Make It Green

I just read an article in the paper about Waste Management Corporation here in Michigan. Rather then capturing the wastewater runoff caused by rainwater at their Maple City site and trucking it to the Frankfort for treatment they have instated new technology to take care of the problem. It uses methane gas generated by the landfill to power a system that evaporate and concentrate the liquid called leachate creating a product that will go back into the landfill to add decomposition.

This is a win win deal, keeping the trucks off the roads, saving Waste Management money, taking extra load off the treatment plant, and about half the methane gas created at the site is used. They say that even though it is better for the environment they are doing it for economic reasons only.

It’s a shame that new technologies that are good for our environment are often at the mercy of cost considerations and the not in my backyard attitude that keeps things like wind farms, trash handling systems, and other “green” systems from being implemented.

We must let our elected representatives on the local, state, and national level know that we need to clean up our act and the time to do it is now.

I Was Bored

Taking a deaf child road sign, tipping over head stones in a cemetery, breaking into and vandalizing a school, defacing someone’s lawn display of the Statue of Liberty, what’s going on? Acts such as these show disrespect for the property of others, cost someone money, and in some cases can cause harm to people.

When caught the person or persons responsible are usually young (under the age of twenty five) and say they did it because they were bored. They had nothing better to do so they thought it would be fun to destroy some ones property.

Since they are the children and grand children of my generation, I have to ask if it’s the way they were raised. Did we fail to give them a set of values; did we not teach them to respect others, are we somehow to blame for the things they have done? Or is it the environment they live in that has given them this idea that the rules don’t apply to them.

They are worse than the “me generation”, they are the “it’s not my fault generation”. If they think a thing will be fun to do they do it without regard for the damage they are causing.

It's a dirty job, but somebody needs to do it.

A job is a job is a job. When you don’t have one and you can’t find one what are you going to do? You got laid off or your factory closed and your unemployment is running out, what choices do you have? You are willing to work, but there just doesn’t seem to be anything you’re trained to do, where do you go?

There jobs out there, but because no one wants to do them. The work is hard and dirty, the job requires you to move, or the pay is lower than what you had before. Just remember “it’s a dirty job, but someone has to do it”. For years we have been told that the jobs being done by illegal aliens were the ones no one else wanted to do. Maybe those are the jobs that you need to look at.

The trash needs to be picked up, the crops need to be harvested, and the hotel rooms need to be cleaned. Someone has to wash cars at the carwash or load and unload the trucks that move goods around the country. Believe me the food in the store didn’t grow in cans and boxes, it got there because somebody grew the crops and milked the cows. Somebody worked in the plant that turned the beef, pork, and chicken into the food you could cook and eat.

The jobs that leave you sweaty and dirty will always be there if you are willing to do them. They may not be glamorous, but they will always be there. Any job is better than no job when you can’t pay the bills or put food on the table.