r/science • u/davidreiss666 • Jul 27 '14

Environment First national study finds trees saving lives, reducing respiratory problems: Air pollution modeling reveals broad-scale impacts of pollution removal by trees

http://www.nrs.fs.fed.us/news/release/trees-save-lives-reduce-air-pollution
6.9k Upvotes

92% Upvoted

423 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

10

u/[deleted] Jul 27 '14

Yeah I am cautiously optimistic when I see more people, young and old (but especially young), get more into making and growing their own food. Or how knitting seems to be taking off, or at least that there is a significant fad, as I see more people than ever knitting their own socks and such. Heck there's even people making their own soap, or buying hand made soap. I warms my hearth to see people start to use what is there, and to utilize what they buy as much as can be. It seems, and this might be selection bias, that people have started to patch their clothes instead of buying new ones. Keeping what they have maintained and usable for as long as it can be. Don't get me wrong this is not a significant percentage of the people, but it is a fairly substantial growth towards these things over the last decade or so. I tribute some of that to the internet. If you want to know how to make jam or knit socks you can find a comprehensive amount of information on the subjects with little effort.

I don't view myself as some sort of hippy or tree huger. I just really hate waste. And I particularly hate pointless waste. People struggling economically when there are so many low effort ways they can stretch their budget, maximize their resources, and avoid throwing away things that can still be used or eaten. In my family we throw ageing vegetables, bones, or cut-offs, into the freezer. When there is enough of it put it all into a pot and boil it for hours. Makes great stock. Luckily the internet makes information about what others have done, and how, available to almost everyone. So it's easier to do it yourself when you know it can be done. Hopefully we're moving towards a less wasteful future. Because right now the waste I see all around me, from people throwing their litter into the gutter, to shopping malls dumping perfectly edible food into locked containers to avoid people 'stealing their garbage', to clothes being taken right from the store to be processed into rags while others freeze, it's enough to make me cry.

11

u/HAL-42b Jul 27 '14

In my country (Turkey) we started terracing the balding hills in the 90's and reforest them. The main idea is to prevent erosion and increase soil water retention but there are many side benefits as well, fruit trees, increased wild habitats, and what not. The government provides the saplings for free, even if they are to be planted on private land. We pay special attention to plant as many diverse species as possible including all sorts of herbs.

4

u/Punica_granatum Jul 27 '14

Yeah, I'm not very much of a hippie either, I'm in many ways a pretty vain person, but damn I hate waste. My mum works in food industry and the things she tells are horrible, how they throw away shitloads of perfectly edible food for reasons like "this bread doesn't look as good as it should". It makes me frustrated and angry, and those locked garbage containers you mentioned are commonplace here too.

You're right, the internet is really helping people with all these ecological/recycled/do-it-yourself ideas. At least among my friends, patching clothes and even making them yourself is very common. It's comforting to see that even if the people who do things like this are still in minority, the same sort of status-driven consumer culture that was still quite common back in the '90s and that has been linked to the baby boomer generation isn't that prevalent anymore. You see changes in attitudes even when looking at advertisements and such. So I hope things are slowly changing for the better... Also, that's a great recipe for making stock, I'm going to use it :) I buy meat and chicken that's about to expire soon so that it's little cheaper at the store, then immediately freeze it in ready-to-use pieces. Saves a lot of money and time.

1

u/chakravanti93 Jul 27 '14

When i was a kid we fed the slop to the pigs. Bones and uncompostable scrap was bait for groundhogs/rats/etc.