Field Trip: Town Dump

For my Environmental Biology class, our lab went to the Columbia landfill. It was awesome. Here are some things I learned:

• the cellulose cases that are used for hotdogs (the part that makes the meat stay together, not the packaging) can be made out of recycled material. I am ambivalent about this. Reason #453 to not eat hot dogs.
  
• The stuff we put in the clear blue recycle bags in Columbia is hand sorted, mostly by temp workers who get no benefits.
  
• There's something called an Eddy Current Separator that acts as a reverse magnet and repels aluminum. cool!
• the recycling center sells ground up glass as sand for $5/ton. prank idea?
• 20-25% of Columbia recycles. sad.
• Columbia has the only Bioreactor landfill in Missouri. Here's how it works: you add water to the waste and methane gas comes off. You funnel the methane into energy, and it supplies electricity to 1,300 homes. Awesome.
  

I love field trips.

Brazilian News...Raposa Serra do Sol reservation

Ok, so for my Global Perspectives and Realities class, I am trying to figure out what's going on with the rainforest in Brazil. I read in an awesome New Yorker article yesterday (Um, can't find it online, will add it later) that said something like that Indonesia and Brazil both contribute to 10% of the Carbon Dioxide added to the atmosphere because of their destruction of their rainforests.

Ok, I've known since 4th grade that destruction of rainforests is the worst thing ever (atmosphere, ecosystems, endangered species, the list goes on). But, it seems like it actually might be the worst thing ever. So, I think I'm going to slowly build my project up here (via my blog), looking at why it's happening. Maybe we'll be surprised, maybe not.

When SustainMizzou (our recycling club/organization on campus) showed An Inconvenient Truth last year, I was talking with some enviro-evangelists afterwards about what I could do and it seemed like the most proactive thing was to not eat meat from Brazil that was raised on rainforest land. Uhh...done.

So, I've been obsessed with Brazil for no clear reason for years now, and I want to figure more out about this. Come along!

The picture above is a map of where the Raposa Serra do Sol reservation is. There have been protests and bridge-burnings lately (nytimes article) because the government is removing non-Indians from the area. I don't understand this whole thing, but maybe I will soon.

links for next time:
nytimes: "Brazil, Alarmed, Reconsiders Policy on Climate Change"
nytimes: "In the Amazon: Conservation or Colonialism?"
mongabay.com: "Rainforests of Brazil: An Environmental Status Report"