I'm going to raise an objection this time. I live in the deep South. A fence like that made of wood will last 5 - 10 years before it rots away to nothing. Pressure treated wood - rots away. Cedar - rots away. Redwood - rots away. Teak - maybe - if you can afford a $25,000 fence.
And that is not mold on the fence, it's algae. In a hot humid environement it grows everywhere. There is a product called "Wet and Forget", Costco, Walmart, amazon sell it. You spray it on, the algae disappears. Do it once a year.
My mom lives about 400 miles north of Mr. Kuntlser in Montreal Canada. There a plain untreated pine fence lasts 20, 30, 40 years because of sub-freezing temps half the year. She has one. An untreated pine fence in my yard would be gone in 2 years.
Mr. Dave---I used to live about 1 hour due south of Houston. We averaged approx 60 inches or so of rain per year. You forget to pick up a piece of pine lumber in the back yard and do not notice it for 1 month or so an you go out and pick it up and on the side that is in the dirt or the grass there are already termites beginning to chomp away on it. It will be gone in probably a year at the most. Crazy. And......before we moved away approx 15 years ago the latest new addition to the insect mix in New Orleans was a termite called (if I remember correctly) was the Taiwanese termite.
Supposedly it eats wood approx 2x as fast as the normal termites we had. Scary.
To clean the plastic fence pictured: Use a pump-up garden sprayer to liberally apply a household bleach - water solution to the visible algae. Like washing a car, apply the algae-killing solution first to the top sections. Let things dry out, hopefully with no heavy rain within the next 24-hours. Depending on extent of algae growth, no-to-some amount of scrubbing may be needed to remove the dead algae. (Alternatively, if you don’t want to bother with algae removal, consider getting a plastic fence made with a light green tint.)
While often a DIY-project, I admit I’m not a fan of plastic fencing. Or the use of plastic exposed to UV rays (sunlight). UV-stabilized plastics don’t actually stay stable very long. All that said, depending on the local climate and semi-skilled craftsman availability, a plastic fence might be the appropriate choice.
Under our pergola are a teak table and chairs. My biggest issue with them is the lichens that grow on teak, presumably b/c teak is so oily? I give people a hive tool to scrape lichens off their chairs. LOL
Probably the oil. The reason teak is rot resistant and used on boats is it is full of oil so it doesn't get wet like non-oily wood, and the oil has natural fungicides.
One can clean the mold off very easily with a weak solution of Clorox. The fence in the pic resembles very much a fence l have around my house. But I plead 'not guilty' – it came with the house when I bought it. Anyway, what are you gonna do with the fence if you remove it? It'd probably end up in some Chinese landfill, strangling whales.
We are also in the south, having lived in GA, FL and now SC. After years of maintaining pressure treated wood decks and railings, we have had enough! I wish I had all the money spent on TSP and wood sealers back in my bank account.
The house we now live in has no wood anywhere. We have epoxy coated porch floors and aluminum railings where necessary. The exterior is hardiplank. Once a year pressure washing has it looking new again.
Another issue is there is zero old growth lumber available anymore, which is naturally more resilient.
That said, in the Pennsylvania Delaware area where houses a few hundred years old exist, fencing was made with plentiful stacked stone, like granite. Most wood fencing was decorative around homes, but doesn’t last, unless perpetually maintained.
Or—speaking as a 12th generation native of both places—the wood fencing was simply allowed to return to earth, and was replaced as time, resources, and labor were available. The return to the earth wasn’t viewed as some moral failing. It was simply how life works on this planet.
Yep. Love my nice little plastic picket fence in Florida. Went up in minutes. Survived Hurricane Sally’s inundation intact and in place. Needs a quick power wash every three years or so. Looks just fine after 11 years. The real wood picket fence progressively shed paint, developed rot pits, lost nails, and generally rotted away and looked like poop for 8 years of its 10 year life.
I’m in the PNW rainforest. EVERYTHING gets covered with algae and moss here. It’s a Green Place. It is life itself emerging out of chaos.
Doesn’t matter whether it’s plastic, painted wood, treated wood, or the rubber seals around your car windows. Or concrete, shingle, metal, glass, bark, leather, canvas, tarp, you name it. The spirit and body of GREEN will check it out, and settle there.
I’m disinclined to pour algae-killing chemicals on anything. We take a brush and/or pressure washer to things from time to time. But IMO Kunstler is advocating a Levittown aesthetic. Which in my book can go pound sand. The notion that the sight of life on earth finding a foothold is somehow ugly and an affront is Absolut Boomerism.
