political-industrial ecology of dvd's
The same holds good for every kind of refuse resulting from a labour-process, so far at least as such refuse cannot be further employed as a means in the production of new and independent use-values. Such an employment of refuse may be seen in the large machine works at Manchester, where mountains of iron turnings are carted away to the foundry in the evening, in order the next morning to re-appear in the workshops as solid masses of iron... Every advance in Chemistry not only multiplies the number of useful materials and the useful applications of those already known, thus extending with the growth of capital its sphere of investment. It teaches at the same time how to throw the excrements of the processes of production and consumption back again into the circle of the process of reproduction, and thus, without any previous outlay of capital, creates new matter for capital. Tuesday, Jan. 20, 2004 Environmentalists Condemn Disposable DVDs By MATT JOYCE Associated Press Writer AUSTIN (AP) - Promoters of a new disposable-DVD technology tout the product's convenience, but environmentalists condemn the self-destructing movie disks as a step backward in developing reusable products. Buena Vista Home Entertainment, a branch of The Walt Disney Co., introduced the EZ-D in September and now offers 35 movies in the format. Consumers have 48 hours after opening the box to watch movies on the $7 disks before an oxidation process changes their color, rendering them unusable. The disks were tested in four markets around the country, including Austin, where they are available at stores such as 7-Eleven, Walgreens and HEB supermarkets. Local environmentalists protested outside one 7-Eleven in October and urged shoppers to send postcards to Disney, condemning the disposable DVDs. They claimed some success - Robin Schneider, executive director of the Texas Campaign for the Environment, said HEB instituted recycling facilities for the EZ-Ds in response to the outcry. The whole way the product is being marketed as 'no returns' is environmentally irresponsible, Schneider said. I've worked on many different issues, and I think this has been the easiest one to mobilize the public because they see the advertisements on television and see how wasteful the products are. Buena Vista officials said consumers will have a different reaction to the disks. We believe consumers will enjoy the convenience of a rental alternative that requires no extra trips to return product and no late fees, Bob Chapek, president of Buena Vista, said in a statement. Representatives of Flexplay Technologies, the New York-based developers of the EZ-D technology, declined interviews. Buena Vista promotes the recycling of EZ-Ds on its Web site, including instructions for mailing the EZ-Ds to collection points free of charge. The recycling program is being handled by GreenDisk, a Seattle-based company that disposes of electronic waste. GreenDisk's address is included on the EZ-Ds, and people are encouraged to mail the disks using downloadable mailing labels that cover postage, said David Beschen, GreenDisk's chief executive. GreenDisk grinds up the EZ-Ds and ships the polycarbonate plastic remains to a recycling company for use in plastic products such as auto parts or appliances, Beschen said. He praised Buena Vista's effort to recycle the disks. What we saw was a group of people who worked aggressively before they even put a product on the street to make sure they had a way to get it back off, Beschen said. That's about all you can ask for in a free-market system. Beschen said he didn't have numbers on how many disks have been recycled, but he said mail-in and bin collection started slowly and appeared to have picked up since Christmas. At the city of Austin's recycling center, home to one of two local designated EZ-D recycling bins, only about 10 disks have been turned in, said city spokeswoman Stephanie Lott. Some retailers said Austin residents have been slow to latch onto the technology. At a 7-Eleven this week, 11 EZ-D titles were on display next to magazine racks on the store's front counter. Shift manager Rafy Hernandez said that shoppers have asked about the EZ-Ds and expressed concerns about their waste. I haven't really sold any, he said. I would like to sell some so I could get some feedback from people. Jessica Felter, of Austin, stopped at the store for a cup of coffee but said she has little incentive to buy an EZ-D. She said she generally returns rented movies on time, making a $7 disposable movie unnecessary. For my husband and I, we would watch it once and that would be it, she said. To this day, no one has come up with a set of rules for originality. There aren't any. [Les Paul]
Re: [political] industrial ecology
