federal death row.
“Today, I am commuting the sentences of 37 of the 40 individuals on federal death row to life sentences without the possibility of parole,” Biden said in a statement released Monday morning.
“Make no mistake: I condemn these murderers, grieve for the victims of their despicable acts, and ache for all the families who have suffered unimaginable and irreparable loss,” he continued. “But guided by my conscience and my experience as a public defender, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Vice President, and now President, I am more convinced than ever that we must stop the use of the death penalty at the federal level. In good conscience, I cannot stand back and let a new administration resume executions that I halted.”
It’s unlikely that this was simply meant to bust Trump’s balls and make him sad — Biden had pledged to “work to pass legislation to eliminate the death penalty at the federal level, and incentivize states to follow the federal government’s example” in his 2020 campaign.
The three prisoners whose sentences will not be commuted are those who committed crimes related to terrorism and hate-motivated mass murders — Dylann Roof, the white supremacist who killed nine people and injured one in a Charleston, South Carolina, church in 2015; Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, one of the two brothers responsible for the Boston Marathon bombing in 2013 (his brother, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, was killed in a shootout with police after the attack); and Robert Bowers, who killed 11 people at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in 2018.
The other prisoners were given their federal death sentences for far lesser crimes, like killing prison guards or drug trafficking-related murders.
It’s certainly nice to get this news after Biden’s 1,500 commutations of federal prisoners failed to include political prisoners like Leonard Peltier or Mumia Abu-Jamal and did include the kids-for-cash judge. It’s also nice to see, considering the fact that the DNC removed opposition to the death penalty from its platform after eight years of including it. Hopefully we can get back on that one, given the fervor with which Republican governors have pursued the executions of people who were almost definitely innocent in the last few years.
Anti-death penalty advocates, including Martin Luther King III, Sister Simone Campbell, Rev. Ralph McCloud, and exoneree Herman Lindsey made a video thanking President Biden for taking this step.
“President Biden has shown our country – and the rest of the world – that the brutal and inhumane policies of our past do not belong in our future,” Anthony D. Romero, executive director of the ACLU said in a statement. “By commuting 37 federal death row sentences, he has paved the way for other elected officials to build on his legacy of racial justice, humanity and morality by commuting state death rows and passing legislation to abolish capital punishment.”
“Biden has commuted almost all federal death row. This is indeed a good day to do the Lord’s work,” Sister Helen Prejean wrote on Bluesky. I’m thankful to so many religious leaders and justice advocates who helped make this possible. I pray for victims’ families, knowing that wishing for death is not a healing course.”
Personally, as horrible as their crimes were, and as hard of a decision as it would have been, I still think he should have commuted the sentences of all of the prisoners, simply because — to quote a bumper sticker — I don’t believe we should kill people who kill people to show people that killing people is wrong. Also there is evidence that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was unduly influenced by his brother and also afraid he might kill him if he didn’t go along with his plan, and that the jury was biased against him. (Which would be entirely understandable given that they were all from the Boston area, but also technically unfair.) Family members of those who were killed in the Charleston church shooting have said for years that they don’t want Roof executed, and as loathsome as he is, that ought to be taken into consideration. Two of the families who lost loved ones in the Tree of Life shooting, and the rabbi who was shot himself also asked for Bowers to get a life sentence, due to their opposition to the death penalty. One of the many injustices of the death penalty is that it puts those who oppose it in the position, occasionally, of having to ask for leniency for those who hurt them or have killed their loved ones.
But, you know, optics.
In any case, this is a great day for those of us who oppose the death penalty, and for all Americans who may not oppose it but still do not deserve to be hardened by its application.
Check out this article from USA TODAY:
Debunking false claims about US drone sightings | Fact check roundup
Best Wishes and Hugs,
Scottie
I am still stuck at the doctors office. Waiting. Hugs
https://www.joemygod.com/2024/12/120-anti-lgbtq-bills-filed-for-2025-legislative-year/
Best Wishes and Hugs,
Scottie
https://www.joemygod.com/2024/12/bird-flu-outbreak-causes-new-surge-in-egg-prices/
Best Wishes and Hugs,
Scottie
Let the age of misogyny begin. Women get use to going back to 1950 way of living. No manly things for the little woman, she belongs at home, doing house work and making things good for her man, the one she needs most in her life. Dependent on a man for everything and permission to do anything. 47% of those voting wanted this nicely heaven. Hugs.
https://www.joemygod.com/2024/12/felon-elect-vows-to-ban-sport-of-female-boxing/
Best Wishes and Hugs,
Scottie
https://www.joemygod.com/2024/12/trump-doubles-down-on-seizing-panama-canal/
Best Wishes and Hugs,
Scottie
Scottie's Playtime 