Week 7!Half way done!
1514 words by congtran
Recycling is a process where a collection of used materials, which normally would be just waste, is remade into new products. What percent of our trash is actually recyclable? Here is the list according to the EPA on http://www.nsf.org/consumer/recycling/index.asp: paper at 40.4% with 71.6 million tons, yard trimming 17.6% with 31.6 million tons, metals at 8.5% with 15.3 million tons, plastics 8.0% with 14.4 million tons, food scrapes 7.4% with 13.2 million tons, glass 7.0% with 12.5 million tons, and others which includes rubber, leather, wood, etc. at 11.6% and 20.8 million tons. That is a total of 179.6 million tons of trash in the year 2000 that we produce each year in America and about 70% of that waste is recyclable. The good news according to that nsf website in the year 2000 the number of recycled products have gone up over 30%, that is almost half but there is still about 40% that we are not recycling and is getting dumped into landfill. Also the sales of water have gone up dramatically since the new fad seems to be being health-conscience. With this increase in water sells the demand for the plastic bottles that they come in also has gone up. According to http://www.container-recycling.org/, more then 60 million plastic bottles end up in the landfills or incinerator each day! But while the increase in demand for more bottles to put the water in the supply is getting low. According to plasticsnews.com the recovered rate of PET bottles from the year 1995 to 2003 has dropped from 39.7 percent recovered to 19.6 percent. The word “recycling” is so often used that many people are becoming immune to the effect. However, I will like to stress the importance of this problem we are facing if we do not stop our wasteful behavior. Just imagine if we do not take out our trash each night at home. Each house would be a filthy mess with high pile of trash. Empty can bottles from our drinks, old New York Times newspaper, cardboard boxes, and old plastic containers such as Shampoo bottles would be over the place. While waste is indeed something we encounter throughout our day, it doesn’t excuse our behavior to neglect the growing problem. According to Wasteline organization at http://www.wasteonline.org.uk/topic., “the UK produces more than 434 million tones of waste every year. This rate of rubbish generation would fill the Albert Hall in London in less than 2 hours.” I know this is not a statistics for the United States but I just wanted to show that recycling is not only a problem in just the United States but in other parts of the world also. If we do not recycle, after the garbage men take away our trash, our filth and waste will be carried away either to be incinerated or buried in a landfill. Just by recycling we could cut our waste by more then half. Our landfills are filling up quickly and soon we will run out of suitable land to use and the landfill will get closer and closer to our neighborhood. Landfills are also a horrible way to get rid of waste. Landfills have a very low oxygen level which makes decomposing almost impossible. Landfills are not like a compost site where the purpose is to bury trash in such a way where it will decompose rapidly. There are many reasons why we should start recycling for instance recycling will reduce the rubbish we dump in landfills and maximize the use of our resources. It can also reduce the air emission we produce because there would be less trash to incinerate. Not recycling is a problem although not huge it can lead to other things like global warming. Recycling can also help reduce the pollution we create. For instance according to http://www.container-recycling.org, its takes 5 tons of bauxite ore to be striped-mined, clean, crushed and refined to make a measly one ton of aluminum. The waste from making aluminum, which is a red mud residue, can seep into our groundwater and pollute the environment around it. Recycling can also save energy where it would normally be used to make things out of raw products. For instance according to http://www.container-recycling.org, it takes 3 percent of the worlds energy to produce the 50 billion aluminum cans we throw away. For every 33 cans that are recycled we save about 7 kWh of energy. The electricity that could have been saved if we recycled could have powered about a million of houses. The good news about all this is that most states are beginning to reduce waste by having recycling programs. Baton Rouge has already exceeded their 25% waste reduction goal set in 1994. They are also trying to continue increase this percentage to convert waste instead of filling up their landfills.
The book of Judges begins with Joshua, which is a weird name for it since he dies in the beginning. The reoccurring formula in judges is that a new generation of Israelites neglects and disobeys god and worship other deities. Next, God punishes them through foreign oppression. Then the people then repent and beg God to save them. Finally God would deliver the people militarily through a judge. A judge is not really a judge like we have today such as Judge Judy, but more of a ruler or leader. Since nobody around that time ever got to see god, it seems to me that authors in the 6th and 7th BCE wrote stories like Judges to scare the people to obey and follow God. It is like telling kids bad things will happen to them if they do not be good, or like telling the kids that the police will come get you if you do bad things. Also I believe that the authors wrote these books to tell people that god is forgiving. Although they may do bad things god will forgive them if they repent for their sins. I think that the conquests in the book of Judges are more accurate because in the book of Judges when the Israelites are in the “Promise Land” the enemies are living there as well, unlike Joshua where it states that all the enemies were vanquished. After wars there are usually prisoners or survivors there would be very hard to wipe out the enemy entirely.
The “Promise Land” is the land that God promise Abraham. But the Canaanites were occupying that area. So the Israelites came and conquered them because they claimed that god promised them that land.
Frank J. Yurco, “Were the Ancient Egyptians Black or White?” started because a editor in BAR wrote in claiming that Queen Nefetiti was a “beautiful black” queen. The article states that Egyptians did not think about race in colors. There were many different colored skin Egyptians. They say that race is “cultural baggage” from our society. The peoples skin colored varied on which area they came from. Just like today people closer to the equator are darker compared to those that live higher north or lower south. The Egyptians divided themselves by the regions that they came from.
My favorite article was Yurco, “Were the Ancient Egyptians Black or White?” because in today society there seems to be a lot of race issues that I see no reason for. Why does the color of ones skin make them a bad person or a smart person? I think race is just a way for people to stereotype and discriminate.
The argument that Jesus was black because he had wooly hair is a bad one because that does not prove anything. Wooly hair could be any color black, white, blonde, brunette, etc. I know plenty of asian people with wooly hair. It may not be white as snow but that is what dye is for. Human beings are curious creatures. We have so much technology now that we can find out almost anything about a person through there DNA. We live in a world were we would like to know everything so we look into every little detail and try to interpret them to make sense of everything. But I am sure people can use that wooly hair argument to make Jesus any color you want him to be. Anyways even if Jesus was black that still does not say that he came from Africa or anything. This man walks around all day doing miracle without the use of sun block with SPF 50 of course he would be of the darker color. Color also was not an issue back then. Yurco tells use that it is a cultural baggage that our society has put on ourselves. But seriously does it really matter what color Jesus was. Will that help you sleep better at night if you know for sure that he was black or white? Also what does being black or white really mean? It is just the color of your skin it does not make you the person you are.