MITPressLog

Reduce, Reuse, Reconsider

We're another week closer to Earth Day (4/22) and our environmental book give-away contest (check back on 4/18 for entry details!). Today's facts are from Recycling Reconsidered: The Present Failure and Future Promise of Environmental Action in the United States by Samantha MacBride. Recycling Reconsidered tells how the success and popularity of recycling has diverted attention from the steep environmental costs of manufacturing the goods we consume and discard. Samantha MacBride teaches at Columbia University’s School of Public and International Affairs and is a professional in local waste governance.

 

• Bottles and jars that residents set out with their cans, plastics, and other recyclables rarely arrive at materials recovery facilities intact, but even those that do are sure to get broken as they proceed. As mixed recyclables move along a conveyor belt, a combination of magnets, electrical currents, air jets, and hand picking remove metal, plastic, and paper, leaving only glass. As glass is sifted out of the moving mix, it emerges crushed, mixed with food residues and bits of label. In this form, known as “dirty mixed cullet,” it is not good for much. At best, it can be used as low-grade fill or what is known as “alternative daily cover,” a substitute for the earthen layer that must cover each day’s load of trash at the landfill. If it is going to become anything more, it has to be shipped to a beneficiation facility to get cleaned and color sorted.

 

• Between 1970 and 1980, municipal solid waste generation in the United States had grown from 3.3 to 3.6 pounds per capita per day. By 1986, residents and businesses were throwing away 4.3 pounds a day. 

 

• Recycling rates commonly quoted are deceptive, since they usually are for municipal solid wastes only. Although many American communities are now recycling 25 to 50 percent of the trash they collect, other kinds of wastes are recycled much less and are produced in greater quantities. All told, an estimated 23 billion tons of waste (excluding water) are produced in the United States each year. Of this, less than 2 percent is actually recycled, most of it paper, glass, and metals.
  --- (Quoted from INFORM’s Entended Producer Responsibility: A Materials Policy for the 21^st Century).

 

• If you live in North America, you have probably seen code numbers stamped on the bottom of plastic bottles, tubs, trays, and even some plastic bags, surrounded by the three chasing arrows that since 1970 have symbolized recycling. Although consumers widely construe these code numbers, which run from one to seven, as instructions to recycle the item in question, the numbers are, in the words of the plastics industry itself, “not intended to be-–nor ever promoted as-–a guarantee to consumers that a given item bearing the code will be accepted for recycling in their community.”

 

• At the end of the 2000s, almost 60 proposals exist to ban, assess fees on, or require in-store recycling collection of plastic bags active in states and a few localities across the United States. In some states where in-store recycling, mandatory or otherwise, has been implemented, such as Delaware, Rhode Island, and New York, no program meets the criteria of strong extended producer responsibility to require producers to document baseline quantities generated and quantities diverted and to achieve mandatory targets for recycling.

 

Mindreading and Autism

How empathetic are you? Most of us interact with other people─ family, friends, co-workers, strangers─ by an unwritten set of rules based solely on our ability to “mind read” a situation. That is, to be intuitively aware of others around us and respond accordingly. Those who have autism have a difficult time mindreading. What comes naturally or intuitively to people without autism often must be taught like a set of concrete rules to those with autism. Mindblindness by Simon Baron-Cohen, Professor of Developmental Psychopathology at the University of Cambridge and Director of the Autism Research Centre in Cambridge, explores this notion of mindreading. In his book, Baron-Cohen challenges his readers to see the world differently:

“Imagine what your world would be like if you were aware of physical things but were blind to the existence of mental things…blind to things like thoughts, beliefs, knowledge, desires, and intentions, which for most of us self-evidently underlie behavior. Stretch your imagination to consider what sense you could make of human action (or, for that matter, any animate action whatsoever) if, as for a behaviorist, a mentalistic explanation was forever beyond your limits.”

Baron-Cohen’s research in the difficulties that people with autism face in interpreting the actions and intentions of others has helped lay the foundation of autism research today.

If you’re interested in testing your “mindreading” skills and discovering how empathetic you truly are, check out the Empathy Quotient Test developed by Baron-Cohen.

