vote for growth

Finally got a chance to take in my recycling last Saturday. RecycleHere! was in Corktown (not quite here, but until I get curbside everything, I'm sticking with these guys in spite of the drive) so I filled every cubic inch of the car and headed to the train station.

While there I met Matthew Naimi, the guy who started RecycleHere!. We ended up standing on the curb, talking for about 30 minutes about his run for Detroit City Council, RH's business model and activities, growing recycling in Detroit, urban agriculture, even urban aquaculture; in fact, he not only didn't look at me like I was from Mars when I suggested growing fish in the city, but he took off with the idea like only someone who's thought of it before could have, suggesting that the effluent and water from the fish be turned into compost for the co-located crops.

The first thing I asked about, not having an opportunity every day to talk to someone knowledgeable about how Council really works, was whether my friends and I had it wrong - would the city in fact benefit from a representational rather than the current at-large Council? Absolutely, he said - we weren't missing any subtleties. Accountability is lacking and this is the only way to get it. Indeed, there's an initiative that will be given some thought during the next session (I think) he said. This would be great, but I'm not optimistic that anything is going to change unless at least a few of the Council members are changed first. Those sitting now have been able to get re-elected specifically because of the lack of a representational requirement; I don't see them acting against their own interests, no matter the interests of Detroit.

Some other items:

• Matthew's got a great grasp of the social and organizational issues around not just garbage removal and recycling in the city, but also of the unions and utilities.
• RecycleHere! comes across all happy and light (note Carl Oxley's bee logo) but positioning it the way he did and making it viable was very savvy.
• He's supporting a Detroit-based recycling program that, if successful, will replace his company. He's willing to put himself out of business to see the city succeed.
• He supports urban agriculture, and understands that this isn't just a nice way to help inner-city residents grow some good organic food. Detroit's vast open spaces are a resource the city could leverage to underpin a number of directions for improvement.

If you live in Detroit, give serious consideration to Matthew Naimi for City Council. More info at recyclehere.net and on Twitter.

this is kinda short, but...

...y'know, Twitter's down. That whole Iran voting like it's 2000 in Florida thing.


Just saw a trailer for a Depp/Bale movie about John Dillinger called 'Public Enemies.' Looks so cool I don't even mind that it's yet another chance for my wife to get all drool-y over Johnny.

Just have to get Iowa onboard...

Stumbled across this looking for something else. It's the abstract of a UC Berkeley Engineering study on corn ethanol.

It is shown here that one burns 1 gallon of gasoline equivalent in fossil fuels to produce 1 gallon of gasoline equivalent as ethanol from corn. Then corn ethanol is burned as a gasoline additive or fuel. Burning the same amount of fuel twice to drive a car once is equivalent to halving the fuel efficiency of those cars that burn corn ethanol, and will cause manifold damage to air, surface water, soil and aquifers. The overall energy balance of corn conversion to ethanol demonstrates that 65% of the input energy is lost during the conversion. Carbon dioxide sequestration by corn is nullified when corn ethanol is burned. Therefore, we conclude, subsidizing ethanol from corn as a gasoline oxygenate is one of the most misguided public policy decisions made in recent history.

College freshmen get it (though the crisp 1 to 1 ratio above may be a little more blurry than that). We need to stop subsidizing (some say to the tune of $5B) this wrongheaded approach that is pushing up food prices, increasing our dependence on petrochemicals, and exacerbating the problem it's touted to solve.

'What are they thinking?' They're not.

I know not everyone surrounds themselves with as much environmental info as I do, but I've been barraged the last few days by two stunningly ignorant comments, and one that just made me want to strangle someone.

The first, a discussion about the serving options for a recent birthday party. We were going to get about 50 inexpensive plates (not ceramic, but you know, actual non-throwaway plates) so they could be used for all such parties in our family. Someone was trying to dissuade us in favor of plastic due to the work of cleaning them. We said we didn't want to keep generating all that one-time-use garbage, buying plastic plates every time there was a get-together, throwing more crap away. The answer, "But they're already made."

The second came while talking to someone about the floating mass of platic and garbage in the Pacific north of Hawaii (I mistakenly mentioned it was the size of Texas. It's actually twice that.). Their solution, "You'd think they could figure out a way to burn it."

The one that made my hands clench hungrily was when a condo organization's board member dismissively waved off the assertion that leaving every front and back door light on all night (which she'd just suggested for security's sake) would waste a lot of energy and add to the growing amount of light pollution in the area. "Nobody cares about that." Tool.

I tend to believe it's only an information problem that stands in the way of solving most of our problems, that if we can just inform most people about the effects of certain actions, they'll come around. But it's more than that, isn't it? People need to be able to think past the very next thought in their heads, and if they don't do that habitually, who the hell has the time to train them?