4
ThursGav, August 28, 1975
University Daily Amsan
Wastes degrading
"NONRETURNABLE — PLEASE DISPOSE OF PROPERLY."
These words, or close approximates, adorn myriad beer and soft drink bottles today. They represent a blatantly absurd assumption of our society—the assumption that we need to use "properly." Unfortunately, it can't necessarily so.
Basically, nondegradable wastes can't be recycled by nature. Natural degraders such as decay bacteria can't break them down into component parts for reuse. The wastes are nonreturnable because they are not used and only are they unreturnable to the corner supermarket, but they are also unreturnable to nature.
Nonreturnable bottles containing that popular liquid refreshment—beer—provide a good example of the headaches caused by nonreturnables. Well-known ecologist Barry Commoner, who studied the effects that from 1850 to 1967 Americans increased their use of nonreturnable beer bottles by 595 per cent, while the consumption of beer itself increased by only 37 per cent. Since the population increased by only 30 per cent during that time, the amount of beer consumed per capita increased by only five per cent, while the amount of beer produced by bottles produced per gallon of beer increased by 408 per cent. That's a lot of bottles stacking up in the environment.
Perhaps the environment could handle a 408 per cent increase in nonreturnable beer bottles in a 17-year period. But the problem doesn't end there. Add other nonreturnables such as synthetic fabrics, plastic beaches and so on. ad nauseum, and you've got a "nonreturnable" pollution problem that taxes the imagination as well as the environment.
Beer brewers and food manufacturers
may try to justify the use of nonreturnable packaging because the use of it makes life more convenient for consumers. For example, nonreturnable bottles eliminate the need to cart "empties" back to the supermarket. However, the time for thinking in terms of convenience may soon be over. Nonreturnables can be harmful, as evidenced by Commoner's example, of wild duck found in the six-pack of a refrigerator's neck. According to Commoner, such events can only become more frequent as plastics factories continue to emit an endless stream of indestructible objects that eventually become waste.
Nonreturnables are easy to ignore as long as they are out of sight—but what happens when we run out of space to store them?
Discounting any absurd suggestions, such as shooting nonreturnables off into space, we have a few alternatives for dealing with the problem. The wastes could be reused in their present form; for example, beer bottles could be used again. Technologies could be developed to recycle the wastes, although the processes may not be economically feasible. Or we could substitute returnables for nonreturnables. Produce in supermarkets could be transported in paper bags instead of plastic.
The point is this: Just because we have the ability to create nonreturable substances doesn't mean that we have to use them. To quote Commonwer, "We can make the planet unless it is a cooperative part of a larger, global whole."
Manufacturing nonreturnables and then spewing them as wastes into the environment just isn't cooperation with the larger, global whole.
Paula Jolly Contributing Writer
Times have changed
Gas pumper relives KU davs
They say it's a small world, and the older I get, the more I believe it.
This summer while in San Diego, I decided to give my choking car a break and have its oil changed. I resolved to pull into the next gas station, regardless of whether it took me 20 minutes to reach Standard, pulled in and gave the attendant instructions.
walk to a nearby shopping center to kill time until the car was done, I heard a voice
Just as I was preparing to
Jain Penner
behind me say, "Rock chalk,
Javhawk. KU."
started, I turned around and saw a boy a little older than I was, with long sandy hair and a beard. He wiped his hands on
Mary McGrory
Singing the Metro blues
"How did you know?" I asked.
the grease-smeared sides of his grey Standard Oil "monkey suit."
"I saw the KU sticker on your car," he said. "I graduated from ol' KU a few years ago. How is Lawren these days?"
WASHINGTON -They tell me I will love the subway- or the Metro as we are continually encouraged to call it.
or even Reporting to the Driver.
I didn't think long fingernails would take to any of them. I decided I must enroll in watchers assigned last shrets being ground out in the carport.
If you ask me why I ride the bus when I am so upright about the contemporary scene, you will be sorry. Briefly, I took a day off and went to the beach, that's why.
If it isn't an underground version of the bus that travels from San Francisco to the Washington Star, I know I won't. Just for appers, nobody pays any attention to the "No Smoking" sign posted in the
of the New Jersey border, my friend suggested consultation.