I have patio benches that hold six bathing-saucers for the local Forest birbs. These were cobbled by my late darling and me from treated 2×8s and 4×4s back in the day when Home Depot’s and Lowes’s cull racks had great stuff cheap. So we’re talking at least 15 years ago. At this point the benches’ edges hold a THICK layer of moss. And there’s no way I’m removing it: it’s tardigrade habitat, especially being constantly wet with birdbathing. And there is nothing in this universe more awesome than tardigrades. Who are probably space travelers.
The saucers get scrubbed every few days because of the quick growth of algae in them. Every week or ten days I take a brush to the top surface of these benches, and a deck brush to the concrete underneath. But I don’t do it with a bunch of cultural bodice-heaving. I mostly feel sad for all the life I’m destroying, that found a little appendage-hold in a hostile universe, and chose my patio, my benches, to do that magic.
This, of course, is why Forest ancestry people avoid cities and, ugh, suburbs. Yesterday Levittown, today Revittown, tomorrow God alone knows what, but I hope it’s not full of Boomers preening about how hard they work to keep life on earth from manifesting in their environments. And maybe instead of b!tching about that fence, Mr. Kunstler could leave a note offering to pressure wash it for the inhabitants. Maybe they like it greeny, but maybe they could use the help.
Brother, we can win this war, even in the Blessed South. Treat your wood with a borate solution of 1 cup Borax mixed with 1 gallon near boiling water. Brush it on, let it dry. After that, treat it with black diesel. A mix of 50/50 diesel and used motor oil. Brush it on, let it soak in. Bugs hate it. Preserves the wood. Fences love it. So do woodsheds, outbuildings, you name it. Reapply black diesel yearly and the wood is good for 20, 30, 40 years. You can reapply the Borate as well. We all fall to entropy in the end, but that doesn't mean we make it easy.
I agree! Unfortunately, there is often no natural alternative to so many things. I love the brushed nickel towel bar for inside the shower that was just delivered. It came in a box that said "Metal First, No Plastic Parts." However, it was made in China. I look forward to the future when most products are manufactured onshore. Great post@
Commercial metal plating is dead here in the USA due to increased regulation of the toxic nature of the work. A buddy's dad, who was the maintenance guy in a chrome shop and the cancer he earned from his 30 years there killed him.
Most all chrome plating shops doing commercial work closed years ago, and most auto chrome parts are made in China, I worked for a canadan company for several months that did all the chromed parts for cars. A horrible job!!!
That future is looking remote. The USPTO is servicing China 300 days faster on average than American design patent applicants in 2024, 2025, and to this day. youtu.be/rwCqgelNBRQ
Just a little point of info about the great plastic trash dump in the middle of the Pacific. It is not caused by those little plastic drink stir sticks and it is not caused by used water bottles. Approx 75% of the volume of this plastic waste is from used and discarded fishing nets. Not the kind someone in N. America uses to land a big salmon or pike but it is from mainly the Asian fishermen in factory boats who put out nets 1 or 2 miles long and then when they get caught on something and they cannot be reeled in, they cut it off and throw out another one. You see that the Chinese and other Asian countries are trying to feed their billions of people as cheaply as possible so they hoover up billions of fish not really caring what type they catch or if there maybe will not be many left for next year or the next decade-----just get as many fish as you can as fast as you can before someone else beats you to it.
And......many countries with a Pacific coastline just dump their garbage trucks directly into rivers that go into the Pacific. Same thing happens in Africa. The amount of plastic waste that originates in either Europe of U.S. or Canada is a very small % of the trash------much smaller than our % of the global population.
And....if the developed countries really gave a crap about cleaning it up they could do so. Scoop up all of the plastic, compact it and bale it. Take it back to shore and burn it for the BTU value and make electricity. Most of the plastic is made from either oil or natural gas so it burns great and the technology to clean up the stack gases is not anything really fancy. If we can clean up coal exhaust gases we can easily clean up plastic stack gases after the material is burnt.
What is lacking is the real desire to do it. The Eco-freaks want something to complain about but none of them have the intelligence to organize the pickup and handling of this raw material that is doing nobody any good floating in the Pacific. These people just want to complain.
If there's anything we learned from the DOGE audits, it's that complaining and being a nuisance about those things pays better than elbow grease and fixing the problem. Now that they USAID tap has been plugged, maybe one of the eco-freaks will get up to something more ambitious than making overpriced bracelets from ocean plastic.
