The Call To Action

Today, I have a big ask of you:

Please consider getting involved with PTEC3D. I'll set out what I am and what I hope to achieve, and then leave you with a bunch of links to dig around in, okay? I'll keep this page updated, too. There are always new things going on. 

What I Am

Is obviously a nom du prawn which I adopted because it's more memorable, and easier to one day pass the mantle on. In real life I'm a retired disability pensioner who's disenchanted with a few things and really wants to do something about them.

Yes I'm inside that...

So that's a pic I took a few years ago when those neckwraps were popular, and it was such a spooky thing I memed it. In my own (luckily) unique style . . .

What I Learned

This is the hard bit because it morphs so much. I started three or four decades ago worrying about climate change and waste, and that hasn't changed, except for the increasing levels of pressure and anxiety I feel. 

I had several health scares that made me look into our food system, and the pressure and anxiety rose even further. I started writing - a lot of writing - about food corporations and the bastardry they were getting up to, from contamination to misinformation to food fraud to poisonings, from cheap tricks like bulking meat up with water to shit tricks like burying e coliin that meat. From olive groves producing 150,000litres of oil versus olive oil sales of 250,000litres, which meant almost half of it wasn't OO, to honey producers filtering all identifiable things out of the honey, which made it harder to establish any healing benefits, but made it way easier to just add in filtered glucose and corn syrup... You get the idea.

That also opened doors into corporate hi-jinks of all sorts. Which led to the whole vexing point of energy from fossil fuels, energy market price fixing / collaboration cartels, and - plastics. Which brought me all the way back full circle, only now I knew how much of all these modern defraudings, robberies, and straight up war on customers was being waged. 

And of course, it's also led me right back to Global Warming. 

What I'd Like To Achieve

I want to make everyone aware of what's going on, what these different malfeasances are doing to them, and how they can take action to prevent being assaulted by a things we call corporations thus giving them a "corpus" i.e. a body to make them seem human and yet which are protected by laws that aren't extended to other bodies on this planet. This is one of the more recent outcomes of everything I've been studying, and it's a social process that needs to happen.

I now also want to stop climate change, as directly as possible. So I've been working on ideas (that may well be unfeasible, or need a lot of massaging to make useful) to start fixing agriculture, energy, and waste. There's so much wrapped up in these three things that it's almost impossible to unravel it all, but if we don't, those aforementioned corporations won't.

Despite not believing that we should ever have been made as directly responsible for recycling materials that were developed not for our convenience but for corporate convenience and profits, I also recognise that we will need to clean this up for our future generations' sakes. So one of the things I'm doing is finding recycling things that can be done at home, for fun, community, or profit. Another thing I'm hoping to start is a free open source effort to design machines etc to make all of the above simple. And also to work on the technologies that'll reduce our use of fossil fuels and manufacturing in general to a much lower and more sustainable level.

I don't want us to sink back to the days of ox-drawn ploughs, I want us to realise we are the technological hominid and that we're now smart enough to realise that the Earth is a spacecraft and we've been throwing spanners into the machinery without realising what we're doing. (Much like Elon Musk has been doing with Twitter, actually, just with far more dire effects...) We need to recover those spanners and realise that everything on the planet is an Earthling and we all need the ecosystem life support system. ALL of us. Down to the last microbe. All depend on one another, all have a function. Even us.

What Can Come Of This?

I'm hoping to collect together a group of people that all want to get involved in stuff like this. Activism - only the most genteel and refined activism, of course, as everything else is just sparkling protest - but I am definitely hoping for agitprop, agitators, propagandists, petition starters, petition signers, lobbyists, people with pitchforks and flaming brands, and signs. A lot of signs. 

I'm looking for people that want to write letters to the editor, to MPs and ministers and CEOs and CFOs and Generals and Majors and Admirals and Commodores. People that want to write on one or other of the blogs I currently do all the writing for. People that want to write documentation for revolution, for a new plastic shredder, or a How To Use AI For The Common Good book. 

Ideally there are coders that want to create little bits n bobs to draw attention to our group, or that let us share information among us outside of normal media. Or an API to allow farmers to send climate data in exchange for better predictions. Or for vertical farm management. Scheduling software. Anything - literally, the sky's the limit as long as it progresses the whole organisation, is useful.

Do you have a penchant and skill for making a simple household device recycle cardboard into eco-friendly chicken coop egg boxes? Or anything else like that? Maybe cleanly and safely extract the precious metals from e-waste using an old shaver and a crockpot? A device that'll roll along under it's own steam - and solar power - and clean PFAS out of the soil air and water? I'd love to talk with you and bounce ideas, find a way to get you funds to make prototypes.  

