Postar artikeln nedan (som är på engelska) i hopp om kommentarer och rättelser. Det är en s k first draft som jag tänkt skicka till Ripley Awards essätävling, som har deadline 30 juni. Se info på t ex http://www.navitron.org.uk/forum/index.php?topic168.0 Man skall skriva en essä på 6000-12000 tkn på ämnet miljöhädelse (dvs mot environmentalismen) och nedan är mitt förslag. Finna några tusen pund att vinna. (Tävlingen har tipsats om tidigare på SKRIVA.) Tacksam för kommentarer och rättelser av ev slarvfel vid stavning. Bytte i våras ordbehandlare och det engelska stavningslexikonet på den jag kör nu verkar inte funka. (Inget jag dagligdags bryr mig om då jag inte kör stavningslexikon - de är bara bökiga och tar extra tid. Enstaka skrivfel i vardagtext på nätforum gör inte så mycket, tycker jag.) --Ahrvid ----- Never in the Field of Environmental Waste Has so Much Effort Meant so Little An evening during one of the harsh winters in Stockholm lately ? they have been getting colder and snowier ? I saw an old lady struggle with two big bags. She was walking slowly and with much effort to one of the so called recycling stations placed here and there in the Swedish capital. The pavement was icy and full of snow. She nearly slipped several times. The city council has been late and lazy with ploughing and sanding, persuaded by the environmentalist dominated media that winters were a thing of the past. I though: what if this dear old lady falls and breaks a leg? It would cost tens of thousands in hospital treatment. Suddently a fancy SUV ? a stock broker? - stopped by the long row of recycling containers, driver emerging and tossing a few bags into the different containers. From the car I would guess his work was worth perhaps a thousand an hour. (Using local currency. 7 SEK = 1 USD.) Shouldn't he rather than spending hours per week sorting garbage and driving to recycling stations, use his valuable time analysing the economic crisis and doing something about it? And how much petrol does his heavy car consume, by the way? Those green shrines of environmental worship aren't only in Stockholm, of course. Every city and town has them. As far as I know, they're all over Europe. There were big headlines when in one town it was shown that after the ?environmentally conscious? citizen had sorted the trash the garbage was all thrown together again and simply burned. It's probably not uncommon, I think. Do we really ?save? anything, especially Earth, by this trash sorting? Paper comes from trees and we won't run out of trees. Iron and aluminium are among the most common elements in Earth's crust. Glass comes from sand ? any shortage of sand reported lately? OK, plastic comes from oil ? but not necessarily; it can also be made from other materials ? but it's usually only burned anyway. So what is the point of all the efforts? The good citizens probably spending hours each week contemplating what trash should go in which bag, and then driving it to the recycling station, half a mile away - if you're lucky. Is it just a symbolic thing? Forcing people to perform meaningless deeds to make them ?environmentally aware?? There was also a huge debate in the TV networks when a lady was criminally charged for leaving a used frying pan outside the metal recycling container, since it was full or the pan was to big for the container hole. You see, the town had hired garbage spies that sat nearby and discovered her unforgettable crime. How much are garbage spies paid an hour? How much is a person worth for an hour's work? Statistics say, calculated straight from GDP/capita, each Swedish citizen earn an average of 152 SEK/work hour. Say that everyone spends 1 hour/week sorting and transporting for recycling, an estimate probably much on the low side. That's 52 hours/year, a work worth 7902 SEK/year or ca 1130 USD/year. We find that 6.716 billion SEK/year in the worth of work hours in Sweden every year is wasted ? on waste. It's probably more work's worth wasted, since those most enthusiastic about the environmental thing tend to earn more, the well-off upper-middle class with fancy cars that can afford to believe that mankind is ?destroying the Earth? with ?our? (their) standard of living, No thought there for the poor of the world that craves for economic growth to get a decent life. The suburbian house-with- lawn owners just go on with their lives as if symbolic garbage sorting rituals make any difference. Also, the recycling stations means we have to pay for two parallel garbage collection systems. The usual garbage collection directly from the households goes on. That's also extra work hours and extra costs. And those recycling stations are usually a stinking mess. There's of course food left in the cans and packing waste. Rats and flies think it's yum-yum. Bacteria too. How many infections and how much disease is spread by putting garbage containers around openly on the streets? How many sickdays does it cause? Of course, there's some recycling that makes sense. For many decades we've taken our cans and bottles to the supermarket to get our deposits back. It's usually not much effort to seperate drink containers, you get some money back and the system works well. In Sweden around 90% of cans and bottles go