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A Plastic Ocean – Recycle more

Byrichard
Reading Time: 3 minutes

A Plastic Ocean is an excellent documentary detailing the problems and threats caused by plastics entering water systems and eventually reaching the seas and oceans. This documentary starts with a team trying to film whales. When they finally do find the whales off the coast of Sri Lanka they notice that there is a film of oil and plastic build up miles from the shore. They say that this bit of ocean should be clean as the beaches had been unused for years. They suspect that the plastic had been freed after heavy rains flushed them out to sea.

I went to the Graduate institute to watch this film last night and the crowd was already well informed. When one speaker asked, “Did you know that the Plastic Ocean problem was this serious” at least half of the room, if not more raised their hand. When people were asked about the zero waste movement at least a third of people raised their hand. The auditorium was filled to capacity.

Plastic and snorkeling

When I was snorkeling in Spain a few  weeks ago I was looking for fish and I saw a few small fish. In the past I had been scuba diving in these waters and surfaced to be surrounded by jellyfish. If you’re stung by a jelly fish you don’t need to use urine. Olive oil and seawater will calm the inflamation. I thought that I saw a jellyfish but as I swam closer I saw that it was a transparent plastic bag floating near the surface. I grabbed the bag and I placed it in my semi-drysuit sleeve and eventually swam back to come out of the water. As I walked back from the activity I picked up a second plastic bag and threw them away. If these bags were left in the Mediterranean then sea turtles and other animals might eat them.

Environmental impact

When plastics reach the ocean seventy percent sinks to the bottom of the sea and can remain there for centuries. What does not sink is degraded by the sun but it is broken up, rather than broken down. What this means is that you go from plastic sheets to plastic pellets and these plastic pellets outnumber krill and plankton by a ratio of two to one. This means that sea birds, fish and other animals higher up the food chain ingest plastic and it accumulates. Seabirds and whales ingest so much plastic that it fills their stomachs and they eventually die of starvation.

Everyday Recycling

It is at this moment that I am so happy to live in a canton where you can recycle PET in one container and all other plastics in another. This means that almost all of the plastic I use on a daily basis is recycled. It can be re-used for bags, car doors and more permanent uses.

 

Recycling is a simple and intuitive habit to have. My generation learned to recycle as children and we have kept up this habit for decades. It is so normal that we feel uneasy at festivals and events where we don’t have bins for PET, Aluminium and other products. In some cases I keep aluminium or PET bottles on me until I find a place where I can recycle them. I enjoy that at Swiss train stations you can now recycle paper, PET, Aluminium and other rubbish.

The advantage of recycling loops is that we use the primary material more than once. It means that we don’t need to waste energy and money on extracting oil and other primary materials. We simply recycle the materials. The concept of closed circuits was discussed.

An Environmentally Friendly Hike

If this post has inspired you to do more for the environment there is a wehike event organised by the Summit Foundation .

This is a hike inaugurating the partnership between WeHike and Summit Foundation, a Swiss ecological non-profit. The Foundation’s mission is to reduce the environmental impact of human activities -leisure activities in particular- in high-traffic locations like ski areas, by raising awareness and proposing concrete solutions. To this end, WeHike supports the Summit Foundation’s objectives by promoting and organising environmentally-aware hikes and waste collection & recycling operations in high mountains.

This is a two day hike near Les Diablerets.

A plastic Ocean is available to watch on Netflix and from other sources. It is worth watching as it will affect how you use plastic in future.

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The Earth Race Documentaries.

Byrichard

Sometimes I stumble across documentaries that I feel excel in their genre. One such documentary is Earthrace: The Power Boat Race around the World. This is a one and a half hour documentary charting the fundraising, awareness building, race preparations and then the actual race, including logistics and more.


I like this documentary because the editing rhythm is in keeping with the story. The story is told in a logical and chronological order with no excessive editing, no breathless commentary, no excessive use of music. It is one and a half hours exploring the project from its start until its temporary conclusion.


I like the use of timelapse for the Panama canal where we see the boat move in next to the container ship. I think the explanation of why the skipper had liposuction could have been explained much sooner in the documentary. I think it’s in the second documentary that we hear that the bio-diesel that was made from fat was used to first start the engines.


