#he is 100% recycled everything I used to make him was collected from the trash

[artificialflav]

Years ago I made this frog toy, from recycled fabric, and filled him with rice.

He is nameless, and has been squished under all my other stuffed animals for so long.

Pathetic creature, but has so much charm. A puddle of a man.

[the-bau-quinjet]

Round 1: Fruit Snacks

Bucky x reader

Summary: Steve, Sam, and Bucky try to prank you. Emphasis on try.

Warnings: none, well I guess manipulative crying? but in a funny way...

Word Count: 1384

a/n: my inspiration for this? A box of fruit snacks. What am I doing with my life?

Masterlist

You love fruit snacks. You've even made a definitive ranking of the best brands. Scooby snacks were the clear winner, but hard to find at the grocery store sometimes.

When Scooby Snacks were unavailable, you went for Welch's. Mostly because they came in a 96 pack and three out of five flavors were pretty good.

Whenever you're feeling sad or upset in any way, your go to is a bag of fruit snacks.

There was one especially tough day when you opened the bag only for it to be full of only orange and grape.

You burst into tears in the kitchen.

All this to say, it's become very clear to everyone in the house that you always have fruit snacks hidden somewhere in the kitchen.

You used to keep them in your room, but then you started eating way too many, so you moved them to the kitchen.

You hid them because, although you were willing to share, nobody would ever tell you when they were taking the last bag.

There's nothing quite like the minor inconvenience of reaching into the box for a bag of fruit snacks, and then having it be empty. It really ruins a day.

So, when you went into the kitchen for a bag of fruit snacks, and all of your hiding places were empty, you were perturbed to say the least.

Bucky, Sam, and Steve were sitting around the island, watching as you looked in seemingly random cabinets and containers.

You huffed angrily, moving to check the one of the last spots they could be. It was you're holy grail of hiding places.

You opened the freezer drawer, pulling out a box of plant based burgers. Under that box was a another box, this time of sugar-free, dairy-free, fat-free ice cream bars.

You opened the ice cream bar box, tipping it over to empty the contents onto the counter.

The ice cream slid across the island, but no fruit snacks came out of the box.

You took a deep breath, trying not to scream. You really just needed fruit snacks right now, and there appeared to be none anywhere.

You refused to make eye contact with any of the guys, knowing it would set you off. Instead, you collected the nasty ice cream bars, dumping them into the trash.

ou really wished they tasted good, but apparently they aren't even useful for hiding your good snacks.

The three men all had their eyes on you, waiting for a reaction. You didn't know which one of them found all your fruit snacks, but you weren't going to give them the satisfaction.

If they wanted a prank war, so be it.

With tears in your eyes, you recycled the cardboard box. Then you finally turned to look at them, watching as their expressions quickly shifted into that of concern.

"I'm going to the store, do you need anything?" You stuttered through the question, trying to play up how upset you were. You waited a minute for one or more of them to answer, when nothing came you turned back toward the door.

"Y/N, what's wrong?" Bucky called as you reached the door.

Hook. Line. Sinker.

"It's just been a tough day. I- It's stupid. I'll see you guys later." You turned around again, walking slightly slower than normal.

Bucky jumped off his chair, running to stop you before you left the kitchen. It must have been his idea to eat all of your fruit snacks. He grabbed your should, spinning you around.

"It's not stupid if it's got you this upset. Talk to me, please?"

You waited a beat before pulling him into a long hug. You pretended to cry more, waiting for him to ask what was wrong again.

"Doll, what's got you so upset?" He rubbed your back, unaware of the devious smirk on your face.

You spoke into his chest, leaving your head buried there. "I just, everything is going wrong today. I woke up late, so Tony was annoyed with me. I spent 3 hours trying to fix this piece of tech, only to realize it wasn't working because it wasn't freaking plugged in. I had to rewrite my code for Redwing's updates four times because it kept getting deleted."

You whined as you listed the events of your day. It really was a shitty day, hence the need for fruit snacks.

"Then I dropped my lunch on the floor, so I just ate an apple. I stubbed my toe on the way to training, so it hurt the whole time. I spent ten minutes looking for my phone while I was using it to call someone. I stepped in a puddle, so now my socks are wet."

You took a deep breathe, really laying on the guilt for the last part.

"And when I went to get fruit snacks to cheer myself up, they were all gone."

You hugged him tighter before pulling away, wiping the fake tears from your face.

"So now I'm going to the store. Hopefully nothing else goes wrong because I don't know if I can take it." You leaned your head back, dramatically trying to get the tears to subside.

"Hey, it's okay." Bucky continued to rub your arms, trying to soothe you. "Why don't you go make some tea or something, and I'll go to the store for you?"

You gave him a small, watery smile. "You would do that for me?"

"Of course, Doll. Steve and Sam will come too." He glared at them over your head.

"You guys are the best." You gave them all a hug as they left the kitchen, smirking to yourself once they were gone.

-

"Y/N, we're back!" Sam called from the elevator, expecting you to still be in the kitchen.

The three men walked down the hall, stopping in their tracks when they saw you.

You were sitting on the couch, fruit snacks in hand, watching a movie with Nat and Wanda.

"What the hell?" Bucky looked between you and the fruit snacks in your hand.

"Where did you even get those?" Steve asked incredulously.

"Well, when the frozen fruit snacks are missing, I know I'm being punked." You smirked at them, laughing with Nat and Wanda.

"So- you..." Bucky trailed off, disbelief clouding his thought process.

"A few waterworks and you three were putty in my hands." You walked toward them, taking the grocery bag with the fruit snacks. "Thanks for the refill." You winked, walking past them into the kitchen.

They stood frozen in shock for a minute, before following you down the hall.

"But how did you know it was us?" Sam asked.

"Why else would the three of you be sitting on the bar stools at the island? You were 100% waiting for a meltdown that I never gave you." You smirked as you hid the bags in different cabinets.

"You never answered my question." Steve stated, still curious about your secret hiding place. "We looked everywhere for hidden fruit snacks."

You placed an arm on Bucky's shoulder as you jumped onto the island counter, unscrewing the top of the chandelier.

"Everywhere?" You questioned as you added a few bags to the compartment before screwing the lid back on. "I've got secret compartments all over the kitchen."