The topic of AI never made it into my plans until quite recently. But there are a lot of edges to that new twist and I'll be adding a section about that. 

Money. I know there are grants out there for these kinds of projects, but I'm not a good grant writer. I'm also not a good bookkeeper. And quite frankly, I'm getting on in years. This is a project that needs dozens of people involved in steering the various moving parts. 

Some of the ideas I present will be worth turning into commercial projects, some will need to be not-for-profit for their entire life. Others will be the sort of thing that can go either way and will need some decisions.

Also - things like Milanote or whatever we decide is a good platform for discussion. I've chosen open source or free so far, because you only have free speech as long as the site provider agrees with what you say and do. If there's a sponsor involved, there's a cost. I'd prefer strings-free grants and private tiny micropayments because that way there's no fiscal hold over the group. 

Getting the idea? I. WANT. YOU. to contact me, join the group email or the Discord server, organise any other means of collaboration you think would work, and to help run such a large widely-spread-out group of activists. 

There. I've said it. It's an activist group, to start putting the brakes on rampant capitalism and authoritarianism, to chain the corporations and stop them destroying our homeworld / spacecraft as it's the only one we have. 

And If You've Read Down This Far

Then I'd better list some stuff here. I'll start with the contact deets:

• Mastodon. Chat with me.
• Email. Write to me.
• Discord. Join the Discord server.
• Email Group. Join the group and get to read and reply to everyone's messages.
  

 And then the blogs:

• PTEC3D Blog About recycling, and PTECH3D generally
• TEdALOG Lite II A more personal but still activist blog
• TEdADYNE Systems Cyber, AI, Ethics, EVs and any other bits
• Body Friendly Zen Cookbook Planet friendly Zen and activism
• TEdAMENU Tuckertime Recipes, health
• Grumpy Old Guy Energy, sustainability, government activism
• OHaiCorona.com I panicked, okay? And so this is my COVID react blog

And then some sundry stuff that's less important but you may want:

• Blog Newsletter Once a week only, get all posts in an email you can then delete at your leisure...
• Blog Aggregator Bookmark this link if you just want to see a running list of posts om the above blogs.
• Youtube I have a (little-used) channel
• Peertube The same content also goes here on an independent video site.
• Ko-Fi page You can make a one-off or repeating donation here.
• Paypal Direct Or you can just Paypal me a donation. 

I stress that any donations I currently get are flat out just paying a small part of the hosting and domain name fees, and if we get a group together we can redirect all these donations to a group fund. But for now, even a few bucks a month means I don't have to shell out for hosting, or can actually buy a few parts to keep building projects towards recycling etc.

Also, one of the many docs I've been working on, a freebie Milanote. Basically, this outlines the various facets of attack on all the issues mentioned above. It has cards for ZFF (Zero Fossil Fuel), ENERGY, RCX (ReCycle eXtreme - bear with me, I like acronyms...) FOOD POLITICS, STEWARDSHIP, and More Thoughts. The cards are just outlines of some of the issues to do with each, and very little in the way of solutions. I do have some of those, but they're all just ideas and nothing too closely or deeply planned because - everything is subject to change, alteration, suggestions, and scrapping if needs be. These are things I'd like to throw into the Discord server, or the email group, or whatever we come up with, and let various moderators/discussion participants ruin with or replace with something else that works better. 

And now there are two more topics that I'll be adding - AI and SPACE. Therre's not much we can do - yet - but they'll raise other issues.  So by the time you read that Milanote, it may well have a few more cards... 

So this is it - the start of a Whole New Thing, I hope... Over to you all!

Recycling Drinks Containers

Two new alternatives to drowning in rubbish.

First an article with large benefits, and for a wonder I'm not talking about something that "will be initiated following more and more and more damn studies" - this is fait accompli, done, dusted, thank you Victorian State Government for another tick on the list. 

Victoria Bans Single Use Plastics.

As of the 1st of February 2023, Victoria's Single Use Plastics Ban came into effect and it's reasonable, comprehensive, and not a moment too soon. We've been successful in requiring manufacturers of single-use packaging to indicate what to do with their various items for disposal and their triangle code, and that was great but in the steadily-accelerating need to divest ourselves of plastic, it's already a dinosaur and we need to go further.

