HOPE Part III: The death of plastic

Plastic bag pollution!

Instead of writing about something too far from us to have any significant impact, Today I shall write about the impact of Plastic Bags.

Yes, the plastic bags that you used everytime you go shopping. Do you know the environmental impact of plastic bags? Or you have heard about it but have forgotten the details? Well, let me remind you.

Exerpt from the excellent article of Paper or Plastic Bags?

Plastic bags are made from non-renewable petroleum resources.

Plastics can be recycled, but not as easily as glass, aluminum or paper. Part of the problem of recycling plastic bags stems from the fact that bags may be made from one of several plastic types. Although two plastic items may look similar, they could be made from different types of resins. This makes separating plastics for recycling difficult. The plastic industry has begun to address this problem by coding plastics with numbers to help consumers and recycling processors identify the type of resin used in production. Some plastic bags have resin codes imprinted on them. However, for the most part, plastic must be recycled into a product for non food use. For example, plastic soda bottles cannot be recycled into new bottles. They can be recycled into products such as bathtubs, flower pots, parking lot car stops, toys, and trash cans.

In addition to not being easily recycled, plastic production and processing require the use of toxic chemicals. Many manufacturing plants that produce these chemicals also produce hazardous waste and pollute the air. In 1986, the EPA, Environmental Protection Agency, ranked the 20 chemicals whose production generates the most hazardous waste. Five of the top six were chemicals commonly used by the plastic industry [propylene, phenol, ethylene, polystyrene, and benzene].

Claims have been made that some bags are degradable. In other words, they will decompose over time. Biodegradation takes place when air is present. Photodegradation occurs when sunlight is available. Most of the garbage we generate is landfilled (about 95%). In landfills, garbage is buried beneath layers of soil that make it difficult for air or sunlight to reach discarded items. The fact is that most plastic bags just don't degrade, even in a compost pile. There are some new starch-based plastics that may be more degradable. But few grocery bags are made from that type of product.

Plastic bags are high in fuel energy if they are burned, but they emit harmful gases that must be prevented from entering the atmosphere.


Exerpt from the excellent article of Plastic Left Holding the Bag as Environmental Plague

About 500 billion to 1 trillion plastic bags are used worldwide every year, according to Vincent Cobb, founder of reuseablebags.com.

Countries that have banned or taken action to discourage the use of plastic bags include Australia, Bangladesh, Ireland, Italy, South Africa and Taiwan. Mumbai (formerly Bombay), India, also has banned the bags.

Australians were using nearly 7 billion bags a year, and nearly 1.2 billion bags a year were being passed out free in Ireland before government restrictions, according to government estimates.

Plastic industry trade associations were unable to provide estimates of plastic bag use in the United States. However, based on studies of plastic bag use in other nations, the environmental group Californians Against Waste estimates Americans use 84 billion plastic bags annually.

The first plastic sandwich bags were introduced in 1957. Department stores started using plastic bags in the late 1970s and supermarket chains introduced the bags in the early 1980s.

Overall, the U.S. plastics and related industries employed about 2.2 million U.S. workers and contributed nearly $400 million to the economy in 2002, according to The Society of the Plastics Industry.

About 100,000 whales, seals, turtles and other marine animals are killed by plastic bags each year worldwide, according to Planet Ark, an international environmental group.

The bags were the fifth most common item of debris found on beaches.

Well, as you can see from above, most of the more educated and advance country has been trying to stop using plastic bags. So what are we waiting for? STOP Using plastic bags!, or at least, reduce their usage.

A few things we as individual can do:

1. Reject the offer to use multiple plastic bags to pack a single item, especially when it's unnecessary.
2. Bring your own shopping bags when you are doing large scale shopping. These can be cloth bags, reused plastic bags, paper carrier, or even travelling bags.
3. Recycle plastic bags.
4. When you have the option, always opt for a paper carrier.
5. When buying small objects, try to utilize your pockets.
6. If you buy multiple items, try to optimize plastic bags usage by packing several items into one plastic bag.

Any more creative ways to conserve the use of plastic bags are welcomed.

Where have the oil gone?

Recent Movie : Spiderman II
A lot of cliche moments. Watch it for the cheesiness value of it. Rating : 3 out of 5

Recent Movie : Supersize Me
Very hilarious documentary. I don't eat fastfood so it doesn't really affect me directly. How can anyone eat that stuff anyway. Rating : 3.5 out of 5

Recent Game : Railroad Tycoon 3
Anyone who loves to play Simulation game should play this. Definitely a brilliant third installment of the Railroad Tycoon series. Rating : 4.5 out of 5

NDP Makeup
Our school Cosmoprof is sponsoring Singapore's National Day Parade makeup. I volunteered to help out. That's how I get to watch the NDP for free. Quite interesting, and I would say it's well organized (well, mostly). Too bad by the time I sat down and watch, I was too tired to appreciate everything.

