Only in America!!!
I was not aware of that US made pallets of hardwood and did not think that it could ever be a stupid luxury consumption like this. I can see reason for some pallets to be made of hardwood, but they should be guarded and reused. But this irresponsible behavior cannot be excused. Six pallets of hardwood per American in land fills, give me a break! I am of the opinion that it is almost a sin to use hardwood for pallets in the first place. How can you use types of trees that take 50 to 100 years to mature for purposes like this. Hardwood is also very stupid to put in landfills, because of the long time it takes to disintegrate. If you really need to waste hardwood, effective burning is probably the best. Compared to the pallets we mostly use in Europe, made of pine tree, hardwood take 4-8 times longer to mature. Even the fast growing teak, developed mainly in central and south America, takes at least 2-4 the time to mature as pine trees and it is questionable if it is still hardwood. The fast growing teak is softer, but still have the natural defense against humidity and insects. Hardwood is mostly a tropical or sub tropical tree and how can US use this for pallets and at the same time be upset about the deforestation of the remaining oxygen suppliers of the world. The hardwood of Europe was by tradition the property of the Kings, wherever it was rooted, because of its value for building ships and as structural building material. In this case oak was a strategic defense material. Oak used as structure for buildings, was inherited and reused for new buildings. The value of oak was almost comparable to gold a few hundred years ago. Hakan At 07:25 AM 11/24/2002 -0800, you wrote: >Keith Addison wrote: > > > Re wasted wood, I picked this up somewhere or other, for the US, not > > Canada: "In 1999, for instance, 7.5 million tons of wooden pallets - > > platforms associated with shipping - went into the solid waste > > stream, accounting for over 60 percent of all wood waste." And: > > "There are an estimated 6 hardwood palletts in landfill for every > > resident of the US." > > > ><snip> > > Indeed! I used to collect hardwood pallets, cut them up and burn >them. Over the course of the "average" winter, my family burned 8 tons >of wood like this. We hadn't paid for heat in years! Making the leap >back into fossil fueled residential heating was a hard decision for me. >I like the automaticity of our natural gas boiler, but we haven't >received a bill yet . . . > > > > > I just posted this somewhere else: > > > > "... the United States is now far from being a sustainable society, > > and in many respects is further away than it was at the time of the > > Earth Summit in 1992. Unlike many other developed countries, the > > United States has not used a strategic process to move the country > > toward a sustainable future and has not educated the American people > > about the opportunities and challenges of sustainable development." > ><snip> > > I've been lamenting about this for at least 30 years. That's one of >the reasons I'm here. > >robert luis rabello ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor ---------------------~--> ˇFREE Health Insurance Quotes-eHealthInsurance.com http://us.click.yahoo.com/1.voSB/RnFFAA/46VHAA/FGYolB/TM ---------------------------------------------------------------------~-> Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Biofuels list archives: http://archive.nnytech.net/ Please do NOT send Unsubscribe messages to the list address. To unsubscribe, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
