World renowned water expert Peter Gleick has a new book – released in May 2010 – outlining the scientific evidence that bottled water use in the U.S. has become unsustainable. The book is called Bottled and Sold: The Story Behind our Obsession with Bottled Water.

Twenty five years ago in the United States, each American probably drank a gallon of bottled water a year, on average. Today it’s up to 30.

In the book, Gleick told us: Every second in the U.S. – we consume about 1,000 bottles of water. He spoke of the tremendous amount of fuel burned in order to make and transport these bottles, most of which ultimately end up in a landfill.

Peter Gleick: We did an estimate at the Pacific Institute that if you calculate the energy requirement of making all of the bottles that are consumed in the United States in a year, it’s on the order of 17 or 18 million barrels of oil equivalent.

He said that globally consumption of bottled water is about 40 billion gallons a year. But that’s not his biggest concern.

Peter Gleick: Probably my biggest concern is that I believe very strongly that water is a human right. There are a billion people worldwide today that don’t have access to safe, affordable tap water. The solution is not bottled water. The solution is developing high quality public water systems that can provide inexpensive water for everyone.

receipt card, little thing, but causes great influence on environment

      Nowadays people are more and more focusing on the influence of everything  which we invented on environment. Take receipt paper for example, scientist and TV news station ran segments on its potential harm to humans, including a CNN special report ” Toxic America.”

     In the early 2000s, an army of citizens, scientists and politicians began to wage a war on bisphenol A, commonly known as BPA, and its use in reusable water bottles, metal food cans and baby bottles. In March, Gov. Christine Gregoire signed a law banning the use of BPA in baby bottles and other children’s products.

      But they may have missed a doozy. New research from John Warner of the Warner Babcock Institute for Green Chemistry, a group that works to create products free of harmful chemicals, says we could be facing BPA exposure every time we sign a credit or debit card receipt.

     Traditionally valued for its nearly unbreakable strength in plastics, BPA also makes possible carbonless copy paper, which Warner learned about during his tenure at the Polaroid Corporation in the ’90s. The thermal technology behind the paper makes it laced with BPA, Warner says.

     One side of the receipt paper is coated with BPA, the cashier hands you the receipt, you apply pressure with a pen and your signature appears. Without BPA, the signature wouldn’t show.

     The chemical is notorious for its hormonal effects. The National Toxicology Program at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences has studied BPA and expressed “some concern” (a midway point on their official concern scale) about the chemical’s effects on the brain function, behavior and prostate glands in fetuses, infants and children. Both the FDA and the EPA announced plans for further studies of the chemical this year.

      Warner says exposure to BPA from receipts could be more dangerous — in quantity and concentration — than plastic bottles, but his study has not been officially published or peer reviewed.

      “When people talk about polycarbonate bottles, they talk about nanogram quantities of BPA,” Warner told Science News magazine. “The average cash register receipt that’s out there and uses the BPA technology will have 60 to 100 milligrams of free BPA.”

      Dr. Joel McCullough, Spokane County health officer, says BPA concerns don’t necessarily translate from water bottles and food containers to receipts. The way we’re exposed to the chemical is different, he says, and ingestion is far more dangerous than skin exposure.

      McCullough says he is aware of some of the dangers of carbonless paper, like skin and nose irritation, but doesn’t think the BPA concern is reason for panic. Federal public health experts have studied the issue and would make a definitive statement about the risk to lower agencies, like Spokane’s Health District, if there was serious concern, he says.

      Library staff in Eugene, Ore., found out about the research in a write-up by their local paper. They saw the threat as real, and as a result the town’s three public libraries switched to BPA-free receipt paper this month.

     “We really wanted people to associate coming to the library with an experience that was totally positive and healthful in every way for their family,” says Connie Bennett, director of Eugene Public Libraries. “So we didn’t want to be giving them poisonous receipts.”

      Other libraries have contacted her with questions about how to switch, and patrons — those who notice, at least — are pleased with the small “Printed on BPA-free paper” message they find at the bottom of their receipt, she says.

