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source: Oregon State University, CC license
Microbeads are microscopic plastic pieces with any form and are vastly used in the production of cosmetics – primarily for exfoliants and toothpaste. Polyethylene is the most common chemical material of which microbead products are made of. Some of the alternatives are other petrochemical-based products such as polystyrene or polypropylene.
Before starting the cleaning procedures all around your property, you have to make sure you get rid of all items that are not worth refurbishing as you’ll waste your time and effort. Continue reading
Compulsive hoarding syndrome is a mental disorder of rather benign nature. No one usually gets hurt, the authorities couldn’t care less and the media grants hoarder’s houses limited exposure. Though it is an issue nonetheless, a psychological tormentor endlessly terrorizing those afflicted. They keep on piling often redundant stuff and refuse to deal with their issue or order partial house clearance. The compassionate team at Rubbish Please has seen a lot in it’s travels in and around people’s properties and is willing to further investigate the roots of this problem. Firstly, we are to take a look at standard definitions to gain a concrete idea what this disorder is all about. Then we’ll establish socio-economical connections between hoarding and poverty. In the end, we’ll offer personal stories about family members who exhibit strong hoarding symptoms.
According to mayoclinic.org: “Hoarding disorder is a persistent difficulty discarding or parting with possessions because of a perceived need to save them. A person with hoarding disorder experiences distress at the thought of getting rid of the items. Excessive accumulation of items, regardless of actual value, occurs.”
Adaa.org offers further insights on the matter: “Hoarding is the persistent difficulty discarding or parting with possessions, regardless of their actual value. The behavior usually has deleterious effects—emotional, physical, social, financial, and even legal—for a hoarder and family members.
For those who hoard, the quantity of their collected items sets them apart from other people. Commonly hoarded items may be newspapers, magazines, paper and plastic bags, cardboard boxes, photographs, household supplies, food, and clothing.”
We observe society’s blissful ignorance towards hoarding as if it’s just ‘collecting items’. Nothing seems wrong on face value. We should, therefore, point out the differences between ‘collecting’ and ‘hoarding’.
Childrenofhoarders.com offers a very good summary on the subject:
COLLECTORS
HOARDERS
Let’s wind the clock back to the turn of the 20th century. There were no fridges and freezers. Most people lived in the countryside working the land and taking care of cattle, essentially producing their own food. Scarcity (poverty in that sense) was a fact only on the money side of things. But people rarely needed any money to begin with. They had enough food to go by. Though since they couldn’t buy lunch minutes before eating, food stockpiles had to be maintained. Especially in winter when there’s less fresh produce around.
Other materials such as heavy-duty blankets, mats and carpets were kept around indefinitely, even passed from one generation to another simply because it wasn’t easy to get those to begin with. Wool and leather were stored for prolonged periods with great caution because they were needed for making clothes, bed and table covers, etc. Poverty (or not having plenty) forced people to keep food and supplies for the long haul and to pass them through generations. Now we live in times of plenty and storing insurmountable quantities of (say) newspapers, magazines, old toys, clothes of deceased relatives is logically redundant. Not for hoarders it isn’t. What’s stopping them to conduct a full house clearance is rooted in old habits, logical misconceptions and irrational fear. All of those relate to poverty of the fear of such horrid times in the future.
One of our former associates – Mike – agreed to give us an interview regarding his household situation when he was growing up. Much appreciative to his openness and readiness, we hand it over to him to tell us what he knows from personal experience about a hoarder’s house.
“I grew up in a family of hoarders. Hard to say how severe their condition was but the piles spoke for themselves. In an apartment of 42 square meters, my grandma managed to stash a pretty ridiculous amount of stuff. She bought two 2-wing wardrobes and a 4-wing one, in addition to two large coffers in order to store a large collection of gifted silverware, plates and glasses from her wedding times. Also, tons of old clothes nobody wears and that includes all clothes from my grandfather who passed away more than 10 years ago. The list goes on: mats, carpets, blankets, pillows and table covers, plastic bags, wooden crates and God knows what else. She grew up in poverty and lived a simple life. In a way, I understand why she does it. Maybe she feels one needs to be prepared for whatever adversity life has to offer.
The basement is a complete mess. It’s one fairly large room in which a person can only take a single step. The rest is mountains of stuff all the way to the ceiling. Many of those are even remotely recognisable. Some several hundred glass jars, broken metal containers, rusty barrels, crates and floorboards, old rubber things…it’s unbelievable. Although I feel somewhat guilty thinking in those terms but one day when she’s no longer around, I am going to clear the heck of that place. There will be no remorse.”
Mike’s story is unfortunately just one of many. Psychologists and analysers are describing the issue very well, although not providing a wealth of proof why does it occur. In Rubbish Please` experience, compulsive hoarding has it’s roots in poverty and simply not having enough. People are therefore more inclined to save stuff as well as money because of the uncertainty they are surrounded with. If they end up needing something they previously tossed, it may be a problem. If they end up keeping something they may never need – it seems less of a problem.
