Friday, August 29, 2008

Van Gogh: The Wheat Fields


This painting by Van Gogh is priced between $28 to $35 million. Sotheby's Impressionist and Modern art sale in November 2007 tried to sell this but the bidding stalled at $25 million and the painting was not sold. After this Sotheby's stock fell sharply because of the embarrassment.

Friday, August 22, 2008

Plastic Threat!!!

Somewhere between 500 billion and a trillion plastic bags are consumed worldwide each year. Less than 1% of bags are recycled. It cost more to recycle a bag than to produce a new one, around Rs. 172,000 to process and recycle 1,000 kg of plastic bags, which can then be sold on the commodities market for Rs. 1,376.

A study in 1975, showed oceangoing vessels together dumped 8 million pounds of plastic annually. The real reason that the world's landfills weren't overflowing with plastic was because most of it ended up in an ocean-fill. Plastic bags account for over 10 percent of the debris washed up on the Indian coastline. Plastic bags photo degrade which means that over time they break down into smaller, more toxic petro-polymers

Nearly 200 different species of sea life including corals, whales, dolphins, and turtles die due to plastic bags

WWF says that If we use a cloth bag, we can save 6 bags a week. That's 22,176 bags in an average life time and if just 1 out of 5 people in India did this we would save 4,435,200,000,000 bags over our life time. China has banned plastic bags and will thus save 37 million barrels of oil each year. Canada, Kenya, South Africa, Singapore, and many others world over have banned or are moving toward banning the plastic bags.

When are YOU starting??