Well I never knew that!

There are usually people around who (for money) will do what others prefer not to, and the pure-finders of Victorian England did a noble job, both for the leather industry and for public health:nono::nono:

Read More Birmingham Post - Blogs & Comment - Birmingham Columnists - Chris Upton - Chris Upton: The pure hell of mucking about with historic leather
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Very informative article - "Where there's muck there's brass" Cheers, Tony

 

Very interesting, yet at the same time disgusting lol.

I also read somewhere that the tradition of having toilets in pubs doesn't come from any kind of moral obligation to the punters and the wider public, but rather as an opportunity for the landlord to make more money. Wee was used in some industry or other (cant remember which), and pub landlords, aware that their punters were producing gallons of stuff every night, but just wasting it in the street, put buckets out for the punters to wee into. These buckets of wee were then sold.

Even further back in time, the romans used to have people whose job is was to wash clothes in wee, before rinsing in fresh water. Apparently in the absence of Daz and Persil, human wee was the best thing available in any quantity for removing stains.

 

The wee was probably less damaging than the chemicals now used,I saw a documentary type programme saying it was mostly animal fats in conditioner.yuk
Also there was a news report yesterday about microfibres being deposit in the oceans from all the synthetic cloths washed.
Accumulating 'Microplastic' Threat to Oceans // Current

 

Stale wee is used in the dyeing process I think.

Thats a very disturbing report about the micro plastic. There is also the island of floating plastic in the sea.

 

I saw that article. Its worrying but not surprising. I wonder if any of it is connected with chav culture. It seems the predominant fashion for a couple of decades now has been to wear all synthetic materials, tracky bottoms tucked into the nylon socks.

Personally I prefer to wear clothes made of natural materials. Cotton and wool (but not cotton wool).

 

The island of plastic floating in the Pacific is the size of Texas.

PLASTIC TRASH ISLAND DISASTER - YouTube

 

That is one sad vid Ziggy and the powers that be worry about cars on the road causing pollution.
Do you remeber the ship breaking yard on the coast
Shipbreakers in Gadani beach, Pakistan - YouTube

 

Blimey, all the oil & stuff would just go back into the sea:DOH:

The bigger plastic rubbish breaks down into smaller particles & just like the micro fibres, they end up in the food chain as well. Jesus knows what damage that will end up causing

 

when I was 23 years old, I toured europe and Israel for 18 months on a working holiday

after working on a Kibbutz, I took a ferry from Haifa (Israel) to Athens .... the whole way on the cruise, the ship workers emptied the dustbins into the sea (even in broad daylight) .... you could see rubbish floating on the surface for miles

sad

 

I don't know if its still the case, but when I was at school in the 1980s, we learnt about a beach in Spain that was considered to be one of the most beautiful in Europe. The sand was almost white, and seemed to glow slightly at dusk and dawn.

The reason for this was the faulty incinerator that was not completely burning the rubbish. So the half burnt rubbish was being simply emptied into the sea. To help make it go away, huge amounts of caustic soda were also being dumped with it. This caustic soda was bleaching everything, including the beach it washed up on, hence the almost white sand, and the glow at sunrise and sunset was the bleach fluorescing in reaction to the ultraviolet in the sunshine.

Was this Spain's fault? I'm afraid not. The incinerator in question was in Gibraltar.

 

Wasn't there a beach up your way that dissapeared because they stopped dumping quarry waste?

 

Dunno, I've never heard that one.

Interestingly though, in a grand feat of engineering, a significant chunk of land not far from me used to be in the sea, and the river tees was rerouted to knock a couple of kinks out to make it more suitable for shipping. In fact, if you walk along the dunes to the gare, you pass the original tees mouth about quarter a mile before the current tees mouth. You can just make it out by the notable absence of significant dunes for a river sized gap. However things are changing down there at the moment. Much work has been going on in preparation for an offshore wind farm. I'm convinced its changed the local currents, because the sand is somehow different now, and the stuff that gets washed up is somehow different too. And just the other day I walked along the beach to the gare, and to my surprise, there was quite a lot of water in the original tees river bed. I can't quite put my finger on it, but you know when you've known an area like the back of your hand for as long as you remember, you just know when something has changed but can't put your finger on what. My gut instinct tells me our local coast line is going to change quite drastically within the next year or two. I'm sure the shipping lane will be ok, it gets dredged regularly to keep it deep, and the gare is going nowhere, its made out of piled up rocks that have been there for god knows how many years, but the I reckon the beach and dunes are about to change shape, and not necessarily in a good way.