Brings to mind an interesting (perhaps) true life story. In the mid 1970s, when I was just a lad working for the Illinois Central Gulf RR in Chicago, the Chicago Sanitary Sewage District and the ICG participated in the development of a sludge train service, where processed sewage would be loaded into railcars for transport to central and southern Illinois. The sewage was to be provided to farmers for use as fertilizer. Apparently these guys had read Engels and decided to do their part to heal the metabolic breach, or maybe it was just the chance to make money, or maybe both, because we all know that nothing is more natural than capitalism... In those days there were peace trains, love trains, soul trains, and we had our shit trains, dubbed, by some genius in the marketing dept., as ICBMs. Well, didn't work as planned, and not because of the excess quantities of toxic chemicals-- lord knows that never would have stopped our dedicated entrepreneurs-- no, it was something far more insidious and immediately visible-- tomatoes. Yes, tomatoes. It seems tomato seeds not only pass through the human digestive track sullied but unscathed, but also through the chemical and heat treatments designed to eliminate pathogens of the bacterial, viral, fungal, protozoan type. So when the farmers spread this stuff on their fields of corn and soybeans (Illinois being no. 2 I think in the production of each), guess what? Thousands upon thousands upon thousands of tomato plants sprouted, strangling the cash crops in their cradles. End of experiment, end of trains. So much for that early adventure ecological alchemy. dms
[political] industrial ecology
January 3, 2004 E.P.A. to Study Use of Waste From Sewage as Fertilizer By JENNIFER 8. LEE The Environmental Protection Agency will sponsor a series of scientific and public health studies on the safety of using sewage sludge as fertilizer, including nationwide chemical tests and building a human health complaint database. The studies, in combination with the agency's announcement on Wednesday that it will more closely regulate 15 chemicals found in sewage sludge fertilizer, are part of the agency's efforts to address public concerns about an agricultural practice that has grown rapidly around the country over the last decade. The announcements also reflect the agency's shifting public stance toward the practice. Currently, 54 percent of the six million tons of sewage sludge generated every year is processed, rechristened as biosolids and used as fertilizer - more sludge than is disposed of through incineration and landfill combined. The popularity of the practice is in part due to the environmental agency's enthusiastic promotion, which started after Congress prohibited the ocean dumping of sewage sludge in 1992. The agency spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on a public relations campaign for recycling sludge as fertilizer, which at that time accounted for less than a third of the sewage waste disposal. The agency even created a brochure in 1994 that said that processed sewage sludge may protect child health. The brochure cited a study showing animals that ingested biosolid-treated soil and dust may have a decreased absorption of lead into the bloodstream, thus lessening the potential for lead-induced nerve and brain damage. In May, the agency fired a 32-year veteran agency scientist, David Lewis, who had raised questions about the safety of practice in a 1999 article published in Nature. But hundreds of complaints have been documented over the last decade, including accusations that the toxic chemicals and pathogens have caused sickness and death in animals and humans. Appomattox County, Va., banned the use of biosolids, which a federal judge overturned in November for conflicting with state law allowing the practice. Industry officials say the complaints have to be taken in context. Given the large volume and multi-decade history of land application of biosolids, the complaints of the large-scale health impacts are few and far between, said James Slaughter, a lawyer who represents the biosolids industry. Environmental agency officials are publicly more ambivalent. I can't answer it's safe. I can't answer it's not safe, Paul Gilman, the assistant administrator of agency's office of research and development, said in an interview with CBS in October about the practice. We are not promoting one approach over another, Ben Grumbles, the acting assistant administrator of the agency's office of water, said of the various choices. We are promoting local choice. We believe the current sewage sludge regulations are adequately protective of human health in the environment. The scientific concerns have been enough such that the Honolulu City Council voted last month to delay a contract with Synagro, a leading sewage sludge disposal company, pending further study on the safety of the practice. The agency's scientific studies were prompted by a National Research Council report, released in July 2002, criticizing the science around sewage sludge as outdated. In addition to regulating inorganic chemicals, the E.P.A. will also identify pathogens and viruses that are present in the sewage sludge - including staphylococcus aureus, a pathogen that tends to invade burned or chemically damaged tissue. While industry-sponsored research at the University of Arizona recently concluded that the pathogen is not present in biosolids, Dr. Lewis said it was the chemicals in the sewage sludge that leave residents more at risk from infection. While critics of the sewage sludge policy are heartened by the research plans, they also caution that the agency should try to ensure balanced viewpoints. Historically, the activities sponsored by E.P.A. have tended to be one-sided in terms of having scientists who have been involved in developing the rule, said Ellen Harrison, director of the Cornell Waste Management Institute, who has been critical of some E.P.A policies. There is a real need to change that and involve people who have been critical of some of the work to date.
Re: [political] industrial ecology
I am semi-retired -- at the economics meetings now for a few days. What is remarkable is that the article says nothing about the EPA sanctioned use of toxic waste is fertilizer. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