Something that's disturbed me forever and that we really don't hear about is that cruise ships and apparently all other seagoing ships, dump all their garbage in the ocean.
Food waste that is very highly processed, nowadays by bacteria so quite natural. I don't think there's any evidence that it does any harm. Also, It is done outside every country's waters.
Unfortunately, an analysis of what is in that huge collection of oceanic plastic waste is that much of it cannot be collected because it is far too small to be filtered due to ultraviolet and other degradation. Yes the source of it is exactly as you have stated.
Hey - it's cheaper up front, and that's all most people care about! If it LOOKS like a fence or a shed, or whatever, it's good to go. Doesn't matter how shoddy and ugly it is. And they brag about "how "good a deal it was."
Synthetic decks such as trex. You ever seen what a failed trex deck looks and smells like? Yeah, no maintenance until the whole thing fails virtually overnight.
Fake grass. Just, no, no, noooooo.
I’ll probably take some heat for this one and slightly off topic, but gas grills. Please, just take the time to use briquettes. Oh I know, gas is so quick and easy. Well if you’re in a hurry maybe you just shouldn’t be grilling. You gas grill guys, please go outside have a look and lie to me that it’s not a gigantic grease fire waiting to ignite. You see, the problem is that nobody ever cleans them. My Weber gets cleaned with every new pile of briquettes.
Fake grass should be banned. It doesn't allow the ground to breathe at least when used outside. It's a chemical waste. Other types of ground cover is actually more attractive and not as much upkeep.
My husband declared no more gas grills, no briquettes, nothing cooked outdoors. I wasn't thrilled about that but have learned to make a fantastic rib eye or strip steak in my cast iron.
Fake grass? In the west, water shortages are going to make it imperative. There is a big difference in the cost and quality of synthetic grass, also its lifetime. It is not maintenance free.
There will always be people that want to bring their east coast lawns with them. They will buy fake grass to replace the Bermuda as the real grass deteriorates.
You are right, rocks are best, it is what I have except for one area with fake grass. It has lasted ten years without deteriorating.
Not hardly. But as an alternative to live grass, yes. A tough decision for out-of-staters. I converted an area of grass to fake grass for appearance sake ten years ago. It still looks good and requires no water.
Do you find yourself going outside, barefoot, and sinking your toes into it deeply, communing with the soil underneath? That’s what grass is. If you can’t do that what’s the point?
When Bermuda goes to 110 degrees it turns to brown crap. Las Vegas has made natural grass illegal, and that is something Phoenix is going to have to do in the near future, Tucson also. Even California is considering it.
Grass is about to become rare in areas of the USA. Like it was two hundred years ago.
I see a lovely, organic petroleum product that nature (mold) has found attractive enough to mate with. During this dance, the fence whispers: "I will last all night, for eons even." The mold wants what it wants, and as a bystander I can only marvel at the interspecies love affair, wishing to love as the mold, and last as long as the moulded PVC.
A sad development. Even clothing now has morphed from cotton and wool to extruded plastic thread. Then there are nylon monofilament fishing nets that keep killing long after they are lost to the fishermen.
When I retired, I discovered the joy of socks. Hand- knit socks, that is. I already knew how to knit, but socks were daunting. I got a good pattern, proper circular needles, and soft wool yarn. I can whip up a pair in a few days and I have memorized the pattern. I take notes as I go, so I don't lose my place. Every Winter, I turn out several pairs for myself and my friends and family. The kids love them for skating and sledding. My son wears his doing chores on the farm.
Check out WigWam (920) 783-1080 they are in Wisconsin and refused to sell to the Chinese, their old sock stitching machines. The Chinese could not make the toes right. I saluted them and they sent me 2x pairs of their woolens. 2015 or so.
Indeed. When I find all, ( mostly ), cotton socks I buy them as liners to go underneath the synthetics. My skin does not like synthetic materials. My body telling me to stop putting that junk on it.
I hear you!! I only wear cotton next to my skin. I get rashes and sweat like crazy from this terrible synthetic "fake" clothing. I went shopping yesterday in search of 100% cotton sleepwear, in a relatively nice department store. No luck. Polyester spandex, nylon, something called modal. Not one thing made of cotton. I refuse to buy that crap. And it smells awful.
We have a plastic fence also and we have it power washed every year. However not only do plastic fences get moldy but we also have steel gate and that is also power washed every year for the same reason. we have stone porch and patio and we power wash it also. We have had wooden fences painted and they deteriorate and are an eyesore also.
