The Bar Towel

I'm not sure what's worse, filling up our landfills with garbage shipped from China disguised as 'products', or the crap we just send down the drain. People talk about entitlement when they meet some spoiled jerk who expects everything, Yet there are so many more of us feeling entitled to make a mess of our environment by just consuming and disposing.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/thunder-b ... -1.2897780

This would have been OT, except for this:

"Scientists reported last fall that two dozen varieties of German beer contained microplastics."

I'm a little more concerned about those tiny plastic fibres being consumed...

Damnit, I thought we were doing good by recycling those plastic bottles into micro-fleece sweaters.

For a second I though we were talking about Belgian Pale Ales (BPAs). I quite like a nice Belgian Pale Ale.

Better link to the story about microfibers in beer (the actual study is, as always, behind a journal paywall): http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 ... 091949.htm

The authors of the article, Gerd Liebezeit & Elisabeth Liebezeit, conclude their research by suggesting possible causes for the contamination, citing the materials used in the production process and the clothes and skin of brewery workers as likely sources.

So not so much from the water in that case. It's a weird study to cite in relation to the water. Presumably most of these fibers are filtered out in the breweries filtration system.

Hah. I'm all for moving off the grid where I have some arable land and woods, my own fresh water source, and little need to purchase 'stuff'. I'll sell the old Strat and go acoustic. It's a bit of a fantasy idyll since there are so many of us on the planet now not everyone could do that.

I any case it gives one pause - the shameful and constant rapid consumption of resources / waste creation that mostly drives an economic engine. A CEO or such of a company has the LEGAL obligation to maxmimize profits, even at the cost of mortgaging his/her own great-grandchildren's future world (possibly climate change, cumulative toxicity.) Somewhere the humane regard of people is lost in the Profit Prerogative.

It will be VERY interesting when our expensive yet (for now) still relatively abundant fuel oil grinds to a trickle, since all our 'cheap' products are widely shipped. It might be a GOOD thing to re-establish a more locally-based economic infrastructure and put pressure on cleaner energy to replace fossil. It would be good to stop believing in the virtue of the 'clean' blue bins we put out and we just begin to waste less.

Sad thing is we're very much like that CEO, we are mortgaging the future of people we will never meet because it doesn't occur to us right now this is what we're doing.

Belgian wrote:Hah. I'm all for moving off the grid where I have some arable land and woods, my own fresh water source, and little need to purchase 'stuff'. I'll sell the old Strat and go acoustic. It's a bit of a fantasy idyll since there are so many of us on the planet now not everyone could do that.

I any case it gives one pause - the shameful and constant rapid consumption of resources / waste creation that mostly drives an economic engine. A CEO or such of a company has the LEGAL obligation to maxmimize profits, even at the cost of mortgaging his/her own great-grandchildren's future world (possibly climate change, cumulative toxicity.) Somewhere the humane regard of people is lost in the Profit Prerogative.

It will be VERY interesting when our expensive yet (for now) still relatively abundant fuel oil grinds to a trickle, since all our 'cheap' products are widely shipped. It might be a GOOD thing to re-establish a more locally-based economic infrastructure and put pressure on cleaner energy to replace fossil. It would be good to stop believing in the virtue of the 'clean' blue bins we put out and we just begin to waste less.

Sad thing is we're very much like that CEO, we are mortgaging the future of people we will never meet because it doesn't occur to us right now this is what we're doing.

No disagreement with you. I just want to add a fun fact here (for whatever reason).

There's an 'Eco' trend towards bamboo fibre clothing. Nothing against that, but the funny thing is the fibres being extracted, after whatever the process is, are apparently exactly the same chemical composition as polyester.

While I'm glad it's not a petrochemical source, at the end of the day it's potentially the same waste product.

What I'm mostly rallying against is not what we are using, but how much we don't use and just throw away, along with plain old waste from amusement use.

As for the fibres in the beer. I wonder if the Germans breweries should make their employees wear hoodie nets?