"Then why not just take one of those? Why send us to the store?" Sam asked, still incredulous that you got the three of them this badly.

"Well, I'm assuming you ate all the bags you did find?" You reached out, waiting for Bucky to help you down. He grabbed your waist, slowly lifting you setting you on the floor.

The three of them nodded.

"So I needed more." You shrugged, tossing the now empty box in the recycling as well.

"Was your day really that awful?" Bucky asked in a soft voice, feeling slightly used.

"It was." You smiled at him, moving to hug him again. "Thank you for caring. Honestly, it's really sweet." You kissed him on the cheek before turning to go back to your movie.

You couldn't stop yourself from calling one more thing over your shoulder as you left.

"This was round one boys, and I was only on the defensive. I'd say be prepared, but you'll never see me coming." You winked.

Part 2

Permanent taglist:

@averyhotchner

[arlingtonpark]

Winter 2020 Anime Round-Up

I decided to do a round-up of all the anime I’m watching this season because, turns out, most of the shows I was interested in were bad!

I.D. Invaded.

This is a psychological thriller sci-fi mystery type show. It’s about a police unit who uses this sci-fi technology to detect a killer’s murderous intent and create a sort of virtual reality projection of the killer’s mind.

They then take a special agent and insert him into the projection to hunt down clues and find the killer’s identity and whereabouts.

Enjoying this show is not cheap. It asks a lot of you.

1. Don’t laugh at how ham-fisted the exploration of how a killer’s mind works is.

2. Don’t laugh at the special agent’s official designation being “The Brilliant Detective.”

3. Don’t question the ridiculous premise of the show; they use a killer’s particles to create the projection of their mind to hunt for clues, but are later shown using those same particles to pinpoint the killer’s location.

4. Don’t laugh at one of the police unit’s agents being a teenage girl.

5. And, of course, don’t notice all the expository monologuing for the audience’s sake.  

The show is silly, but there’s some intriguing stuff in it. The conflict between the unit’s field squad and the desk workers can be good, though the locus of that conflict being about what seems to be a bureaucratic oversight is pretty weak.

The teenage girl is the most bald-facedly ridiculous thing about this show, but she is unironically the best character. She does some daring, crazy shit in this show and I was legitimately shocked by it.

Oh, yeah, I forgot.

6. Don’t laugh at the OP using recycled production materials and footage from the first episode.

Signs of a quality production right there.

 Plunderer.

>.<

This. Show.

I feel bad for Sarah Wiedenheft. She voices the main heroine in the dub. The in-over-her-head, naïve, helpless heroine, Hina.

God, help us!

Hina is a woman with a mission. She is bubbly and naïve, but stubborn and she gets in over her head by the end of the first episode. Why?

You know why, fool! So she can be rescued by the hero.

This show puts a creative spin on the typical shonen formula. Many shonen shows are designed to be wish fulfillment for teenage boys, with Mary Sue main characters for them to project onto.

The crazy spin on the formula here is that it’s wish fulfillment for sexual predators.

That’s not a joke.

The show takes place in a magical world where everyone is branded with a “count,” a number that increases whenever they complete a task specific to them.

Hina’s count goes up whenever she walks 100 km. Another’s count goes up whenever her food is complimented.

The count is denoted by a number that’s branded somewhere on their bodies. Hina’s count is located on her inner thigh, just below her crotch.

Meanwhile, this is what the hero does to Hina the first time they meet:

This is them at the end of the episode after he rescues her.

You know how in Dragon Ball, Master Roshi was this old pervert? The hero here is like that, except he’s young, not old, and a predator rather than just a pervert.

Licht is the hero; his count goes up whenever he dates someone, I guess, but the thing about him is that he’s a predator, so his count is actually -999. If your count reaches zero, you’re Kylo Ren-ed off into an abyss never to be seen again, so negative counts shouldn’t even be possible.

The reason the hero isn’t dead is because he’s actually.

Wait for it.

The Legendary Ace!

A badass fighter spoken of only in legends!

Who is this show even for?

It’s clearly supposed to be a wish fulfillment kind of show, but the only people I can see projecting onto the hero are, like, really, really pathetic people who fantasize about sexual assault.

(Another female character’s count is located on her left breast.)

The heroine is looking for this legendary ace, but even though she’s lived in this world her whole life, and has traveled throughout it her whole life, she knows nothing about how the count system works.

That was necessary, you see, for two reasons: so the system can be explained to us in monologue, and so the heroine can be made helpless and in need of rescue.

Those with a higher count have a high social status. This could have been a cool exploration of how luck is underappreciated as a factor in one’s social status, since how counts are determined is completely arbitrary and some are easier to increase than others, but no, we don’t get that.

People with a lower count must obey people with a higher count. But you’re in the military, there is an appeals process: if you have a lower count and are ordered by someone with a higher count to do something, you can challenge the high count to a duel and if you win, you can ignore their order.

You can then take the loser’s count and add it to your own.

These duels are called “star stakes.” >.<

Hina, naturally, is suckered into one of these duels and is about to lose everything when Licht saves her by agreeing to duel Hina’s opponent on her behalf.

And just to emphasize how infantilized Hina is in this show, Licht not only saves her physically, he even provides her with some emotional support, but phrased in a way that totally talks down to her.

 Asteroid in Love.

I’ve already seen the first episode three times, and I have no shame!

Doga Kobo is the Kyoto Animation of the past few years. Just as KyoAni made a name for themselves with a string of shows about cute girls doing cute things, Doga Kobo have sort of taken on that mantle.

Three Leaves, Three Colors; Gabriel Dropout; New Game; Senko-san; and now Asteroid in Love are all shows with good characters with good design work and animation better than they had any right to have.

This show is about a girl named Mira who meets a boy named Ao during a camping trip. He has a thing for astronomy and Mira is completely won over by it. They promise to discover and name an asteroid together.

Tragically, that one camping trip was the last they saw of each other.

Comically, they happen upon each other at the start of high school and wouldn’t you know it? Ao was a girl the whole time!

She was very tomboyish at that time in her life, so Mira mistook her for a boy.

But whatever, Mira’s friend still ships them.

They’re both passionate about astronomy, so they reconnect and become good friends real quick.

The friendship between Mira and Ao is by far the best part about this show; unfortunately, everything else is very generic.

