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Two tons of confetti drop on New Year's Eve each year at Times Square in New York. The clean-up afterward is immense, as people leave all their spilled drinks and party favors all over the ground, and that's on top of the four-thousand pounds of little squares of paper.
My proposal is simple: instead
of wasting paper in the name of an increase in the number of the year we live in, that we use colored soap-paper sheets instead.
These already exist and are mainly marketed for travel via airlines, and the process for making them could be adapted for the creation of confetti.
After it all settles on the ground and everyone leaves, simply call in the Fire Department for a quick hose-down(making sure to insert a filter/net into the sewer drains to catch other waste and debris). The streets will never have been cleaner.
Dissolving Paper Soap
http://www.x-tremeg...asp?productID=15073
Here's the soap-paper I was talking about, c/o X-treme Geek. [MrDark, Jan 01 2008]
NYC's Outdated Sewer System
http://riverkeeper....ution/the_facts/986
Biodegradable soapy water is the least of our problems. [MrDark, Jan 01 2008]
[link]
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What's the proportion of the confetti to the mass and/or volume of the insoluble trash ? Is it, forgive the pun, a drop in the ocean ? Also, do you want to flush that much surfactant into the storm drains rather than the foul sewer ? |
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Somehow getting people to take their trash home, or deposit it in provided receptacles, would be a start. |
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Having said that, it's not a bad idea per se, but it may need a little work. |
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I've lost too much faith in humanity to believe that everyone would be willing to take their trash with them or at least drop them off at a receptacle.
As for storm drains and sewers, perhaps most of the water could be forced into the sewer system, but if it's biodegradable and going to be broken down by living organisms anyway, will it really matter that much if it ends up in New York Harbor? |
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// willing to take their trash with them // |
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It's amazing what people are prepared to do when the fire department is parked up ready to soak them ....... |
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Heh... never thought about it that way :-) |
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Yeah, I've seen folks who can't imagine going to an event without a trip to get a cooler, a trip to get ice, and three trips to get all the right beers. But they can't pack out their garbage because it's too much trouble. Troubling them with a fire hose would be appropriate. |
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Croissant for creativity. |
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How about pigeon/rat poison instead? Soap might cause some slip-and-fall liability. |
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I like the careful, considered pause between postings, by the way. |
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Hmm... you mean to "kill two birds with one stone"? Heh... Sadly though, I don't have a pun that works with rats. |
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Anyway... yeah there'd be a possibility of slippage, but probably not much of one until they're lathered into a foam by a water hose... at least not much worse than slipping on regular paper pieces overlapping one another. |
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As for the quick replies, honestly I'm just excited to be trying to get involved again:-) |
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