We as humans also deteriorate. However if we don't take care of ourselves or lucky enough to have good health then we will also be terrible to look at. It goes on and on. The problem is everything ends. Pretending all is beautiful clean and neat for ever and ever is great if you are young and motivated to do it or have the money.
I agree with you but one must understand that life itself is messy and we clean it up as best we can. But some of the homes near me are extremely beautiful but the old Gold Coast of Long Island is now completely deteriorating. One of the Phipps family that owned a magnificent mansion near us died about 10 years ago and the place is just sad. They had the Most beautiful white wooden picket fence one can imagine. She was meticulously about it until she she died. Now it is broken, moldy and dilapidated. The entire property is abandoned and it's just an eyesore.
I prefer to see these endings part of the times. We are so tuned in the end of America as we knew it, is going downhill too and it's so hard to come to terms with. One tries to overlook the ugliness that surrounds us and one should try do the best one can do, as long as one can , but when we can't anymore due to things out of our control, then just switch the outer environment focus and direct it onto the inner life....Indeed- that can be the only place that can be as beautiful and lovely as your imagination will want it to be..... and the perk is- no one will complain that it's an eyesore!
I live on LI as well not too far from the Gold Coast and now all I see are McMansions being built with 3 car garages and a huge metal gate down the driveway. Always curious who could afford to build these humongous houses these days…
we say the same thing. We are assuming its either dirty money…mafia….
chinese….but they are too frugal……
Indian from India…highly possible and
for sure the MOSLEM ARABS IRAN MOSTLY. we know for sure because they are buying up land and let it sit or build something. they mostly rent these places out to BLM groups or other moslems.. its a travesty.
Agree…and down the road from me right at Expressway entrance/exit they are building a HUGE building that looks to be a mosque, not sure yet as there are no signs, but the windows have a very Arab shape and it is monstrous in size.
Look under and behind the fence. I would suggest that this homeowner wouldn’t maintain any kind of fence…it doesn’t look like they maintain their yard. Now, to be the devil’s advocate, and forgetting about aesthetics for the moment, lift the hood of your car….most people will be confronted with loads of plastic. Or try to get your plumber to replace your plastic plumbing pipes with copper (or think about paying for that). Even in a perfect world, we are not going to stop using plastic. So perhaps the answer should be solutions to what we do with it when it’s no longer usable, or maintaining it properly while in use.
Copper is a magic metal. Healthier than plastic by far. Also, the best whiskey stills are always made of copper. I've never heard of copper toxicity. Copper is better than the galvanized stuff that they once used for water pipes. I'm not saying copper toxicity is not real, I've just never heard of it.
Ratio of observed children playing on plastic trikes and assorted plastic playthings to those things sitting upturned in yards: so far, 0 to 100. FWIW I like the look of a weathered wood fence behind my plantings, the older the better
"There is a mechanism in our neurology that revolts against fakery, especially things made of plastic when they are deployed among things found in nature. ... You sense that even in decomposition it is not returning-to-nature because it is not a natural thing in the first place. It will ultimately deteriorate into micro-plastic particles that get into the eco-system as alien material ... "
Splendid, James, just splendid. You avoided using the Eyesore of the Month column as the occasion for a smart-ass putdown; instead, in your view a plastic fence holds a meaning overlooked in a casual glance. It symbolizes the slick artifice that degrades so much of our contemporary lives (in spite of plastic's alleged non-degrading immortality). You show us the skull beneath the skin.
A brief environmental observation but way more -- a genuine philosophical essay, in bonsai format, but no less profound for that. Terrific stuff.
I'm going to raise an objection this time. I live in the deep South. A fence like that made of wood will last 5 - 10 years before it rots away to nothing. Pressure treated wood - rots away. Cedar - rots away. Redwood - rots away. Teak - maybe - if you can afford a $25,000 fence.
And that is not mold on the fence, it's algae. In a hot humid environement it grows everywhere. There is a product called "Wet and Forget", Costco, Walmart, amazon sell it. You spray it on, the algae disappears. Do it once a year.
My mom lives about 400 miles north of Mr. Kuntlser in Montreal Canada. There a plain untreated pine fence lasts 20, 30, 40 years because of sub-freezing temps half the year. She has one. An untreated pine fence in my yard would be gone in 2 years.
Sometimes practicality has to trump aesthetics.
Mr. Dave---I used to live about 1 hour due south of Houston. We averaged approx 60 inches or so of rain per year. You forget to pick up a piece of pine lumber in the back yard and do not notice it for 1 month or so an you go out and pick it up and on the side that is in the dirt or the grass there are already termites beginning to chomp away on it. It will be gone in probably a year at the most. Crazy. And......before we moved away approx 15 years ago the latest new addition to the insect mix in New Orleans was a termite called (if I remember correctly) was the Taiwanese termite.