High school club? Check.

Club member who’s boisterous and excitable? Check.

Club member who’s serious and down to earth? Check.

But in spite of all that, I could watch this show all day.

The presentation is excellent. The character designs are lovely and the direction and animation are amazing.

 Magia Record.

A spin-off of Puella Magi Madoka Magica. Magia Record takes place before Rebellion, but in an alternate universe where the events of Madoka Magica haven’t happened yet. There’s a new cast, but the main cast of Madoka Magica will be back as major characters.

InuCurry, who did the artwork for the witches’ labyrinths are back, this time as series co-directors and co-writers.

The Magica Quartet, the brain trust of people who created Madoka Magica, Gen Urobuchi, Akiyuki Shinbo, Ume Aoki, and Atsuhiro Iwakami, are back too. The four are collectively credited with coming up with the story.

Shinbo, who co-directed Madoka Magica, is back as an animation supervisor. Aoki is back in her role as character designer. Iwakami is co-credited with series planning.

Yukihiro Miyamoto, who co-directed the original series alongside Shinbo, is back as assistant director.

This show…it’s just good to see it all back. The character designs are a bit different from the original series, but they nailed the aesthetic otherwise.

Magia Record draws heavily from plot elements first used in Madoka Magica, but it’s not what I would call uninspired. Anyone who’s seen Madoka Magica will notice the callbacks, but they’re fun, not cringeworthy.

It reminds me of how The Force Awakens brought people back in to the Star Wars universe by heavily echoing A New Hope, but Magia Record is much more creative in its echoing than Force Awakens was.

Everyone who likes the OG series should check this out.

There’s already much intrigue in the story. A magical girl whose wish was granted, but also apparently simultaneously erased from existence, rumors of a city where magical girls can be “saved,” and a Kyubey who is a separate entity from the others.

The show is an adaptation of a mobile rpg. This is from a cutscene.

Iroha Tamaki, the main character of Magia Record, and Homura Akemi. 

Get excited.

 Bofuri.

This show is like Asteroid in Love, in that it would be totally boring if it weren’t totally charming.

This is the type of show that takes a silly phenomenon in the real world and makes it the premise of the whole show. Maple is a girl who’s just gotten into video games. Because she’s a newb, she puts all of her points into defense at the expense of even basic stuff like speed and strength.

Thus ensues hilarity.

There’s not much to talk about here. Maple is endearing as a video game noob. The artwork is great. The writing is legitimately funny in a subdued way.

A+

 Darwin’s Game.

I watched this show because the premise reminded me of King’s Game.

For those who don’t know, King’s Game is widely considered to be the worst anime ever made. It sucks.

King’s Game is about a death game administered over the phone and it the point is that everyone dies. It tries hard to do horror and it fails hard. I watch it every Halloween. :D

Darwin’s Game is about a mobile app game that pits players against each other in death matches. You win by killing all the other players.

With some shows it’s clear the writer can’t decide what they want to do. This show can’t decide if it wants to be trash or legit good.

Immediately you can tell this show is going to suck because the artwork is terrible. This is an ugly show to look at.

The show opens with a cold open clearly made to make the audience ask questions. It succeeds too well.

The opening depicts a random person being chased through the streets and then killed by an invisible furry.

Seriously.

By God, the fanservice in this show…

This doesn’t even fully capture the shamelessness of it. If you watch the episode, you’ll notice her dress has frills from the waist down.

Except for when we see her kneeling down, when her dress is suddenly a single piece of cloth. So we can better see her ass outlined through it.

Things temporarily get good when the main character has to fend off the furry from the opening. It really is thrilling, but everything goes back to crap when the mc has to fight the dress woman in the above picture.

He doesn’t kill her though. Oh, no, he doesn’t.

She becomes smitten by how strong he is and the episode ends with her asking him to bed her.

-barf-

[thetruthseekerway]

Managing Our Plastic Addiction

New Post has been published on http://www.truth-seeker.info/featured/managing-our-plastic-addiction/

Managing Our Plastic Addiction

By Asma Jarad

Managing Our Plastic Addiction

The invention of synthetic plastic in 1907 by Belgian-born American immigrant, Leo Hendrik Baekeland, gradually and completely changed life for people around the world. In the search for a substitute to shellac–a natural electrical insulator–Baekeland invented Bakelite. Because it provides endless possibilities with its unique ability to be molded into virtually anything, Bakelite was marketed as “the material of a thousand uses.”

Over time, plastic evolved even further and replaced our reliance on natural materials such as metal, wood, stone, and animal tusks, becoming the material of infinite uses. Indeed, the development of plastic has proven invaluable to people and the environment. However, as with all good things, there is always a price to pay. Unfortunately, plastic products show up in places we don’t want them to; piling up in landfills, blocking our waterways, and polluting our oceans.

We are endowed by our Creator for good, so how can we utilize plastic in the countless beneficial ways it is offered without harming our health and contaminating our environment?

Plastic Everywhere

In the 1960s, plastic began gaining popularity due to its exceptionally versatile characteristics. Our lives today are saturated with plastic products; from the medical field, tech devices, furniture, toys, car and plane parts, to food containers and drinking vessels; reliance on plastic is everywhere. In addition to being precisely moldable, plastic is light yet durable, provides a practical alternative to glass and ceramics, is cheap to produce, and sterile enough to be used in medical procedures and devices.

It is indeed difficult to imagine a day without plastics because they make our lives easier, healthier, and safer. For example, safety helmets people use for riding a motorcycle or bike are nearly 100% plastic. Plastics also furnish our lifestyles; whether it’s the cellphone in our hands, the clean water delivered to our faucets, the television mounted on our walls, or the structural foundations of our homes, innumerable lifestyle possibilities would not be available if not for plastic.

As practical human beings, we know that there is no such thing as an all-around good thing. Everything has its downfalls and when it comes to plastics, there is no exception. With increased reliance on plastic as an alternative to natural resources, we gradually learn the negative result of the proliferation of plastics in our lives. As we become increasingly aware of taking care of the environment and reducing our waste, we also cannot ignore the collecting plastic debris, piece by piece occupying vast miles of ocean space, clogging our waterways, and piling up in landfills. The troubling effect of plastic waste certainly cannot be disregarded.

