renaissance poisson

i am not doing the best i can myself, but at least i am ashamed of it and endeavour to improve, which is more than can be said for prime minister stephen harper.

if you are embarrassed by how he's consistently putting corporate interests ahead of environmental ones, and how he's representing canada in regard to climate change, and if you would like to see canada pick itself up from its bottom of the barrel position on this issue, please consider signing this petition put together by avaaz.

you don't need to be canadian to sign.

i can't seem to comment on the blog entry itself right now (errors out), so i'm leaving this here to remind myself to try again later.

re: http://www.treehugger.com/files/2006/08/viastone_biodeg.php#perma which links to several companies that create papers from minerals and a binder, who all tout themselves as environmentally friendly: viastone, xterrance, and terraskin.  the papers are all 100% tree-free, and are made from mineral powders with a non-toxic resin binder.

the viastone link in the treehugger entry doesn't work; it should be http://www.viastone.net instead.  also, the link to xterrane doesn't actually link to the company's website; that should be http://xterrane.en.ecplaza.net/

i don't know how i feel about this rock paper (beyond wanting to take scissors to it right away :). tried to find out more about its manufacture, but all the named websites are fairly worthless on that account. googling didn't get me much further, but i came across another company, Taiwan LM Technology Co. making such a paper, who actually list their european patent number, which allowed me to look up their patent. 

limestone isn't exactly a renewable resource.  tree farms aren't great, but limestone quarries are worse.  the process, however, might well be more environmentally friendly than what paper-and-pulp factories do these days.  gotta read the patent to find out; they're claiming some nice stuff.  i also wonder about the archival qualities of such papers; we've learned a lot about cellulose over the years, but we know nothing much about this.  but i'll definitely gonna get me some to try them out.