      Robert Roose, manager of Spokane Public Libraries support services, says administrators at Spokane’s libraries were not aware of the threat of BPA in receipt paper, but he hopes they libraries will look into it.

      Janelle King, head cashier at the Main Market, says even if the jury is still out on the danger posed by this most recent BPA threat, it’s not far from her mind.

     “I handle receipt paper all day, so I think about it a lot,” King says. “It’s definitely a concern knowing how readily environmental toxins enter through the largest organ in your body.”
 

Since it causes a lot of pollution to our environment, why shouldn’t us camcel the use of it? Government are trying their best to solve this problem.

Hi, little baby! watch the bottle which you drink.

      Nowadays with the rapid development of economy, the standard of people’s living level is ever increasing, especially those new born babies. As is known to all, the child is the future of nation, so parents pay great attention to baby’s health, but recently, parents have began to find that food which is used to feed baby are threatened  by plastic which can cause great harm to baby’s health.

      An Auckland mother says she found a piece of plastic in her daughter’s baby food.

      She is now considering a boycott of all Wattie’s products.

      The woman said she bought a 170 gram jar of Wattie’s Moroccan Lamb baby food from a Countdown Supermarket in Upper Hutt while on holiday there last week.

      She was upset to find a piece of plastic, about the size of a 10 cent coin, in the jar when she was feeding her eight-month-old daughter Sophia on Sunday night.

      “I thought it was a piece of onion because it was clear but then realised it was actually plastic.”

      Though Sophia did not swallow the plastic, the woman was concerned that residue from the plastic may have seeped into the food when it was heated in the microwave, because her daughter vomited soon after consuming the product, forcing her to seek medical advice.

      The woman said it took three attempts to contact someone at Wattie’s. She was told the company was unsure what the plastic was or how it got into the food. Wattie’s said it would send her a voucher that could be used to buy any Wattie’s product, the woman said. “I think it is a big safety issue. I could easily have put it [the plastic] into her mouth.

     “I just want Wattie’s to check their products properly and I want to warn people that they need to be careful as this could happen to them.”

     Wattie’s general manager of quality Paddy O’Brien was surprised to hear of the plastic find.

    “Baby food – we obviously treasure our reputation there. We don’t have many issues at all with baby food. We have all the sophisticated systems we can get to try and stop this sort of thing happening.”

     Wattie’s would need to send the bit of plastic to the factory in Australia where the product was made to find out exactly what it was.
     A  lot of measurement have been put to investigate this thing which apprears in baby’s stuff.Hopefully, everything will be checked out.

     Welches resident Nora Galbee had plastic bags in her shopping cart, but said that was just because she had forgotten to bring her reusable bags into the store. She gave the ban a thumbs-up.

   “I think it’s something we should be doing,” she said. “(Plastic bags are) not environmentally friendly. They last too long in landfills.”

     She and others would remember to bring in their reusable bags if a ban were enacted, Galbee said. “We’ll adjust.”

    Valerie Walbert, a Sandy resident whose shopping cart contained several reusable bags, said she started shunning single-use bags – both paper and plastic – a few years ago.

   “I feel like I’m kind of taking care of my carbon footprint, my contribution to the environment,” she said.

    Everyone takes divergent stands on plastic bags, someone approves it, someone opposes it.In my opinion, we should ban plastic bags and use paper bags instead. Because it takes a long time for decaying plastic bags,also the process of decaying it will emmit a lot of toxic gas which is extremely bad for human health and our living environment.

see, I am beautiful with the flowing of sweet breeze.

     As is known to all, plastic pollution has influenced our life for a long time, and cause so much suffering to our daily life, in order to change this situation, some people which is strongly against plastic pollution will do something to cause public’s attention towards plastic pollution.

    A boat made out of 12,500 recycled plastic bottles sailed into Sydney Harbour on Monday, four months after it set out from San Francisco on a journey across the Pacific Ocean meant to raise awareness about the perils of plastic waste.