Since the chemical structure of most plastics renders them resistant to natural processes of degradation, plastic pollution has become a leading environmental plague. According to Rick LeBlanc, an expert in the area of sustainable packaging, “Normally, plastic items can take up to 1,000 years to decompose in landfills. But plastic bags we use in our everyday life take 10-1,000 years to decompose, while plastic bottles can take 450 years or more.”

There are solutions to this epidemic which include what I learned in grade school as the 3 Rs: reuse, recycle, and reduce. According to Laura Parker, a National Geographic staff writer who specializes in covering climate change and marine environments, “A whopping 91% of plastic isn’t recycled. Billions of tons of plastic have been made over the past decades, and much of it is becoming trash and litter.”

When we reuse and recycle rather than tossing away, we reduce the need to create more plastic products, thus helping to stave off what many experts fear will be a time in the not so distant future where the ocean will be filled with more plastic waste than fish. Roland Geyer from the Bren School of Environmental Science & Management, specializes in industrial ecology and found that “The rapid acceleration of plastic manufacturing, which so far has doubled roughly every 15 years, has outpaced nearly every other man-made material.” Unlike other man-made materials such as steel, nylon, and glass, the lifespan of plastic products in our lives average under a year.

Tips for consuming less plastic as described by Stephanie R. Kinnon, a Vancouver-based freelance writer, include:

– Make an effort to purchase products with minimal plastic packaging.

– Use cloth bags for grocery shopping.

– Reuse plastic containers within your home. For example, plastic grocery bags can be reused for additional trips to the grocery store or as lunch bags, gym bags, and garbage can liners. Yesterday’s yogurt container can become tomorrow’s lunch pail. Old margarine containers can become storage vessels for an assortment of household items.

– Familiarize yourself with plastic recycling in your community.

Plastics on Our Health

In addition to the negative impact we inflict on the environment with our over-consumption, lack of recycling, and reliance on plastics, there is also a documented adverse effect on our personal health. For example, plastic containers are made with additives such as bisphenol-A (BPA), an industrial chemical that some experts claim is toxic because it binds to estrogen receptors and influences bodily processes such as cell repair, fetal development, growth, energy, reproduction, and fertility. When certain plastic containers are made, BPA is added to aid in product resiliency.

BPA is meant to remain sealed within the product, however, it commonly seeps into the food or beverages the container is holding. Given this information, BPA has been banned or restricted on several fronts, however the common replacements, bisphenol-S or bisphenol-F are similar to BPA in structure and toxic effect. To minimize BPA exposure, Aline Petre MS, RD, recommends avoiding packaged foods, drinking from glass bottles, being selective with toys, not microwaving plastic, and only buying powdered infant formula.

Whether we like it or not, plastics are here to stay. Despite the negativity surrounding them, plastics are critical to our modern lives. Without plastics, we would not have much of the technology we enjoy and depend on such as cell phones, computers, TVs, and lifesaving medical devices. Plastics’ versatility has raised our standard of living and helped shift reliance from natural materials in a safer, lighter, cheaper, reliable, and durable manner. It is incumbent upon each one of us to do our part in becoming plastic savvy to preserve our environment and protect our health.

We must reduce our waste by choosing reusable and recyclable plastics to keep them out of landfills as well as out of the water we share with other living creatures. When we are done with our plastic products, we should take responsibility for delivering them to reputable recycling centers where they are converted into other useful products. The benefits of recycling are far reaching as they include reducing the amount of waste sent to landfills and incinerators, conserving natural resources, preventing pollution by reducing the need to collect new raw materials, and saving energy.

As Muslims who seek to follow in the footsteps of our ultimate altruistic role model, Prophet Muhammad (Peace Be Upon Him), we should heed his teachings when he advised us to hold ourselves accountable for our actions and to avoid going into excess as reported by Abu Huraira, “Verily Allah likes three things for you and He disapproves three things for you.

He is pleased with you that you worship Him and associate nor anything with Him, that you hold fast the rope of Allah, and be not scattered; and He disapproves for you irrelevant talk, persistent questioning and the wasting of wealth.”—(Sahih Muslim, Book 30, Hadith 12. Wealth comes in many forms, including a healthy environment. In the Quran, God commands us to avoid wasting resources and to be mindful of our guardianship role. He says, “But seek, through that which Allah has given you, the home of the Hereafter; and [yet], do not forget your share of the world. And do good as Allah has done good to you. And desire not corruption in the land. Indeed, Allah does not like corrupters.” (Quran 28:77).

———

Asma Jarad is a Chicago-based freelance writer and editor published across multiple forums.

Reprinted from the Summer 2019 issue of Halal Consumer© magazine.

[biofunmy]

They Love Trash – The New York Times

JOSHUA TREE, Calif. — Soph Nielsen was sewing garbage onto her black T-shirt (a chicken wing, a crushed Bud Light can, a plastic fork) and struggling to attach a snarl of crusty pad thai.

“This is to get people to see the trash,” she said, her fingers slick with grease. “We don’t want to be the invisible janitors.” With her distinctive appliqués, that was unlikely.

It was the last day of the Joshua Tree Music Festival, a family-friendly event of didgeridoo sound baths, yoga, crafts, electronica and other familiar fare held at a dusty desert campground for three days in October. Ms. Nielsen, a 25-year-old artist whose medium is trash, was one of 20-odd Trash Pirates working the event.

The Pirates are a loose collective of waste management specialists, to borrow a phrase from Tony Soprano, who make sure events are as sustainable as possible through recycling and composting. They also educate attendees about how to do both properly.

Garbage has long been the uncomfortable fallout of the festival world, and as these gatherings multiply like glow sticks at a Phish concert, stretching the season into a year-round party (hola, Costa Rica), its impact has roused young artists and activists like Ms. Nielsen.

Most Pirates start out as volunteers, helping with trash or performing other tasks so as to attend for free. Then they have their “trash moment,” as the Pirates put it, the epiphany that turns volunteer work into a career, and trash into a calling.

“Your first experience of the mass of it, whether it’s loading dumpsters onto a trailer or driving out to the event grounds when everyone is gone and it’s a sea of trash, is an existential crisis,” Ms. Nielsen said. “You are baptized into compost.”

“You’re either in or you’re out,” she added, echoing the rallying cry of a long-ago counterculture movement that involved a bus, “and it becomes a way of life.”

