So, it’s Ash Wednesday 2012, and I’m finally getting around to letting you know my wish list for the 2011 holidays. I guess I’ll just ask for early presents for the 2012 season (or considering my previous post, maybe I’ll just keep thinking about it).
Now I am known in my family as one hard to buy presents for. I usually ask for the chance to take a hike, alone, or a backrub, or my favorite — a tree-planting party! But for this wish list, I’m asking not only for whirled peas, but for things that I use every day, and that in their own way, could change the world.
Here goes:
Toothpaste tubes that don’t break and leak, allow 100% of the toothpaste to get out, and are reusable or recyclable. I’m happy to report that at least for the toothpaste I use — Tom’s of Maine — my wish has come true! I was in the Astoria Co-op yesterday, looking to replace the half-used, leaking tube of toothpaste that I’d been using for the last two weeks, getting toothpaste all over the bathroom and me, and examining the Tom’s of Maine boxes, and noticed that they were advertising new tubes. Wow! I’ve been thinking about this for a long time, and evidently so has Tom’s. The new tubes are made of plastic that they say won’t break or leak, and can even be mailed back to them to be recycled into pallet corner pads! What I really want to know is why we’ve been using aluminum tubes for so long. Doesn’t aluminum cause Alzheimer’s?
Clothes hangers that don’t get tangled up. Oh, this one is one of the longest-term irritants I have. With all our design and technological prowess, you’d think a simple hanger could be made that wouldn’t get hopelessly tangled in other hangers, and be impossible to extract to hang up your jeans. I just lay my jeans on my dresser to avoid this situation. But a search of the Internet (i.e. “hangers that don’t get tangled”) led me to Ditto Ecological Hangers, and right there on the page that tells you why you should buy their hangers, under features, it says “non-tangling”. Yippee! Besides all the other great things about Ditto hangers, they don’t get tangled! I’ll let you know if this claim is true when I receive my 10-pack. This would be really big! Did you know that you can’t recycle metal or plastic hangers?-
Thomas Crapper
Toilets that compost or process waste without utility water. This is a big one. Yeah, composting toilets have been around for a long time. But I’m talking about a toilet that my wife Nancy would use, and all my friends, and my kid. And me, for that matter. It can’t smell, require hauling chips or sawdust or dirt back and forth, or anything too exotic. It can’t cost more than a toilet does now, and it has to look pretty much the same as our ubiquitous Thomas Crapper invention, or no one will use it. Now I’m a chemical engineer, and I’ve been thinking about this for a long time. What we need is a little chemical factory that fits into a standard toilet and magically delivers fertilizer to our garden. You won’t believe this, but yesterday I was in Safeway reading the latest Popular Science, and in the What’s New section was a little blurb on a Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation initiative to build a toilet without use of utility water, is cheap, and produces fertilizer and energy as products. Ureka! The problem is that this challenge is for poor countries! Why is it that all the design innovations are being done for poor countries and not for us rich, non-austere folks?!! Anyway, it’s good to know that the sharpest minds in the world are working on this problem. Judging by some of the winners so far, the solution is way overdone. The answer is to get our waste — which is optimally made (through co-evolution) to be used by microorganisms in soil as food — to its proper place in the proper concentration. Maybe I’ll enter the competition…
Household garbage processing instead of garbage and recycling hauling. I remember trash compactor commercials from the days I used to watch television. In the 60s and 70s, we were still sure that technology could solve all our household problems, and trash compactors were one of the many gadgets you could buy to play with. Now we have iPhones… But what I’m looking for here is a system that allows you to process ALL your garbage — recyclables, traditional trash, compost, you name it — right in the comfort of your own home or apartment or condo. Remember, the waste business is big, really big, and Waste Management (or whatever they call themselves these days) will break your knees to get that business, or you might end up in a landfill if you dare to compete. But I can always wish upon a star, can’t I? Well, I’m afraid I don’t have an answer for this one yet, but if you know of someone that hasn’t been disposed of because they had this bright idea of a household trash processing system, please get me their number, will you? Now imagine, if you will, a world without landfills…
Such little things I want. Well, I would really like an iPad3 and an iPhone5 when they come out, and don’t get me started on software I want…
Well, I hope you had a merry little Christmas, a happy Chanukah, or a great holiday season, however you celebrate the winter solstice time, this past December and/or January. And that you got whatever you wanted. Oh, did I talk about an electric razor that can carve out the perfect goatee, and leave the rest of my face soft and smooth as a baby’s? I want one of those, too. And I almost forgot, I could really use a cat door that doesn’t break when the cats come racing in after a cat fight outside.
O.K., Bob, I feel my status as writer-of-the-strangest-posts-on-the-Edge is now in jeopardy. I’m having a hard time coming up with anything that might be stranger than posting a Santa wish list two months late (or ten months early) to mark the beginning of Lent (a time traditionally devoted to fasting and self-sacrifice).
I’m wondering if maybe you rediscovered a bottle of something potent that you hid from yourself while celebrating the winter solstice. If so be careful with that stuff, or you’ll be trick-or-treating on Yom Kippur!
In which case, I will give you an earth-friendly chocolate bar and wish that you be written into the comedy of life for the new year.
