photo by Axel Bruns (Snurb on Flickr CC)

In a quaint return to yester-year, 60 towns in France have replaced some of their recycling and rubbish collection trucks with horse-drawn carts.

The ambient sound of clip-clopping hooves was surely part of the reason for this change, but the horses are more mobile in some narrow streets than the noisy and cumbersome trucks. Plus, they eat grass instead of fossil fuels and produce fertilizer for any gardener not to proud to scoop some off the street.

Though there have been failures and drawbacks to these schemes, but some have been successful. A similar idea with donkeys in Italy, has had clear economic advantages:

In Sicily, another place bringing back four-hoofed transport, Mario Cicero, mayor of 14th-century town Castelbuono, disagrees. He pioneered glass and cardboard collection using two packsaddle donkeys in 2007. Three years on, Cicero has done his sums and calculated a cost saving of 34%, as well as winning over a sceptical population and putting more donkeys to work.

–Guardian

If the animals are healthy and treated well, this could be a good idea, as long as it’s well regulated. New York’s cruel handsome cab industry makes me have reservations, however.

Read more on this story in the following Guardian article:

French towns swap rubbish trucks for horse-drawn carts

photo by Peter Van den Bossche (LHOON on Flickr CC)

The ongoing web of problems between rubbish and corruption has turned Italy’s once rustic region of Campania into an area known for the mafia and toxic waste.

Naples, the capital of Campania, is once again the center of protests, in which 2,000 locals rioted, threw stones and burned garbage trucks early Friday and during the following three nights. The protesters are against their city being used as a giant dump for the north of Italy – including further plans to build yet another waste facility on the slopes of Mount Vesuvius.

From a report in the Edmonton Journal:

The clashes coincided with a strike by garbage collectors, who fear that their temporary contracts will not be renewed. The crisis has resulted in an estimated 750 tonnes of stinking rubbish mounting up uncollected in the streets of the southern port city.

The garbage piled up from five consecutive days of striking is causing health concerns in Naples, as well as fanning already-existing unrest.

From a Euronews report:

The long-running saga has been blamed on a lack of local incinerators and landfill sites controlled by the local mafia, some of which were used for the illegal dumping of toxic waste.

For background on the situation in Naples, see the following post:

The Neapolitan Garbage War: When Things Just Keep Piling Up

At least they made an effort; photo by LoopZilla (source: Flickr Creative Commons)

Cold, dark and grimy. I sure picked a good year to move to London. Besides the economic downturn and an increase in VAT, the city – along with the rest of the UK – has apparently gotten dirtier. Besides lousy pollution levels, an exceptionally cold winter and beaches covered in rubbish, there’s a bunch of weirdos hanging plastic bags of dog shit from trees.

That’s the main focus of an article in the London Times, which moans about gangsta wannabes who are too tough to clean up their pit bulls’ leavings, but suggests that the bucolic black bag-hangers are ‘just impossibly confused’.

The author is probably right about the urban macho dog owners. As for the rambling country black baggers, why can’t they just take the bags home? Because carrying a bag of shite down a country lane is just as uncool as it is in the ‘hood – if there are indeed any ‘hoods here in Mary-Poppins-land, which I guess there sort of are.

Anyway, some useful info also comes from the Times article:

Britain has become scruffier as well as colder, according to a report by Keep Britain Tidy. As parliament was told recently, motorway embankments are strewn with plastic bags and the laybys on A-roads are overflowing with fast-food packaging and plastic bottles. Although the amount of litter was down 4% last year — because councils spent record amounts clearing it up — overall standards of cleanliness declined.

Believe me, I’ve noticed. And just what is this mythical council that does everything for you, albeit poorly?

The Telegraph, another conservative-leaning paper incase you didn’t know, ran an article about all the food-related waste that piggy Britons throw away every year: 11.9 million tons of it. That’s 0.45 tons per household. According to the Waste and Recycling Action Programme (Wrap) these numbers could be cut in half.