Supposedly it eats wood approx 2x as fast as the normal termites we had. Scary.
Yep, termites, carpenter ants - should have included them. Again, not an issue up north because they can't survive the cold.
Actually, watch Maine Cabin Masters. Carpenter ants survive Maine winters just fine. Very hardy.
Every house in Massachusetts has carpenter ants. But we don't worry because they work so slowly.
Maybe they're state employees.
To clean the plastic fence pictured: Use a pump-up garden sprayer to liberally apply a household bleach - water solution to the visible algae. Like washing a car, apply the algae-killing solution first to the top sections. Let things dry out, hopefully with no heavy rain within the next 24-hours. Depending on extent of algae growth, no-to-some amount of scrubbing may be needed to remove the dead algae. (Alternatively, if you don’t want to bother with algae removal, consider getting a plastic fence made with a light green tint.)
While often a DIY-project, I admit I’m not a fan of plastic fencing. Or the use of plastic exposed to UV rays (sunlight). UV-stabilized plastics don’t actually stay stable very long. All that said, depending on the local climate and semi-skilled craftsman availability, a plastic fence might be the appropriate choice.
Under our pergola are a teak table and chairs. My biggest issue with them is the lichens that grow on teak, presumably b/c teak is so oily? I give people a hive tool to scrape lichens off their chairs. LOL
Probably the oil. The reason teak is rot resistant and used on boats is it is full of oil so it doesn't get wet like non-oily wood, and the oil has natural fungicides.
Thanks for the explanation! It's also extremely heavy wood. The chairs are nearly impossible to lift.
One can clean the mold off very easily with a weak solution of Clorox. The fence in the pic resembles very much a fence l have around my house. But I plead 'not guilty' – it came with the house when I bought it. Anyway, what are you gonna do with the fence if you remove it? It'd probably end up in some Chinese landfill, strangling whales.
We are also in the south, having lived in GA, FL and now SC. After years of maintaining pressure treated wood decks and railings, we have had enough! I wish I had all the money spent on TSP and wood sealers back in my bank account.
The house we now live in has no wood anywhere. We have epoxy coated porch floors and aluminum railings where necessary. The exterior is hardiplank. Once a year pressure washing has it looking new again.
Another issue is there is zero old growth lumber available anymore, which is naturally more resilient.
That said, in the Pennsylvania Delaware area where houses a few hundred years old exist, fencing was made with plentiful stacked stone, like granite. Most wood fencing was decorative around homes, but doesn’t last, unless perpetually maintained.
Or—speaking as a 12th generation native of both places—the wood fencing was simply allowed to return to earth, and was replaced as time, resources, and labor were available. The return to the earth wasn’t viewed as some moral failing. It was simply how life works on this planet.
Yep. Love my nice little plastic picket fence in Florida. Went up in minutes. Survived Hurricane Sally’s inundation intact and in place. Needs a quick power wash every three years or so. Looks just fine after 11 years. The real wood picket fence progressively shed paint, developed rot pits, lost nails, and generally rotted away and looked like poop for 8 years of its 10 year life.
This guy gets it.
I’m in the PNW rainforest. EVERYTHING gets covered with algae and moss here. It’s a Green Place. It is life itself emerging out of chaos.
Doesn’t matter whether it’s plastic, painted wood, treated wood, or the rubber seals around your car windows. Or concrete, shingle, metal, glass, bark, leather, canvas, tarp, you name it. The spirit and body of GREEN will check it out, and settle there.
I’m disinclined to pour algae-killing chemicals on anything. We take a brush and/or pressure washer to things from time to time. But IMO Kunstler is advocating a Levittown aesthetic. Which in my book can go pound sand. The notion that the sight of life on earth finding a foothold is somehow ugly and an affront is Absolut Boomerism.
I have patio benches that hold six bathing-saucers for the local Forest birbs. These were cobbled by my late darling and me from treated 2×8s and 4×4s back in the day when Home Depot’s and Lowes’s cull racks had great stuff cheap. So we’re talking at least 15 years ago. At this point the benches’ edges hold a THICK layer of moss. And there’s no way I’m removing it: it’s tardigrade habitat, especially being constantly wet with birdbathing. And there is nothing in this universe more awesome than tardigrades. Who are probably space travelers.