Some documentaries are filmed within a period of weeks or months but this one was filmed over four years. As a result the chronological structure of the documentary also makes sense. I was able to watch over an hour before I took a break, and then watched it until the end.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=euXj_egklF8


If you find this documentary interesting then there is a follow-up documentary about the successful circumnavigation of the globe.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wo69hDvDNjo

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Learning about Tiny Houses

Byrichard

Learning about Tiny Houses is interesting. There are a number of features/documentaries online where people build their own tinyhouses either from shipping containers, trailers or other structures. The aim of these tinyhouses is to maximise space and reduce costs. Some of these homes are entirely off the grid. They collect rain water and solar panels provide power. The bedroom is often built above the kitchen and climbing wall holds are used instead of ladders or conventional stairs.

One home folds out from a truck to become a castle. One tower serves as a toilet and the second one serves as a shower. The space above even features a bath.

Another Tiny home is designed as a tree house providing a beautiful 360° panoramic view of the landscape around.

This tiny home is interesting because it’s built out of half a shipping container. For a change the bed is below and the living room is above. The kitchen and office are next to it and there is a shower from which to watch birds.

I have seen a lot of people speak about minimalist living, living off the grid and living out of cars, campers and other vehicles. By watching videos about tiny houses you begin to understand that there are certain basics that you need to have and that these basics fit in to small spaces. If you have a van, a caravan or other vehicle then you can live as comfortably as these people.

This last video would make for a perfect summer home for recent university graduates or high school graduates. It’s small, light and mobile. You’re self sufficient to a great extent and as long as it’s warm you have your own space. It’s amusing that in at least three videos we hear about people learning to be neater through living in such small spaces.

As a scuba diver, rock climber, cyclist and geek the biggest challenge for someone like me would be to find a place where I could store my diving gear and especially the scuba tanks. They’re bulky. Diving gear also needs to dry properly to avoid the smell of the lake (as I used to dive weekly in the lake).

My view of living in a tinyhouse has changed through the watching of these documentaries. It shows you that what you want is functionality rather than size. You want “gadgets” as these maximise how you use available space.

Andrew Keen And The Scarcity of Choice
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Andrew Keen And The Scarcity of Choice

Byrichard

I recently noticed that I had Andrew Keen’s The Cult of the Amateur book as an audiobook on Apple Books. I have had the book for at least a decade but have only got around to reading it recently. Over the last week I have listened to him speak about the closing of Tower Records and it encouraged me to write more about the scarcity of choice, that comes with online browsing and shopping.
When I lived in Weymouth I would go to WHSmith and look for new books, and then when I lived in London a few years later I would look for books at Waterstones. I spent hours in that book shop and often wanted to buy plenty of books but resisted temptation. The beauty of book shops is that you can look within a section and quickly see hundreds, or even thousands of books.


Scarcity of Choice With Books


Compare this to book browsing today. Book shops are rare, and supermarkets have a very limited choice. It does get worse. When you shop for books online you get plenty of the top selling books recommended, but it’s hard to find the least popular titles. It’s hard to find the long tail of books. it’s hard to browse through niche interests and topics because algorithms force us to see the top selling books, rather than browse.


Lending Libraries


That’s why the lending box in Eysins, Borex, Crassier, Founex, several in Nyon and other places are so good. They do have niche books, and they do have niche books. In the age of unlimited choice our actual options are limited to what algorithms think we want to read, rathre than what we would stumble upon in a physical book shop. Today we need to know what we’re looking for, rather than exploring, and finding it.


YouTube and Content Creators


He discussed YouTube and content creators that are creating content for free on YouTube, rather than being paid to generate it. What he didn’t explore so much, related to YouTube and amateurs trying to be professional about content production, a decade and a half later, is that broadcasters and independent companies are cutting costs and reducing their output thus reducing the number of jobs available for media professionals in mainstream media and more.