In environmental terms, all the rotting food and waste that is wasted contributes the equivalent of 20 million tons of carbon dioxide a year to the atmosphere. The associated packaging adds another six million tons of CO2 a year, the report’s authors estimated.

–Telegraph

Furthermore, a third of all household food in the UK – worth ₤420 (€480/$640) – ends up being thrown away. Though recycling rates have gone up in Britain, composting lags behind, meaning food goes in landfills and releases methane, a powerful greenhouse gas.

The government is working on proposals to tackle food waste including ‘pay as you throw schemes’ which will probably increase illegal dumping. Why not cut waste off at the source, like requiring less packaging on food products? Another proposal is to ban ‘buy one get one free’ deals at supermarkets. That’s how I get most of my dinners! Makes me want to throw a shopping cart full of two-for-one frozen pizzas down a wooded slope. Not that I would ever do such a thing.

by Graham Land

photo by Wang Jiuliang (source: 2009 Lianzhou International Photo Festival press images)

As China’s economy grows, so does the amount of rubbish it produces – by 10% each year. The Chinese government is struggling to keep up with the consumer society its economic policies have created. The resulting dumps and landfills – both official and illegal – are an ever-increasing blight on the country’s growing metropolitan areas.

One way to get rid of the rubbish is by burning it in government incinerators or simply out in the open, but this releases toxic fumes and dangerous pollution.

Photojournalist Wang Jiuliang has been documenting the waste problem in and around China’s capital of Beijing since 2008. See this Guardian slideshow of his award-winning work:

Photographer zooms in on Beijing’s waste

Be sure to also check out this Guardian video report on Wang Jiuliang’s documentation of the garbage problem in Beijing (click on the below link to watch the video):

Beijing’s rubbish dumps: the ‘seventh ring’ of the city

by Graham Land

Additional resources:

Lianzhou International Photo Festival

Destined for the Atlantic Rubbish Patch? Photo by Horia Varlan (source: Flickr Creative Commons)

Not to be outdone by its fellow large expanse of sea and longtime nemesis, the larger Pacific Ocean, the Atlantic Ocean can now claim a colossal plastic garbage patch of its own.

According to reports from the BBC and AP, the Atlantic ‘Rubbish Patch’ – located within the latitudes of 22 and 38 degrees N in the North Atlantic Ocean – is comparable to the better-known Great Pacific Garbage Patch.

The researchers carried out 6,100 tows in areas of the Caribbean and the North Atlantic – off the coast of the US. More than half of these expeditions revealed floating pieces of plastic on the water surface.

–BBC News

The Pacific Garbage Patch, or more accurately Garbage Patches, are situated in the North Pacific Gyre; one between Hawaii and Japan with the other lying somewhere betwixt Hawaii and California. The ‘Patch’ momentarily shocked millions of reasonable people last year when Oprah, CNN and various news and scientific journals ran stories about the Texas-sized soup of plastic bags, bottles and toys. But then there was Michael Jackson and Susan Boyle and Tiger Woods… I mean we can only care about so much, right?

The study’s principal investigator said Tuesday the findings are based on more than 64,000 tiny bits of plastic collected over more than 22 years by Sea Education Association undergraduates.

–AP

The problem with plastic is that it absorbs pollutants and toxins that have been legally and surreptitiously dumped the ocean. After plastic trash breaks down into small plankton-like beads it then gets eaten by tiny marine animals and jellyfish, which in turn get eaten by larger animals, thereby poisoning the entire food chain. And guess who sits atop the food chain, eating concentrated poison and pollutants? Well not me – I’m a vegetarian and therefore prefer to eat genetically modified soya and crops sprayed with poisonous pesticides. In your face, food chain!

Seriously though, I guess we always knew it was there. It would have been foolish to think that that only one enormous swirling vortex of plastic trash exists in the world’s oceans. Hell, there are probably several of them. Just wait till they do some research in the Indian Ocean. Maybe they’ll find my old collection of Star Wars figures. I’ve heard they’re worth millions.

by Graham Land

Additional resources:

Garbage Patch news – giant seabirds gorge on plastic

Ban the Plastic Bag!

More on the Garbage Patch