This Awesome Worm Eats The Scourge Of The Earth: Plastic Bags. Seriously!

Will it be waxworms to the rescue in the war against
those awful plastic grocery bags?

The latest thing on environmentalists' hit list is all those plastic bags you take home from the grocery store or wherever.

They don't break down easily. They get caught in the wind and hang themselves up in trees and wires and such and look horrible. They waste space in landfills.

A lot of local and some state goverments have either banned or are considering banning these bags. It's the lateset environmental movement du jour.

Even if we stopped providing all those plastic bags tomorrow, what about the zillions of them that already exist? What do we do with them?

One answer: Wax worms.

Bear with me on this one.

According to Atlas Obscura, scientists have tried to get bacteria and fungus to break down these plastics, and they can, but the process is painfully slow. So slow that it's not worth the effort.

However, was worms are awesome. Says Atlas Obscura: 

"Frederica Bertocchini, a biologist at the Institute of Biomedicine and Biotechnology in Spain, noticed wax works had managed to eat their way through the plastic bags they were kept in. While other organisms can take weeks or months to break down even the smallest amount of plastic, the wax worm can get through more - in a far shorter period of time. 

The researchers let 100 wax worms chow down on a plastic grocery bag, and after just 12 hours, they'd eaten about 4 percent of the bag, according to findings publishes Monday in the journal Current Biology. 

That may not sound like much, but that's a vast improvement over fungi, which weren't able to break down a noticeable amount of polyetheylene after six months."

The theory is that if you get a HUGE crowd of wax worms working together, they can make real progress in the plastic bag wars.

By the way, the worms aren't just good chewers. They break down the plastic into ethylene glycol, which you can use to make polyester or antifreeze.

Great. Maybe the wax worms an also produce ways to keep your car running when it's 30 below, or create tacky 1970s-style fashion.

Awesome!

The Lawn Industrial Complex Is Scamming You

Part of my big lawn in St. Albans, Vermont
It would look better with less grass andn
more flower beds, but I don't have time
to add flowers because I alwayus have to mow the lawn. 

I want a divorce from my lawn.

You should probably break up with your lawn, too.

I thought of this, again, the other evening as I struggled to mow my large lawn.

It's the very lawn I'm trying to at least partially eliminate in favor of perennial beds and vegetable gardens.

I spend so much time keeping the grass under control on the lawn by mowing it I don't actually have time to get rid of the lawn to put in the gardens so I theoretically wouldn't have to mow so much.

Talk about Sisyphus!

Like everyone else with a lawn, I'm a slave to it. And not a happy one.

Lawns are almost always wasted space. I think of the property surrounding a house as more "rooms" that can have personality, beauty, flair.

I'm slowly expanding perennial beds around my garden shed
outward into the lawn. You can see how I'm slowly digging
out the lawn on the outer edges of the flower beds
to get rid of all that lawn.  

An expansive lawn has all the charm of an empty warehouse.

Drive though some decent neighborhoods on a sunny, pleasant Saturday. The only people you see on lawns are the people who are mowing them. Other than that, the lawns are not used.

Meanwhile people are eating breakfast or lunch on the deck, or they've set up chairs in the flower garden and are relaxing with a cold drink.

There's kids on the playground equipment, but not on the expanse of grass,. Nearby, people are harvesting vegetables from the raised beds.

Lawns are OK if you're using them to play soccer or baseball or golf or something, but other than that, why do they exist?

To make lawn care companies make money.

Let's face it. Lawns are more lucrative than gardens. Sure, you have to buy tools and plants and seeds and decorations for the gardens. But once you have that stuff, it costs nothing to weed and maintain the garden, unless you hire somebody to do it for you.

But lawns are a constant expense. You have to keep buying gas to power the lawnmower. Lawn mowers are nosier, stinkier and more obnoxious than even Donald Trump.

Yes, you can get a push mower with no motor, but frankly, those are not practical unless you have a small lawn. Electric or battery powered lawn mowers aren't great either.

This used to be a steep, grassy hard-to-mow embankment
outside my St. Albans, Vermont house.
So I replaced the sod with a bunch of easy-to-care-for day lillies
and put in a rock wall to mark the base of the slope.  

Lawn mowers are expensive, and you have to maintain them and pay for repairs. By the way, a lawn mower operated for one hour is often as polluting as a car driven 200 miles. 

The lawn care companies - the Lawn Industrial Complex in my parlance - have successfully built a culture that dictates the "need" to have a perfect lawn.

Which, of course means you have to buy their mowers, fertilizers, weed killers - you name it.

They've crafted a narrative that a perfect, weed-free lawn is macho, and proves you are in control. A real man. ("Too bad, ladies with your frivolous flowers" is the sexist subtext to this lawn culture or advertising regime.)

Lawns aren't great for the environment, either. Especially if you use all the chemicals some of the lawn care companies insist you use to eliminate all weeds.  

