Burn To Shine: Portland

I finally got one!!!



Thanks and forever-grateful-ness go to Bucky Done Gun at sleater-kinney.net. He/she sent me an original DVD (not a copy of one) with the fantastic Carrie cover. I got it Thursday and watched it several times throughout the night. I absolutely love it.

Bucky also included a copy of Swan Island's new album, The Centre Will Hold. Awesome. Thank you!!!



Speaking of burning...

Yesterday, we visited H-Power (a facility owned by the City & County of Honolulu), which is where they burn our trash. They currently burn about 60% (or 65% ??) of the daily trash. They're looking at adding another boiler so that they can handle 80-90% percent of the trash. We went on a tour of the processing area, where they smash the garbage into manageable pieces and use magnets to remove the ferrous metals. Some sort of electromagnetic field was used to separate non-ferrous metals.

On the island, we produce an average of seven pounds of trash per person per day. This is much higher than the national average of 4.4 pounds. The tour guide explained to us that the reason for this is the fact that EVERYTHING we buy on the island is packaged in some way because we're so isolated and helpless that we require EVERYTHING to be shipped to us from elsewhere. Therefore, it ends up coming to us in extravagant packaging that other places don't usually have to deal with. Lucky us.