Thursday, April 10

7,382 things

Seven thousand three-hundred and eighty-two disposable things went into making this canoe. Hint: Think Japan, where this man worked in a cafeteria. Once again, the blog that brings really dumb stuff to you (7,200 bananas, for example), presents another wonderful Internet oddity. Click here to connect with the full story. If you can guess beforehand what the 7,382 things are, wow—you are truly green and deserve another helping of sushi!

I am still looking for something meaningful to do with my collection of wine corks. I have hundreds, maybe thousands; they would fill a large garbage (rubbish, metric) can. Many people have saved them for me, including my largest source, a recycling center. Wineries pay big bucks for corks. Fifteen years ago a friend who ran a corking machine and now has his own winery told me that natural corks cost 70¢ each. That explains why there are so many plastic corks now. But plastics come from petroleum, so what’s next? Corn (maize) corks? Switchgrass corks? Maybe someone will figure out how to make them from smog, or carbon dioxide. Oh! I know! Cats!

Please!

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'm guessing chopsticks.

Anonymous said...

Yay for me. I didn't look at the article until after I had sent the comment, honest. Hadn't been keeping up with your adventures since the wall was done. The picture of all your new plants made me green with envy. Yesterday it got up to 74, today it's in the low 90's. It hit 94.9 about ten minutes ago. All I can do is hand water my ferns. Anything freshly planted here would die fer sure. I did have success in raising a monarch butterfly--fed it milkweed, watched it in its beautiful jade house, took it outside after it emerged and let it go---

























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Anonymous said...

If a cork is 70¢, maybe the bottle is 10¢, plus 5¢ for the label, 20¢ for transport to the store, 50¢ could be the store's take to cover their expenses plus profit, 60¢ in liquor tax (I'm just guessing), therefore a bottle of Two-Buck Chuck (1.27 Euro Eustace, metric) has negative 15¢ worth of wine in it.

They lose a little on each bottle sold, but make up for it in volume.

Tom Hurley said...

Pete S.—Are you a government economist or something? What a stunning assessment of the reality of merchandising!

Tom Hurley said...

Pat, your monarch is another feature of the Tanner’s roast label Hilary is making. What a coincidence.