Better late than never! I’m reminded of the Crazy Eddie commercials in New York in the 70s and 80s. It’s Christmas in July (or August)!
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x514qj_crazy-eddie-commercial-compilation_shortfilms
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4yYGoO5imyY
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2dyxc_crazy-eddie-commercials-1980s_shortfilms
Dude, now I know how you got addicted to electronic toys.
We must remember these commercials when we start kicking into high-gear with advertising sales on the Edge. I’ll wear the Superman outfit if you’ll be John Travolta. Think of all the starving investigative journalists we’ll be able to employ!
OK. The first annual update of my Chanukah wish list, actually published DURING CHANUKAH! Amazing!
Using the numbers from above, I’ll let readers know what’s going on with my wishes from last year. Then I’ll make some new wishes for this year.
1. Toothpaste tubes that don’t break. I’m happy to report that my new and improved Tom’s toothpaste tubes have not broken at all this past year! Great improvement! I haven’t sent any of the tubes back to Tom’s yet. Gotta get to that. Complete the loop, you know!
2. Clothes hangars that don’t tangle. Haven’t actually purchased these yet. Gotta get to that!
3. Toilets. I’m happy to report that the Bill & Melinda Gates Toilet Challenge has been won by the California Institute of Technology, with a toilet that uses solar energy to disinfect and recycle human waste without water. Very cool! Only problem is that it is slated for third-world countries, and not here where it’s needed. But maybe they’ll sell the plans and I can have one built in my house! Take a look at the video of the winning design.
4. Household garbage processing. No progress. I still think about it each time I deposit something in the garbage can. Gotta get to this!
Nobody has come forward with a cat door that won’t break, or a razor that can shave anywhere near close enough without hurting. This reminds me that I’m looking for a way to crowdsource these ideas into reality. If enough people worked on the problems, I’m sure they could come up with solutions. I’ve looked for websites that would do this, but can’t seem to find any. Anybody have any ideas? Maybe we need to develop an idea crowdsourcing site.
My new wishes are for a system to replace passwords and a way to get the world to act on climate change. Just small wishes, really…
Your criteria for an eco-crapper reminds me of the food materializers on Star Trek. Presumably, the natty crew of the Starship Enterprise never needed to worry about the mess associated with growing and processing food. Surely Spock also had a toilet like the one you want.
Toward that end, maybe the holiday marketeers at Ronco will invent some gadget that bypasses our modern aversion to night soil. Or, as you suggest, some techno-moguls will sell us the intel to deal with our poop in more pleasantly responsible ways.
This Ronco? I never heard of them or him. But I get the reference to Star Trek. According to Gene Roddenberry, all the technological and scientific hoo-dads on the show were for convenience, in order that the viewer didn’t get caught up in the “how could they do that” problem, and focus on the issues brought up. That said, the communicator became the cell phone, and the tablet on The Next Generation became the iPad. I don’t think they ever showed how they dealt with human waste.
Yes, that Ronco. I think they were the company that advertised lots of handy-dandy gizmos when I was a lad.
As long as we’re on the subject of Chanukah, here’s a great video of Chanukah with an twist of Apple:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ODy0ZZE8gJo
And showing there’s really an app for everything, here’s the iHanukkah app:
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/ihanukkah/id401629889?mt=8
As it says above, “Now I am known in my family as one hard to buy presents for. I usually ask for the chance to take a hike, alone, or a backrub, or my favorite — a tree-planting party!” This Christmas, I decided, rather spontaneously, that in addition to not requesting any presents for myself, that I would reciprocate by not buying anything for my family, friends or even charities. Well, my wife did get me Cadbury’s Rum and Raisin Chocolate, a raccoon ornament and a Christmas-themed salt and pepper shaker set. And today as I was doing the Christmas version of “All Kinds of Folk” at KMUN, a colleague there gave me some dark chocolate covered black walnuts that were amazing. To them, and to all our family and friends who have already sent us Christmas and Chanukah cards and gifts, thank you very much!
I will get around to giving back to my wife, David, and all the others, in time. But the whole commercial side of the holidays (and in general) has soured for me over time.
Every day there’s extensive advertising from “local” chain stores in our newspaper, often way outweighing the paper itself. As Christmas approached, I was asked in e-mail to provide funds for all the great organizations I’ve given my e-mail address to at some time in the past. Most of my snail mail is solicitation from these and other great environmental organizations that somehow got my address. And don’t even get me going on the telephone solicitation…
Even in my web work for non-profits, I’ve had to take second fiddle to fundraising, which ramps up this time of year. I’ve come to realize that we’ve ingrained charity into the holidays, along with the guilt of not giving. Commercially, so much of business supposedly occurs around this time of year that our economy in general is affected by our spending habits, and the media report on holiday sales as top stories.
Well, I’m sick of it. What we need at this dark time of year is not buying, or even giving, things. We need to renew our spirit, reconnect with all living and non-living things, and even disconnect with some of our usual connections.
My holiday wish for all is a release of the pressure of buying, giving, getting together with certain people only, and not others, having to be places at certain times, and all the other pressures of the holiday season. May your holiday season be merry and bright, relaxing and stress-free!