#Environmental Service

[robbincenijn]

Stena / Future Vision / w. GiantAnt / 2019

[siglo-group]

Siglo Group - Ecologists association in Austin, Texas

Siglo Group integrates ecology into land management and design, community planning, and geographic assessments.

[environmental-service]

Environmental Services - Key to a Wonderful World

Our lives have been made easier by the new technology we have now because of our great intelligence. We all work hard to have a good life and enjoy all the things we can have. Having huge houses full of appliances is the most comfortable thing for us because with it all we have to do is to relax and live the life to the fullest. We can even go to beautiful places no matter how far it is from our homes because of different ways transportation that we had invented. Humans are indeed the most intelligent being in this world that deserves to have the best way of living this life.

New technology had changed our lifestyle like our ways of transportation. We can travel by land, sea or air depending on what we like and what we can afford. Appliances have also been invented to give ease in our daily works at home and at work. We can even have enough time to spend with our family like having a vacation with them in the most beautiful places. On the other hand, more destructive disasters are occurring because of the effects of the new technology in the environment. Some of it has marked in our memories like the tsunami in Thailand and lately the earthquake in Haiti. These things should give us a clue to realize what we would do now to prevent more disasters to occur.

Environmental Service

Seeing through the photos and videos of the worst effects of the disasters both in humans and in the nature will make us think of why did this happen and what can we do to resolve this. Helping the victims is what we can do after the disasters happen but the fact is that we can help them more before a tremendous thing would happen. We can join non-profit organizations in their activities for a better world like providing good environmental services that our mother nature needs now.

 It is good that we are worrying with others but what we should also be worrying about is the worst problem of our planet. Our environment needs our help in retaining its healthiness because our fault caused this destruction. Some of us are engaged in illegal logging which cause flash floods, dynamite fishing that caused polluted water and most of all our carelessness even caused spills that are harmful to all living things. These things we did can make help us earn a lot but it causes a lot of trouble and worst of it is that our family can even be a victim of these disasters. Vist https://www.ecowastecompacting.com/

  Now is the time for us to act to prevent more tremendous things to happen because we do not know it can be worst. There are a lot of ways we can do which are part of environmental services that our environment needs. Housewives can practice proper disposal at home and recycle the non-biodegradable garbage. Teens can now join some organizations in their eco-friendly activities while factories can practice proper disposal of toxic wastes. By this, our environment will be clean and we can enjoy bountiful fruits and vegetables. We can even have great amount of potable water and prevent epidemic illnesses as well. Healthy environment can cause a healthy body and life to all of us. All we need to do is help the planet because it provides all we need to live.

Resource

[adhdandcomics]

whoever needs to hear this: if you got a disability, if you don’t know if you have something, if you ever think “it’s not that bad” if you have a thing about guilt, if you’re ill, Anything: listen. it is okay to throw things away.

you can throw it away. if it sucks and it stresses you the fuck out, if you just “need the right time to fix it” for the past 3 months. or years. if you loved it once upon a time but it makes you feel kinda weird and guilty now. if it’s a jacket youve reaaaally been meaning to mend and then donate. a jar of sauce that “all you have to do” is clean out to recycle but it’s been a week and now there’s a small colony growing in it. slowly shredding to bits fabric scraps you plan to use to fix something. busted picture frame. cracked mug. old shoes. extra box. an entire pack of granola bars that you hate so much but don’t want to waste.

life is already so goddamn difficult for us. i know you still care about recycling and the environment and sustainability. but it’s okay, i promise. sometimes you have to take care of your space. sometimes you have to cut your losses so you can actually have energy to recycle the next thing. get rid of the old shirt before it turns into a tornado pile of guilt under the bed. you’re not a bad person. you can throw this one away.

[byler-alarmist]

Do people know most paper receipts are harmful to their health?

I'm going to get up on my soapbox for a minute, but do people realize how pretty much everyone is being overloaded with endocrine disruptors like BPA/BPS on a near-daily basis??