The saucers get scrubbed every few days because of the quick growth of algae in them. Every week or ten days I take a brush to the top surface of these benches, and a deck brush to the concrete underneath. But I don’t do it with a bunch of cultural bodice-heaving. I mostly feel sad for all the life I’m destroying, that found a little appendage-hold in a hostile universe, and chose my patio, my benches, to do that magic.
This, of course, is why Forest ancestry people avoid cities and, ugh, suburbs. Yesterday Levittown, today Revittown, tomorrow God alone knows what, but I hope it’s not full of Boomers preening about how hard they work to keep life on earth from manifesting in their environments. And maybe instead of b!tching about that fence, Mr. Kunstler could leave a note offering to pressure wash it for the inhabitants. Maybe they like it greeny, but maybe they could use the help.
For some reason, I really like this comment 💚 despite being a boomer myself.
Wet and Forget really works. Several years and we still dont get algae on our north facing deck in illinois.
100% yes and yes
Brother, we can win this war, even in the Blessed South. Treat your wood with a borate solution of 1 cup Borax mixed with 1 gallon near boiling water. Brush it on, let it dry. After that, treat it with black diesel. A mix of 50/50 diesel and used motor oil. Brush it on, let it soak in. Bugs hate it. Preserves the wood. Fences love it. So do woodsheds, outbuildings, you name it. Reapply black diesel yearly and the wood is good for 20, 30, 40 years. You can reapply the Borate as well. We all fall to entropy in the end, but that doesn't mean we make it easy.
I agree! Unfortunately, there is often no natural alternative to so many things. I love the brushed nickel towel bar for inside the shower that was just delivered. It came in a box that said "Metal First, No Plastic Parts." However, it was made in China. I look forward to the future when most products are manufactured onshore. Great post@
Commercial metal plating is dead here in the USA due to increased regulation of the toxic nature of the work. A buddy's dad, who was the maintenance guy in a chrome shop and the cancer he earned from his 30 years there killed him.
Most all chrome plating shops doing commercial work closed years ago, and most auto chrome parts are made in China, I worked for a canadan company for several months that did all the chromed parts for cars. A horrible job!!!
That future is looking remote. The USPTO is servicing China 300 days faster on average than American design patent applicants in 2024, 2025, and to this day. youtu.be/rwCqgelNBRQ
Just a little point of info about the great plastic trash dump in the middle of the Pacific. It is not caused by those little plastic drink stir sticks and it is not caused by used water bottles. Approx 75% of the volume of this plastic waste is from used and discarded fishing nets. Not the kind someone in N. America uses to land a big salmon or pike but it is from mainly the Asian fishermen in factory boats who put out nets 1 or 2 miles long and then when they get caught on something and they cannot be reeled in, they cut it off and throw out another one. You see that the Chinese and other Asian countries are trying to feed their billions of people as cheaply as possible so they hoover up billions of fish not really caring what type they catch or if there maybe will not be many left for next year or the next decade-----just get as many fish as you can as fast as you can before someone else beats you to it.
And......many countries with a Pacific coastline just dump their garbage trucks directly into rivers that go into the Pacific. Same thing happens in Africa. The amount of plastic waste that originates in either Europe of U.S. or Canada is a very small % of the trash------much smaller than our % of the global population.
And....if the developed countries really gave a crap about cleaning it up they could do so. Scoop up all of the plastic, compact it and bale it. Take it back to shore and burn it for the BTU value and make electricity. Most of the plastic is made from either oil or natural gas so it burns great and the technology to clean up the stack gases is not anything really fancy. If we can clean up coal exhaust gases we can easily clean up plastic stack gases after the material is burnt.
What is lacking is the real desire to do it. The Eco-freaks want something to complain about but none of them have the intelligence to organize the pickup and handling of this raw material that is doing nobody any good floating in the Pacific. These people just want to complain.
If there's anything we learned from the DOGE audits, it's that complaining and being a nuisance about those things pays better than elbow grease and fixing the problem. Now that they USAID tap has been plugged, maybe one of the eco-freaks will get up to something more ambitious than making overpriced bracelets from ocean plastic.
Something that's disturbed me forever and that we really don't hear about is that cruise ships and apparently all other seagoing ships, dump all their garbage in the ocean.
Food waste that is very highly processed, nowadays by bacteria so quite natural. I don't think there's any evidence that it does any harm. Also, It is done outside every country's waters.
Unfortunately, an analysis of what is in that huge collection of oceanic plastic waste is that much of it cannot be collected because it is far too small to be filtered due to ultraviolet and other degradation. Yes the source of it is exactly as you have stated.
