Treehugger - Latest Comments in What's the Most Wasteful Thing You've Ever Found?

Re: What's the Most Wasteful Thing You've Ever Found?

Event Calendar — Wed, 05 Sep 2007 04:03:20 -0000

I once had a neighbor that used a garden blower on his driveway every morning at 8 am to clear off the few pineneedles that fell during the night. Now I'm in another part of the country and see professional lawn maintenance crews cutting the grass of the yards around me every week even when it isn't needed.

Re: What's the Most Wasteful Thing You've Ever Found?

corey — Tue, 04 Sep 2007 21:08:22 -0000

How about dumping 200 meals in the garbage because you are in the US military stationed in kuwait. your congressman comes to visit you. he is 1 hour late to the lunch. All the soldiers were not allowed to eat until he arrives. So we sit in front of our plates for nearly 1 hour before we are told by the command sergeant major to throw them out and get a hot meal since the congressman has just notified them is will be there in 10 mins.

or maybe the fact that we leave the generators for lights running 24/7 even when the lights are off.

how about the fact that we have 800 soldiers on my base and we consume 8 pallets of bottled water a day. imagine what its like at the larger bases.

how about the fact that we leave all non tactical vehicles idling for hour upon hour to keep them cool instead of building shaded parking areas.

i could go on for hours. the military wastes more in one day than most small countries do all year.

Re: What's the Most Wasteful Thing You've Ever Found?

Doug — Tue, 04 Sep 2007 13:30:40 -0000

Here's an illegal dump site we uncovered while out picking up highway trash:

http://www.maggotpunks.com/...

Loads and loads of waste from the nearby hotel. Naturally the hotel got away with it since it was blamed on homeless people and roadside trash (despite it being in a forest away from the highway, blocked by a hill).

Essentially a plethora of one use items like small tubes of toothpaste, mouthwash, and we even found a full container of soymilk. The city's solution was to cut down the forest.

Re: What's the Most Wasteful Thing You've Ever Found?

Tim Russell — Tue, 04 Sep 2007 12:40:50 -0000

There might have been a food safety issue with the cookies and expired food could't it have been composted or fed into digesters? Can't remember what show it was but I saw where they took organic garbage and sewage, fed it into large digester tanks and were generating power from the resulting gas. I think it was in California.

Where I work sometimes product needs to be dumped for food quality/safety issues but it doesn't go to a landfill but to a company that uses it for animail feed products.

Re: What's the Most Wasteful Thing You've Ever Found?

mdpdb — Tue, 04 Sep 2007 10:11:49 -0000

in Toronto: a woman hosing down her driveway to clear it of debris *in a full downpour*.

in NYC: in January, my office was so hot from the overpowering steam heat that the muckety-mucks in their wool businesswear turned on the air conditioning full blast to fight it.

Re: What's the Most Wasteful Thing You've Ever Found?

Marilyn Terrell — Tue, 04 Sep 2007 09:53:34 -0000

How about the Spice Girls getting individual Lear jets for their upcoming global tour? That's a waste in so many ways...

http://www.treehugger.com/f...

Re: What's the Most Wasteful Thing You've Ever Found?

GT — Tue, 04 Sep 2007 08:06:23 -0000

Most wasteful? FIJI bottled water in Virginia. The absurdity of filling a container ship full of water then pushing that ship full of water through the water half way around the world to a port in San Diego or Los Angeles never ceases to amaze me. Of course the water then has to be trucked to stores all over the country before it shows up on my students' desks..... all with perfectly safe and equally tasteless chilled water available for free from the drinking fountain just outside the door. This has to be the perfect example of squandered wealth and resources.