Where have the oil gone?
It's just a funny thought after seeing "Supersize Me". Do you know Texas is the fatest state in America? Well, maybe not so coincidentally, Texas is also the state where oil was first discovered. See the parallel there?

Spells of Laziness
I have promised myself to do some research on the bio-solar cell and our current economy system. Unfortunately I was hit by what I called the "spells of laziness", which results in lethargy and inaction for the duration of the spell. I am just writing this down so that I know what to research on after the spell effect wears off.

Hope Part II: Green Energy

I was doing some research on the so-called green energy market, brought to my attention by a friend. It is interesting that in Europe a so-called green energy market has emerged.

Basically it's a certificate that proved that a certain percentage of the total energy produced by an electricity provider is "green energy". Green energy is essentially energy generated via environmental friendly method, like wind or solar energy. This certificate can then be obtained by electricity generators and consumers as a proof that they have produced or used a certain amount of green energy, since in some countries, a certain percentage of green energy usage is compulsory by law: ...By law, all electricity suppliers must prove they have bought or generated the equivalent of 0.03 unit (3%) of green electricity for every unit they sell... . Read more about it here and here. Europeans, being more accutely aware of our energy issue, are quite supportive of such programmes.

Overall, it seems like a right direction to head towards. While it is no solution to the pending oil crisis, it MIGHT lessen the impact. However, as with any industry, there are some players who would sacrifice ethic for profit, and try to pass incineration as renewable green energy.

Personally, I think Singapore has every incentive to start the green energy practise. Not only does it reduces the adverse effect caused by electricity generation, it also reduces Singapore's dependence on the foreign fuel import. The recent blackouts should have proven to us that our energy generation base is very fragile at best.

The electricity generators should start to offer this option to the consumers, with government support. We could start on a volunteer basis. If the response is good, it could be made a standard practise with incentives like tax rebate and etc.

Related news :
Wind farm in UK

Reference site:
Green energy in Europe
Cleaner and Greener Environmental programme
Energy justice
3 Phases Energy Services

What we CAN do:
Home Checklist

911, the US conspiracy?

Recent Read : 911 Conspiracy theory
Michael Meacher, a former British environment minister, vindicates FTW's (From The Wilderness, it's a magazine) position on 9/11, the war on terrorism, and peak oil.

Recent Game : Civilization 3 Conquest
This expansion pack to civilization adds a lot to the game and change the game dynamics greatly. It's similar to what broodwar was to starcraft.

I dislike conspiracy theory, truly. I loathed not to be able to believe in things by their appearance. Conspiracy theory says that for every explanation to a situation, there must be a more evil, sinister explanation. It goes against my faith in humanity. Nonetheless, when certain facts cause suspicion, they must be mentioned and highlighted.

In the article above, the author asked several tough questions for people who want to sympathize with US in the 911 event.


First, it is clear the US authorities did little or nothing to pre-empt the events of 9/11. It is known that at least 11 countries provided advance warning to the US of the 9/11 attacks. Two senior Mossad experts were sent to Washington in August 2001 to alert the CIA and FBI to a cell of 200 terrorists said to be preparing a big operation (Daily Telegraph, September 16 2001). The list they provided included the names of four of the 9/11 hijackers, none of whom was arrested....

Michael Springman, the former head of the American visa bureau in Jeddah, has stated that since 1987 the CIA had been illicitly issuing visas to unqualified applicants from the Middle East and bringing them to the US for training in terrorism for the Afghan war in collaboration with Bin Laden (BBC, November 6 2001)....

The first hijacking was suspected at not later than 8.20am, and the last hijacked aircraft crashed in Pennsylvania at 10.06am. Not a single fighter plane was scrambled to investigate from the US Andrews airforce base, just 10 miles from Washington DC, until after the third plane had hit the Pentagon at 9.38 am. Why not? There were standard FAA intercept procedures for hijacked aircraft before 9/11. Between September 2000 and June 2001 the US military launched fighter aircraft on 67 occasions to chase suspicious aircraft (AP, August 13 2002). It is a US legal requirement that once an aircraft has moved significantly off its flight plan, fighter planes are sent up to investigate....


It is not difficult to construct a US involvement from the above evidence. Apparently most canadians thought so too.

For further reference, read this "What If" article by Michael C. Ruppert.

A New Look

Recent Read : Board Game Design
For people who are interested in board game design.

I made some change to the page layout so that it's more user friendly. I hope this effort will help to encourage more readers to comment. For a start, perhaps you can comment on the color scheme.

In case you haven't noticed, at the beginning of each post is a link to expand/collapse the whole post. This might to help with the scrolling. The comment section has been shifted to the main page, so it's more convenient to comment now (hopefully!). It also has the same expand/collapse function as the posts.

