I've Got Company! Are You With Me?

More and more when I go shopping, there are other people in line also with their own bags. I hope they are also recycling at home. We have become loaded down with garbage. We want less of it. With a little effort, we can decrease landfill impact tremendously. Behavioral scientists tell us it takes three months to make something a habit. Recycling and using reusables are great habits to get into! Here are some great habits to develop:

· Remember to keep cloth bags in every car and to grab one when you walk to a store. It’s pretty hard to carry seven items home loose in your hands, so you tend to go for the plastic with its convenient handles. Grab a cloth bag with longer handles so you can sling it over your shoulder while you walk. Better, yet, wear a backpack and stay balanced.
· Remember that every chipboard carton a product comes in can be flattened and recycled.
· Tear address labels off the umpteen catalogs and travel books we all get and recycle those, as well.
· Take the time to wash out messy jars and bottles. Some can be thrown in the dishwasher. Others just need to sit with hot soapy water in them for a few hours, shaken up and rinsed out. Don’t forget the soap. It acts as a surfactant to reduce surface tension and keep food from sticking so tightly to the container. (Yes, I mean peanut butter, too!)
· Invest in a shredder. That’s the best way to keep sensitive materials, like old bank statements from falling into the hands of identity thieves. Then use the shredded paper to pack breakables for shipping.
· Recycle printer cartridges. Office Depot gives you your choice of a discount off a purchase or a ream of recycled paper for each one you bring in.
· Recycle old batteries, even the AAAs. Hazardous metals can leach out in landfills.
· Go on-line and research recycling centers in your area and your options. Then post their requirements in the kitchen or someplace easily accessible. If you live in an apartment or condo building, share the information with other units. We can pay for curbside recycling, but we have free recycling drop-off locations within a few blocks, so we take it ourselves.
· When you have neighborhood clean-up days and pick up trash, separate it into garbage and recyclables. No reason for cans and bottles to go into a landfill.

You probably have tons of ideas of your own. If you do, please comment on these blogs and I will use your ideas and help you share them. We’re all in this together. Let’s do what we can.

Fighting Special Interests- and the Beat Goes On

Using Ireland’s successful plastic bag tax as a model, Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels is proposing a 20-cent “green fee” on all disposable bags. The proposed fee is the first of its kind in the nation made by a mayor striving for a legacy of environmental stewardship. If the City Council approves, the fee would go into effect January 1. In an effort to ease the transition, the city will mail one reusable shopping bag to each household.

Plastic bag bans, however, are meeting concentrated and well-financed resistance from petroleum producers and plastic bag manufacturers. Some municipalities considering plastic bag bans have been hit with legal demands for environmental impact statements to justify a ban. Most do not have that kind of money, so they back down from proposing a ban or even a plastic bag surcharge. In their efforts to prevent bans, the plastic bag industry has launched a huge campaign for plastic bag recycling. As you have seen from earlier blogs, the economies are just not there.

EPA data shows that between 500 billion and a trillion plastic bags are consumed worldwide each year. Of those, less than 1% are recycled. However, increasing that percentage isn’t a solution. Jared Blumenfelt, Director of San Francisco’s Department of the Environment tells it like it is:
There are harsh economics behind bag recycling. It costs $4,000 to process and recycle one ton of plastic bags, which can be sold on the commodities market for $32. Do the math.

Again, we’re faced with special interests corrupting the environment. The bag industry is right that paper bags are not the answer. But their claims that plastic bag bans will create a huge demand for paper bags and cause widespread catastrophic deforestation are unfounded. The solution is and has always been; reusable bags. When someone asks you whether you want plastic or paper, say: “Neither. I brought my own.”