Want to learn more about autism? Autism Speaks is a great place to find information about the basics of autism, read personal stories, and get involved in autism awareness.

 

Monday Eye Candy: Body Sweats

Happy Monday! Feast your eyes on a few images from Body Sweats: The Uncensored Writings of Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven by Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven, edited by Irene Gammel and Suzanne Zelazo. Click on each image to enlarge.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Thirty Percent-Off (and Poetry!) Friday: April

Like last month, we are excited to offer a 30% discount on an MIT Press title to our blog readers (when purchased through the MIT Press website). Today's 30 percent-off Friday pick also launches our National Poetry Month celebration--be sure to check back for a poem every Friday through the month of April!

Our April discount pick is I Am a Beautiful Monster: Poetry, Prose, and Provocation by Francis Picabia and translated by Marc Lowenthal. Francis Picabia (1879-1953), painter and poet, was a leading figure in the Dada movement.

Follow this link, which will automatically apply the discount, to get your copy of I Am a Beautiful Monster. *In the (unlikely) event that the discount doesn't appear when you click the link, have no fear--simply manually enter the discount code "IBMFRI12" in the shopping cart to get the discount.*

Without further ado, here's a poem from  I Am a Beautiful Monster. Check back on the first Friday of May (5/4) for our next "Thirty Percent-Off Friday" pick.

 

Anecdote

You see, I’m crazy to think it
I am a man with nimble fingers
Who wants to cut the threads of old sorrows
False folds of my worried brain
Stories in arabesque memories
I’m only happy on the open sea
Where you go farther
On anonymous waves.

 

Costa Rica by the Numbers

Earth Day is on April 22nd, and we'll be celebrating in the weeks leading up to it by posting an array of facts from a few of our environmental books each Wednesday (trivia fans, take note!). To top it off, we're offering a give-away contest for an environmental book closer to 4/22, so be sure to check back for entry details.

Today's Earth Day tidbits are from Adrian Hepworth's Wild Costa Rica: The Wildlife and Landscapes of Costa Rica. Adrian Hepworth is a wildlife photographer based in Cartago, Costa Rica.

 

 

• Scientists have recorded 240 species of mammal, 860 species of bird (which represent 8 per cent of the world's total), 221 species of reptile and 174 species of amphibian in Costa Rica. In addition, more than 10,000 species of plant have been identified with another 2,000 believed to remain undiscovered, and a staggering 370,000 species of invertebrate are estimated to live in Costa Rica, of which 350,000 are insects.

 

• Between 3 and 4 per cent of all the world's animal and plant species can be found in Costa Rica. This figure becomes all the more astounding when we consider that, with a land area of just 51,100 sq km, Costa Rica represents only 0.03 per cent of the world's total land surface area; it is less than half the size of England, not much larger than Switzerland or Belgium and more than eight times smaller than the US state of California.

 

• Among the dozens of birds and prey that live in the rainforests of Costa Rica there are five species of eagle, including the Crested Eagle and Ornate Hawk Eagle. The largest eagle of the Americas, the Harpy Eagle, may still survive in the country despite the lack of confirmed sightings in recent years.

 

• Since 1945, Costa Rica has built up a system of almost 250 national parks, wildlife refuges and biological reserves that cover roughly 20 per cent of its land area. The vast majority of this land is government-owned, although almost 150 private properties also account for a valuable part of the country's wildernesses.

 

• Almost 4 km above the palm-shaded beaches and hot, steamy jungles of the Costa Rican lowlands there is a sharp, rocky summit where no trees grow and icicles form at night. With a view of two oceans and looking down on the clouds, this mountain is the pinnacle of the Talamanca Mountain Range. At 3,819 m above sea level, Mount Chirripó is taller than any other mountain in neighbouring Panama, Nicaragua, El Salvador and Honduras.

Monday Eye Candy: Asylum

Today's eye candy is from Christopher Payne's Asylum: Inside the Closed World of State Mental Hospitals:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Buffalo State Hospital, Buffalo, New York

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Unclaimed copper cremation urns, Oregon State Hospital, Salem, Oregon

 

 

Danvers State Hospital, Danvers, Massachusetts