Deplasticize Your Life

Greetings. I've had to take a hiatus from this blog due to a lot of demanding projects. I'm not sure how often I will be able to post for the next 6 months but I'll try to find something interesting at least once a month. The war against plastic bags has gotten to a whole new level in the last year and I just can't keep up with all the articles and activity. But this is a good thing!

Here's something from my favorite blogger, Sharon Astyk, on deplasticizing your life. I'm including more of the article than I usually do, and I really encourge you to go direct to her site and read the whole thing, plus her other posts. She and Miranda from Simple Living have got a really cool project going called "90% Emissions Reduction" or "The Riot for Austerity". You can read more about my participation in it on my Truffula Tuft Blog

Monday, June 25, 2007
52 Weeks Down - Week 9 - Deplasticize Your Life

If you didn't see the article on plastic oceans (the one with the horrible turtle pictures), you should definitely read it here - this is really important.

Because we all knew that plastic never breaks down entirely, but I don't think everyone realized that what happens is that plastic fragments and mixes in with your water, your soil, your food, and the food and water of plants and animals, and then it makes its way into our bodies. How is a really troubling and scary story. Definitely read the article.

Now this is stuff never, ever meant to be ingested - full of endocrine disrupters (messes with your hormones), carcinogens (warm plastic mixed with liquid creates dioxin among other things), traces benzene (liver cancer) and all sorts of things that no one ever meant for us to eat, breathe and bathe in. Now this plastic warms the planet a couple of times - when it is manufactured from oil, when it is recycled (if it is, most isn't - more on this in a minute), and when it goes into a landfill and helps mix with organic garbage to produce methane. And since cancer treatment isn't exactly low input, you could argue that it warms the planet again - when we have our surgeries and other treatments from the illnesses caused by becoming a plastic world.

The plastics industry has spent a long time convincing us that plastics are recyclable - they have those nice arrows, so they must be ok, right? But in fact only a few varieties of plastic are recyclable, plastic recycling is quite energy intensive, and after you recycle that plastic container into a bumper or recycled plastic lumber, that's it - next stop is the landfill or your water table.

So what do we do about this? The first thing is to buy no new plastic, or as little as humanly possible. Don't take that plastic bag at the grocery store - when you do so, you are saying "make another." Don't buy things packaged in plastic if you can avoid it - and tell your store manager "I'd really like to purchase that - but not with all that plastic packaging." Whenever possible, buy things with no or minimal packaging, or that uses recycled glass, metal or paper only. The only way to stop the plastic plague is stop making a market for it....

photo from Mindfully.org The remains of adult albatross with a gut full of plastic

Japanese Garden of Recycled Materials

Judith Selby Lang is an artist with a big, beautiful vision. She is creating "ReCycle Ryoan-ji", a 20' x 48' replica of Ryoan-ji Garden in Kyoto made entirely out of recycled materials as part of the 2007 Northern California Cherry Blossom Festival. It will be presented in the San Francisco Civic Center Plaza. Check out her blog about the process of creating this installation.

Fee per bag at Giant

Some first hand experience of using a fee per bag system, from a graduate student in Maryland:

January 22, 2007
Fun at Giant Foods

So I'm back at school, and I went to the Giant to pick up some food, to get ready for living on my own again. A few things struck me...

Customer Reactions

Reusable bag company Spice Bags put this on their blog:

Jan. 19, 2007

IKEA Your consumer wants a resuable bag. Is she/he going to get it from you or from someone else?

Spice Bags Blog

IKEA announced it wouldn't give away free plastic bags and would charge fora sturdier reusable bag. How do you think their customers reacted? Here are some actual customer comments...

Trying for a Ban in Marin

1/20/07
Official to pitch plastic bag ban
Rob Rogers, Marin Independent Journal, Marin, CA

Hoping to stem the tide of a "plastic plague," Supervisor Charles McGlashansays he plans to propose a ban on plastic bags at grocery and drug stores inunincorporated Marin...