Hey - it's cheaper up front, and that's all most people care about! If it LOOKS like a fence or a shed, or whatever, it's good to go. Doesn't matter how shoddy and ugly it is. And they brag about "how "good a deal it was."
My neighbor cut down his lovely arborvitae fence and put in a plastic privacy fence. On the positive side, at least he keeps his vinyl siding clean.
Ok and two more, actually 3 more things:
Synthetic decks such as trex. You ever seen what a failed trex deck looks and smells like? Yeah, no maintenance until the whole thing fails virtually overnight.
Fake grass. Just, no, no, noooooo.
I’ll probably take some heat for this one and slightly off topic, but gas grills. Please, just take the time to use briquettes. Oh I know, gas is so quick and easy. Well if you’re in a hurry maybe you just shouldn’t be grilling. You gas grill guys, please go outside have a look and lie to me that it’s not a gigantic grease fire waiting to ignite. You see, the problem is that nobody ever cleans them. My Weber gets cleaned with every new pile of briquettes.
Fake grass should be banned. It doesn't allow the ground to breathe at least when used outside. It's a chemical waste. Other types of ground cover is actually more attractive and not as much upkeep.
My husband declared no more gas grills, no briquettes, nothing cooked outdoors. I wasn't thrilled about that but have learned to make a fantastic rib eye or strip steak in my cast iron.
I love my cast iron skillet, too. I use it for everything I don’t cook with briquettes.
Fake grass? In the west, water shortages are going to make it imperative. There is a big difference in the cost and quality of synthetic grass, also its lifetime. It is not maintenance free.
Imperative? Just have rocks you dont need fake grass
There will always be people that want to bring their east coast lawns with them. They will buy fake grass to replace the Bermuda as the real grass deteriorates.
You are right, rocks are best, it is what I have except for one area with fake grass. It has lasted ten years without deteriorating.
I think he must be a fake grass salesman.
Not hardly. But as an alternative to live grass, yes. A tough decision for out-of-staters. I converted an area of grass to fake grass for appearance sake ten years ago. It still looks good and requires no water.
Do you find yourself going outside, barefoot, and sinking your toes into it deeply, communing with the soil underneath? That’s what grass is. If you can’t do that what’s the point?
When Bermuda goes to 110 degrees it turns to brown crap. Las Vegas has made natural grass illegal, and that is something Phoenix is going to have to do in the near future, Tucson also. Even California is considering it.
Grass is about to become rare in areas of the USA. Like it was two hundred years ago.
I see a lovely, organic petroleum product that nature (mold) has found attractive enough to mate with. During this dance, the fence whispers: "I will last all night, for eons even." The mold wants what it wants, and as a bystander I can only marvel at the interspecies love affair, wishing to love as the mold, and last as long as the moulded PVC.
A sad development. Even clothing now has morphed from cotton and wool to extruded plastic thread. Then there are nylon monofilament fishing nets that keep killing long after they are lost to the fishermen.
I only bought 100% cotton athletic socks for years (being a decades long runner).
All of a sudden, several years ago, that market simple disappeared. Now it’s like 100% cotton socks went extinct.
When I retired, I discovered the joy of socks. Hand- knit socks, that is. I already knew how to knit, but socks were daunting. I got a good pattern, proper circular needles, and soft wool yarn. I can whip up a pair in a few days and I have memorized the pattern. I take notes as I go, so I don't lose my place. Every Winter, I turn out several pairs for myself and my friends and family. The kids love them for skating and sledding. My son wears his doing chores on the farm.
Check out WigWam (920) 783-1080 they are in Wisconsin and refused to sell to the Chinese, their old sock stitching machines. The Chinese could not make the toes right. I saluted them and they sent me 2x pairs of their woolens. 2015 or so.
Indeed. When I find all, ( mostly ), cotton socks I buy them as liners to go underneath the synthetics. My skin does not like synthetic materials. My body telling me to stop putting that junk on it.
I hear you!! I only wear cotton next to my skin. I get rashes and sweat like crazy from this terrible synthetic "fake" clothing. I went shopping yesterday in search of 100% cotton sleepwear, in a relatively nice department store. No luck. Polyester spandex, nylon, something called modal. Not one thing made of cotton. I refuse to buy that crap. And it smells awful.
I sew my own. 100% cotton fabric is available. Just avoid fire resistant treatments. Just don't smoke in bed.
Agreed. Even more important, don't put food in plastic, nor put plastic in your kid's mouths.