A security guard from the Environmental Protection Agency was among us. I was hoping he would respond to the heavy off-duty pollution, but he was sound asleep.
license renewed. It is necessary to present one's Social Security card. Not the number, mind the card. It takes at least a week.
The other morning, the air was blue, as usual. Then I detected a sweet, cloying enzyme enriched with the other components of peace demonstrations. Of yes, marijuana.
The gas station attendant told us with morose satisfaction that we were 37 miles off course. We whirled about him for a brief clap. We were expected for dinner in Delaware. Our host has a heart condition. I knew he would be worried. Alas, he was, and he had no time to care or wait hours later, but that's a whole other chapter.
"Sit down," he invited. "I haven't talked to anyone from Lawrence for ages."
We had excellent typed directions for the journey to Rebehob: How to cross the Bay on Route 80, how to route 80, that kind of blues.
A friend came with me. She is a free-lance writer and a person of great character, as it is better to be if you live in the Southwest. Although apprehensive, she is resourable. She can dress her neck and she carries an umbrella in all seasons.
Inevitably, whirling colored lights appeared in the rear-view mirror. I was young, blond and not moved by my affecting account of the missed turn, the waiting family, the hurried car. I handed over the documents.
"It expired last November," he said coldly.
After seven days on the Aline, I tried to turl my himself on their pity. But Social Security has problems these days. It's worth trying. I met them at $403,780,374 in overpayments. I waited through three recorded announcements before I got a young man who I met at the bus. My description of what it's like in the back of the bus. "We're
We missed the time. We were talking about a subject of obsessive interest to both of us—whether the difficulties of writing for print.
pretty jammed up," he said distractedly. I whimpered a little and hung up.
thought a few of protesting.
Perhaps a few well-chosen words about the Rights of Others or Following the Rules
"Fine," I answered. What else could I say?
Oh, well, maybe I will like the Metro. It will probably be built by the time I get my Social security card and my license from the Department they'll have a Maryland State Trooper on every car.
As the signs began ominously to tell us we were within miles
"Is this the only license you've got?" he asked.
Thinking he was trying to introduce a light note, I chuckled excessively.
Or maybe they won't bother to post "No Smoking" signs. Then, at least some of us expired speeders won't have to hate ourselves for being asphyxified cowards.
He began to recite to me the entire penal code of the State of Maryland. Then my friend took the car and drove me into the intricacies of having the
My seat-mate was a bearded young man wearing a visor and long fingerprints. He passed the heist to a friend who sat firing me.
We sat down on the curb.
(C) 1975 Washington Star Syndicate, Inc
crept into his voice as he mentioned the Gaslight.
When I told him New Haven had had three or four different rooms, he wasn't surprised. He wasn't surprised. When I told him the Gaslight had burned down and would soon be a cathedral, he was going to start crying.
"When did you go to school there?" I asked.
"What a bummer!" he said.
"That place held so many memories. I remember once a sniper was sitting on the roof shooting at people who walked by. It was really far-out."
"I got out in '70," he said. "Oh, those were the days. I'll never forget KU. It wouldn't be the same now, though. I was back in Lawrence in '72 and the place sure wasn't the same."
He smiled as a thought crossed his mind.
"Really?" I asked.
"Oh it was wild back then." He shook his head and a faraway look crept into his eyes. He was silent for a moment.
"Thirteenth and Tennessee," he said suddenly.
"I was at the 'Light the night
Union burned. We went over to
look at the fire then started
the fire and knocked a trash bucket to fill with water.
These jerks took I set the
fire. I got jumped by a couple of them and then my friends came
a big greet! We got into a huge brawl.
"Huh?"
"That's where I lived. Thirteenth and Tennessee."
"Really? I only lived a block from there last year, up on Ohio," I said.
"What ever happened to the old hangouts?" she asked. "The way we did, whatever it is called now and the Gaillard? A note of reverence
"Did you set the fire?" There was something about the gleam in his eye that made me wonder.
"But we did some wild things. Once, the army captured some bridge in North Vietnam so we held a protest and captured the bridge over the Kaw River. People drove up and they jumped out and started clubbing people right and left."
"Hell no. I didn't have enough guts." he answered.
New York needs rescue
By WARD HARKAVY Contributing Writer
We are facing the loss, or severe crippling, of one of this country's major resources.