I don't think many people understand that ever since most of the world transitioned to thermal paper receipts (cheaper than ink), almost every receipt you handle from the gas station to the grocery store to the Square terminal printer at the local co-op is coated with Bisphenol-A (BPA) or its chemical cousin Bisphenol-S (BPS).

These chemicals have not only been proven to cause reproductive harm to human and animals, they've also been linked to obesity and attention disorders.

Not sure if your receipt is a thermal receipt? If you scratch it with a coin and it turns dark, it's thermal.

BPA/BPS can enter the skin to a depth such that it is no longer removable by washing hands. When taking hold of a receipt consisting of thermal printing paper for five seconds, roughly 1 μg BPA is transferred to the forefinger and the middle finger. If the skin is dry or greasy, it is about ten times more. 

Think of how many receipts you handle every day. It's even worse for cashiers and tellers, who may handle hundreds in a single shift. It is also a class issue, since many people who work retail and food service are lower-income and will suffer worse health consequences over time from the near-constant exposure.

Not only that, receipts printed with thermal ink are NOT recyclable, as they pollute the rest of the paper products with the chemicals.

People don't know this and recycle them anyway, so when you buy that "green" toilet paper that says "100% recycled"? Yup, you are probably wiping your most sensitive areas with those same chemicals (for this reason, I buy bamboo or sugarcane toilet paper as a sustainable alternative to recycled paper).

This page from the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency has some good links if you want to learn more.

As consumers, we need to demand better from our businesses and from our governments. We need regulation of these chemicals yesterday.

If you are a buyer or decision-maker for a business, the link above also contains a shortlist of receipt paper manufacturers that are phenol-free.

If you work at a register, ask customers if they want a receipt. If they don't and you can end the transaction without printing one, don't print one!

As a consumer, fold receipts with the ink on the inside, since that's where the coating is. Some more good tips here.

And whatever you do, DO NOT RECYCLE THERMAL RECEIPTS

[nyxelestia]

Environmental Storytelling

[er-cryptid]

Sphenopsida

-- often called "horsetails"

-- tracheophytes

-- only 25 living species

-- true land plants

-- vascular

-- true roots, stems, and leaves

-- small leaves

-- scale-like pattern on leaves

-- grow in tropical and temperate climates

-- use alteration of generations

-- cell walls in leaves and stems contain silica

.

Patreon

[organicmatter]

vintage woodsy owl poster

[landgraabbed]

i know that generative ai is today's boogeyman but i really wish that people were more precise when discussing it. ai is a huge field that isn't just "create thing based on stolen assets", there's many legitimate uses in medicine, research, etc. your beef is with generative ai, not ai in general.

[robbincenijn]

Stena / Future Vision / w. GiantAnt / 2019

[environmental-service]

Environmental Services

Environmental services are available to keep your family and living space safe. Not only can they protect the condition of your home, but they can help keep your air quality clean and protect your home from molds and asbestos. Here are a few useful environmental services you may be interested in for your home or business.

Environmental Service

 1. Mold remediation is one of the top environmental services there is. Molds are formed in moist areas and should not be left alone or ignored. You cannot wipe or paint over mold to solve the problem. A professional mold remediation service needs to be done if you want to successfully rid your home of the fungus. A few dangers of mold are heightened allergies, an unstable building foundation, and an unhealthy air quality. The last thing you want is to live in a poor air quality, and it is certainly not a condition that should be exposed to infants and small children.

 2. Asbestos abatement is another important environmental service. Asbestos can be found in a number of places like pipes and furnace insulation, floor tiles, old homes, and more. It is a dangerous mineral fiber that is used in a number of fire-retardant insulation materials. It is constantly warned that only a licensed person should remove asbestos from a building. If asbestos is disturbed or improperly removed, serious health risks are at hand. The last thing you want is the fibers getting into your breathing air. Special materials and knowledge of the substance are required in order to safely and thoroughly guarantee the problem is permanently removed from a building.

