Recycling

Cool facts on recycling, taken from NPR.com's story "Beyond Recycling." Interesting stuff. Other notes: I'm planning a road trip to Portugal with some friends during the last half of Feria (April 10-14), a week-long cachondeo at least a large as Semana Santa, where nothing is sacred. I'm a fan of that pair. A week of saints, relics, giant Jesii, incense and KKK outfits followed by a week's rest and then a week of absolute debauchery. My how I love Spain. Also, I am finally learning how to cook. Last night I made "Wonderful Chicken Curry Salad" for myself and some friends (big success) and watched Across the Universe, which I really enjoyed. I'm very behind on the movie scene because movies don't get here until after they're out on DVD in the states, but in any case, I think Across the Universe is from the past year and it's a cool look at various aspects the 60s to the tune of Beatles songs. The songs are generally worked in smoothly, and there's a sweet scene with "I want you (she's so heavy)." Worth a watch, except for the end. The end is lame. Also, this is an old film, but everyone should see The Fountain, because it's one of the coolest movies I've seen all year--it's from 06 or '07 and very good.
Other things: I'll be living in Owen House co-op next year and am very very excited about that. It's 100+ year-old mansion with a bunch of people living, cooking, cleaning, and buying food together in a nice little socialist family. Guff.
It's taken me a long time to develop an interest in cooking, but now that I have, I'm loving it. Fun, easy, and very tasty hobby. I'm currently eating a salad with olive oil, balsamic, mandarins, and a bunch of veggies I bought fresh from the market and had left over from the last few meals I've made. I think that all together it can't cost more than 2 euros. If I had a restaurant, I would sell it for 27. Yes, it's that good. It's so good, in fact, that I'm going to go back to eating it right now and maybe try a more focused update tomorrow. Also, if anybody knows or is sleeping with someone who deals with graduating seniors at Michigan, please begin stating my case, because it turns out that you have to fill a handful of prerequisites in order to graduate from the cursed place, and, well, I didn't really do that. Can it be that I'm already a senior???


Recycling Facts

• Recycling a ton of paper saves 17 trees, two barrels of oil (enough to run the average car for 1,260 miles), 4,100 kilowatts of energy (enough power for the average home for six months), 3.2 cubic yards of landfill space and 60 pounds of air pollution.

• Americans throw away enough aluminum to rebuild our entire commercial fleet of airplanes every three months.

• Recycling creates six times as many jobs as landfilling.

• Recycling glass instead of making it from silica sand reduces mining waste by 70 percent, water use by 50 percent and air pollution by 20 percent.

• Recycling just one aluminum can saves enough energy to operate a TV for three hours.

• The energy saved each year by steel recycling is equal to the electrical power used by 18 million homes each year — or enough energy to last Los Angeles residents for eight years.

• If every U.S. household replaced just one roll of 1,000-sheet virgin fiber bathroom tissues with 100 percent recycled ones, it could save 373,000 trees, 1.48 million cubic feet of landfill space and 155 million gallons of water.

Sources: Eco-Cycle, Environmental Defense Fund, Colorado Recycles, Steel Recycling Institute, Seventh Generation Co.