As Brenda Cummings noted for NorthJersey.com  in 2013:

"Many of these chemicals leach into our ground water and run into our waterways, helping to make polluted runoff the single larges source of pollution nationwide. Excess nitrogen and phosphorus from fertilizers causes eutrophication. (death from excessive algae grow) in rivers, lakes and ponds."

Yes, you're lawn is also ruining your trip to the beach. You don't have time to go to the beach anyway, because you have to mow, and all those fertilizers you use on your lawn turned the watera the beach to a gross, smelly algae slick anyway.

God forbid a dandelion ever blooms, which, by the way, has the potential to feed a badly needed pollinating bee.

We have been so forced to "require" a lawn that people routinely insist on having them in places where they shouldn't grow. Like the Desert Southwest.

Another perspective of the day lily
embankment outside my house with a perennial
garden under construction to the right.
That new perennial garden also used to be lawn.  

Sometimes, when people rebel against lawns, there's terrible push back. Many homeowners' associations require expansive (and expensive!) lawns, and even many municipalities do.

There are several cases in which homeowners got in trouble for growing well-maintained gardens in their front yards instead of stupid lawns.

In a recent case, a Florida couple is suing their town for a new zoning ordinance that bans front yard gardens.

The couple contends that, within reason, if you own property, you should do what you want with it, and a front yard garden is certainly within reason, as long as it's properly maintained.

I'm totally behind these homeowners!

Don't get me wrong. Having some lawn on your property is a good thing. Kids need places to run around. I know where I live our dogs want to romp on the grass, or roll in the coolness of the lawn on a hot day.

Plus lawns, if you limit them, are a good design element. They offer a break from the bushiness of flowers, shrubs and other things in the garden.  Or, a narrow corridor of lawn makes a good path through a garden.  There's definitely a place for lawns in any landscape layout.

It's just that we've been sold a bunch of malarkey that we all need expansive lawns with no other major features or variety to make it interesting.

Meanwhile, I guess I'll just drag that lawn mower back out and beat back that growing grass that, if I leave it alone, will hide what few perennial beds I've managed to plant.
.

Florida's "Treasure Coast" Is A Disgusting Goop Of Toxic Algae

The gross algae bloom in Florida. Photo
by Terry Spencer/AP 

Nobody's going in the water and everybody's pointing fingers of blame in Florida for something truly disgusting:

A soupy, icky, possibly toxic algae bloom is gumming up the shoreline at the peak and heat of summer.

As if alligators and unrelenting humidity weren't enough, now you can't go in the water.

Or even near it.

Florida Gov. Rick Scott has declared a state of emergency because of the blue in southeast parts of the state.

And everybody's pointing fingers at each other in blame for the ickiness.

The algae is there because of polluted, phosphorus-laden water coming from Lake Okeechobee, about 35 miles away from the affected areas.

The governor says it's the federal government's fault for neglecting repairs to the lake's old dike system.

He could have a point, since the Army Corps of Engineers is inadequately funded for this type of thing. Plus, there was tons of rain in Florida this past winter and spring, so with their inadequate system, they had to release more tainted water from the lake than usual.

But lots of state officials have looked the other way as farming and other interests have dumped pollution and phosphorus in the Lake Okeechobee. Had they cracked down on that, this not have been such an issue.

As local public radio station WQCS noted, there was a deal in the works back in 2011 for the Florida Legislature to buy more land around Lake Okeechobee for water storage, but Governor Scott's administration came in and put an end to that idea.

So yeah, this might be Scott's fault, too.

Area residents say the algae smells so bad that they  have to stay indoors, and when they do go outside, some of them get watery eyes and respiratory problems.

Plus, wildlife is suffering, too, and some marine animals are probably dying because of the algae.

This kind of thing happens elsewhere due to poor pollution controls, mostly from agricultural, sewage treatment plant and industrial runoff.

There was a big algae bloom on Lake Erie last summer, which threatened Toledo, Ohio's drinking water supply.

Here where I live in Vermont, toxic and thick algae have lately made appearances in and around St. Albans Bay, which I  can see from my hillsice home, in the past few summers. That has caused swimming bans and warnings to keep children and pets away from the algae-slimed water.  It could hurt or kill them.

Of course, it's expensive to enact pollution controls that would prevent all this phosphorus and other bad stuff from getting into waters around Florida, the Great Lakes, Vermont and elsewhere.

But do we really want to spend our summers holding our noses and worried about our health because of all this algae in the water?

Heres an aerial view of the algae in Florida to give you an idea of the scope of the Algae From Hell



And he's a sad video of a manatee trapped in the algae goop and a family trying to hose it off to give it some relief. It's unclear if the manatee made it out of the algae and survived or not:

Officer In Trouble For NOT Summarily Executing Two Bear Cubs

A conservation officer in Canada was
 suspended from his job for not
killing these two bear cubs.  

A female bear kept getting into the freezer of a remote camp in British Columbia recently.

When bears become a problem like that, they sometimes have to be put down, and that, sadly was the case with this bear.