Or styrofoam. Fast food tastes like it.
We have a plastic fence also and we have it power washed every year. However not only do plastic fences get moldy but we also have steel gate and that is also power washed every year for the same reason. we have stone porch and patio and we power wash it also. We have had wooden fences painted and they deteriorate and are an eyesore also.
We as humans also deteriorate. However if we don't take care of ourselves or lucky enough to have good health then we will also be terrible to look at. It goes on and on. The problem is everything ends. Pretending all is beautiful clean and neat for ever and ever is great if you are young and motivated to do it or have the money.
I agree with you but one must understand that life itself is messy and we clean it up as best we can. But some of the homes near me are extremely beautiful but the old Gold Coast of Long Island is now completely deteriorating. One of the Phipps family that owned a magnificent mansion near us died about 10 years ago and the place is just sad. They had the Most beautiful white wooden picket fence one can imagine. She was meticulously about it until she she died. Now it is broken, moldy and dilapidated. The entire property is abandoned and it's just an eyesore.
I prefer to see these endings part of the times. We are so tuned in the end of America as we knew it, is going downhill too and it's so hard to come to terms with. One tries to overlook the ugliness that surrounds us and one should try do the best one can do, as long as one can , but when we can't anymore due to things out of our control, then just switch the outer environment focus and direct it onto the inner life....Indeed- that can be the only place that can be as beautiful and lovely as your imagination will want it to be..... and the perk is- no one will complain that it's an eyesore!
I live on LI as well not too far from the Gold Coast and now all I see are McMansions being built with 3 car garages and a huge metal gate down the driveway. Always curious who could afford to build these humongous houses these days…
we say the same thing. We are assuming its either dirty money…mafia….
chinese….but they are too frugal……
Indian from India…highly possible and
for sure the MOSLEM ARABS IRAN MOSTLY. we know for sure because they are buying up land and let it sit or build something. they mostly rent these places out to BLM groups or other moslems.. its a travesty.
Agree…and down the road from me right at Expressway entrance/exit they are building a HUGE building that looks to be a mosque, not sure yet as there are no signs, but the windows have a very Arab shape and it is monstrous in size.
Eight years ago, we moved out of Sterling Hts. MI, shortly after a very noticeable push by an influx of mooslums of different varieties.
They bullied the city into allowing them to build a mosque in a residential zone.
Much happier here in The Free State of Indiana.
You’re lucky
Look under and behind the fence. I would suggest that this homeowner wouldn’t maintain any kind of fence…it doesn’t look like they maintain their yard. Now, to be the devil’s advocate, and forgetting about aesthetics for the moment, lift the hood of your car….most people will be confronted with loads of plastic. Or try to get your plumber to replace your plastic plumbing pipes with copper (or think about paying for that). Even in a perfect world, we are not going to stop using plastic. So perhaps the answer should be solutions to what we do with it when it’s no longer usable, or maintaining it properly while in use.
Copper pipes are a good way to get copper toxicity
Copper is a magic metal. Healthier than plastic by far. Also, the best whiskey stills are always made of copper. I've never heard of copper toxicity. Copper is better than the galvanized stuff that they once used for water pipes. I'm not saying copper toxicity is not real, I've just never heard of it.
I believe that if you have chronic kidney disease, it’s best to stay away from copper, but other than that, I’ve never heard of an issue.
Ratio of observed children playing on plastic trikes and assorted plastic playthings to those things sitting upturned in yards: so far, 0 to 100. FWIW I like the look of a weathered wood fence behind my plantings, the older the better
Petroleum pimps be dammed. Back to the days when you paid a kid to paint your fence.
Amen, and well said.
Plastic outdoor parts represent the enshittification of our neighborhoods.
There's one other point about that junk: It never looks better than the day you took it out of the box. And it never looked good that day, either.
"There is a mechanism in our neurology that revolts against fakery, especially things made of plastic when they are deployed among things found in nature. ... You sense that even in decomposition it is not returning-to-nature because it is not a natural thing in the first place. It will ultimately deteriorate into micro-plastic particles that get into the eco-system as alien material ... "
Splendid, James, just splendid. You avoided using the Eyesore of the Month column as the occasion for a smart-ass putdown; instead, in your view a plastic fence holds a meaning overlooked in a casual glance. It symbolizes the slick artifice that degrades so much of our contemporary lives (in spite of plastic's alleged non-degrading immortality). You show us the skull beneath the skin.
A brief environmental observation but way more -- a genuine philosophical essay, in bonsai format, but no less profound for that. Terrific stuff.