 3. Being that every building has a certain amount of radon in it; radon mitigation is a very useful service. This is an easy and practical service that helps home and business owners maintain a safe level of radon in their building. Since radon is odorless and colorless, it is nearly impossible to locate the radioactive gas without the help of a trained home inspector. In order to obtain a healthy air quality, there should be no more than 4pCi/L of radon present. Vist https://www.ecowastecompacting.com/

 These are just a few of the top environmental services there are available. It is not worth it to leave mold, radon, or asbestos in your home. Not only can they be hazardous to your health, but the condition of your home is at risk. These are practical services that go a long way to provide a safe living environment.

Resource

[tomorrowusa]

More climate news that Republicans will tell you to ignore.

This is by Jeff Masters, a professional meteorologist and co-founder of Weather Underground – a pioneering weather site started in 1995.

September 2023 smashed the record for the most extreme month for heat in Earth’s history, recording the highest departure from average of any month in analyses dating back to 1850, said NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information on October 13. NOAA, NASA, Berkeley Earth, and the European Copernicus Climate Change Service all rated September 2023 as the warmest September on record, crushing the previous September record by a huge margin. And famed climate scientist James Hansen warned today that the world is on the verge of exceeding the 1.5 degree Celsius warming threshold seen as key to protecting the world’s people and ecosystems — a claim still hotly contested within climate science. According to NOAA, September global temperatures spiked to a remarkable 1.44 degrees Celsius (2.59°F) above the 20th-century average. The September 2023 global temperature anomaly of 0.46°C (0.83°F) surpassed the previous record-high monthly anomaly from March 2016 by 0.09°C (0.16°F). Using NASA data, September 2023 was 1.7 degrees Celsius above the temperature of the 1880-1899 period, which is commonly called “preindustrial” (the difference between the 1951-1980 baseline reported on the NASA website and the 1880-1899 period is 0.226°C). This is the first time that a monthly temperature has exceeded 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial temperature threshold in the NASA database.

Rightwingers make up bizarre excuses to keep us using fossil fuels. It's not unexpected that religion would make an appearance on the climate-denial stage. In the 2010s, hate monger Bryan Fisher told listeners and viewers that it was an insult to God not to use fossil fuels.

Back to reality...

The year-to-date period of January-September is the warmest on record globally. According to NOAA’s latest Global Annual Temperature Rankings Outlook and the statistical model it uses, there’s a greater than 99.5% chance of 2023 being the warmest year on record. At the start of this year, few experts foresaw 2023 as being a contender for Earth’s warmest year, as the bulk of El Niño’s warming comes during the second year of each El Niño rather than the first — so it’s possible that 2024 will be even warmer than this year.

There's a climate-denial industrial complex with deep pockets willing to spend big to buy politicians to keep fossil fuel corporations cranking out carbon.

We need to support viable candidates and politicians at every level of government who favor the transition to Earth-friendly energy.

[age-of-moonknight]

“An Unquiet Grave,” Moon Knight: City of the Dead (Vol. 1/2023), #4.

Writer: David Pepose; Penciler: Marcelo Ferreira; Inker: Jay Leisten; Colorist: Rachelle Rosenberg; Letterer: Cory Petit

[byler-alarmist]

Seeing as how my post is getting low engagement, I'm curious:

Bonus: reblog with your answer and if you like, your home country.

[quotelr]

Joyfully we undertake our daily work.

Lailah Gifty Akita, Pearls of Wisdom: Great mind

[dailyanarchistposts]

I.5.12 Would an anarchist society provide health care and other public services?

It depends on the type of anarchist society you are talking about. Different anarchists propose different solutions.

In an individualist-mutualist society, for example, health care and other public services would be provided by individuals or co-operatives on a pay-for-use basis. It would be likely that individuals or co-operatives/associations would subscribe to various insurance providers or enter into direct contracts with health care providers. Thus the system would be similar to privatised health care but without the profit margins as competition, it is hoped, would drive prices down to cost.