The crew of the Plastiki, a 60-foot (18.2 meter) catamaran that weathered fierce ocean storms during its 8,000 nautical miles at sea, left San Francisco on March 20, stopping along the way at various South Pacific island nations including Kiribati and Samoa.

 ”This is culmination of four years planning, so it’s a very exciting day,” Plastiki spokeswoman Kim McKay said.

The boat, skippered by environmentalist David de Rothschild – a descendant of the well-known British banking family – was being towed to the Australian National Maritime Museum for a welcome ceremony.

“We hope that Sydneysiders will turn out in force to help us celebrate,” de Rothschild said in a statement.

The six-member crew lived in a cabin of just 20 feet by 15 feet (6 meters by 4.5 meters), took saltwater showers, and survived on a diet of dehydrated and canned food, supplemented with the occasional vegetable from their small on-board garden. The boat is fully recyclable, and is powered in part by solar panels and windmills.

The Plastiki’s name is a play on the 1947 Kon-Tiki raft sailed across the Pacific by explorer Thor Heyerdahl.

The crew briefly stopped in Queensland state last week, after battling a brutal storm off the Australian coast.

De Rothschild said the idea for the journey came to him after he read a United Nations report that said pollution – and particularly plastic waste – was seriously threatening the world’s oceans .

Will this activity cause public’s attention towards plastic pollution? who know? I hope it will.

      Since people are interested in doing cosmetic surgery, let us talk something about that.

How can I determine if a plastic surgeon is right for me?

A visit to the plastic surgeon gives you an opportunity to meet them, where you can gauge their personality and behavior. It’s always good if you feel comfortable and relaxed around them. The visit also is important for evaluating their credentials and experience. It is important that they are Board Certified plastic surgeons, meaning that the American Board of Plastic Surgery has accredited them. This ensures that they have undergone all the rigorous education and training to be a plastic surgeon in the United States. Most plastic surgeons will have before and after pictures of their patients that you can view. This allows you to assess the quality of their work.

The following are some recommended questions to ask the plastic surgeon during the initial consultation appointment:

• How many procedures of this type have you performed?
• How long will the procedure take?
• What are the common risks associated with the procedure?
• How long is the average recovery time for this procedure?
• Where will you perform the surgery?
• What is the total cost of the procedure?
• What is your policy on surgical revisions?

In plastic surgery, the transfer of skin tissue is a very common procedure. Usually, good results are expected from plastic surgery that emphasizes careful planning of incisions so that they fall in the line of natural skin folds or lines, appropriate choice of wound closure, use of best available suture materials, and early removal of exposed sutures so that the wound is held closed by buried sutures.

With increased media attention on beauty and perfection, celebrities and those alike are turning to plastic surgery more and more. For those who are not living on the salary of a celebrity, they are taking out loans to achieve their plastic perfection summing up to approximately $83,000 for 14 surgeries.

Though media and advertising do play a large role in influencing many people’s lives, researchers believe that plastic surgery obsession is linked to psychological disorders. Body dysmorphic disorder is seen as playing a large role in the lives of those who are obsessed with going under the knife in order to achieve physical perfection. People with this disorder are so preoccupied with their looks that it takes over their lives.

For those whose doctors refuse to perform any further surgeries, they are turning to “do it yourself” plastic surgery, injecting themselves in their home, running extreme safety risks. but does plastic surgery hurt?This will depend on the type of surgery and the patient. Generally speaking, non-surgical plastic surgery procedures will not cause a great deal of pain. For surgical procedures, these will be invasive and thus appropriate precautions are taken to ensure the highest level of safety and minimal discomfort during and after the procedure. These procedures will typically use anesthetics and sedatives so you won’t feel a thing during the operation. Where it hurts, is usually during the recovery period, and only then any pain or discomfort will be temporary until you are fully recovered. Plastic surgeons will give you strict orders to reduce your activity level to ensure that healing progresses at a fast rate. Painkillers can be prescribed or purchased to reduce any pain or discomfort.

Once the trees are collected, they must dry at least three years before they can be used. More machinery is used to strip the bark, which is then chipped into one-inch squares and cooked under tremendous heat and pressure. This wood stew is then “digested,” with a chemical mixture of limestone and acid, and after several hours of cooking, what was once wood becomes pulp. It takes approximately three tons of wood chips to make one ton of pulp.

