Wow. Another decade has passed. In the years ruled by the iPod, the death and rebirth of hope (you know who I’m talking about), Tiger Woods, Lance Armstrong and Roger Federer, reality TV, Coldplay and Britney, flat-screen TVs and ShamWow!, climate change and energy may seem a relatively small blip on the cultural big screen.

Original post

Did you know that jars, bottles, and other containers can be recycled and used again? In case you didn’t know that, now you do and you can help in making the fact of glass recycling known. When you recycle glass, the glass is picked up by a recycling truck and is later separated by colors. Then it is broken up into smaller pieces known as cullet. This is where the savings begin because it takes less energy to make recycled glass than it does to make glass in its original form. Recycling glass is cost efficient and reduces space in landfills that would normally be filled by bottles and containers. Glass that is made from recycled glass reduces our pollution by twenty percent and related water pollution by fifty percent.
The actual term glass recycling refers to the process of turning waste glass into usable products. Depending on what the intention of the glass is at the end of the process, glass is normally separated into colors. And as you may know glass normally comes in a number of colors. Flint glass is the term they use for clear glass, and then you have green glass and amber brown glass. Due to the fact of its weight and density, glass makes up a large component of household and industrial waste.
You can recycle your glass at your local recycling plant or at self drop off locations within your city. Remember however, if there is a section for each color that you separate it out so that it doesn’t get mixed up together. You can also arrange it with your trash pick up service for them to bring out a container for you to put your individual glass waste in and they will come back by and pick it up. That saves you time and money also.
Recycling in general is a topic that is rarely discussed unless something big happens; you need to work with your family and community to make everyone more aware of what landfills have in store for us now and in the future. By doing that not only with glass recycling come a known factor, other recycling services will also be more known in the community. Glass recycling is only one step in the right direction and there are many more ways that you can walk in the right direction. Help the environment out and make sure that you give recycling a try.

How To Achieve Total Energy Independence from Polluting Fossil Fuel Plants NOW Environment,Government,Manufacturing Solar power is, basically, the generation of electricity through sunlight. This can be used to reduce or completely eliminate the need for purchased electricity, such as from fossil fuel burning power plants. There’s even a chance you can generate enough power to sell back to the electric company, typically for credit. Also, when you have solar panels on your house the value of that house can increase by thousands.

The most practical and popular method for collecting solar energy for home use is Photovoltaics (or PV.) PV converts light into electric current using the photoelectric effect, which was discovered by Alexandre-Edmond Becquerel in 1839. He noticed that some materials release electrons when hit with rays of photons from light, which creates an electric current. Solar power has mad excellent progress over the years and has a lot of potential, but as of 2008 it supplied only 0.02% of the world’s total energy.

Unfortunately, one of the biggest barriers to widespread use of solar panels is high initial cost; the price of a basic solar installation can run you upwards of $20,000 and can take you 30 years to pay back. Also, a new issue that has popped up recently, especially in Nevada, is solar farms in the Mojave Desert and the possibly disruptive environmental impact they may have on the wildlife in the regions where these solar farms are built.

It has become increasingly clear that no government body, on either side of the aisle or anywhere in between, is going to make the decisions and actions necessary to free us from the chokehold of fossil fuel until we as a nation, or as a planet, hit the point of absolute desperation. Now that we understand that government cannot and will not take the reigns on this, what is the alternative?

The questions that really need to be asked are “How can we as a people, as a nation, and as a planet, break free from the stranglehold of the fossil fuels that have polluted the air we breathe, ravaged our environment to the point of no return, and is one or two steps away from making us as human beings glow in the dark? What can we do to make a difference in the right direction?”