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Dirty Diapers Used To Grow Mushrooms
Zothecula writes While their contents might be considered an environmental hazard by many, disposable diapers themselves pose a more significant problem for the environment. According to the EPA, the average baby will work their way through 8,000 of them before they end up in landfill where they'll take centuries to break down. In an effort to reduce the problem, scientists at Mexico's Autonomous Metropolitan University, Azcapotzalco (UAM-A), have turned used diapers to the task of growing mushrooms.
Mushrooms used to be grown on horse manure, and I doubt they are very "selective". So this is no surprise.
However, it is well known to be a bad idea. You do not grow food for human consumption on human feces, because the risk of contamination is too high. Horse manure is ok, as is growing animal fodder on human feces.
And there are better schemes to get rid of old diapers - since they are rich in high quality cellulose that can be used after a good clean.
farmer communities in Mexico have many years doing exactly that for human consumption
And I bet Mexicans are not the only ones doing it in that way...
I already don't eat mushrooms due to food allergies (and trying to tell them the specific TYPES I'm allergic to is a waste of time).
So this is just another reason for me to NEVER eat a frickin mushroom.
Just...eww.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
And to recycle them in a sustainable way. Problem solved. In general, I think that should be the case for a lot of things.
this is just another reason for me to NEVER eat a frickin mushroom.
How about you read the article? "The project is not intended to produce mushrooms targeted for human consumption, since the main objective is to get rid of diapers to avoid damaging the environment more"
There is an awful lot of waste and fungi eat most things, so we'll probably end up with many of them in a few years.
afaik starbucks already gives the grounds away for hippies to grow tomatoes and weed with.
that is, if you got a large source of used coffee beans, you probably already have some use for them that's better than mushrooms yuck.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
So that's 16k diapers for twins... well, we guesstimated 10k. The thought of carrying that many diapers up to the third floor and then back down fully 'charged' convinced us to use cloth diapers.
Now we just polute the rivers with the laundry detergent :p.
one could hope for a bare minimum of literacy.
Yes, one could hope.
Or are they really are landfilling babies at the experimental mushroom farm???
Oh well.
As for the sentence in question, while there is an amusing ambiguity if one wishes to look for it, I don't think most people are going to have a problem parsing it.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
No shit...
This has to be the most ghetto way to grow shrooms.
In the end, both.
Plump helmet explosion?
You should look up what that 'fertilizer' thing used for all grown crops is.
-=This sig has nothing to do with my comment. Move along now=-
Well, the sentence parses nice and cleanly. It states that "the average baby will (...) end up in landfill..."
The sentence is plain wrong - what its author wrote differs from what he intended.
Prediction for end of Universe #42: Fencepost error in Quantum_bogosort.cpp
Phase 1: Collect underpants
Phase 2: Grow mushrooms
Phase 3: Profit
Worst. Signature. Ever.
How do you use 0.129 of a diaper?
Or support your local cloth diaper service.
www.greenspringdiapers.com
the average baby will work their way through 8,000 of them before they end up in landfill
It's only as ambiguous as you want to make it.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Fungi based solutions like this really need more good press. For those interested here's a video from TED Talks of Paul Stamets giving a presentation on using Oyster Mushrooms to decompose diesel and other peptroleum waste among some other amazing uses of other types of fungi. Paul Stamets: 6 ways mushrooms can save the world - http://www.ted.com/talks/paul_...
They're only using baby lawyers, so it's OK.
How do you use 0.129 of a diaper?
Based on the subject, it's either a typo or he's from a country that uses a dot instead of a comma for delimiting thousands.
n/t
It's nice to have technology to better dispose of diapers, but it should not be used as an alternative to tackling the main problem, which is that babies now wear diapers over longer and longer periods. The main reason for this is interfering with biofeedback. The better the diaper the less feedback the baby gets so the less it is inclined to change its behavior.
The best way to reduce spent diapers is to reintroduce a form of biofeedback. An irritation. An annoyance. But of course that would interfere with the gains of Proctor and Gamble.
If I might propose an environmental regulation, it would be about the minimum allowed amount of negative biofeedback in pampers.
In other words, from a certain age on it would not be allowed to make them too good.
8000 nappies. 8000/365 is about 21. Assuming three years in them, that's seven a day every day.
Three year assumption is what got you. Today, I've seen parents keep their children in diapers or something other that allows them to shit in place, until they have to toilet train them in order to get into Kindergarten.
The disposable diaper manuafacturers would like to keep us in them from birth to death.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Key word? Intended because how long you think its gonna be before some employee figures out with the high cost of mushrooms there is profits to be made?
