Quiz 13- 10 Questions on waste and garbage - Answers

Introduction: "The biggest waste of water in the country by far. You spend half a pint and flush two gallons." (Referring to toilets)
Prince Philip Duke of Edinburgh British consort of Queen Elizabeth II.

1. What is Kitchen Midden?

Ans: A pre-historic refuse heap left at the site of a camp or village.  Such heaps, often containing buried relics and help in  investigations of cultures that left no written records  or permanent architectural remains

2. Marpol Annex 5, governs / regulates the discharge and disposal of whose garbage or Garbage from where?

Ans : Garbage from Ships and off-shore installations.

3. 3. This is perhaps the most printed logo/ clipart ever (IMHO). You can perhaps see it in most packing and packaging. No one is really sure who actually designed it, but what is it called ?

Ans: Tidyman .

4. On August 31, 1986, the cargo ship Khian Sea, was loaded with more than 14,000 tons of ash from waste incinerators in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The operators of Khian sea intended to dump the ash in the Bahamas. However, the Bahamian government turned the ship away, and Philadelphia withheld payment to the companies because the waste was not disposed of. Over the next 16 months, Khian Sea tried to dump its cargo in Dominican Republic, Honduras, Panama, Bermuda, Guinea Bissau and the Dutch Antilles and in January 1988, the crew finally dumped 4,000 tons of the waste near Gonaïves in Haiti as "topsoil fertilizer". When Greenpeace informed the Haitian government of the origin of the waste the ship slipped away.
Next the crew of Khian Sea tried to unload the rest of the cargo in Senegal, Morocco, Yugoslavia, Sri Lanka and Singapore. After repairs in Yugoslavia, the ship's name was changed to Felicia, and then Pelicano. But these changes failed to hide the ship's original identity.
One day in November of 1988 the rest of the ash disappeared when the ship was en route from Singapore to Sri Lanka. Eventually the ship's captain admitted that they had dumped the remaining 10,000 tons of the waste into the Atlantic and Indian Oceans. Over the years, various attempts to return the ash dumped in Haiti failed.
Greenpeace and Haitian environmental groups launched a "Project Return to Sender" and in April 2000, 2,500 tons of ash and contaminated soil was shipped to Florida and in June 2002 that waste was moved to Mountain View Reclamation Landfill, in Franklin County, Pennsylvania near Antrim Township.

The case contributed to the creation of which Convention in 1989 to Control the Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and Their Disposal and is Named after a place in Switzerland?

Ans: Basel Convention.

5. The study of this natural phenomenon picked up momentum after Peruvians engaged in mining and exporting guano (phosphate-rich bird droppings used as fertilizer) observed that the occurrence of this created problems for guano-mining enterprises. During this phenomenon, guano-producing seabirds would mysteriously perish in great numbers, their carcasses washing up on shore in the millions followed by the  reduction in the amount of guano available along the Peruvian coast. The guano thus inspired the study of which phenomenon?

Ans: El Nino effect.

6.  It's existence was predicted in a 1988 paper published by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) of the United States, and discovered in 1997 by Capt. Charles J. Moore on his return from the Transpacific Yacht Race. Today a total of 4 have been discovered in our oceans. What am I talking about ?

Ans: Garbage Gyre/ Garbage patches in the oceans. The Great Pacific garbage patch, is a gyre (Vortex) of marine debris particles in the central North Pacific Ocean and was first predicted in 1988. Since then similar such garbage patches have been discovered. The North Atlantic Garbage patch, Indian Ocean garbage patch and Mediterranean Sea Garbage Patch

Source : National Geographic.

7. It was invented by Harry Wasylyk  a Canadian inventor and Larry Hansen of Lindsay, Ontario, who worked for the Union Carbide Company there . They were first intended for commercial use and were first sold to the Winnipeg General Hospital. Union Carbide then bought the invention from Wasylyk and Hansen and first manufactured it under the name Glad, for home use in the late 1960s. Which product?

Ans:Green plastic garbage bag (made from polyethylene). Since their invention, plastic garbage bags have been filling our landfills and unfortunately most plastics take up to one thousand years to decompose.

8.  Among many things Fred Lawrence Whipple is well known for, two things take the cake. He proposed the "Dirty snowball" theory for comets (i.e. comets were icy objects containing some dust and rock ) and the other is for designing the Whipple Shield. What is the Whipple shield used for ?

Ans: Whipple Shield is an impact shield used to protect manned and unmanned spacecraft from collisions with orbital debris/ Space garbage (also  micrometeoroids ).

Whipple shield used on NASA's Stardust probe

9. Lillian Moller Gilbreth, the mother of 12 children, was a pioneer in ergonomics, Gilbreth patented many devices, including an electric food mixer, shelves for refrigerator door and which other household device which helps to make our garbage disposal a wee bit easy?

Ans: Trash can with step-on lid-opener (pedal operated garbage bin)

10. He was a great writer and philosopher. One of his best selling epic poem "Henriade" was written in the Bastille prison, where he spent 11 months for writing poems against the regent. After his death, in 1778 he was secretly buried in a abbey in Champagne. In 1791 the remains were bought to Paris and buried in the Pantheon. In 1814 after the Bourbon restoration , his remains were stolen and dumped in a garbage heap by right ultras. Which author?

Ans: Voltaire