Proper Waste Disposal

If you are like me, you go through sporatic clearings of stuff, whether papers, files, cosmetics and hair products no longer used--anything to feel less hemmed in. The trick to being effective at one of these spring/fall/whenever cleanings is to get organized. You'll do yourself and the environment a favor.

Step 1: Set a finite area to clear that's not too overwhelming, like the master bathroom cabinets

Step 2: Have two bags handy: one for trash and one for recycle. Don't get lazy on this one. You just have to rinse out those half-used bottles to recycle them.

Step 3: Reuse or recycle: Left over shampoo you no long like, or it has sulfates and you can't use it on your straight hair, can be poured into hand dispensers and used for handwashing. Check environmental websites to see what should NOT be emptied down the drain.

Step 4: Get rid of outdated prescriptions, but don't flush them down the toilet. More and more, we are finding escalating amounts of drugs in our drinking water and streams. Unless it specifically says to flush, and very few drugs do, adulterate them so they can't be used and put them in the trash.

Step 5: Durable goods you no longer want can be donated to a charity--like that curling iron you never got the hang of, or the humidifier you never use.

Sept 6: Separate business papers into those with personal information that need shredding and those you can recycle.

Then just do it. YOu will feel so free that you have cleaned out all those drawer and cabinet hoggers. And you will probably feel more like tackling that file cabinet in your office.

Mr. Foster, Please Go Away

We live in one of the most beautiful unspoiled places in the U.S., high in the Colorado Rockies. In the summer, the wildflowers knock your socks off. In the fall, the aspens glow with gold against the rocks and deep green of the conifers. Also ubiquitous are the beer cans someone drops into the gully across from our driveway most weekdays. So going out for a walk means coming home with the beer cans to put into the recycle bin.

This guy who prefers Foster's Ale and his friends who drink a variety of other brews either live or work up here. So why do they think trashing the place is okay? Why do they think their mother will be there to pick up after them? I considered posting a sign asking them why they are doing this. My husband thinks if I did that, he may give us all his trash just to make a point. He's probably right. Anyone who would do this everyday is living un unconscious life. I don't even want to think about him drinking and driving.

So unless we catch them in the act, the only thing we can do is continue to pick up the cans, the bags, the fast food wrappers so we can continue to enjoy living in this paradise and give it the respect it deserves.

A Much Overdue Blog Entry

I could say I’ve been away, and I have, but even then I could have done something. What I could have done wouldn’t have had the impact as this PowerPoint presentation emailed to me by a friend. Check this out, and after you watch it, if you aren’t recycling every possible thing you can, then we’re in worse trouble than we thought.
Google this to get the astounding show: what_is_this_made_of.pps

Differences Around the World

Every country, every city, every neighborhood has different priorities with regard to the environment. In our neighborhood in the city, I can pick up a big bag of trash everyday in front of our townhouse complex. Next day, I go out and do it again. Trash seems to come up like grass. When we go to Mexico, trash is in huge piles. In African villages, any hole becomes a trash dump; no pretty trucks coming by on a regular schedule to pick it up. In Asia, we’ve got heavy air pollution, water pollution, but we’re pretty good about trash.

In Taiwan and in Shanghai, we saw small boats with the daily job of scooping trash out of the water in the harbor. Walking through neighborhoods anywhere in China, we saw virtually no trash. On the historic Bund on Shanghai harbor, every few yards are these helpful containers, encouraging people to recycle. We saw them everywhere in major cities. You just can’t breathe the air.

Myths About Recycling

Myth: Recycling Plastic Bags is Just as Good
As I’ve explained in earlier blogs, Less than 3 percent of plastic bags are ever recycled, and when they are, it costs $4,000 per ton, while manufacturing them costs $32 per ton. No one can get excited about doing it. Even when we put them in a recycling bin, most of them won’t get recycled. Many are shipped to countries like India and China, where they are incinerated and cause pollution. The best solution is not to use them; bring your own reusables.

Myth: Cheap Reusables Are a Good Alternative
Most of them don’t last very long and create their own disposal problem; some of them contain lead. Get high quality bags you can launder and that will last for years. No hassle, no waste.

Myth: Paper is Better Than Plastic
You are just trading problems with either. It takes 4 times as much energy to make a paper bag than a plastic bag. Paper comes from tree pulp, which means cutting down trees. According to Reusit.com, in 1999, 14 million trees were cut to produce the 10 billion paper grocery bags used by Americans that year alone. Global warming gets two boosts: once from the deforestation and again from the manufacturing process.

Myth: Banning Bags is the Best
Bans force people to change their behavior, and may actually drive them in the wrong direction: to paper or cheap reusables. Charging a fee, like 5 cents a bag, requires people to make a conscious decision. Bans also inconvenience customers. Sometimes we just need plastic bags for drippy meats, pet messes or kid messes! It’s nice to have disposable bags as an option.

Source: reusit.com

Some Plastic Litter Good News Items from Resusit.com

As of January 1, 2011, single-use, non-biodegradable bags are banned in Italy, which uses 1/5th of the 100 billion bags annually used across Europe. While retailers argue that biodegradable bags are too expensive and not as durable (it’s the durable part that bothers us), similar bans in other countries have worked. In the two years since China banned the bag, it has kept 100 billion bags out of landfills.

Another good idea for reducing plastic bags is bag fees. They are proving successful in cities like Washington DC and countries like Ireland that put their PlasTax in effect in 2002. Washington DC’s little fee resulted in an 80% reduction in use-and-toss bags.

Fees work for a number of reasons, say environmental experts:

1. They are market-based solutions that get people to change their habits – and with a nudge not a shove. Even small, 5-cent fees make a huge impact.
2. The money collected from fees can be earmarked for clean-up, especially when funds are hard to come by.
3. It gives us choices. If we don’t want to pay for clean-up, we can bring our own bags and keep our money.

On the Styrofoam front:
Eben Bayer’s company turns agricultural waste into biodegradable packing material grown from a fungus. Polystyrene (Styrofoam) is commonly used to pack everything from delicate hardware and breakables for shipping, to our take-home meal from over-generous restaurant servings. None of that is recyclable, and when it degrades in nature, it releases carcinogens. Bayer's packing material, if adopted for widespread use, could reduce the production and disposal of polystyrene immensely.

From MSNBC:
Stockholm-based appliance company Electrolux AB recently produced a custom set of five vacuum cleaners made from water-borne plastic trash. The refuse was collected from different oceans and seas across the globe, with each locale’s most prevalent trash dictating its vacuum’s unique look.
Though the vacuums are not for sale, they do work. Electrolux hopes these fashionable, functional pieces of art will begin a discussion about the growing problem of water-bound plastic pollution and perhaps even move people away from the use-and-toss culture that led to the current situation.