The events themselves — both community-minded and escapist — are morphing into trash camps: days-long immersions into the politics of waste, with lectures and workshops on developing your garbage-handling skills along with your yoga practice.

Some trash stats are in order. In 2017, according to an environmental impact report, Coachella, in Indio, Calif., was generating over 100 tons of trash each day. Many events are now committed to becoming zero-waste endeavors, or as close to it as possible. High “diversion” rates (the percentage of waste not sent to the landfill) are badges of honor. Last spring, the Trash Pirates brought the Joshua Tree Music Festival’s rate up to 77 percent.

In 2017, Coachella’s diversion rate was just 20 percent, apparently because attendees weren’t using the recycling bins. Veterans of Burning Man and other festivals learn acronyms like MOOP, for “Matter Out of Place,” an umbrella term for trash and anything else that doesn’t occur naturally on a site; cigarette butts, broken tents and human waste are some common examples.

Burning Man has a “Leave No Trace” ethos, but the messy camps of bad Burners are called out each year on the festival’s MOOP Map in the hope that public shaming will be a deterrent next time around.

��Shepherds of the “Away’’’

While there are many waste organizations dedicated to mitigating the environmental impact of such gatherings, the Trash Pirates are distinguished by their zeal and their punk aplomb.

Take Moon Mandel, 24, a filmmaker and Trash Pirate who was managing the operations that weekend at Joshua Tree. Mx. Mandel is nonbinary, and with their bright orange jumpsuit emblazoned with patches stitched with trash graphics (the recycling whorl and other insignia) they looked like an indie Eagle Scout.

As Oscar the Grouch sang his gruff-voiced hymn “I Love Trash,” one of many trash-friendly songs on the Pirates’ playlist, Mx. Mandel said: “It’s very important for people to see the work we do and understand the human scope of it. We are trying to alter the cultural norms of a throwaway society. We teach them that there’s no ‘away.’ We are the shepherds of the ‘away’ and it’s being buried inside the earth forever.”

And so Mx. Mandel performed trash collections, dancing with colleagues as Oscar warbled under a festive tent with gaily painted bins, and sorting garbage (earning $5 a bag) for those campers too busy or negligent to do it themselves.

To attendees who had dutifully separated their food scraps and recyclables and were tipping them into the appropriate bins, Mx. Mandel called out a hearty, “Yarg!” their preferred Pirate cheer.

“Thank you for composting!” Mx. Mandel praised a young woman scraping scrambled eggs out of a frying pan, and then recited some recycling basics: “You can’t compost paper with too much printing on it, or recycle greasy paper. Single-use bags can be taken to supermarkets in California for recycling, so we are collecting them. Make sure everything is clean. You don’t need to rinse your soda or beer cans. But if your stuff is covered in yogurt, it’s not going to be recycled.”

Mx. Mandel has a policy about not working festivals where organizers are charging for water. “The decommodification of water is one of my core beliefs,” they said.

Mx. Mandel was particularly proud of their cigarette-butt program. For the last two years, they have been collecting butts (200,000 and counting, they said) at festivals and sending them to TerraCycle, a company that teams with manufacturers and retailers to recycle or upcycle all manner of products and materials, including action-figure toys, backpacks and toothbrushes. Cigarette butts are turned into plastic pallets; the tobacco is composted.

Sarah Renner, the operations and site manager for the Joshua Tree Music Festival, wrote in an email that the Trash Pirates are “the down and dirty, real as can be, heroes of the event world.”

The Pirates have handled her festival’s waste for the last four years, sweeping, handing out bags and painting barrels with children. “They don’t just pull trash bags and sort recycling,” she said. “They are on a mission to change the way people think while getting everything to where it needs to go.””

The work is brutal. Heat stroke, sunburn, cuts and bruises are common hazards, as is a dousing with trash juice: the pungent slurry that pours from a trash can and into your armpits when you’re hoisting it over your head.

Close-toed boots are encouraged, but don’t always protect. Mx. Mandel’s foot was sliced open, they said, this past February at a festival in Costa Rica by a severed iguana hand that pierced their boot, but most dangers are what you’d think: nails, screws, shards of glass.

Tools of the trade include MOOP sticks, which are long claws for grabbing trash without having to bend over. These are light and rather delicate, with a nice action, and are precise enough to pick up a grain of rice.

Hand sanitizer and liquid soap are requirements; one Pirate, Moose Martinez, had a Purell bottle clipped to the strap of his over-the-shoulder water bag. Work gloves and thin blue food service gloves are part of the uniform, but many of the Pirates were working in their bare hands.

“We call that raw-dogging,” said Luke Dunn, 33, a musician and preschool teacher, as a colleague with clean hands fed him a chocolate-chip cookie. “You try not to touch your face, you wash a lot.”

On the Pirates’ Facebook page, “Trash Pirates and Waste Naughts,” with over 4,000 followers, they share job tips (a recent post was for waste management at McMurdo Station in Antarctica); inspiration (“It’s Called Garbage Can, Not Garbage Cannot”); and education (news clips on California’s recycling woes and posts reviewing the best trash bags or instructions on how to make compostable confetti out of leaves with a hole puncher).

One long thread discussed cleaning up glitter, a particular scourge of Gay Pride parades.

‘The Lost Boys’

The Trash Pirates formed six years ago when two friends, Caleb Robertson, now 26, and Kirk Kunihiro, 29, then living in the San Francisco Bay Area, wanted to go to festivals for free.

While volunteering for the green teams, as they are called, of these gatherings, Mr. Robertson said, “We came to realize that there was a way to express our zero-waste passions within the event industry.”

They learned their craft at Green Mary, a two-decades-old company dedicated to making events sustainable that was founded by Mary Munat, an environmental activist and former Army reservist.

“They are fast, hard-working, green-hearted people,” she said of the Pirates. “I love their energy and greenness, and I am so glad my age-old eco-passions gave birth to so many little green pirates.”

The Trash Pirates was a nickname they gave each other early on, when festivals were more haphazard, and it stuck. In the beginning, Mr. Robertson, said “It was more seat-of-the-pants. Many of us were living out of our vehicles. That’s the thing: Trash can attract people who don’t feel like they have a place to go, giving people purpose in a space where they had none. Kind of like the Lost Boys. People are interested in the party, but it becomes empty if you don’t have a purpose.”