The pulp is then washed and bleached; both stages require thousands of gallons of clean water. Coloring is added to more water, and is then combined in a ratio of 1 part pulp to 400 parts water, to make paper. The pulp/water mixture is dumped into a web of bronze wires, and the water showers through, leaving the pulp, which, in turn, is rolled into paper.

Unlike paper bags, plastic bags are typically made from oil, a non-renewable resource. Plastics are a by-product of the oil-refining process, accounting for about four percent of oil production around the globe. The biggest energy input is from the plastic bag creation process is electricity, which, in this country, comes from coal-burning power plants at least half of the time; the process requires enough juice to heat the oil up to 750 degrees Fahrenheit, where it can be separated into its various components and molded into polymers. Plastic bags most often come from one of the five types of polymers — polyethylene — in its low-density form (LDPE), which is also known as #4 plastic.

l        A look at the facts and numbers
Further insight into the implications of using and recycling each kind of bag can be gained from looking at overall energy, emissions, and other life cycle-related costs of production and recycling. According to a life cycle analysis by Franklin Associates, Ltd, plastic bags create fewer airborne emissions and require less energy during the life cycle of both types of bags per 10,000 equivalent uses — plastic creates 9.1 cubic pounds of solid waste vs. 45.8 cubic pounds for paper; plastic creates 17.9 pounds of atmospheric emissions vs. 64.2 pounds for paper; plastic creates 1.8 pounds of waterborne waste vs. 31.2 pounds for paper.

Paper bags can hold more stuff per bag — anywhere from 50 percent to 400 percent more, depending on how they’re packed, since they hold more volume and are sturdier. The numbers here assume that each paper bag holds 50 percent more than each plastic bag, meaning that it takes one and half plastic bags to equal a paper bag — it’s not a one-to-one comparison, even though plastic still comes out ahead.

It’s important to note that all of the above numbers assume that none of the bags are recycled, which adds a lot of negative impacts for both the paper and plastic bags; the numbers decrease in size (and the relative impacts decrease) as more bags are recycled. Interestingly, the numbers for paper bag recycling get better faster — the more that are recycled, the lower their overall environmental impact — but, because plastic bags use much less to begin with, they still ends up creating less solid and waterborne waste and airborne emissions.

l        Paper and plastic bags’ required energy inputs
From the same analysis, we learn that plastic also has lower energy requirements — these numbers are expressed in millions of British thermal units (Btus) per 10,000 bags, again at 1.5 plastic bags for every one paper bag. Plastic bags require 9.7 million Btus, vs. 16.3 for paper bags at zero percent recycling; even at 100% recycling rates, plastic bags still require less — 7.0 to paper’s 9.1. What does that mean to me and you? Plastic bags just take less energy to create, which is significant because so much of our energy comes from dirty sources like coal and petroleum.

Both paper and plastic bags require lots and lots of resources and energy, and proper recycling requires due diligence from both consumer and municipal waste collector or private recycling company, so there are a lot of variables that can lead to low recycling rates.

Ultimately, neither paper nor plastic bags are the best choice; we think choosing reusable canvas bags instead is the way to go. From an energy standpoint, according to this Australian study, canvas bags are 14 times better than plastic bags and 39 times better than paper bags, assuming that canvas bags get a good workout and are used 500 times during their life cycle.

Here are milestone of paper bags:

1869 Francis Wolle and his brother and other paper bag makers found Union Paper Bag Machine Company.
1870 Margret Knight invents a device to cut, fold and paste paper bag bottoms, Margaret Knight of Boston is credited with about 90 inventions and 22 patents. Her patents covered textile and shoe-making machinery, domestic devices, and even a “sleeve-valve” automobile engine. Knight’s greatest success, however, was the first machine to make the square-bottomed paper bags. Others had been trying to develop such a machine for years, since the envelope-shaped bags then used were narrow and flimsy.
About two years after the Civil War she went to work for the Columbia Paper Bag Company in Springfield, Massachusetts. While in the factory, she invented a device to cut, fold and paste bag bottoms. Initially her employer complained about the time she spent on the device. When she suggested she might consider selling the rights to him if it worked, he gave in. After doing thousands of trial bags on a wooden machine, she had an iron model produced in Boston.