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Modern cloth diapers, while expensive, are very easy to use, and contain waste as well as disposable diapers. They pay for themselves in a reasonably short time and prevent all of this landfill waste.
Our daughter was premature, and we used disposables until she was large enough to move into the "one size" BumGenius diapers we got from our registry. I think we have ~20 of them, which means about $340 spent and a 3ish day supply without laundry. When we're done with them, though, we can resell them - yes, they have resale value.
The alternative we would be using is $0.21 each, so we'll break even after 245 or so days. Larger disposable diapers are more expensive so the savings will grow with time, not shrink, and the cloth ones are very adjustable.
It doesn't hurt to be nice.
HE washer takes about 2 hours to clean a sanitary load, but uses just a few cents of water and detergent. Cleaning costs are in the noise.
It doesn't hurt to be nice.
YOUR sentence is plain wrong: "The sentence parses (...) the average baby..."
What the heck are you implying here?!
The issue you're complaining of is one that isn't resolvable within English without either (a) awkward or unwanted redundancy or (b) a significant modification to add markers to the grammar. Consequently, the grammar here is classic in form; besides the fact that, psychologically, the meaning is understood, the rule is that the pronoun takes as its antecedent the closest noun; a supporting rule (that for purposes of avoiding ambiguity actually frowns on the spoken grammar's usage in speech where "they" is employed as a singular--not it's a dumb rule if one is using writing to imitate speech, such as in dialog) is that the pronoun and antecedent must match in number--thus no "use of 'they' to avoid SEXIST!!!(F***ING PATRIARCHCAL BIGOTS, RAAAAAR!!!!) pronouns" made-up "RULES!!!!" by the insane imposed on the usage of everyone else. (I say that despite using 'they' all the time in speech--in writing, nay!) For the prep. phrase "of them" we know "average baby" is singular and therefore "of them" must apply to the earlier "diapers", likewise for "they/'ll" which does not need follow the phrase nor would be--if the writing is any good--taken as applying to "baby."
Intelligent idiots are we. | Evil men do not understand justice.
Judging by the quality of our school system, I'd say its the ankle-biters.
Have gnu, will travel.
Have gnu, will travel.
More concerning is that the baby takes centuries to break down.
Actually, no. Why wouldn't any diapers end up in the landfill until all 8,000 are used? Everything about the sentence structure is awkward and confusing.
through 8,000 of them before they end up in landfill
So are all 8,000 diapers used before any end up in a landfill? That is one crazy hoarder.
It's only as ambiguous as terrible writing.
I call bull shit on this fertilizer stuff.
I don't suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it!
You're assuming they're only counting the 3 years at the beginning of life. What about the 10 years at the end of their life?
Things buried in landfills break down slower. Kind of makes the whole idea of having landfills seem silly, but it's true.
Heh, well bull shit (and cow shit) are useful field fertilizers. My grandpa had his herd in the fallow field every third year (on a corn->soybeans or wheat->fallow rotation or maybe it was the other way around).
"....the average baby will work their way through 8,000 of them before they end up in landfill where they'll take centuries to break down."
This is an episode of "Hoarders" I don't want to see; where they kept all 8,000 diapers before sending them to the landfill.
Bullshit! (...right?)
Ezekiel 23:20
I worked as a nanny for triplets for nine months. I'd say that I changed each one 8-10 times a day. The well-baby clinic said it was the first set of triplets they'd ever seen that never had any sign of diaper rash. The grandparents provided the diapers, with the stipulation that I use as many as I saw fit without worrying about cost.
With my own children, I used cloth diapers, and washed 3 dozen diapers twice a week. I had my children very close together, so I had two in diapers most of the time. And before I get any of these "popping out babies" cracks, it wasn't my idea. Marital rape does exist, and is not any more pleasant than any other variety.
How come there is no "gross" mod category? That's a gross oversight.
Table-ized A.I.
your sexist rant against singular "they" might have some validity if it wasn't for the fact that "they" has been used as a singular pronoun for at least 400 years (i.e. since approximately the beginning of modern english) and the fact that there are numerous nouns in the english language which can also be used as either singular or plural - "bacon" for example. it's not unusual.
in other words when using singular "they", the pronoun and antecedent *DO* match in number. No amount of ranting will change that fact.
3 per day for 3 years = 3285. Then, if they still have to wear them at night, it's 1095 for the next three years. How on earth do you get to 8000?
Just incase someone questions my qualifications: We have raised 4 kids. None of them are used for growing mushrooms now.
You're putting bacon in landfill?? Heretic!
Cue "baby in a blender" jokes.
Naw, pretty simple, eh?"...8000 Diapers, before they.." They is directly after diapers, so "they" refers tothe the last noun in the sentence..