Next year, they hope to work upward of 30 events. “The work isn’t going to stop, I’m almost scared of it,” Mr. Robertson said, adding that he and many of his colleagues are looking to expand beyond the festivals and tackle community projects in Los Angeles, where he now lives, and beyond.

Mx. Mandel is devoted to filmmaking; Ms. Nielsen to art and activism. “But we are all still united by trash,” Mr. Robertson said. “We recognize that festivals are a stage and a platform to reach people, but we also know that it’s just a Band-Aid and the best thing we can do is to concentrate on government policies and community work.”

Mr. Kunihiro, who also lives in Los Angeles, started his own waste-consulting business, which includes a waste sampling service that analyzes the composition of waste streams — work that makes festival trash seem as clean and fresh, he said, as birthday cake.

He has led tours for fourth graders of recycling plants in the Bay Area; at Joshua Tree, his water bottle was a tiny blue toy recycling bin, a gift from his mother.

Another Pirate, Stephen Chun, talked about the awkward moment when he is asked what he does for a living. “A lot of people are like, ‘Huh, that’s nice. Good for you,” he said. “The feedback over time goes from being, ‘Oh, you’re the trash guy’ to, ‘Oh, you’re a hero.’ Now I say I’m a zero-waste events consultant.”

Ms. Munat said, “People see us going through the recycling and offer us their sandwiches. And we’re like, ‘No, it’s O.K., we’re getting paid.’”

Because trash is ascendant as a problem and a paradigm, it continues to grow as a métier. “In 1995, when I first starting teaching about waste, it was a boutique subject and not considered appropriate for academic study,” said Robin Nagle, a professor of anthropology and environmental studies at New York University who specializes joyfully in garbage.

She has been anthropologist-in-residence at the New York City Department of Sanitation for more than a decade; her book “Picking Up: On the Streets and Behind the Trucks With the Sanitation Workers of New York City” was published in 2013. Professor Nagle is a founder of what’s known as discard studies, a new interdisciplinary field of research examining waste politically, culturally and economically.

“You can take any piece of trash as an object in the world and track it from its raw materials though its journey into the marketplace as a commodity,” she said. “At any of those points it will connect not just to the proliferation of garbage as a form of pollution but a host of any other environmental crises including the big megillah that is climate change.”

Of the Trash Pirates she said, “They are pushing boundaries in wonderful ways. I would be curious to see what they’re doing in 20 years. Do they bounce from this ebullient, youthful thing to something more settled? And will the planet be even closer to the brink of destruction?”

We shall see, but in the meantime, as is their practice, the Pirates swept the Joshua Tree Music Festival campgrounds clean by forming a MOOP line, as it’s known, with each Pirate three to four feet apart and armed with a MOOP stick and a bucket, and moving from the perimeter to the center.

Mx. Mandel said, “Like one amoeba we slowly devour the MOOP.”

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[clotomalin]

Charity shop shopping has a bad rep. It's often assumed that charity shops only sell the things that people don't want, which is true, but another persons trash is another persons treasure. After investigating fashion supply chains and fashion disposal during my final year of university, I took Traid's pledge to source 70% of my wardrobe from second hand sources and the other 30% from sustainable and ethical brands and makers. I buy a fair bit of Vintage clothing (There's a vintage haul coming next week!) and as I'm still on a student's budget, I thought I'd give charity thrifting a go. Granted, it's not as glamorous as vintage thrifting, and the quality of product isn't the same standard, but there are bargains and treasures alike to be found! So here are some items I've bought over the past few weeks, there's lots of smart casual pieces that I'm going to dress up for work (I'm starting a new job, exciting!) and dress down for the weekend. I'm aiming to maximise the wear of each garment, so will be doing some styling blog posts soon to share with you my ideas and looks. First up is this houndstooth print esque long sleeve, pyjama style shirt. It's 100% polyester and in primary colours of navy and red. Originally from Autograph at Marks & Spencer, bought from Acorns Children's Hospice Charity Shop dot £3.99. Due to the fantastic condition of this top and the style, I'd say it's less than two years old and has only been worn a handful of times. I love the pyjama, yet smart look and busy print. It's a size UK 14, but I always like to have some wriggle room in my tops for my expressive arms. Onto my vintage charity shop find! I picked up this Vintage Tesco blouse from Cancer Research UK for £2, it's the second vintage Tesco blouse I have from the 50s/ 60s. It's plain baby blue in colour, with pretty fold and embroidered scalloped detailing, a gentle vintage piece.

100% Polyester, with cuffed sleeves, this subtle piece will be a tran-sesonal piece and very versatile for casual styling and work appropriate looks. There are a few marks on the material from day to day wear, so will give those a good dose of stain remover before popping it in the wash. The label again, states a 14, but is a good fit. The next one was a conundrum. I was instantly drawn to the print, a lovely bright summer print, but was disheartened to discover it was Primark. I can't stand the place. I'ts so unethical and mass produced and everything I stand against. But here it was, a pretty top, unworn and pretty much brand new. Whilst I would never purchase new Primark, I reasoned that I could give this item a good home, get lots of use out of it and one day, when it can be worn no more, re-use, up-cycle or recycle responsibly.   I can see myself being reminded of Rana Plaza whenever I wear this top. It's definitely going to fuel my sustainable fashion mission, that's for sure. At least Cancer Research UK got £2 for it and I hope that that money can go towards something good. My next find is perfect for the flared and bell/ tulip sleeve trend currently in fashion. A short sleeve tulip sleeve blouse from TU at Sainsburys, 100% Polyester. I picked it up in a size 12 for £3.29 its a flattering fit, whilst fun with the sleeve cut and super appropriate for the time of year with the neutral flower and leaf print. I'm going to tuck the top into smart trousers and leave over the top of jeans. It's not very often I see a top that has print and statement detail, but this top mixes the two really well. The tag has been ripped out of the Classique blouse, but by the feel of it, again It's polyester. Three quarter sleeves and a super jazzy print. Fun, free and easy to wear, this is the ultimate summer shirt! It's in super condition and was just £5.49, I'm going to get lots of wear out of this one! Red is the colour of the summer season this year, so I was chuffed to find this pretty short sleeve jumper with frill v neck detailing for £3 and on buy one get one free offer. 91% Viscose 9% Nylon and from Bonmarche, a very unusual product pick up for me, as I thought Bonmarche only made clothes for pensioners, that said, I do tend to have a grandma chic look. For my free item, I picked up this vintage M&S short sleeve men's shirt for Adam. I couldn't find anything I fancied for me and I'm not in the habit of buying just for the sake of buying. Hopefully it fits him and he likes it! It's not just clothing I've been picking up at charity shops, I've managed to get my hands on a pair of navy Dune sandals for £6, which are super comfy and have only been worn a few times judging by the minimal wear and tear on the bottom of the shoes. I'm supper picky about footwear, especially second hand, but you can find great shoes in great condition at great prices. I've also been picking up small styling bits and pieces to make the most of my clothes and develop further outfit options. Belts are super cheap, usually around £1 and can make an outfit. They're super useful to have on hand and charity shops always have loads of different shapes, sizes and colours available. But my ultimate bargain was this lovely yellow pop of sunshine, at £4 it was a great buy, especially for a brand new bag, then I found it was still available in accessorize for £27. Someone clearly didn't fancy the gift they'd been given, but fair play for donating it to charity, so someone else could enjoy it and the charity could benefit. The environment is really important factor for me and 95% of clothing thrown away to landfill can be recycled through charity shops, textile collection and main stream re-cycling, so next time you're finished with clothes, shoes and accessories, donate them to a charity shop, to help support that charity, whilst saving the environment and allow your old items to become treasures to other people, just like these old items have become my new treasures. Reduce, re-use and recycle! Clo SaveSave

