Word: plasticizers
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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That is why Kruse packed his three tiny planes on plastic foam bubbles in the back of his car and drove more than 1,300 miles across the U.S. to launch them for a few minutes of glory. For Kruse the urge is visceral, planted in him for good when, at age seven or eight, he hand-launched a 5 cents glider on ; the sun-drenched Kansas prairie. The craft rose a few feet, then miraculously was snatched by a thermal and carried away. Kruse leaped on his bicycle and rode desperately after it -- one mile, two miles, five miles...
...State Park to the annual gathering of the state's Democrats. Nothing as far as the eye can see spoils this strip of beach, which the Delaware Senator reclaimed from the military for his state, the site where he announced his first run for the Senate in 1972. Carrying plastic lawn chairs and coolers, more than a thousand Democrats are pouring into the park, twice as many as have ever come to the party get-together in the past. As three generations of Bidens alight -- his mother, father, sister, wife and two of his three children -- the Senator is swamped...
...study comparing the U.S. with other nations, its pile of disposable diapers, melon rinds, grass clippings, plastic hamburger boxes, broken mattresses and discarded tires came to 1,547 lbs. for every man, woman and child in the country. Only Australians came close to producing as much waste: a prodigious 1,498 lbs. per person. The average West German or Japanese threw away about half as much. But even the U.S. figure pales next to that of California, where some calculations have the average citizen throwing away 2,555 lbs. a year. Says Attorney Jill Ratner, who is active in environmental...
Technology may help ease the looming crisis. One of the most troublesome elements in the garbage stream is the soaring use of plastic, which is difficult to burn or recycle and, because it is not biodegradable, will clog landfills for centuries. Early efforts to produce plastics that decay were less than successful: some disintegrated under sunlight, unavailable at the bottom of landfills. Others came apart after contact with water, causing supermarket executives to shudder at the thought of what would happen to the groceries in a plastic shopping bag containing a leaky milk bottle. But now there is a method...
...large part, the garbage crisis is a cultural crisis. The development of a throwaway, convenience culture helped create this mess; a real solution may require cultural change. For example, more than 20% of U.S. garbage comprises grass clippings and leaves stuffed into plastic bags and left for collection. Householders should simply leave that grass on their lawns or rake - it into a mulch pile, ignoring and thus revising the cultural demand for a golf green-neat lawn. Another cultural change would be required to get Americans to recycle 50% of their trash, as Japanese do. Cultural change is notoriously slow...