In Local News – TechnoTrash

If you live in New York City and have electronics you want to get rid off in a green, eco, recycling way. Here are two upcoming events I found on the Lower East Side Ecology Center’s website:

April 26th, 2009
Central Park
West 67th Street and Central Park West

and

May 2nd, 2009
119 W 23rd Street at Tekserve between 6 & 7th Avenues
Manhattan

Here is what techotrash consists of:

Working and non-working:

Computers (laptop & desktop),
Servers, mainframes
Monitors
Printers, scanners, fax-machines, copiers
Network devices (routers, hubs, modems, etc.)
Peripherals (keyboards, mice, cables, etc.)
Components (hard drives, CD Roms, circuit boards, power supplies, etc,)
TVs,VCR & DVD Players
Audio visual devices
Radios/Stereos
Cell Phones, pagers
PDAs,Telecommunication (phones, answering machines, etc.)
Media (floppies, cd’s, zips, VHS tapes)

I have a bag of stuff I have been saving up for the next techno recycling gala event. This is such a sweet deal.

Goodbye old and improperly burned cds, printer ink cartridges, old laptop batteries, etc…goodbye.

-Cara

Some Tips From Me To You

Here are tips that are so simple that I can’t believe people don’t do them.

1. Bring your own drinking cup or coffee cup to work and stop using the plastic/paper ones provided. I don’t have official statistics, but let’s just say according to a recent Cara Poll, you can save 68585.73 acres of land a year if you do it and your carbon foot print will be a size 3. [If people listen to you at work, tell them to do it to and tell your office organizer to stop the insanity and no more paper/plastic cups. It so you will save a fafillion acres and no longer have a carbon foot. Nice…]

2. Do e-bills and e-bank statements and e-whatever…no more paper! Let’s say for this one, you will not lose the cure for cancer and aids located in the Rainforest, where they are cutting down the trees to print your bills on. If you are worried about all your personal information being on-line, where someone may hack into and steal your identity, don’t worry, it’s already there. If you think your bank and credit card company have all your information on papers hidden in a vault, you are incorrect. I believe the World Wide Web is probably a bit more secure than your mailbox, so stop with all that.

3. Last, but not least, it is one I struggle with because I am impatient and hate waiting for a computer to boot up, but turn off your computer when you aren’t using it. Standby is not good enough. It uses almost the same amount of energy, and I hear all of you out there saying, but doesn’t she know it uses more energy to start up a computer than to leave it on??? Lies, that is not true, an urban myth, ancient history, etc. It is not true, so turn it off.

I think these three tips are easy.

-Cara

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Reason 70 from, 101 Reasons Why I Am Vegetarian:
The number of foodborne outbreaks involving produce more than doubled between 1999 and 2004. But before you blame the veggies, it’s important to know that the contaminating pathogens are invariably those that hitch a ride on fecal matter. And we know plants don’t defecate. So what’s the story? It all gets down to one simple fact: Feedlot operators cannot afford to properly treat all the waste that their mammoth-size facilities generate, so they often divert the muck to the nearest waterway. Down stream, produce processors use the water as a rinse.

Web 2.0 … The Machine is Us/ing Us

Just something to think about.

-Cara

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Reason 39 from, 101 Reasons Why I Am Vegetarian:

Officially, Wildlife Services, a program of the USDA, prevents “damage to agriculture.” Never mind that agriculture is hugely damaging to wildlife, this multi-million-dollar perq for cattle ranchers exists primarily to exterminate species thought to spread disease and to eradicate predators. Non-target wildlife is often caught in the cross-hairs. Wildlife Services agents shoot, poison, gas, electrocute, and lethally trap millions of mammals and birds on public land where only 3.8 percent of the nation’s beef is even derived. The methods are often cruel and excessive and even ineffective. The program has decimated populations of grizzly bears, mountain lions, moose, elk, buffalos, and coyotes. Recently, an intriguing global study actually found that predators inflict negligible damage to ranching operations.