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[biofunmy]

They Love Trash – The New York Times

JOSHUA TREE, Calif. — Soph Nielsen was sewing garbage onto her black T-shirt (a chicken wing, a crushed Bud Light can, a plastic fork) and struggling to attach a snarl of crusty pad thai.

“This is to get people to see the trash,” she said, her fingers slick with grease. “We don’t want to be the invisible janitors.” With her distinctive appliqués, that was unlikely.

It was the last day of the Joshua Tree Music Festival, a family-friendly event of didgeridoo sound baths, yoga, crafts, electronica and other familiar fare held at a dusty desert campground for three days in October. Ms. Nielsen, a 25-year-old artist whose medium is trash, was one of 20-odd Trash Pirates working the event.

The Pirates are a loose collective of waste management specialists, to borrow a phrase from Tony Soprano, who make sure events are as sustainable as possible through recycling and composting. They also educate attendees about how to do both properly.

Garbage has long been the uncomfortable fallout of the festival world, and as these gatherings multiply like glow sticks at a Phish concert, stretching the season into a year-round party (hola, Costa Rica), its impact has roused young artists and activists like Ms. Nielsen.

Most Pirates start out as volunteers, helping with trash or performing other tasks so as to attend for free. Then they have their “trash moment,” as the Pirates put it, the epiphany that turns volunteer work into a career, and trash into a calling.

“Your first experience of the mass of it, whether it’s loading dumpsters onto a trailer or driving out to the event grounds when everyone is gone and it’s a sea of trash, is an existential crisis,” Ms. Nielsen said. “You are baptized into compost.”

“You’re either in or you’re out,” she added, echoing the rallying cry of a long-ago counterculture movement that involved a bus, “and it becomes a way of life.”

The events themselves — both community-minded and escapist — are morphing into trash camps: days-long immersions into the politics of waste, with lectures and workshops on developing your garbage-handling skills along with your yoga practice.

Some trash stats are in order. In 2017, according to an environmental impact report, Coachella, in Indio, Calif., was generating over 100 tons of trash each day. Many events are now committed to becoming zero-waste endeavors, or as close to it as possible. High “diversion” rates (the percentage of waste not sent to the landfill) are badges of honor. Last spring, the Trash Pirates brought the Joshua Tree Music Festival’s rate up to 77 percent.

In 2017, Coachella’s diversion rate was just 20 percent, apparently because attendees weren’t using the recycling bins. Veterans of Burning Man and other festivals learn acronyms like MOOP, for “Matter Out of Place,” an umbrella term for trash and anything else that doesn’t occur naturally on a site; cigarette butts, broken tents and human waste are some common examples.

Burning Man has a “Leave No Trace” ethos, but the messy camps of bad Burners are called out each year on the festival’s MOOP Map in the hope that public shaming will be a deterrent next time around.

‘Shepherds of the “Away’’’

While there are many waste organizations dedicated to mitigating the environmental impact of such gatherings, the Trash Pirates are distinguished by their zeal and their punk aplomb.

Take Moon Mandel, 24, a filmmaker and Trash Pirate who was managing the operations that weekend at Joshua Tree. Mx. Mandel is nonbinary, and with their bright orange jumpsuit emblazoned with patches stitched with trash graphics (the recycling whorl and other insignia) they looked like an indie Eagle Scout.

As Oscar the Grouch sang his gruff-voiced hymn “I Love Trash,” one of many trash-friendly songs on the Pirates’ playlist, Mx. Mandel said: “It’s very important for people to see the work we do and understand the human scope of it. We are trying to alter the cultural norms of a throwaway society. We teach them that there’s no ‘away.’ We are the shepherds of the ‘away’ and it’s being buried inside the earth forever.”

And so Mx. Mandel performed trash collections, dancing with colleagues as Oscar warbled under a festive tent with gaily painted bins, and sorting garbage (earning $5 a bag) for those campers too busy or negligent to do it themselves.

To attendees who had dutifully separated their food scraps and recyclables and were tipping them into the appropriate bins, Mx. Mandel called out a hearty, “Yarg!” their preferred Pirate cheer.

“Thank you for composting!” Mx. Mandel praised a young woman scraping scrambled eggs out of a frying pan, and then recited some recycling basics: “You can’t compost paper with too much printing on it, or recycle greasy paper. Single-use bags can be taken to supermarkets in California for recycling, so we are collecting them. Make sure everything is clean. You don’t need to rinse your soda or beer cans. But if your stuff is covered in yogurt, it’s not going to be recycled.”

Mx. Mandel has a policy about not working festivals where organizers are charging for water. “The decommodification of water is one of my core beliefs,” they said.