I'm not talking about coal, gas, whales or paper clips. I'm talking about New York City.
So much has been said recently about our largest city's financial problems. Because of the huge base we have directed toward that city because of these problems, that one important thing has been
The influence of the city on our lives is impossible to overlook in hinterland, New York is our financial center, our theater center, our museum center, our church center, our many waves, our political center.
New York has meant more to our culture than any other city. In fact, New York may be called the cultural center of the world.
We need New York.
We need its museums, its Broadway, its Wall Street, its architecture, its people. We need its vitality.
Unfortunately, it is also our pornography center, our vice center and maybe our drug center. But after all, it's our largest city. It's ridiculously big, and with excess comes the risk of even minor problems are magnified with eight million people.
And does New York ever have problems. Over one million people on welfare, a high crime rate (though not the country's highest), endless traffic and sanitation problems, a deadly poll of population, people stacked in offices and just too many and too much of these, and more, problems.
Recently, we've heard outcries about New York's
wasteful and inefficient fiscal management. Some say that New York shouldn't be treated differently than other cities, all of which have problems almost as large as those of New York.
Unquestionably, New York is almost paralyzed by its problems. It's broke and it's having a hard time borrowing enough money to pay its vast number of employees.
Fleas for help by New York Mayor Abraham Beame and others have usually fallen on the ground. We need new for New York officials.
One important thing to understand about New York is the way it is governed. Unlike most of our big cities, New York has to maintain almost without social help from New York State.
Many of New York's wealthiest and most productive people have fled the city for Long Island, Connecticut, New Jersey or upstate New York suburbs. They work in New York during the day and flee to the suburb at night, where they purchase housing, support money, support suburban schools and ignore the city which provides them with jobs.
It's time we begin considering New York as more than just the five boroughs, both physically and in our minds.
The whole metropolitan area surrounding New York City should be considered one unit, for purposes of taxation and management. New York State should be required to help its
bigger city with social service functions such as welfare. People who work in New York City and live elsewhere should have to share the responsibility of training the operation of the city.
We should try to change how we view New York City mentally. It is our responsibility, even in Kansas, to do everything we can to preserve the integrity of New York City.
It is the city that has been the source of much that is right with our culture and much that is wrong. But the good has far outweighed the bad. And the city will continue to be a source of enrichment to us if we keep it from fiscal disaster.
New York City is different from other cities. Let's face that fact and work to keep the city going.
"What did you do?" I asked.
"And did you do?" I asked.
"Jumped in the river," he said matter-of-factly. "What else could I do?'"
I shrugged, thinking it was a miracle that the gas station manager hadn't come over and told him to set back to work yet.
"The whole campus was like that. Riots, insults, protest marches, all that jive." He had, aloha, got into an act of activism.
"Didn't you ever study?" I asked.
"Study? Hell, no!" he said. "I used to book my books and sit by Potter Lake, but some dude would walk by with a Frisbee and I'd figure I could postpone the books for awhile."
"What did you major in?" I asked him.
"Personnel administration," he snorted. "Can you believe that? I don't know how I ever managed to graduate."
He looked across the street at the ocean, and a note of sadness crept into his voice.
It was a mystery to me, too.
"Classes were pretty easy, that
much bell breaking loose on
campus that the chancellor held
a convoitation and let us vote on
whether we wanted to have
classes like Vietnamese symposium and edible plants of Kansas."
"It's ainda weird, you know?" he said. "Here I am at work in personnel administration, and what am I doing?" Pumping gas. I'm almost 27 years old and I'm still pumping gas. What are we doing?"
"Well," I replied, "at least you had a good time."
"Yeah." He brightened.
"Yeah. I sure did."
My car was ready by that time. I signed the BankAmericid charge, got in and started the motor.
"It was nice to see someone else from KU." I told him.
"Yeah. Well, raise some bell in Lawrence for me. Come see me again if you're ever back in California. I probably still be pumping gas," he said. "Have a safe trip."
A couple weeks later, when I was back in Lawrence, I thought of him and drove down Oread Avenue, stopping in front of the empty lot where the nanny had been almost see the snipers and the street the way it had been five or six years ago.
It's almost incredible how times have changed.
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