recycling taken to a new level--your flooring

I try to recycle whenever possible. It's not just about getting nickels for soda cans, either (which go into our little girl's piggy bank). It's also about trying to keep our landfills under control (1. they fill up 2. chemicals that don't belong there leach out into the water, etc.). Anyway, we generally put out very little garbage weekly, and most of what we set out goes to the composting and recycling programs. When we have wood, I break it up for kindling in the fireplace. The dog poop goes into our own compost piles, and believe me, the plants like it.

As I've written before (9/4/06), we have some nice areas here in the Inland Empire that smell ... like manure. Cows, in particular, are a great producer of the stuff, and in the age of farming on a massive scale, we're hard put to use it all. Now, there's an idea afoot to take what's left after cleaning it up and making ... particle board with it. What a great idea--those fibers have survived a cow's four stomachs. It could probably make some resilient floors, and it would be a lot cheaper than imported Italian porcelain tile. Of course, the idea is in the early stages, and we'll have to see what designs they come up with. But it's certainly no worse than making vinyl flooring out of ... compressed, liquified dinosaur remains.

To read the Yahoo News article, click on the following link:

manure article