Green Tech Girl

I was having a conversation with a friend today who was saying that the lifecycle of a Prius was actually worse than that of a Hummer due to the batteries. He cited a nickel mine where nothing grew for miles around due to the toxicity. I have yet to look this up to substantiate his claims, but what do you think? Do you think the environmental benefits of better gas mileage are outweighed by the toxic batteries in electric or hybrid cars?

I realize this is completely anti-environmental of me to say, but when I hear something like “there will be no more tuna in a few years,” there’s a big part of me that feels I should go out and eat as much of it as I can before it’s gone. Reverse psychology. So is telling people this going to help lower tuna consumption, or increase it?

Flint Michigan is responding to the shrinking of the city by razing old neighborhoods that have fallen into disrepair and returning the land to nature. Some folks are up in arms over this, thinking mistakenly that the city is taking over people’s property, but the property in question has been abandoned. So I think it’s a great idea! More here…

There’s a lot of resistance to San Francisco’s new recycling law:

Throwing orange peels, coffee grounds and grease-stained pizza boxes in the trash will be against the law in San Francisco, and could even lead to a fine.

The Board of Supervisors voted 9-2 Tuesday to approve Mayor Gavin Newsom’s proposal for the most comprehensive mandatory composting and recycling law in the country. It’s an aggressive push to cut greenhouse gas emissions and have the city sending nothing to landfills or incinerators by 2020.

My question is: Is it in anyway feasible to send “nothing” to landfills? Seems like a pipe dream to me. I would actually prefer that cities put energies into reclaiming methane gas from landfills as a viable alternative fuel source. If that were done with all landfills, there would be no need to sort out organic waste from the trash. Why waste a good fuel source?