back. At least over here, the supermarkets also have small containers for used batteries that may contain mercury; battery volumes are so small that such recycling isn't much of an effort either. We also have electronics, which however is a tiny fraction in volume compared to food containers, bottles etc. Some want old electronics to extract the small amounts of copper, even gold and other metals from it. If there's real value in it the markets will take care of getting recycling done, but personally I think that functioning, not too old electronics should be re-used as it is. Ship working computers and mobiles to the poor of the world. (I myself was involved in getting computers to the Baltic states just after their liberation from the Soviet Union, when things were a bit tough there.) Paper has traditionally been recycled too. For hundreds of years we had lump collectors ? it was a profession ? since paper in older times was made from old clothes. It later, at least over here, transformed into collecting ordinary paper, but not from containers in the streets but directly from the doors of the households. The thing is that it doesn't really matter if some paper goes into ordinary household waste. It burns well in the garbage dump processing ? many plants will even extract energy from it. Plastic burns well too. Though glass and metal doesn't burn, it's heavy and can easily be mechanically seperated. Those huge resources wasted by ordinary citizens spending evenings sorting trash, should be used for updating garbage dumps to burn what can be burned (and use the energy!) and mechanically sort out glass and metal. Don't burden us with doing the work machines do better. People would get more free time, which would make them happier or, if they choose, they could spend on more work worth money, which would benefit society in general by creating more of the economic growth that the poor need. Ironically, while the posh people waste their time on meaningless sorting rituals there's real, useful waste being thrown away without any thought of all. Supermarkets throw away thousands of tons of perfectly good food. I don't know about laws in other countries, but I do know throwing away good food en masse is very commong in at least the Western world. In Sweden food usually has a ?Best Before? date, which is set very narrowly. ?Best Before? means ?Rather Good Even After?. Food is usually perfectly fresh and safe for some time after ?Best Before? ? but still it's thrown away by the supermarkets. There's an international movement of ?dumpster divers?, young students and others breaking into the containers and taking care of the wasted food. They call themselves ?freegans? but will only use a tiny percentage of the wasted food. Most go straight to the garbage dumps. It can't realistically be sent to drought-hit parts of Africa instead - it would go bad on the way - but why can't it be sold by the supermarket itself, for a reduced price? The money saved could be sent to Africa, if the consumer who saved the money so wishes. Perfectly good food worth billions go to waste, which would benefit the poor. There are of course poor also in Western societies, who'd be happy to save money on vegetables or cheese that's one day older than some pencil-pusher has decided it ?should? be. And in a strange twist, greedy supermarket owners who throw away food they shouldn't, still ?recycle? food that should be trown away, or perhaps ? if I may suggest ? used for animal fodder. If food is expensive, typically meat in different forms, there have been a number of scandals exposed when supermarkets have simply put new ?Best Before? labels on old stuff. Old meat where bacteria thrives may be a health hazard. It must have with greed to do, to not sell off good food with a discount (lower profit) and selling bad, old meat with a fake ?Best Before? date (higher profit). And let's not even go into the thousands of tons of perfectly good fish thrown overboard dead by frustrated fishermen, who can't land the catch because of quota regulations. It seems political regulations a bit too often force people to do the wrong thing, and it artificially creates higher prices. And we all lose. We lose time. We lose food. We lose money. My thoughts go back to that dear old lady who struggled through the snow and ice with her recycling bags for no good at all. --Ahrvid Engholm -- ahrvid@xxxxxxxxxxx / Be an @SFJournalen Twitter Follower for all the latest news in short form! / Gå med i SKRIVA - för författande, sf, fantasy, kultur (skriva-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx, subj: subscribe) / Om Ahrvids novellsamling Mord på månen: http://www.zenzat.se/zzfaktasi.html C Fuglesang: "stor förnöjelse...jättebra historier i mycket sannolik framtidsmiljö"! Nu som ljudbok: http://elib.se/ebook_detail.asp?id_type=ISBN&id?86081462 / Läs även AE i nya Vildsint Skymningslandet, årets mest spännande antologi - finns bl a på SF-Bokhandeln! / YXSKAFTBUD, GE VÅR WCZONMÖ IQ-HJÄLP! (DN NoN 00.02.07) ----- SKRIVA - sf, fantasy och skräck * Äldsta svenska skrivarlistan grundad 1997 * Info http://www.skriva.bravewriting.com eller skriva- request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx för listkommandon (ex subject: subscribe).