"in the year 2010": rubbish construction

BBC: 'house of the future' is plastic

Please click above BBC link and please watch that video describing our future in plastic houses... it is dated February 24th, 2010; so it definitely is not from the early days of trying to understand what sustainability might be about; this is what a BBC reporter and a construction company come up with today, in the year 2010 ... or have they offered him plastic shares of any kind ...; it begins:

This is a pile of rubbish; a mix of household and industrial waste that would normally go to fill a hole in the ground: utterly useless stuff...

You will see panels made from 'chopped up old television sets' and hear the statement that among others 'those panels will be used to build sustainable houses while at the same time waste is recycled'. The material is explained to be 'substantial', 'waterproof', that 'it doesn't rot' and would have 'a long, long life durability'. Each house would contain 'about 18 tons of 'Thermo Poly Rock', abbreviated most modern into a 'TPR' token, 'recycled waste' that 'otherwise would have gone to landfill'.


This and the rest of that miserable piece of information is either a prime example of how bad journalism has become - was it ever any better? - or, of how desperate that one member of the construction industry is trying to survive our current crisis. And how desperate must those politicians and decision makers of BRE and Carbon Trust be to give their "good names" for this piece of medieval and destructive innovation.

If you need any more you will find it in this BBC article.

I won't go into the details of how pleasant it must be to live in a 18 ton waste plastic house and I won't discuss whether pressing "rubbish" to form panels and hide those behind dwelling walls can really be regarded as a sustainable "recycling" process but I would like to add another video, a trailer of a new movie hitting the theatres soon; it is called 'Plastic-Planet' and describes in German and English the plastic world we live in - all the pictures are bilingual, so don't hesitate to take the time:

I have blogged on phthalates twice before. Ugly chemicals that explain a lot of why and what is going wrong. Plastic is poisonous but also a valuable commodity; it needs to go through controlled recycling processes - not into holes in the ground and not into walls for us to live in.

The above BBC report is what is utterly useless stuff - not that pile of rubbish!

Carpe diem!

P.I.C.N.I.C.

The Picnic Party Poster

Man tries to copy nature; swim like a shark, clean with Lotus or learn from birds' wings how planes can save energy (e.g. winglets). No harm in copying, but why do we only do this half-heartedly?

P.I.C.N.I.C. stands for Produced In Carbon Neutral Integrated Cycle and as such follows nature's rule where nothing is waste but everything is energy. While the manmade definition of waste allows wasting, our globe's logic is to keep things in balance; life incorporates death in form of new life; same as any product recycles to product(s), leaves no room for waste.

Let’s have a party: let's have a P.I.C.N.I.C.!

Carpe diem!