Weather, Climate, Environment, and Energy

[FearlessF]

recycling helps most folks feel good about their effort

try not to ruin it for them, please

[MrNubbz]

 and I don't drink beer from cans.  

Really - years ago brewers started lining the cans with a waxy substance to cut out that metal taste.The one advantage of cans is blocking light.It has been proven by many blind taste tests that bottles left out even under artificial lighting negatively affects the taste.That makes me feel good about those efforts

[847badgerfan]

I've often wondered whether or not wine and booze bottles recycle. Not sure why, but I wonder.

[Cincydawg]

We took another long walk today.  They are having some kind of "science fair" thing in the park, it was packed with youngsters.  I sort of glanced at some of the booths.  Meh.

We then walked south looking for somewhere new to have lunch and went all the way to where Tech has built up across the freeway.  Ate gyros, pretty good, and found a place called Bytes after we ate that was pretty neat, gonna try that sometime.  Perfect weather, warmish in the sun and a touch cool in the shade, zero clouds, lots of stuff blooming, a lot of people out and about, several restaurants were packed on their patio areas.  

https://www.bytesrestaurant.com/home

Each table has an iPad and you just order using that.  

I know the midsection got severe floods, I'm sorry for them.  They obviously need more dykes.

[FearlessF]

really shouldn't drink beer from anything but a glass, after being poured into the glass from the container to release the head

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd far rather drink straight from the bottle than pour it into a separate glass. I chase every bit of bite I can get, and pouring beer into a glass seeds too much CO2 gas. My goal is to keep that in solution, so emptying a beer into a glass kind of ruins its flavor for me.

[MarqHusker]

Craft brewers also love the cans, way less cost to ship than bottles.  

[CWSooner]

I've often wondered whether or not wine and booze bottles recycle. Not sure why, but I wonder.

I took a bunch of glass bottles to a recycling point the other day.  There were three bins in which to put them; one for clear, another for green, another for brown.  The green glass included--as far as I could tell--all wine bottles no matter how much more brown than green their brownish-green color seemed.

[CWSooner]

There is an EPA Superfund cleanup site in NE Oklahoma.  The place is "Tar Creek," and there used to be zinc and lead mines there, and the chat piles outside the mines contaminated rainwater and ultimately the ground water.  There has been some success using mushrooms to pull heavy metals out of the groundwater.

A couple of similar articles in the Tulsa World.

https://www.tulsaworld.com/news/local/secret-weapon-to-get-heavy-metals-from-tar-creek-compost/article_323eff40-0884-5f91-ae39-cc35f8396500.html

https://www.tulsaworld.com/epa-mushroom-compost-removes-pollutants-from-tar-creek-site/article_37368dd9-7f74-5b6d-9ec0-a029c2b6469d.html

Mickey Mantle's father--"Mutt" Mantle--worked in some of these mines.  He died of Hodgkin's disease at age 40.  I don't know if his work had anything to do with his early death.

[Cincydawg]

What do you do with the mushrooms after they are contaminated?

Superfund sites are real problems.  They often just get brownfielded, as the funds are not there to clean up any but the very worst.

[Cincydawg]

Circa 1990, composting of waste was supposed to be the "solution".  Some smaller cities set up municipal solid waste composting operations.  They were failing as fast as new ones opened, I would guess none exist today (they do compost yard waste, a very good change).  Problem 1 was malodor and Problem 2 was cost.  When things degrade without oxygen, they stink.  If you've ever left a pile of grass clippings around for any period of time you know what I mean.

And of course MSW contains batteries, heavy metals, and all sorts of "garbage".  That leads to "leachate", the liquid goo that gets generated.  That leachate often is contaminated and toxic and has to be ... collected and managed.  We had a pretty large drum composter where I worked for experiments.  The materials added were tightly controlled, no batteries etc. and it worked, it took a lot of energy to turn it, I'd guess it was 10 feet diameter and 25 feet long.  They used as ingredients shredded paper, dog food, ground glass, and some mulch, and we'd add a few percent of our material to test what happened to it.

This is great for yard waste IF you can turn and aerate the material fairly often.  Not so for MSW, nor is burning it a good idea, that releases stuff into the air we don't want in the air.

This is where I got into trouble.  I started reading up on composting facilities and noted how many closed and how few were being started and published a report on that (internally).  I didn't think anyone would read it, but apparently it got kicked up to high levels.  I got some very angry emails that copied my boss and his boss and his boss.  My boss' boss caught me at lunch and said "Whatever you do, DO NOT RESPOND to any emails on this, let me deal with it."  He later told me I had initiated a fire storm that could only happen because my facts were correct, but it went against a very public program we had going on and some VP types had staked their careers on this.

It took about another two years before all the programs we had in R&D were shit down, mine was last to go.  I got transferred to a place I did not want to go after being asked 3 times if I wanted to go there.  I was also on the edge of a nice promotion which was delayed 7 years as a result.

Don't be a round peg if they have square holes.

[847badgerfan]

I've worked on a few Superfund cleanup sites in the past. Bureaucracy is the major problem. I figure I could have been done in about 1/3 the time if took to get through all the red tape, for about 1/3 of the money. Government doesn't allow for speedy solutions. If it did, about 50 percent of the government "workers" would be more.

[847badgerfan]

What do you do with the mushrooms after they are contaminated?

Superfund sites are real problems.  They often just get brownfielded, as the funds are not there to clean up any but the very worst.

I'd like to know about this too.

[MrNubbz]

I'd far rather drink straight from the bottle than pour it into a separate glass. I chase every bit of bite I can get, and pouring beer into a glass seeds too much CO2 gas. My goal is to keep that in solution, so emptying a beer into a glass kind of ruins its flavor for me.

I dunno years ago I was at one of the local Oktoberfests thrown by some the local craft brewers.I was talking to one of the brewers and he suggested the opposite.Pour the beer straight down the middle of the quaffing vessel to produce as much head as possible,let sit then repeat until full.I know they do this with Guinness on St.Paddy's Day but probably to get a head start .His rationale was this releases much of the CO2/gas getting the true taste of the product - seemed the rest of those guys were doing the same.I've been doing that ever since and I think they're right