Biodiesel from FOG

Biodiesel from FOG In May of this year, I wrote a post called “Recycling Renaissance”. The post described how Flagler Beach, Florida, seven miles from our Florida home, had developed innovative approaches to dealing with a difficult problem, recycling. This week I learned Danbury, Connecticut, where I live part of the year, has also done […]

Can We Cope With Packaging? (Redux) by John R. Patrick

I wrote this story originally in July, 1999. Blogging was not yet ubiquitous. I edited the story in May, 2008, in July, 2021, and now in August, 2023. Packaging is one of those things that most of us may not think about a lot. Packaging can be plastic, glass, paper, Styrofoam, cardboard, or poly-whatever, and […]

Recycling Renaissance

Recycling Renaissance Word count: 974 Reading time: 3.6 minutes One of the many things I learned from my dad was about recycling. Dad was a voracious reader of books and newspapers including The Wall Street Journal, the Philadelphia Bulletin, the Philadelphia Inquirer, and the south Jersey Salem Sunbeam. Newspapers would accumulate on the basement stairway […]

Can Fusion Solve the Climate Change Problem?

Photo courtesy Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory Can Fusion Solve the Climate Change Problem? Written: July 2002 The frequency, duration, and strength of storms, flooding, and forest fires are increasing, as we see every day in the news. Experts are predicting things will get worse, a lot worse, unless the countries of the world take aggressive […]

Why Do We Need Trees?

Why Do We Need Trees? Life on Earth depends on energy coming from the Sun. The greenhouse effect has protected life on Earth from unlivable cold conditions for as long as life has been here. To keep greenhouse gases in perspective, we need to remember greenhouse gases are a good thing, but only if there […]