Some points:

Better to not need to recycle single-use plastics in the first place by replacing them with more durable and environmentally-friendly materials that can be used over and over or have a clear path for the manufacturer to recycle. (That's by the way a thing I think is acceptable, that a manufacturer of food containers - to name the worst culprits in the piles of plastics at out local waste dumps - should take them back by providing at their own expense bins to return their plastic to recycle at their factory. But it would still be better if all the users of these containers could be educated to just not use them from now on okthxbai...)

I'm not sure how the ban will affect milk jugs because this is still one huge segment of the food market and I'll try and find out and report back and either update this article or if the story's worth it, an article of its own. I'm guessing they're classified as not being single-use, but it's also okay with me on the basis that (from my experience) these have their triangle code on them and are generally not PET more generally HDPE or PP, and those are far easier to recycle.

I also bet right here and now that Coca Cola, Nestle, and the other worst polluters of the plastics market will claim their damn drink bottles are re-usable so we won't see much change there either. But milk, fruit juices, and a few others, could probably easily switch over to coated paper tetra style containers. For instance, I'd buy my liquid detergents in a tetra style container, gladly. 

And that would be good because along with take-away coffee and milkshake cups, these materials are now recyclable.

Recycling Beverage Cartons

Some images from the article

Plastic beverage containers can be recycled into building material sheets. This appears to be a material to replace plasterboard and other wall sheet materials and looks fantastic. It's coated (I'm guessing to allow paint to adhere properly) and the offcuts and sheets can be "re-recycled" so this could turn milk and juice cartons, coffee take-away cups and lids and straws, and probably a few more materials, into a material that seems to have quite a few  uses.

Some points:

As I mentioned, many liquids we use and that are packed in odd-shaped PET bottles (why do I need to see the pretty green dye - and have to accept yet another chemical I didn't ask for - in my dishwashing liquid? I just wanted to wash my dishes...) would be just as useful in a plasticised cardboard tetra style pack, and being generally square, those sorts of containers just stack more neatly. Meaning fewer trucks transporting from the factory, more product being able to be stored at the supermarket, more product per shelf inch on the shelves at the supermarket. 

I mean - there's only one real reason for clear PET bottles and fancy shapes, and that's brand differentiation. Brand differentiation benefits manufacturers but does bugger-all for us the consumers other than obscure the product's flaws and shortcomings. The reason manufacturers loathe-hate-detest these sorts of ideas of not using plastic is that their products would have to stand on their merits, and when you come down to it, those merits should be effectiveness, safety, and price. And they HATE having to admit that all their products are actually just the same dog's different legs...

How we can hasten these processes

We need to keep in mind that no matter how good the instructions on single-use plastics are about how to throw away the different components of the packaging, it would be far better to not have to throw anything away at all. Many of those packagings already had their triangle codes on them, but the manufacturers are making it OUR responsibility to recycle a product that exists for THEIR convenience far more than for ours. 

It's their chance to package their product in a container they can almost infinitely customise and convey their identity with and woo your custom rather than having to have quality products. 

It frees them from providing - and possibly, washing and refilling - containers for their products, it frees them to use petrochemicals to manufacture their containers rather than recycle the old ones. (Which is a far more expensive process than just making the containers using new 'virgin' plastic.)

And it frees them from even having to touch their crap again because they've successfully made it OUR problem. 

We can fix this by requesting our governments to do more things like the single-use-plastic ban in Victoria. Many, many more laws to restrict corporations' freedom to generate rubbish products in rubbish packaging and then get us to shovel their rubbish for them.

We can ask governments to place large tariffs on 'virgin' plastic (that is, plastics that have been made by majority use of petrochemicals rather than recycled plastics) and provides incentives for 95% or more recycled plastics. 

Contrary to what has been widely disseminated, plastics can be recycled almost indefinitely. Remember how long plastics can persist in the environment? That's an indication of how 'forever' those plastics really are. If we recycled all the plastic that's been dumped to date, we could build houses - millions of houses - with it, and still have enough left over to provide re-usable containers for every person on Earth, and still have enough left over to make 240gallon IBC totes to transport every product to go into those re-usable containers. 

As far as building materials go, every plastic can be recycled to form new building materials or compose a significant portion of new building materials. There are bricks, the aforementioned construction sheets from drinks containers, and even pavers. Roads can be built using plastic.

Granted, these re-uses of plastics don't get rid of the shedding of microplastic particles, but it's been discovered that some microbes are adapting to break down plastics and also, we should consider any recycling and re-use of plastics as just a way to keep them out of landfill until we come up with a clean way to break plastic down into its base components. 