Other anarchists reject such a system. They are favour of socialising health care and other public services. They argue that a privatised system would only be able to meet the requirements of those who can afford to pay for it and so would be unjust and unfair. In addition, such systems would have higher overheads (the need to pay share-holders and the high wages of upper management, most obviously, and not to mention paying for propaganda against “socialised” medicine) as well as charge more (privatised public utilities under capitalism have tended to charge consumers more, unsurprisingly as by their very nature they are natural monopolies).

Looking at health care, for example, the need for medical attention is not dependent on income and so a civilised society would recognise this fact. Under capitalism, profit-maximising medical insurance sets premiums according to the risks of the insured getting ill or injured, with the riskiest and most ill not being able to find insurance at any price. Private insurers shun entire industries as too dangerous for their profits due to the likelihood of accidents or illness. They review contracts regularly and drop sick people for the slightest reason (understandably, given that they make profits by minimising pay-outs for treatment). Hardly a vision to inspire a free society or one compatible with equality and mutual respect.

Therefore, most anarchists are in favour of a socialised and universal health-care system for both ethical and efficiency reasons (see section I.4.10). Needless to say, an anarchist system of socialised health care would differ in many ways to the current systems of universal health-care provided by the state (which, while called socialised medicine by its enemies is better described as nationalised medicine — although it should be stressed that this is better than the privatised system). Such a system of socialised health-care will be built from the bottom-up and based around the local commune. In a social anarchist society, “medical services .. . will be free of charge to all inhabitants of the commune. The doctors will not be like capitalists, trying to extract the greatest profit from their unfortunate patients. They will be employed by the commune and expected to treat all who need their services.” Moreover, prevention will play an important part, as “medical treatment is only the curative side of the science of health care; it is not enough to treat the sick, it is also necessary to prevent disease. That is the true function of hygiene.” [James Guillaume, “On Building the New Social Order”, pp. 356–79, Bakunin on Anarchism, p. 371] The same would go for other public services and works.

While rejecting privatisation, anarchists also reject nationalisation in favour of socialisation and worker’s self-management. In this we follow Proudhon, who argued that there was a series of industries and services which were “public works” which he thought best handled by communes and their federations. Thus “the control undertaking such works will belong to the municipalities, and to districts within their jurisdiction” while “the control of carrying them out will rest with the workmen’s associations.” This was due to both their nature and libertarian values as the “direct, sovereign initiative of localities, in arranging for public works that belong to them, is a consequence of the democratic principle and the free contract: their subordination to the State is … a return to feudalism.” Workers’ self-management of such public workers is, again, a matter of libertarian principles for “it becomes necessary for the workers to form themselves into democratic societies, with equal conditions for all members, on pain of a relapse into feudalism.” Railways should be given “to responsible companies, not of capitalists, but of WORKMEN.” [General Idea of the Revolution, p. 276, p. 277 and p. 151]

This was applied during the Spanish Revolution. Gaston Leval discussed “Achievements in the Public Sector” in his classic account of the collectives. Syndicates organised water, gas and electricity utilities in Catalonia, while the trams and railways were run more efficiently and cheaper than under capitalist management. All across Spain, the workers in the health service re-organised their industry on libertarian lines and in association with the collectives, communes and the unions of the CNT. As Leval summarised:

“For the socialisation of medicine was not just an initiative of militant libertarian doctors. Wherever we were able to make s study of villages and small towns transformed by the Revolution, medicine and existing hospitals had been municipalised, expanded, placed under the aegis of the Collective. When there were none, they were improvised. The socialisation of medicine was becoming everyone’s concern, for the benefit of all. It constituted one of the most remarkable achievements of the Spanish Revolution.” [Collectives in the Spanish Revolution, p. 278]