I have a feeling that the current color scheme is a bit too complicated (Remember the porn site joke?). When I have time I'll think about re-organize the color.

No long post today. I am too tired to write anything coherent after spending a long rendezvous with the long-lost javescript and CSS. NOW I feel ashame to mention that I am (was!) a computer science graduate. >.<

Hope Part I (+ Intro) : Solar Tower

Recent Read : Solar Tower

Let's Hope:

I am initiating this small online project simply named "Hope". It is inspired by the Peak Oil issue I have read about earlier this month. Instead of reading about all the doom and gloom news, perhaps at the same time we can find out what is happening (or can happen) that may bring some hope to this blight.

I am encouraging whoever reading my web log to contribute by giving comments, or looking for information related to the energy issue. Be it an alternative source of renewable energy, energy control policy, energy replacement, or things that are currently relying on energy/electricity which can be done in another fashion, like organic farming, environmental cooling, plastic bag replacement, recycled paper bag, etc. In short, any information or ideas, including technology, policy or methods which can reduce our reliance on fossil feul energy are welcomed.


Solar Tower:

Read about it using the link above. Basically it is an edifice of about 1km tall and 3.5km in radius which can generate renewable energy without the need of fossil fuel. The energy generated is sufficient for 200k household in Australia.

It is a good news, except that to generate enough energy for the 1 million or so household in Singapore, we need to have around 5 of this giant which could be quite hard on our limited land. Perhaps we can use some of our island for this.

And it's not exactly cheap. Well, it's better than nothing.


Regarding Hope:

It is interesting how HOPE has always been the defining characteristic of human. Someone who has lost hope is as good as dead. Can I Hope that more people will contribute to this site? I certainly can ;).

SARS a scam? (+ a note on pessimism)

Recent Read : SARS: A Great Global SCAM

The original website can be found here: SARScam

I realize this can be a very touchy article as Singapore was one of the most heavily hit area. However, as with all "conspiracy theory", this one is worth some consideration.

I agreed with some points the article raised, most notably the low death rates, and the fact that most viral disease has no medical cure nowadays. These facts would at least point to an over-hype situation. As for the rest of the conspiracy... well, I'll leave it to whoever read the article judges for himself. Personally I think the article is a bit of a hype as well. The Horowitz guy is obviously also using public fright as a marketing tool.

The only thing I know is that when we are forced to weight evil against evil, we have already lost the battle.

I did a check on the Principal Causes of Death in Singapore. It is interesting to know that none of the emerging disease in the pass like anthrax, SARS, BSE (A.K.A Mad Cow Disease), Avian Influenza (A.K.A Bird Flu), made it to the top 10. Yet these emerging disease has major impact on the regional and global economy. Considering the effect of lung cancer and heart disease on tobacco business, wouldn't you think that the economical impact of those "emerging disease" was a bit too dramatic in comparison to their actual health impact? (I can't help but to relate to the power of media propaganda at this point.) Note that Heart Disease, Cancer, Pneumonia and Injuries remain in the top 5 causes of death.

A global reference is the World Health Report published by WHO. HIV/AIDS has higher appearance there but otherwise the figures are similar, i.e. Heart Disease, Cancer and Injuries being the prominent causes of death.


Pessimistic vs Realistic

I am usually quite piqued when people call me a pessimist, while in fact I am just a realist. (In case you are wondering Molewall, you are not the only one.) If nothing else it holds a very negative connotation. Some people might argue that there is little difference between pessimism and realism. Well, I think there's quite a big difference. Here's how:

Pessimist: I have a chance of losing this bet, thus I should not take it.
Optimist: I have a chance of winning this bet, thus I should take it.
Realist: I have a 65% chance of winning this bet, but winning this bet will only gain me 100 dollars, while losing this bet will make me lost a job and 2 months' salary, thus I should not take it.

In short, a realist based their judgement on established facts and careful analysis of the situation. Granted, giving the information transparency this age, it's hard to account for the accury of the so-called established facts, however, this established the traits of a realist.

I highly respect and encourage different point of view on any subject, but I hate to be labelled based on my analysis, espeially if these analysis are based on unpleasant facts. I understand it is human nature to want to believe in pleasant things, but if unpleasant facts are reduced to pessimism and subsequently dismissed, the labelling has become not only irritating, but DANGEROUS. This is particularly true during one of my Oil Peak discussion with my friends. When I said it is unlikely that human will find a replacement energy source in time based on today's technology, one of my friends simply said, "you are too pessimistic lar". Well, that is EXACTLY why a serious albeit unpleasant issue such as Oil Peak was not well received. It is too pessimistic. We like optismistic stuff. Sometimes I even think that I have to be pessimistic just to counter some of the senseless optimism around me. It's suffocating me (Not the optimism part, the senseless part).