And that's closer than we may imagine. Because everything will break down into its component parts if you throw enough energy at it, the trick is capturing the byproducts and storing them for re-use in other processes where they won't be as prone to becoming a planet-wide pollutant. And energy is becoming cleaner and cheaper by the day. I know it doesn't seem like it with utility companies hiking prices by 22% while simultaneously enjoying 25% lower generation costs thanks to renewables and sustainables, but it's a spasm, a rictus, the last desperate jaw-snappings of a beast that's on its last legs and that we really should put down as quickly as we can. 

Also, some plastics are harder to recycle because companies add so many other chemicals and compounds to them to colour them, stiffen them, soften them, make them more rigid or more flexible, and these compounds have to be taken into account when recycling/recovering plastics. And most companies don't give that information or put it on their products. We need to ask that plastic additives need to be listed every bit as much as there's a need to list all food additives. The companies will tell you it's too hard but - they have the bloody recipe on the desk in front of them FFS. They lie. 

There's a good solution right off the top of my head - stamp a QR code into things right alongside the triangle code, with a number that can encode every percentage of every additive to the plastic. It can be a ten digit number - which is able to encode any combinations of literally a million additives and their percentages. We should really lobby our governments to get a schema designed and then enforced. Designing the QR code takes a school student level of mathematics (i.e. even a LNP treasurer should be able to come up with it) and enforcing it just takes determination by the world's goverments.

Our Secret Superpower - ALL our votes

Which brings me to another thing. Victoria has undertaken to reinstate government ownership of public utilities, specifically energy companies, but it doesn't hurt if we pointed out that governments were originally appointed almost solely for the purpose of providing public utilities such as energy, water, and waste management. It's time we politely asked them to get back to their roots, too. Email your local MP, email the Ministers for Energy, for Sustainability, for Recycling and Waste Management. They are all required to be made aware of our opinions and requests, and what they do with out requests should also ultimately guide your votes. 

Don't buy a product in plastic unless that plastic has a clear path to being recycled and re-used by the company making it. Don't buy the idea that we're responsible for the plastic tide because of our insistence on quality AND price. Don't forget that the corporations that tell you how high labour costs are, generally quote you the labour prices in a Western First-World country but actually use labour from a third-world country. These corporations routinely triple-dip into our pockets because they put the cost of recycling on us, they don't put money into the labour force here, and they generally don't pay taxes either because they just dance around tax laws.

Government voting

Let me be a bit clear on this - we're not quite at the point of autocratic self-appointed government yet, so our votes are necessary for a party to become the sitting government. Let politicians' actions in relation to saving the planet guide our votes more than the promises to make rainbows shine out of our butts ("oh look! You just missed it. Also you can't see it because it's behind you, but we did make it happen! Honest!") and really really REALLY think about what their policies will do in the way of limiting or liberating corporations from taxes and responsibilities, what their decision to permit or deny another coal mine or cola-fired power station will mean, whether they're here to help you get out of a multiple-bad-idea expensive to run and maintain fossil fuel engined vehicle and into a simple cheap and inexpensive to run EV, etc. 
 

Here are valid ways to vote. Use them at every opportunity.

Activism voting

And then vote on that. Someone will come up with free open source butt rainbows made from environmentally friendly materials soon enough anyway. Take to the online community, share links to articles like this, chat with your friends about topics like this, put up posters drawing attention to the issues. All of these are a vote that you can put out there for recycling, for shaming corporations that are not doing their total best to save the planet rather than their shareholders. Vote often, there's no limit to your activism votes!

And remember the other Rule Of The Ultimately Fatal Game Of Life - besides your public opinion vote and your government vote, you have one other, far more powerful, means of voting at your disposal - your hard earned cash. Every dollar you spend is a vote. Are you spending $80 - $120 a time filling up your tank? That's up to 120 votes for a fossil fuel company. Use the car less, get the fuel bill down - reduce your vote. 

Dollar voting

Know that the company where you buy your lunch from uses food grown in chemicals and processed in chemicals and presented in a plastic clamshell with 27 serviettes crammed in to hide the fact that the burger is half the size? (AND they forgot the bloody pickles. Again.) - there's a simple answer - bring lunch from home a few times instead. Every meal like that which you pay for, you voted for. 

Is your driving, your fast food burger, that Electrashine Butt Rainbow[tm] - worth the amount of rubbish and toxic waste they generated? Don't vote for that any more. It's rubbish.