However, before she could place the patent application, she found a man named Charles Annan who had studied her machine while visiting the factory was attempting to a patent machine suspiciously similar to her own. Knight, 33 at the time, filed a patent interference suit against Annan. She played to win, spending $100 a day plus expenses for 16 days of depositions of herself and other key Boston witnesses. Annan claimed that because Knight was a woman she could not possibly understand the mechanical complexities of the machine. Due to her careful notes, diary entries, samples and expertise the court ruled in her favor.
The paper bag-folding machine was not Knight’s only invention. Besides devices that improved her paper bag machine, her other inventions included a new window frame and sash design, a numbering machine, an automatic boring tool, and a spinning or sewing machine. The total number of her inventions is generally thought to be eighty-nine. They earned her a good deal of money, but when she died in 1914 her fortune had dwindled down to a mere $300.
1872 132,890 (US) issued November 12, 1872 to Charles Annan for paper bag machine
1883 Charles Stilwell awarded patent for making Square-Bottom Paper Bag w/ pleated sides
1890 William Purvis on August 19, 1890 for a paper-bag machine, the combination of two suction-formers having perforated surfaces, between which the ends of the paper tube are fed, and provided with two independent grooves arranged at different positions of the length of the formers and out of line with each other. He later licensed the paper bag invention to Union Paper Bag Co, of New York.

The First Man-Made Plastic – Parkesine

The first man-made plastic was created by Alexander Parkes who publicly demonstrated it at the 1862 Great International Exhibition in London. The material called Parkesine was an organic material derived from cellulose that once heated could be molded, and retained its shape when cooled.

Celluloid

Celluloid is derived from cellulose and alcoholized camphor. John Wesley Hyatt invented celluloid as a substitute for the ivory in billiard balls in 1868. He first tried using collodion a natural substance, after spilling a bottle of it and discovering that the material dried into a tough and flexible film. However, the material was not strong enough to be used as a billiard ball, until the addition of camphor, a derivative of the laurel tree. The new celluloid could be molded with heat and pressure into a durable shape.

Besides billiard balls, celluloid became famous as the first flexible photographic film used for still photography and motion pictures. John Wesley Hyatt created celluloid in a strip format for movie film. By 1900, movie film was an exploding market for celluloid.

After cellulose nitrate, formaldehyde was the next product to advance the technology of plastic. Around 1897, efforts to manufacture white chalkboards led to casein plastics (milk protein mixed with formaldehyde).

The following are the contemporary history of plastic bags:

1957 The first baggies and sandwich bags on a roll are introduced.

1958 Poly dry cleaning bags compete with traditional brown paper.
1966 Plastic bag use in bread packaging takes over 25 to 30 percent of the market.

1966 Plastic produce bags on a roll are introduced in grocery stores.

1969 The New York City Sanitation Department’s “New York City Experiment” demonstrates that plastic refuse bag curbside pickup is cleaner, safer and quieter than metal trash can pick-up, beginning a shift to plastic can liners among consumers.

1974/75 Retailing giants such as Sears, J.C. Penney, Montgomery Ward, Jordan Marsh, Allied, Federated and Hills make the switch to plastic merchandise bags.

1973 The first commercial system for manufacturing plastic grocery bags becomes operational

1977 The plastic grocery bag is introduced to the supermarket industry as an alternative to paper sacks.

1982 Kroger and Safeway start to replace traditional craft sacks with polyethylene “t-shirt” bags.
1990 The first blue bag recycling program begins with curbside collection.

1990 Consumer plastic bag recycling begins through a supermarket collection-site network.

1992 Nearly half of U.S. supermarkets have recycling available for plastic bags.

1996 Four of five grocery bags used are plastic.