So the Spanish Revolution indicates how an anarchist health service would operate. In rural areas local doctors would usually join the village collective and provided their services like any other worker. Where local doctors were not available, “arrangements were made by the collectives for treatment of their members by hospitals in nearby localities. In a few cases, collectives themselves build hospitals; in many they acquired equipment and other things needed by their local physicians.” For example, the Monzon comercal (district) federation of collectives in Aragon established maintained a hospital in Binefar, the Casa de Salud Durruti. By April 1937 it had 40 beds, in sections which included general medicine, prophylaxis and gynaecology. It saw about 25 outpatients a day and was open to anyone in the 32 villages of the comarca. [Robert Alexander, The Anarchists in the Spanish Civil War, vol. 1, p. 331 and pp. 366–7]

In the Levante, the CNT built upon its existing Sociedad de Socorros Mutuos de Levante (a health service institution founded by the union as a kind of mutual benefit society which had numerous doctors and specialists). During the revolution, the Mutua had 50 doctors and was available to all affiliated workers and their families. The socialisation of the health care took on a slightly different form in Catalonia but on the same libertarian principles. Gaston Leval provided us with an excellent summary:

“The socialisation of health services was one of the greatest achievements of the revolution. To appreciate the efforts of our comrades it must be borne in mind that they rehabilitated the health service in all of Catalonia in so short a time after July 19th. The revolution could count on the co-operation of a number of dedicated doctors whose ambition was not to accumulate wealth but to serve the afflicted and the underprivileged. “The Health Workers’ Union was founded in September, 1936. In line with the tendency to unite all the different classifications, trades, and services serving a given industry, all health workers, from porters to doctors and administrators, were organised into one big union of health workers … “Our comrades laid the foundations of a new health service … The new medical service embraced all of Catalonia. It constituted a great apparatus whose parts were distributed according to different needs, all in accord with an overall plan. Catalonia was divided into nine zones . .. In turn, all the surrounding villages and towns were served from these centres. “Distributed throughout Catalonia were twenty-seven towns with a total of thirty-six health centres conducting services so thoroughly that every village, every hamlet, every isolated peasant in the mountains, every woman, every child, anywhere, received adequate, up-to-date medical care. In each of the nine zones there was a central syndicate and a Control Committee located in Barcelona. Every department was autonomous within its own sphere. But this autonomy was not synonymous with isolation. The Central Committee in Barcelona, chosen by all the sections, met once a week with one delegate from each section to deal with common problems and to implement the general plan … “The people immediately benefited from the projects of the health syndicate. The syndicate managed all hospitals and clinics. Six hospitals were opened in Barcelona … Eight new sanatoriums were installed in converted luxurious homes ideally situated amidst mountains and pine forests. It was no easy task to convert these homes into efficient hospitals with all new facilities.” [The Anarchist Collectives, Sam Dolgoff (ed.), pp. 99–100]

People were no longer required to pay for medical services. Each collective, if it could afford it, would pay a contribution to its health centre. Building and facilities were improved and modern equipment introduced. Like other self-managed industries, the health service was run at all levels by general assemblies of workers who elected delegates and hospital administration.

We can expect a similar process to occur in the future anarchist society. It would be based on self-management, of course, with close links to the local commune and federations of communes. Each hospital or health centre would be autonomous but linked in a federation with the others, allowing resources to be shared as and when required while allowing the health service to adjust to local needs and requirements as quickly as possible. Workers in the health industry will organise their workplaces, federate together to share resources and information, to formulate plans and improve the quality of service to the public in a system of generalised self-management and socialisation. The communes and their federations, the syndicates and federations of syndicates will provide resources and effectively own the health system, ensuring access for all.

Similar systems would operate in other public services. For example, in education we expect the members of communes to organise a system of free schools. This can be seen from the Spanish revolution. Indeed, the Spanish anarchists organised Modern Schools before the outbreak of the revolution, with 50 to 100 schools in various parts funded by local anarchist groups and CNT unions. During the revolution everywhere across Spain, syndicates, collectives and federations of collectives formed and founded schools. Indeed, education “advanced at an unprecedented pace. Most of the partly or wholly socialised collectives and municipalities built at least one school. By 1938, for example, every collective in the Levant Federation had its own school.” [Gaston Leval, quoted by Sam Dolgoff, Op. Cit., p. 168] These schools aimed, to quote the CNT’s resolution on Libertarian Communism, to “help mould men with minds of their own — and let it be clear that when we use the word ‘men’ we use it in the generic sense — to which end it will be necessary for the teacher to cultivate every one of the child’s faculties so that the child may develop every one of its capacities to the full.” [quoted by Jose Periats, The CNT in the Spanish Revolution, p. 70] The principles of libertarian education, of encouraging freedom instead of authority in the school, was applied on vast scale (see section J.5.13 for more details on Modern Schools and libertarian education).