Coming of Age At the Right Time


I often wish that I had come to YouTube half a decade later than I did, maybe even later than that. When I wanted to break into the media the model was still focused on mainstream media. Now it has flipped around and the opportunity, and challenge, is to think of content that would attract people to view content. If YouTube had been what it is today, when I was 18 then I would have studied the same thing, but I would have pivoted towards independent content production much sooner. I have books on the topic, but independent at the time meant finding investors to pay for ideas. Today the barriers are inspiration and motivation.
Paradoxically, despite the barrier to entry being very low, to post content on YouTube or other video sharing platforms. there is a wall. The wall of tabloid sensationalism. I watched one content creator until I noticed the clickbait nature of the headlines. In another case I stopped watching several content creators for going on and on about their million plus subscribers. The barrier to entry is the same as the barrier to watching the content.


Getting Beyond The Noise


The patience to sort through the tabloid and sensationalist crap, before getting to content worth watching. On YouTube there is a scarcity of choice, because to please the algorithms you need to be a tabloid sensationalist to appear in search results and to be recommended. Failing this you are invisible. Failing this you need to drive traffic via blog posts or other means.


On Books And Video


I speak about the challenge of finding books despite having a backlog of hundreds of books. As I have often said, finding a book you want to read takes seconds, but actually reading it takes hours. Some books require thirty hours of reading. Usually they require seven hours or so. Books require an investment of time.
My real challenge is with video content. That’s where I struggle to find what I want to watch. In the past we would watch TV and see “What’s coming next” or we would read about new shows. Now we don’t, so we just have to browse until we find something. This isn’t a new problem. I had it when looking for films in video rental shops. In another lifetime finding something to watch was easy. Go to Discovery Channel and find documentaries to watch. Problem solved.


And Finally


As I read The Cult of the Amateur by Andrew Keen I thought that it should be updated for the 21st century. Instead of doing this he just wrote a few new books, one in 2018 and the second in 2020. I would purchase them but I might as well finish the book I am reading now, before getting yet another book. The Cult of the Amateur is an interesting look into what was perceived around 2007. The new books would reflect more modern visions.

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Thoughts on the New York Times Article about Project Aristotle and its findings

Byrichard

When I read this article I can’t stop thinking of the Prototyping sessions at Lift 2016. Teams from big corporations worked together to collaborate on exploring new ideas and developing new projects. Some had to work on a video, others had to work on models. Others had to create 2d representations. One set of tables had people working on music, graphics and more.

We had to record a number of interviews and they often said that they enjoyed being out of the office, in a different setting with different people. They spoke about how valuable this experience was and that they wanted to do this frequently, rather than once every few years.

In this article they mention that ‘‘equality in distribution of conversational turn-taking.’’ is important for successful teams. I agree whole-heartedly with this statement. I am not a forceful person, I wait until I am asked a question before speaking. As a result it is easy for me to switch off and think of other things. By finding a team where people listen to everyone else we engage people.

This is a topic discussed in Insanely Simple. It’s a book about Steve Jobs and how Apple works. They speak of the eight-person meeting. If you’re not needed you’re not allowed to be in the room. The focus is on keeping groups small and dynamic rather than large and clunky.

‘‘As long as everyone got a chance to talk, the team did well,’’ Woolley said. ‘‘But if only one person or a small group spoke all the time, the collective intelligence declined.’’. That’s because listening is an act of kindness but no more. What responsibility or accountability do we have in a team where one person takes over the conversation?

‘‘average social sensitivity’’ That’s good for my personality type. When I take personality type tests seriously and for fun I get Intuition as one of the four words… “skilled at intuiting”. Compassion is an important part of good team dynamics. “People on the ineffective teams, in contrast, scored below average. “

One of the books “Give and Take: A Revolutionary Approach to Success” explores this idea in depth. It devotes quite a bit of time exploring team dynamics within the Simpsons creative team. It speaks about authorship, co-writing and collaboration as keys to success. It speaks about letting people work a first draft of the script and getting teams of people to re-work and re-write it. I have heard about this taking place on a lot of television shows. This could be one of the reasons why American television shows are compelling to watch. As teams work on projects everyone feels compassion for the end project, rather than individuals.

What Project Aristotle has taught people within Google is that no one wants to put on a ‘‘work face’’ when they get to the office. No one wants to leave part of their personality and inner life at home. But to be fully present at work, to feel ‘‘psychologically safe,’’ we must know that we can be free enough, sometimes, to share the things that scare us without fear of recriminations.

I started writing this as a facebook comment but saw that I was inspired enough to write a blog post instead.

 

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