Posts Tagged ‘pollution’

And I Would Have Gotten Away With It, Too, If It Weren’t For That Rascally Ecuadorean Judge…

Thursday, February 24th, 2011

“CARACAS, Venezuela — A judge in a tiny courtroom in the Ecuadorean Amazon ruled Monday that the oil giant Chevron was responsible for polluting remote tracts of Ecuadorean jungle and ordered the company to pay more than $9 billion in damages, one of the largest environmental awards ever.”

What do you think?

Is $9 billion enough to cover large-scale destruction of the environment and irreparable damage to human health? Is it too much?

And would knowing that BP has already pledged $20 billion to pay for damages related to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill change your mind?

Recycling Irony

Monday, February 7th, 2011

“All Danny Clark wanted was to leave an eco-friendly footprint for his children.

That and to ride the new wave of ‘green business’ startups by coming up with a way to make money and help the environment at the same time.

His idea was simple: If he could make plastic water bottles biodegradable, it would reduce the impact on landfills, curb roadside litter and reduce the amount of plastic garbage that eventually washes into the oceans.

Everybody wins. Well, not everybody.

The Mesa man’s small-business venture has run into opposition from a large and unexpected source: the $400 billion recycling industry, which fears that by making plastic bottles biodegradable, it will reduce the stream of plastic refuse used to make everything from carpet to clothing to new bottles. In addition, changing the makeup of plastic bottles could make it more difficult to recycle them, the industry fears.”

What do you think?

Chicken or egg? Should your old plastic junk be used to make new plastic junk, or should it biodegrade into the earth once its life is over? Which idea has a better business model?

Pollution is…

Friday, August 21st, 2009

Pollution is the introduction of harmful or poisonous substances into the environment like litter, car emissions, or industrial chemicals and waste. Pollution can come from many different sources and can destroy habitats entirely or just make places less healthy for humans and other animals to live. Pollutants from mines and other industrial sites have in many instances caused birth defects and increases in the frequency of cancer and other diseases for nearby populations.