Don't you pollute the ground by default just doing what you are doing daily?
Don’t everyone pollute by default? Think of all the empty containers and jars of stuff thrown in the trash? Most things are never used up 100%. When you buy oil after you empty it into your vehicle there is still oil clinging inside the bottle. This clinging oil may not be much but even if it were 1/8 of an ounce multiply that by 1,000s or 10s of 1,000s of containers and it can add up to quite a bit, especially if the plastic ever deteriorated away or was damaged and breeched to let the oil escape. Down the road there can be a potential oil slick created in a buried landfill. Not to mention all the engine treatment containers, nail polish, and other chemicals. As much as one might try you more than likely always pollute de factoly whether you like it or not.
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My carbon footprint treads deeply. Unfortunately. :(
An 1/8 of a ounce?! Never. I am so careful/cheap/parsimonious (pick one – or two) I stand the containers upside down with the cap on and let them sit over night. If I could wring them out I would.
I heat with wood in a high tech reburning type stove. Much of my burnable trash goes in there where it heats my home with very little ash. It does make CO2 but no more than what I would have if I let my normal heating system run.
All metal gets recycled. A neighbor with a huge garden trades me vegetables for my mixed metal.
Plastic gets recycled by the weekly town recycling truck.
I’d have to agree with you that unless we are willing to live 100% off the land (think early Native Americans) we are polluting one way of the other.
My goal is to pollute less than I did in my ignorant days.
IMO the plastic container is worse than that bit of oil. I recycle like a fiend and even have a compost pile so my trash foot print is a small as I can make it. I buy as much as I can in bulk eco friendly packaging. Packaging is our current worst ecological enemy.
Studies by European water authorities show that all sorts of drugs go into rivers after first going through humans and then through sewage systems. In fact, some law enforcement types monitor illegal drug use by checking residual amounts. The presence of antibiotics in water supplies may have contributed to the emergence of pathogens able to resist current antibiotic drugs. It’s unrealistic to think that human life will not impact the environment.
Well, yes, but where else are you going to stand?
What @Cruiser said. This concept of disposable this and one time use that makes me insane. I despise these 4 or 6 oz cans of soda. And what is up with the tiny chip packeges? One serving my ass. My mom made my lunch and packed chips in a baggie. My pickles were in a baggie. Then I brought the baggies home. My dad would rinse them out and turn them inside out to be used again. They didn’t last for a whole week, but we didn’t have single serving anything when I was growing up and I don’t feel the need now.
Don’t even get me started on the disposable “toothbrush” that a woman can carry in her purse, enabling her to go home with a complete stranger she meets in a bar…. Lord knows, that first alcohol soaked kiss should be special and not taste like a rum and coke. What ever would he think of her?
Sorry, I digress….
… and we thought athiesm would save us from the guilt of Original Sin and fear of eternal damnation.
@CrankMonkey, in the U.S. health care providers flush unused and expired medicines down the toilet as a matter of policy and remnants slip through the water treatment process.
@Trillian, I got all kinds of shit in middle school because my mom used Saran wrap instead of wasting money on baggies. ;-)
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