Mx. Mandel was particularly proud of their cigarette-butt program. For the last two years, they have been collecting butts (200,000 and counting, they said) at festivals and sending them to TerraCycle, a company that teams with manufacturers and retailers to recycle or upcycle all manner of products and materials, including action-figure toys, backpacks and toothbrushes. Cigarette butts are turned into plastic pallets; the tobacco is composted.

Sarah Renner, the operations and site manager for the Joshua Tree Music Festival, wrote in an email that the Trash Pirates are “the down and dirty, real as can be, heroes of the event world.”

The Pirates have handled her festival’s waste for the last four years, sweeping, handing out bags and painting barrels with children. “They don’t just pull trash bags and sort recycling,” she said. “They are on a mission to change the way people think while getting everything to where it needs to go.””

The work is brutal. Heat stroke, sunburn, cuts and bruises are common hazards, as is a dousing with trash juice: the pungent slurry that pours from a trash can and into your armpits when you’re hoisting it over your head.

Close-toed boots are encouraged, but don’t always protect. Mx. Mandel’s foot was sliced open, they said, this past February at a festival in Costa Rica by a severed iguana hand that pierced their boot, but most dangers are what you’d think: nails, screws, shards of glass.

Tools of the trade include MOOP sticks, which are long claws for grabbing trash without having to bend over. These are light and rather delicate, with a nice action, and are precise enough to pick up a grain of rice.

Hand sanitizer and liquid soap are requirements; one Pirate, Moose Martinez, had a Purell bottle clipped to the strap of his over-the-shoulder water bag. Work gloves and thin blue food service gloves are part of the uniform, but many of the Pirates were working in their bare hands.

“We call that raw-dogging,” said Luke Dunn, 33, a musician and preschool teacher, as a colleague with clean hands fed him a chocolate-chip cookie. “You try not to touch your face, you wash a lot.”

On the Pirates’ Facebook page, “Trash Pirates and Waste Naughts,” with over 4,000 followers, they share job tips (a recent post was for waste management at McMurdo Station in Antarctica); inspiration (“It’s Called Garbage Can, Not Garbage Cannot”); and education (news clips on California’s recycling woes and posts reviewing the best trash bags or instructions on how to make compostable confetti out of leaves with a hole puncher).

One long thread discussed cleaning up glitter, a particular scourge of Gay Pride parades.

‘The Lost Boys’

The Trash Pirates formed six years ago when two friends, Caleb Robertson, now 26, and Kirk Kunihiro, 29, then living in the San Francisco Bay Area, wanted to go to festivals for free.

While volunteering for the green teams, as they are called, of these gatherings, Mr. Robertson said, “We came to realize that there was a way to express our zero-waste passions within the event industry.”

They learned their craft at Green Mary, a two-decades-old company dedicated to making events sustainable that was founded by Mary Munat, an environmental activist and former Army reservist.

“They are fast, hard-working, green-hearted people,” she said of the Pirates. “I love their energy and greenness, and I am so glad my age-old eco-passions gave birth to so many little green pirates.”

The Trash Pirates was a nickname they gave each other early on, when festivals were more haphazard, and it stuck. In the beginning, Mr. Robertson, said “It was more seat-of-the-pants. Many of us were living out of our vehicles. That’s the thing: Trash can attract people who don’t feel like they have a place to go, giving people purpose in a space where they had none. Kind of like the Lost Boys. People are interested in the party, but it becomes empty if you don’t have a purpose.”

Next year, they hope to work upward of 30 events. “The work isn’t going to stop, I’m almost scared of it,” Mr. Robertson said, adding that he and many of his colleagues are looking to expand beyond the festivals and tackle community projects in Los Angeles, where he now lives, and beyond.

Mx. Mandel is devoted to filmmaking; Ms. Nielsen to art and activism. “But we are all still united by trash,” Mr. Robertson said. “We recognize that festivals are a stage and a platform to reach people, but we also know that it’s just a Band-Aid and the best thing we can do is to concentrate on government policies and community work.”

Mr. Kunihiro, who also lives in Los Angeles, started his own waste-consulting business, which includes a waste sampling service that analyzes the composition of waste streams — work that makes festival trash seem as clean and fresh, he said, as birthday cake.

He has led tours for fourth graders of recycling plants in the Bay Area; at Joshua Tree, his water bottle was a tiny blue toy recycling bin, a gift from his mother.

Another Pirate, Stephen Chun, talked about the awkward moment when he is asked what he does for a living. “A lot of people are like, ‘Huh, that’s nice. Good for you,” he said. “The feedback over time goes from being, ‘Oh, you’re the trash guy’ to, ‘Oh, you’re a hero.’ Now I say I’m a zero-waste events consultant.”

Ms. Munat said, “People see us going through the recycling and offer us their sandwiches. And we’re like, ‘No, it’s O.K., we’re getting paid.’”

Because trash is ascendant as a problem and a paradigm, it continues to grow as a métier. “In 1995, when I first starting teaching about waste, it was a boutique subject and not considered appropriate for academic study,” said Robin Nagle, a professor of anthropology and environmental studies at New York University who specializes joyfully in garbage.

She has been anthropologist-in-residence at the New York City Department of Sanitation for more than a decade; her book “Picking Up: On the Streets and Behind the Trucks With the Sanitation Workers of New York City” was published in 2013. Professor Nagle is a founder of what’s known as discard studies, a new interdisciplinary field of research examining waste politically, culturally and economically.

“You can take any piece of trash as an object in the world and track it from its raw materials though its journey into the marketplace as a commodity,” she said. “At any of those points it will connect not just to the proliferation of garbage as a form of pollution but a host of any other environmental crises including the big megillah that is climate change.”

Of the Trash Pirates she said, “They are pushing boundaries in wonderful ways. I would be curious to see what they’re doing in 20 years. Do they bounce from this ebullient, youthful thing to something more settled? And will the planet be even closer to the brink of destruction?”

We shall see, but in the meantime, as is their practice, the Pirates swept the Joshua Tree Music Festival campgrounds clean by forming a MOOP line, as it’s known, with each Pirate three to four feet apart and armed with a MOOP stick and a bucket, and moving from the perimeter to the center.

Mx. Mandel said, “Like one amoeba we slowly devour the MOOP.”

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