Sunday, April 18, 2021

Living life

Something new: No news is good news Monday.
Tracking Covid-19, however, remains with us:
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The Lincoln Project:

Healthy planet, anyone?

Plastic bags … always with us. 
UK’s ‘bag for a week’ habit is no green alternative – rather, it has created more problems for the environment. Supermarket ‘bags for life’ must cost more to cut plastic use, urge campaigners

The US is responsible for around 327 billion bags ending up in the sea every year. Single use plastic is responsible for killing over 100,000 marine animals a year. Plastic bags contribute to these deaths by entangling wildlife and being mistaken for food by larger animals such as whales and turtles.

More facts on plastic bags:
  • More than 1 million plastic bags end up in the trash every minute. 
  • 100,000 marine animals are killed by plastic bags.
  • Up to one trillion plastic bags are used worldwide each year – that’s 160,000 a second.
  • If you linked them end to end they would circle the globe 4,200 times.
  • Around 10% of those will end up in our oceans.
  • Less than 1 in 7 plastic bags are recycled.
  • The US is responsible for around 327 billion bags that end up in the seas.
  • A plastic bag is used on average for 15 minutes.
  • It can take anything between 20-1000 years for a plastic bag to break up.
  • Articles on plastic bags:
  • Trying to Recycle That Plastic Bag? The Odds Are Nine to One It’s Not Happening 
  • If you know your recycling, you probably already know that most communities don’t accept plastic bags in their curbside bins. And if you recycle like a pro, you may know that plastic bag recycling is a thing you can do at most local grocery stores or superstores.
    But here’s where it gets confusing. Does that mean just the bags from that store? Or can you recycle more? Most drop-off bag collections accept polyethylene film. This includes high-density polyethylene (HDPE or #2 plastic) and low-density polyethylene (#4 plastic or LDPE). It’s great if your bags have markings on them, but since most do not, it’s good to know some general guidelines
  • Are South Africa’s shopping bags really being recycled? 
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Photo essay: ‘Forests are not renewable’: the felling of Sweden’s ancient trees.  Forests cover 70% of the country, but many argue the Swedish model of replacing old-growth forests with monoculture plantations is bad for biodiversity.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch…

The Midlands Meander  is:
…a region in beautiful KwaZulu Natal that stretches from just beyond Mooi River in the north, Hilton in the south, Karkloof in the east and the foothills of the Drakensberg in the west.
… An easy one-hour drive from Durban and four and a half hours on the N3 highway from Johannesburg, there is much to explore and do in the Midlands. For all that is on offer, life is lived at a gentler pace, we take time to chat to strangers in the trading store and we grow our own vegetables.
We dropped in on The Midlands Meander site known as the Piggly Wiggly – an outdoorsy combo of restaurants, wine cellar, ice cream parlor, candle shop, live snake show, and small train for kids. Bought a bottle of wine, Shiraz.
Continued on …to Nottingham Road – a village known locally as “Notties”. Takeaway: there’s no there there. Well, there’s more of a there there in Notties than there is in, say, Curry’s Post. Anyone (like me) looking for an actual center of town in Curry’s Post won’t find a center, or even a grandiose post. Rather, there are hundreds of posts… supporting electric fences but no actual Curry’s Post. But I digress.
On our way home, we visited the Mandela Capture Site . My overwhelming feeling was sadness - so many lives wasted – and anger – such hope and expectations for a better life for the majority dashed. Rather than selfless leaders, South Africans got Jacob Zuma
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Getting darker each day
Feb 26: sunrise 5:47am; sunset 6:33pm.
March 2: sunrise 5:50am; sunset 6:29pm.
March 9: sunrise 5:55am; sunset 6:21pm.
March 16: sunrise 5:59am; sunset 6:13pm.
March 22: sunrise 6:03am; sunset 6:05pm.
April 1: sunrise 6:09am; sunset 5:54pm.
April 2: sunrise 6:09am; sunset 5:53pm.
April 8: sunrise 6:12am; sunset 5:46pm.
April 19: sunrise 6:20am; sunset 5:35pm.

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