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.

Another Plastic Bag Ban!

San Jose, California has passed an ordinance that becomes effective Jan. 1, 2012 to entirely ban disposable plastic bags in the city of 1 million people. Paper bags will be available—for a fee. It’s the strongest anti-bag legislation in the U.S. to date.

Not only will unsuspecting customers left (not) holding the bag, but , fines of up to $1,000 can be imposed on shops which break the ban. It will affect about 5,000 businesses.

Exempted from the ban are restaurants and nonprofit secondhand stores. Plastic bags used to protect meat, produce or bulk foods, and sandwich bags and trash bags are also exempt.

Proponents of the ban are excited because they consider it an opportunity to lead on an important environmental issue. Emily Utter, policy associate with Save the Bay, said in an interview: "This ordinance is a great step forward and will keep millions of bags out of San Francisco Bay." She and others are hopeful other cities and California will follow suit. Currently, Long Beach, Santa Monica and Santa Cruz were considering laws to restrict plastic bag use. Cities like San Francisco and Washington already restrict plastic bag use.

People who were against the ban included Tim Shestek, the American Chemistry Council's senior director for state affairs (lobbyist for the petroleum industry?), who called the ban was "unfortunate."

Fact or Fiction?
Councilman Pete Constant, who voted against the ban, told the paper that the city had voted to increase "the burden and cost for people in the midst of one of the deepest recessions we've experienced in our lifetime." –San Jose Mercury News

How much of a burden, really, is bringing your own bags? Grab a tote bag from that conference last year. Re-use your sturdy Trader Joe’s handled paper bags. If we are putting burdens on people, it isn’t by making them bring their own bags.

Also from Councilman Constant:
Plastic bags are fully recyclable, and instead of entertaining recycling partnerships and programs, the City Council chose a policy that punishes consumers by raising grocery costs unnecessarily.

We’ve gone over this before in this blog, but do the math: It costs $4,000 to process and recycle one ton of plastic bags, which can be sold on the commodities market for $32. Recycling is in no way cost-effective.

Your Thoughts, Please

We have a lot on our minds right now: the economy, terrorism, pat-downs, family, the holidays. Let's not forget about our planet, the one we have to live on and share with others? I was walking through our city neighborhood the other evening, looking at Christmas lights--and trash. A plastic bag blew up around my legs, and I thought it did nothing to enhance the decor. So I picked it up, along with some fast-food containers, and a notice of power shut-off for non-payment, wondering how that anonymous person was doing. I know a lot of people that walk my street are struggling, so what are some things I can do to help that?

Of course, we can identify and give as generously as possible to charities we care about. There are little things we can do, too, to perk up the holidays for people less fortunate that us:

• Pick up the trash: I have this formula that if I find a plastic bag on the street or sidewalk, it is a sign that I'm supposed to pick it up and fill it with as much trash as it will hold. I do this at least weekly. I'm walking somewhere anyway, so why not fill a bag with trash and deposit it in a receptacle? If we all did that, the world might look a little spiffier and worth our efforts.

• Put spare change in the "Feed the Meter" parking meters. We have several of these on corners in the Central West End of St. Louis and all the money fed into the meters goes directly to homeless services. So instead of giving a panhandler money, feed the meter. Then you know where it goes.

• Never pass a Salvation Army bucket without giving them something. I carry quarters and dollar bills in my pocket during the holidays so I'm ready to feed them. It really encourages those frigid bell-ringers.

What are some of the little things you do to make your corner of the world a little better for people? Please share, and sign up to be a follower of this blog. God Bless, and Happy Holidays!