So, it stands to reason why poverty-based hoarders choose the lesser of two evils.
The following land pollution facts and statistics are supposed to represent the scale of this global issue that is one of the biggest Earth’s problems in 21st century. To make things easier, we have grouped all of the facts about pollution in five separate groups.
Learn why U.S. and China are the countries most influenced by land pollution, which are the land pollution causes and how the rest of the world copes with this natural disaster. In the end of the post there is an overall information on earth pollution that is supposed to inform, educate and provoke you to take action just like Rubbish Please does.
Source: Wikimedia ; CC license 3.0 Changes made: rescaled
Land pollution occurs when liquid or solid waste materials are being disposed either on the land surface or buried underground. If that in some way contaminates the soil or imposes threat to the health of the people nearby, that means the land has been polluted. Continue reading
imagine your breathing if you were living there
Since this is the fourth piece from the Trashmageddon sequence this means that if you’ve read any of the previous posts, you are already familiar with the deadly effect of the rubbish on all animal species. Continue reading
source: Wikipedia ; CC license
The amount of garbage that is produced globally, every year is unimaginable to an ordinary person, especially to those who’re living in well-developed countries with good waste management. Continue reading
Island of trash in the ocean
We already presented the Trashmageddon scenario to you and even spoke a lot about how it leads to the death of many bird species in our previous blog post about this global waste threat. Now, when most of you are already familiar with the destructive potential of the waste we produce, it’s about time to make the next step and broaden your horizon. Continue reading
The World Bank is making prediction for waste levels in the year 2025. The way things are going, the predictions seem fairly accurate, which also makes them quite disturbing. This should serve as a wake up call to us all. In another blog post, we’ve explained the concept of the possible future the way we see it. The coming years might be dire and this infographic may be showing but the tip of the iceberg. Continue reading
Ocean waste – oceans are full of it. Well, not literally “full” of it, but you get what we mean – there’s a lot more waste in the world’s oceans than any of us would prefer. That being said, we’re spectacularly efficient at putting problems “out of mind”, especially if said problems are also “out of sight”. Hence, we sort of forgot ocean waste for a while and it led us to our current predicament in the first place, which brings us back to our original point.
Because some people are trying to raise awareness about these colossal issues, they are sometimes going overboard with it due to the fact that most people ignore them. This allows for the perpetuation of certain myths related to the problem at hand. Don’t get us wrong – Rubbish Please is always behind campaigns, ideas, and crusades against rubbish and waste in all their forms and shapes, but we are not proponents of lying. We believe the problems are serious enough to stand on their own two feet without having to come up with ridiculous or exaggerated claims. That’s why we decided to investigate some of the most popular ocean waste myths and debunk them. Here, at our company, we don’t care about these ocean waste myths. We care about facts.
The idea is that there are plastic islands floating around in every ocean. Some people even fear it’s possible that the separate waste masses will form their own continent. What a load of rubbish! Yes, it’s true that we have a significant problem with plastic and many other types of ocean waste, but the islands are simply the most noticeable problem, not the biggest one.
The truth is a lot more disturbing. Waste is all over the ocean and is not simply centralized in a certain location. Thanks to the currents, there are a few places where there is a higher accumulation of debris (or the so-called “islands”), but overall rubbish everywhere and these accumulations are but a small part of the whole problem.
This is one of the most popular ocean waste myths. In fact, it’s one of our favourites, because it completely absolves us of all responsibility. As long as you haven’t taken the missus (or the mister) to a cruise lately (and if you haven’t dumped anything from that ship in the ocean), you can walk away completely guilt-free.
Yeah, that’s not how it works. The bigger percentage of plastic ocean waste is common household items (including plastic bottles, cups, and toys). Which means most of them originate from our own homes and are not the product of a very vocal minority of people. We are all at fault for this, not just a few bad seeds.
As the myth states it, we can somehow solve the problem by “cleaning” up the oceans (and the rubbish islands) until everything is fine again. This sounds like a perfectly good “sunshine and unicorns” kind of theory.
The reality of the situation is a bit different. We cannot realistically expect that we’ll be able to clean the oceans up, even though there are really promising programs out there. As we’ve already noted, most of the waste is not even located in the same place, making this problem notoriously difficult to deal with. As of now, we have no reliable ways of dealing with it.
It’s fairly obvious that we can’t do much as normal citizens. We can’t clean up the oceans and call it a day. However, what we can do is make an effort to reduce the waste we produce. There are certain actions we can take in order to stop being a part of the problem and become a part of the solution. This alone will not solve what we’ve already done, but at least it’s a good way to cease adding more on top of it. And who knows – with enough people taking action, maybe we’ll stop polluting the planet.
Thrashmageddon incoming
If you are already associating the Trashmageddon to the armageddon you are partly heading in the right direction. If you want to get there, though, instead of imagining huge fiery balls falling from the sky, try to visualize a different scenario by adding a pinch of rubbish to the whole picture. An actual apocalypsis that would bring an end to the Earth is not as painful and miserable as the Trashmageddon that we are now being tortured by. Continue reading
