Printing Press Operator. Mike returns to Las Vegas (he was also there in Casino Food Recycler) to try his hand as the operator of an old-style printing press, and when he says old-style, he means it. This baby weighs about six tons and is some hundred and fifty years old.
First they draw an image with charcoal pencils, then create images for each of the different colors, which is treated with huge amounts of light (some five thousand watts) to create a sort of stencil which will create the part of the image for that particular color. Then they can run the paper through the press to apply that color to the lithograph. Naturally it doesn’t go too well when Mike runs the pages through the press, but it turns out okay (no word yet on whether these lithos will ever be available anywhere).
Terra Cotta Manufacturer. Another stop at an old business model, this one making terra cotta, well, things. In this case, they take a bunch of the glop and create models. The models are used to make a negative mold, which can in turn be used to create a new positive – or more models – that can be churned out. The model here is a part of a building.
It’s actually pretty cool, like Play-Doh for grown ups, and a very dirty job. This is the one time you see a company that tells Mike he can’t do something. I’m surprised more people don’t, actually, but in this case it may cost them a month of work, so it’s completely understandable.
Garbage Pit Technician. Finally Mike returns to the San Francisco dump (he was also there in Chinatown Garbage Collector) to see what they’re doing that is new. As it turns out, they are going through the food and other compost to find things they can pump through this monstrous Trommel machine that essentially chews it up and turns it into a green slop that can then be converted into a type of methane. It’s pretty nasty and very dirty. Mike then gets to clean it out. It’s also really cool, and the dump is, at present, the only place that’s doing it.
