Originally posted by SpunGCake
reply to post by getreadyalready
plastics are being made from soy beans also you know, and oil dosent revolve around every energy source, why you so negative?
and so when i bought my green hard drive its not realy green cuz when it craps out i recycle it? them lieing bastards.
edit on 29-2-2012 by
SpunGCake because: (no reason given)
edit on 29-2-2012 by SpunGCake because: (no reason given)
Not very many are being made from Soybeans, and of those that are made by soybeans, there is a diesel-powered combine harvesting those soybeans.
There is a diesel powered generator pumping water to irrigate those soybean fields, there are semi-trucks running off diesel power to move the
soybeans to a factory, and there is a giant factory running off fossil fuel electricity to process those soybeans into something else. There a at
least a dozen chemicals, likely made from refined crude, that are used to process the soybeans and manipulate them into plastics, and then, once they
are plastic material, there are trucks, and trains, and boats and planes running off fossil fuel to ship them to your nearest Dollar General store, so
that you can pay $1 for it, and throw it away in a few days, and then there are more trucks and equipment to pick it up in your trashbin and haul it
to a landfill.
Compare that process with what soybeans are really good for....... EATING! There are starving kids in Africa that would love to have some corn and
some soybeans, but they can't because it is too important to turn these "green" items into fuels and plastics for the west to consume and
discard.
I'm not negative, I'm just trying to drive home a point. What we think of as "green" would have been considered frivolous waste 50 and 100 years
ago! We are not even close to getting back to the type of conservation and moderation that our grand-parents and great-grand-parents knew, and yet,
we pat ourselves on the back for being green.
Green is turning in your glass milk jug each morning so the milk man can refill it with milk again. Green is eating off the same chinaware, that you
got from your momma, and using it your whole life, and then passing it down to your own children. Green is buying a car, and keeping it running for
15-20 years. Pay it off one-time, and then take it to a local mechanic to make sure it keeps humming along. No payments, no banks, no trading it for
the next, new, shiny, thing. Green is paying an extra 30% for some quality, solid wood furniture, made by a local craftsman, maintaining it, and
passing it off to your children when they get their own homes. Green is buying food that is in season in your locale, instead of buying things at the
big box stores that have been shipped 1 million miles for western convenience, when they could have just as easily been shipped to starving
populations somewhere.
Keep in mind, this rant is not centered on you, nor anyone else in particular. I do the same thing lots of times. I like to have a kiwi fruit, or
extra-virgin olive oil, or bananas or tomatoes in the middle of January, but we have to keep from patting ourselves on the back for being "green,"
when we really have no understanding of the concept whatsoever. The people that lived through the Great Depression were Green! They knew how to make
things from scratch, and they knew how to make a can of beans and a Ham Bone feed a family for a week! We think the last 5 years was comparable to
the Depression Era, but it most certainly was NOT! We don't know a thing about hard times. People in Somalia, and Haiti, and Guatemala know hard
times.
We just had some minor inconveniences and we're proud of our efforts to "survive" and remain "green." We neither survived, nor remained green.
Us in the industrialized western nations in the 21st century have no idea what it means to survive. Our mentally ill homeless people on the street
live better than most countries average citizen! The worst of our population lives better than the best in other nations.
So, no offense, but buying a "green" hard-drive for your computer is about the farthest thing from "green" that I can imagine.