Even worse, this bear had two cubs. Conservation officer Bryce Casavant was ordered by his supervisors to kill the bear cubs, too.

He refused and took them to the North Island Wildlife Recovery Association near Vancouver, British Columbia.

For Casavant was suspended for his job without pay, says the Canadian broadcaster CBC. 

The situation, first reported in the North Island Gazette in British Columbia, set off a HUGE erupton on social media, especially in Canada erupted at the news of the conservation officer's suspension.

Nothing like an order to kill two cute little black bear cubs to get people riled up.

It's true if bear cubs are conditioned to cause trouble, they, too have to be put down, say wildlife experts. But the CBC quoted the recovery center's manager as saying he is perplexed by the order to kill the cubs.

"(The mother bear) was a problem, but these cubs did nothing," said the manager, Robin Campbell.

Campbell said the cubs were not habituated to humans and could be successful re-introduced to the wild. Casavant, the conservation officer, did the right thing by bringing the cubs to the wildlive recovery center, Campbell said.

"In 30 years, this is the first time we've ever had an issue like this," Campbell said, as quoted by the CBC. "There has to be some kind of misunderstanding... hopefully somebody will come to their senses." 

It's unclear if that will happen. Certainly the shoot to kill the cubs order sounds sadistic, but we haven't heard yet from the guy who ordered the deaths. British Columbian environmental authorities haven't decided what to do about the cubs yet.

Casavant is still suspended from his job, but now it's with pay, because of the public outcry over this.

Even if more information comes out and it turns out the cubs were misbehaving and habituated to humans, why the rush to kill them? And why the rush to suspend Casavant? As one commenter pointed out on the North Island Gazette Facebook page, let's let animals be innocent until proven guilty, too.

Others point out that Casavant's job title is Conservation Officer, so let him conserve, in this case the life of these bears, if at all possible.

Still others took a big picture look at this and said it is humans invading the habitat of bears, and not bears invading the habitat of humans that's the real problem here.

Of course, when you look at the big picture, that's when things really get sticky. Us humans are ruining the habitat of countless species, and we're spawning a great wildlife extinction.

The simple solution to the bear cubs in British Columbia is to reinstate Casavant, release the cubs to the wild if possible and move on.

As far as the big picture goes, I don't think anybody has a good solution to us humans and our environmentally dangerous ways. We're all guilty, this writer included.

It's fine and absolutely correct to be upset over the callousness some people had toward these bear cubs. But this makes me wonder how many innocent wild animals I might have unwittingly harmed.

Keurig K-Cups Star In Bizarre Action-Horror Movie

From the video: A K-Cup monster destroys
Halifax, Nova Scotia and kills much of the populace
in a strange but fun video from K-Cup opponents.  

Keurig Green Mountain K-Cups are convenient as hell. It seems everybody uses them, including my husband, for their nice single serve fresh coffee all the time.  

The K-Cups, however, are not the most environmentally friendly contraption.

They're made of plastic and foil, and they're full of wet coffee grounds after you use them. They're next to impossible to recycle, so they add to the trash piling up in our landfills and such.

Not a nice PR thing for a company based in oh-so-environmentally friendly Vermont.

It's one thing to criticize these K-cups, but a production company in Canada has made a whole, short, nearly two-and-a-half minute long horror/action movie about K-cups, reports Vermont Public Radio. 

You can watch this way, way over the top, but strangely compelling and funny video at the bottom of this post.

Here's VPR to set the scene up for you:

"To anyone who has seen Cloverfield, the 2008 film depicting a monster attack on Manhattan through the lends of a home video camera recovered by the government, the style of the new video is familiar.

"An aircraft appears in the sky shooting the beverage packs into the streets at a high velocity, killing some onlookers. The person holding the camera runs away and records, in order: a car being blown up by K-Cups, a massive Godzilla-like monster made entirely of K-Cups belching a high volume of K-Cups down onto an unnamed city; a photographer bing crushed by a car-sized K-cup, a woman being stomped on by the aforementioned K-cup monster; soldiers shooting at an unseen enemy; and finally, the recorder's own death by an aerial assault of K-Cup shooting K-Cup trays."

Yeah, way, way, WAYYY over the top.

I just hope my husband's K-Cups don't decided to attack him one early groggy morning in the future.

The movie was made by Egg Studios in Halifax, Nova Scotia. It was shot over the course of a day in Halifax. It was done by Egg Studio staffers over six months during down time when they weren't working for paying clients, says VPR.

Egg Studios partnered with a group called Kill The K-Cup to make the video. The set area was provided by Social Bean Gourmet Coffee Co.

Kill the K-Cup has launch a change.org petitition to get Keurig Green Mountain to change the K-Cup into something recyclable now if not sooner, not Keurig's 2020 target date.

For its part Keurig Green Mountain says finding an environmentally better alternative to a K-Cup is a priority for them, that they appreciate the humor, creativity and message in the video.

In any event, here's the most unusual, but strangely entertaining video: