Tag: consumer products

Noise Pollution: Shhhhhh!

  • Everywhere you go, there's bound to be something making noise. (Photo by Lester Graham)

We live in a world that’s filled with noise. But when things get
too loud, the sounds can affect us in all kinds of ways. Kyle
Norris talks to one man who says that loud noises are a health,
ethical, spiritual, and environmental issue:

Transcript

We live in a world that’s filled with noise. But when things get
too loud, the sounds can affect us in all kinds of ways. Kyle
Norris talks to one man who says that loud noises are a health,
ethical, spiritual, and environmental issue:


For Les Blomberg, it all started with a sound like this:


(Sound of Blomberg imitating buzzing)


That’s Blomberg imitating the sound of the street sweeper. It
would clean his street at four in the morning. Blomberg says he
had never thought much about noise pollution…until this
happened, and it made him all tired and cranky. Eventually
Blomberg got the city to change the time of day when it cleaned
the street.


This experience got him interested in the topic of noise
pollution:


“To me kind of at the core, noise is an issue of civility. How
you treat your neighbor. It’s an environmental issue. Noise is a
pollutant that we’re casting out. It’s a waste product. It’s kind of
like second hand smoke. It’s the waste product of our activities
that we’re casting out into the environment.”


Blomberg’s passion for noise pollution grew as he learned more
about it, and he realized it’s an under-rated, under-appreciated
problem. Now he runs the Noise Pollution Clearinghouse. It’s
an organization that tries to keep the peace and quiet, the
organization connects people with noise experts and activists.
It fights for stronger noise regulations and standards, and it tests
consumer products to find out which are the quietest.


Blomberg says people usually contact him with one of three
kinds of noise problems. Jets and helicopters (sound of jet),
highway noise (sound of highway), and noises from electronic
amplification (sound of music) — like loud stereos. People tell
him these noises ruin their sleep, concentration, and quality of
life… and all those things put people in bad moods and can ruin
how they deal with other people.


Loud noises also trigger a physiological response in our bodies.
That’s what Les Blomberg says:


“When we were evolving, when things were noisy it was
usually a warning that something wrong was happening. If the
lion walk through camp and you didn’t hear it coming, you
would be breakfast for that critter. And so we evolved to deal
with that. Our hearing works twenty-four hours a day, it can
wake us up if we hear noises in our environment.”


As humans evolved, Blomberg says that loud noises would
trigger a quick little shot of adrenaline, leading to fight or flight.
He says we still go through this stress response today, when we
hear a loud noise, even though we know it’s only a siren or an
air conditioner and not a lion.


Loud, isolated noises like a street sweeper or a leaf-blower can
be temporarily problematic, but if you’re continuously exposed
to loud noises like these over time, they can lead to serious
damage. Each year in this country 30 million people suffer
from hearing losses.


Paul Kileny is the Director of Audiology & Electrophysiology
at the University of Michigan’s Health System. He says hearing
is the essence of human communication:


“People who have significant hearing loss they have a variety of
emotional problems. They withdraw. They isolate themselves
because they have trouble hearing. They don’t socialize.”


So loud noises aren’t just an inconvenience. They can bring
about real emotional problems. Les Blomberg with the Noise
Pollution Clearinghouse says we don’t have to live in a noisy
world. Technology has the ability to make things quieter.


Noise-cancellation systems and acoustic buffering can make
cars, appliances, and even lawn equipment quieter. Engineers
can make road surfaces quieter to drive on, but these changes
cost money and will have to come from the various industries
wanting to change.


Blomberg says that’s starting to happen, but slowly. He believes
loud noises are also an ethical issue. He says it’s like the golden
rule, of treating people the way you’d like to be treated and that
we can all do a “politeness check,” by making sure we’re not
imposing our sounds on our neighbors.


For the Environment Report, I’m Kyle Norris.

Related Links

Epa Launches Insulation Education Campaign

The EPA is embarking on a new public education campaign about the dangers of vermiculite insulation. Much of the attic insulation was made with ore that is contaminated with asbestos. Critics say the EPA waited longer than it should have to notify the public. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Tracy Samilton reports:

Transcript

The EPA is embarking on a new public education campaign about the dangers of vermiculite
insulation. Much of the attic insulation was made with ore that is contaminated with asbestos.
Critics say the EPA waited longer than it should have to notify the public. The Great Lakes
Radio Consortium’s Tracy Samilton reports:


The loose silvery brown insulation is
found in the attics of many homes built in the
60’s, 70’s, and
80’s. The mine where the tainted
vermiculite came from was shut down
13 years ago, after miners began
falling ill and dying. But it wasn’t until this month that
the EPA warned
homeowners that vermiculite insulation is dangerous and should be avoided.


Andrew Schneider is a reporter at the St. Louis Post Dispatch. He broke a story last year that the
White House had directed the EPA not to issue a public warning. But Schneider says the EPA
came under even more pressure from other places.


“A lot of it came not just from the press hammering away at them, but really good people within
the EPA who were raising hell with their own administrators.”


The EPA will distribute notices to hardware stores and state agencies, telling people how to
identify the insulation and to stay away from it. Removal should only be done by professionals.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Tracy Samilton.

Government Bans Lead Candle Wicks

The government is banning candles that contain lead in their wicks. A consumers’ group says the ban comes decades later than it should have come. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports:

Transcript

The government is banning candles that contain lead in their wicks. A consumers’ group says the
ban comes decades later than it should have come. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester
Graham reports:


A government agency, the Consumer Product Safety Commission, says it will ban lead-wick
candles beginning in October of this year. Lead is used in a small percentage of candles to make
the wicks straight. But lead can cause neurological damage, especially for infants and fetuses. In
the 1970s, the candle industry made a voluntary agreement with the government to stop using lead.
Peter Lurie is with the consumers’ organization, the Public Citizen’s Health Research Group.


“When the voluntary agreement failed, we re-petitioned the government and now, 30 years later,
we finally have what we all saw in the first place. In the meantime, of course, thousands of
American consumers have been needlessly exposed to significant levels of lead right there in the
home. And the blame for that can be put squarely at the foot of the industry and also to an agency
that simply didn’t do its job.”


The Consumer Product Safety Commission says it had an agreement with the industry. When it
became clear that the agreement was being violated, it took the action to ban the lead wicks.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, this is Lester Graham.

Economy Maintains Cycle of Sprawl

As businesses and governments struggle to find ways to revive the economy, Great Lakes Radio Consortium commentator James Howard Kunstler says that it’s time to re-scale the marketplace. And, ultimately, to re-think how we live and work:

Transcript

As businesses and governments struggle to find ways to revive the economy, Great Lakes
Radio Consortium commentator James Howard Kunstler says that it’s time to re-scale the
marketplace. And, ultimately, to re-think how we live and work:


Not long ago, The New York Times reported that car sales had fallen off 30 percent. The
paper commented that quote “strong auto sales this year have been a key contributor in
propping up consumer spending, which in turn has been the main impetus of economic
growth.”


Is that all our economy is about? Buying and selling cars? In a way, the answer is yes.
The U.S. economy is now based on the creation and maintenance of suburban sprawl and
all its furnishings and accessories.


What keeps the cycle going? The easiest credit the world has ever seen. Often to people
with poor records of repaying loans. What happens when the music stops, and the zero
percent “miracle loans” stop with it? What other economic activity is there in the United
States? We don’t make anything here anymore except movies, TV shows, and pop music,
and only a tiny percent of Americans can be in show biz.


We’ve outsourced the actual making of most mundane products to distant nations where
people work for peanuts. Everyday retail trade is conducted through so-called “efficient”
national chain stores. Behind this mask of efficiency, though, lies the wreckage of
America’s communities, and the complex, fine-grained networks of economic relations
that once supported them. In rural America, ruin and depression are rampant among
small farmers. Today, we subsist on Caesar salads which travel an average of 2,500
miles from field to table.


This a system primed for unwinding. We are fast becoming a nation reliant on everyone
but ourselves. More tragically, as it unwinds, we will be stuck with all the unsustainable
furnishings: the far-flung subdivisions of commodity housing; the redundant chain stores;
the countless miles of blacktop in need of continual repair; the gazillion cars that we can
no longer afford to replace. We’ll be stuck living in places that are not worth living in,
and not worth caring about, far from any food supplies, and with no networks of local
economic interdependency.


These are our prospects, and they can only be worsened by looming international military
mischief, Jihad, de-stabilized oil markets, and terrorism.


There’s really only one reasonable way out of this predicament: the re-scaling of
America. We face the enormous task of reconstructing local economic networks that add
up to real communities, which in turn add up to places worth caring about. It’s time to
re-size and downscale everything we do from farming to schooling to shopping. The
future is telling us very clearly that we have to start living locally, but we are not
listening, and we are not prepared.


James Howard Kunstler is the author of The Geography of Nowhere and other books. He
comes to us by way of the Great Lakes Radio Consortium.

Trash Transformed Into Trendy Fashion

  • This purse, made out of an old license plate and recycled motorcycle hubcabs, was created by Pittsburgh-based company Littlearth. Photo courtesy of Littlearth.

It’s estimated that Americans will spend about 295 billion dollars during the holiday season. Sooner or later, most of what we buy will end up in the garbage – filling the already crowded landfills. But one person’s trash is another person’s treasure. And as the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Karen Kelly reports, entrepreneurs are taking our garbage and turning it into trendy products:

Transcript

It’s estimated that Americans will spend about 295 billion dollars during the holiday season.
Sooner or later, most of what we buy will end up in the garbage – filling the already crowded
landfills. But one person’s trash is another person’s treasure. And as the Great Lakes Radio
Consortium’s Karen Kelly reports, entrepreneurs are taking our garbage and turning it into trendy
products:


(music playing)


At the Rec Room in St. Louis, Missouri, Angela Bergman is eyeing the store’s best-selling
product, a belt decorated with vintage bottle caps.


“It’s different, like everyone’s got the same old thing and that’s something not too many people
have.”


It’s called the soda cap belt and it was created by the Pittsburgh-based company called Littlearth.
The belt is made out of recycled rubber and the buckle is actually from the seat belt of a car.


Almost all of Littlearth’s products are made from recycled materials.


But Rec Room manager, Ed Sievers, says first and foremost, customers go for the style.


“Not the recycled, that’s certainly far secondary. It’s the fashion. They’re attracted to because of the
coolness and the fashion, basically.”


That’s exactly what Littlearth founder, Ava DeMarco, is striving for. She and her partner, Rob
Brandegee, started the company almost 10 years ago in the basement of their home.


Most entrepreneurs begin with an idea for a product. But Ava says they were inspired by
curbside shopping expeditions.


“We got old inner tubes and just went out and scrounged around for hub caps and license plates
and we’d bring all these found objects into our house and figure out how we could make them
into products with the equipment we had.”


Those strange materials have led to some pretty unusual items. For instance, there are purses
made out of old license plates. First, the plates are shaped into a cylinder. Then they’re closed
with a clasp. And plugged on either end with motorcycle hubcaps. They also make hair brushes
out of bicycle handlebars – the kind with tassels hanging off the end.


These days, the company sells its products in more than 2,000 stores across the U.S.


But no matter how much they grow, Ava says they’ll always start with a cool piece of trash.


“I like the whole idea of taking things out of the waste stream and making stuff that isn’t just like, ‘Oh, you made that at home,’ but it takes it beyond that and it’s just an amazing, unique, one of a
kind thing that’s really beautiful.”



“This clock was a chrome lampshade. That’s the cage of a fan. This is a clock made out of an old
lawnmower.”


Patti Smythe gives a tour of her store, The Garbage Palace in Toronto. She calls herself a dumpster diver. And while she runs a smaller business than Littlearth, her mission is the same – to
transform trash into treasure.


“These are our barbie angels and in the summer they’re called glamour barbies, so with old barbie dolls, we transform them into treetops. You put them on top of your Christmas tree. So that’s
what happens when Barbie dies. She becomes an angel.”


Smythe’s store is packed floor to ceiling with works of garbage art. There are the lamps made out
of old kettles and baking pans. Vinyl records are melted into vases. And broken chairs are
turned into tables. One has a giant film canister on top. Another is covered with a mosaic made
from broken plates. And, as a last resort, just about anything can be turned into a clock – the blade of a saw, a shoe tree or even a vintage blender.


Smythe says it’s not just about making money, it’s about inspiring others to do the same.


“I’d like to change people’s views. It isn’t garbage. We’re such a wasteful society: ‘Ugh, throw it out, we’ll get a new one,’ that kind of attitude. I’m trying to change that. It’s like, don’t throw it
out, make it into something else, you know?”


Smythe says she redirects literally tons of post-consumer waste every year. She keeps about a
quarter of what she finds and donates the rest to teachers to use in their art classes. At Littlearth,
Ava DeMarco recycles about 40 tons of rubber and 60 thousand license plates each year. Both
women say they love the thrill of discovering quirky items on the sidewalk. And they hope to
convince people to take a second look at their garbage and appreciate its hidden potential.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Karen Kelly.