This educational revolution was not confined to collectives or children. For example, the Federacion Regional de Campesinos de Levante formed institutes in each of its five provinces. The first was set up in October 1937 in an old convent with 100 students. The Federation also set up two universities in Valencia and Madrid which taught a wide variety of agricultural subjects and combined learning with practical experience in an experimental form attached to each university. The Aragon collectives formed a similar specialised school in Binefar. The CNT was heavily involved in transforming education in Catalonia. In addition, the local federation of the CNT in Barcelona established a school to train women workers to replace male ones being taken into the army. The school was run by the anarcha-feminist group the Mujeres Libres. [Robert Alexander, Op. Cit., p. 406, p. 670 and pp. 665–8 and p. 670]

Ultimately, the public services that exist in a social anarchist society will be dependent on what members of that society desire. If, for example, a commune or federation of communes desires a system of communal health-care or schools then they will allocate resources to implement it. They will allocate the task of creating such a system to, say, a special commission based on volunteers from the interested parties such as the relevant syndicates, professional associations, consumer groups and so on. For example, for communal education a commission or working group would include delegates from the teachers union, from parent associations, from student unions and so on. The running of such a system would be, like any other industry, by those who work in it. Functional self-management would be the rule, with doctors managing their work, nurses theirs and so on, while the general running of, say, a hospital would be based on a general assembly of all workers there who would elect and mandate the administration staff and decide the policy the hospital would follow. Other interested parties would have a say, including patients in the health system and students in the education system. As Malatesta argued “the carrying out and the normal functioning of public services vital to our daily lives would be more reliable if carried out … by the workers themselves who, by direct election or through agreements made with others, have chosen to do that kind of work and carry it out under the direct control of all the interested parties.” [Anarchy, p. 41]

Needless to say, any system of public services would not be imposed on those who did not desire it. They would be organised for and by members of the communes and so individuals who were not part of one would have to pay to gain access to communal resources. However, it is unlikely that an anarchist society would be as barbaric as a capitalist one and refuse entry to people who were ill and could not pay, nor turn away emergencies because they did not have enough money. And just as other workers need not join a syndicate or commune, so doctors, teachers and so on could practice their trade outside the communal system as either individual artisans or as part of a co-operative. However, given the availability of free medical services it is doubtful they would grow rich doing so. Medicine, teaching and so on would revert back to what usually motivates people to initially take these up professions — the desire to help others and make a positive impact in society.

Thus, as would be expected, public services would be organised by the public, organised in their syndicates and communes. They would be based on workers’ self-management of their daily work and of the system as a whole. Non-workers who took part in the system (patients, students, etc.) would not be ignored and would also play a role in providing essential feedback to assure quality control of services and to ensure that it is responsive to users needs. The resources required to maintain and expand the system would be provided by the communes, syndicates and their federations. For the first time, public services would truly be public and not a statist system imposed upon the public from above nor a system by which the few fleece the many by exploiting natural monopolies for their own interests.

So Public Services in a free society will be organised by those who do the work and under the effective control of those who use them. This vision of public services being run by workers’ associations would be raised as a valid libertarian reform under capitalism (not to mention raising the demand to turn firms into co-operatives when they are bailed out during an economic crisis). Equally, rather than nationalisation or privatisation, public utilities could be organised as a consumer co-operative (i.e., owned by those who use it) while the day-to-day running could be in the hands of a producer co-operative.