Dumpster dive | October 13, 2023

• Fail pail: This Halloween, McDonald's is once again offering its Happy Meals in "boo buckets"—essentially another piece of plastic destined for the landfill. No link provided, since the only mentions I could find were essentially cheers of excitement. But I cry boo in disparagement, for reasons in my article, "Trick or trash: The frightful mess of Halloween."

• I do miss the comedic wisdom of the legendary George Carlin. In this YouTube clip from 1992 (!) he calls out the audacity of our desire to save the planet. (Spoiler alert: The planet will be fine, the people maybe not so much.)

• Hey billionaires with rockets: The amount of space junk could one day become so dense that you'll be trapped on our planet. The risk to space flight is one reason why the The United States has issued its first-ever fine for space junk. Plus, all that free-floating debris in Earth's orbit could eventually crash into satellites and disrupt GPS among other things. "Even a paint chip…coming in the wrong direction at orbital speed, which is 17,500 miles an hour [could] hit an astronaut doing a spacewalk. That can be fatal." [BBC]

• Cracks in the bottled water industry? California has ordered Triton (makers of Arrowhead brand) to stop drawing water from San Bernadino springs, and the governor of Massachusetts announced a first-ever procurement ban on all single-use plastic bottles by state agencies. [The Guardian, The Hill]

• F#ck fast fashion: France is subsidizing clothing and shoe repairs to address global warming caused by the fashion industry, which is responsible for 10% of global warming. It's crazy that the cost to repair a zipper costs more than a new jacket from H&M. [Reasons to Be Cheerful]

• Also over in France, a medieval castle is being constructed from scratch using 13th century tools and practices. Workers wear clothing of the era (except for footwear and helmets), and some use the skills they've acquired to help restore Notre Dame. Even the surrounding gardens feature only plants indigenous to the area in the Middle Ages. Magnifique! [NPR]

Photo by Kenny Eliason on Unsplash