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Morning Brew: July 2nd, 2008
Photo: "a wee maple leaf on a big pregnant belly" by torontopile, member of the blogTO Flickr pool.
Your Toronto morning news roundup for Wednesday July 2nd, 2008:
A 17-year old high school student in Waterloo may have discovered a way to use bacteria to break down plastic bags in a matter of weeks. He's won several school awards and scholarships for his studies, and now that he has media attention, perhaps he'll get some major funding from a company or the government to pursue things further.
Stories like this define us as Canadians. People waited in line for over two hours to board ferries to the Toronto Islands yesterday, because (in addition to larger than normal crowds) they were only using two of the four available ticket booths. Perhaps this was due to people not waiting until they got to the islands to smoke their wacky tabacky?
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While many of us were heading to see Canada Day fireworks, a good number of people up in Vaughan were running from fire. An old flour mill burned out of control and part of the structure came crashing down, prompting evacuation of residents from the area. Fire marshals are investigating, and it wouldn't surprise me if they discovered Roman Candles or Burning Schoolhouses in the rubble.
A veteran clubber (or late bloomer?) died on Monday after taking "herbal ecstasy", a natural energy-boosting pill marketed as an alternative to the real deal. The next day, a woman at the same club, taking a similar product, was carted off by paramedics and is in critical condition. Will these incidents spur on a "war on herbs"?
The Vancouver Canucks have offered Leafs captain (and current free-agent) Mats Sundin a 2-year deal worth a whopping $20-million. Take it Mats.
Discussion
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I think it would be safe to say that unsafe welding causes more large fires in non-residential situations than any other cause.
Did you just call a 12th graders science project "a genuinely dumbass idea" based on "flawed data and assumptions"? That's pretty harsh, considering all you have to go on is a few media reports. Have you seen his work? Spoken to him at length?
Perhaps rapid break down of the bags is just the first step, and harnessing the energy is the next? Don't be so quick to dismiss his idea (especially so rudely)! :)
Even if we don't talk about logging, you'd be surprised how bad paper processing can be.
1) Paper bags require more material than plastic. Significantly more. It takes more trucks to transport the raw goods to processing facilities, more trucks to take it from the processing facilities to the bag manufacturer and it takes significantly more trucks to transport the same number of paper bags as it does plastic ones to the retailers DC and stores. The difference is very significant.
2) Paper bags require more energy to produce. Significantly more energy. Not including the energy required to ship the things (see above)
3) Paper bags often pretty harmful chemicals which make plastics processing look good. I know the effect this can have on the environment as I used to leave nearby a paper mill. The river it was on was almost entirely devoid of any marine or plant life and you wouldn't dare drink the water or swim in it.
I could go on. There are a serious number of paperbag misconceptions out there. They were phased out of grocery stores for a reason.
Are you sure it was published and then it disappeared? I don't see any record of a comment from you on the backend, and it wouldn't have been deleted unless it was inappropriate.
Please feel free try posting it again.
Cheers,
Jerrold
When I originally posted it yesterday (around 2pm) I received a weird message about "first-time posters having to wait for approval". Bizarre, as I've posted many times before, and I can't imagine BlogTO implementing an annoying "approval first, post later" policy for regular visitors.