It's not as simple as it seems

Continued from last 2 posts. Editorial from the Examiner:

Jan. 26, 2007
Fighting our way out of plastic bags

Plastic bags, ubiquitous plastic bags, unsightly plastic bags — everyone uses them and everyone has an opinion about them. It’s not surprising, then, that these symbols of consumerism have evolved into yet another political issue in The City, betokening the long if oversimplified war between the Board of Supervisors and the business community...

SF saga continued

Continued from last post. Now they are trying a new approach:

January 19, 2007
City seeks to require compostable grocery bags
Charlie Goodyear, San Francisco Chronicle, San Francisco, CA

San Francisco officials said Thursday that they will pursue a new law requiring all grocery bags used in the city to be compostable after sparring with large supermarket chains over implementation of a voluntary reduction and recycling effort...

This AP story appeared from San Jose to London:

January 19, 2007
SF grocers say they used 7.6M fewer plastic bags in '06
Associated Press, San Francisco, CA

Grocery stores that participated in a citywide plan to reduce the use of plastic bags handed out 7.6 million fewer sacks to shoppers in 2006 than the year before, an industry trade group said...

Artists want photos of bags

These Chicago based artists are soliciting photos of your plastic bag collections. Before you crochet them into hammocks or wrap your leftovers with them (because your not going to throw them away right?!), take a picture and send it to these guys. They will do something interesting with it I'm sure:

Feb. 1, 2007

Temporary Services - We Still Need Your Help

For the past few months we have been re-using plastic shopping bags in a variety of ways for upcoming projects in Chicago and Zagreb. The enormous waste created by these bags is a global phenomena with impact everywhere. Most people wind up with more of these bags than they can ever re-use....

Bring your own bag to the Student Co-op

A student at Swarthmore passes on a lesson from down under:

Feb. 1, 2007
Recycle bags
Marshall Morales, The Phoenix, Swarthmore College, Swarthmore, PA, US

Throughout Australia and New Zealand, I noticed a simple and powerful change for green living. Environmental action groups have worked with supermarkets and other stores to charge for the normally free plastic bags used to carry purchases...

O'Mama says "Pick up that mess!"

The crunchy mamas are getting the word out:

Reusable Bags Tackle Plastic Bag Mess
Vincent Cobb, O'Mama Report

Introduced merely 25 years ago, plastic bags are accumulating in our environment at an alarming rate. They're everywhere: strewn along roadways, stuck in trees, and piled up beneath our kitchen sinks. New, eco-conscious businesses are helping battle this growing problem by raising awareness and offering effective, affordable, high-quality products that help reduce plastic bag consumption...

San Francisco Supermarket Agreement Failing

January 18, 2007
Deal to reduce plastic bag use hits the skids
Charlie Goodyear, San Francisco Chronicle

Large supermarket chains that agreed in 2005 to help reduce the number of plastic grocery bags in use in San Francisco have refused to release the number of bags they distributed last year, breaking a deal they made with the city...

Illinois Recycling Bill 259

1/18/07
Law would force retailers to recycle plastic bags
Blackwell Thomas, Bloomington Pantagraph, Bloomington, IL

The sight of a plastic bag dancing gently in the breeze might have provided inspiration for the Oscar winning movie “American Beauty,” but one lawmaker does not see any romance in the image.

Santa Cruz Reusables

An activist from Santa Cruz is working on promoting reusables - specifically those great little Chico Bags:

1/18/07
A New Year . . . .
The Breeze from San Juan Blog

I am taking on addressing disposable bags this year. I think there is an opportunity to create a conscious moment when we are offered that bag when we shop.

Eco-Stylish Reusables

January 10, 2007
Grocery stores flaunt eco-style
By Jenifer Gee, Amador Ledger Dispatch, Jackson CA

While you may not see them on the arms of models strutting the runways in Paris, environmentally-friendly grocery bags are becoming more of a must-have accessory for eco-conscious county residents...

Plastic Activist in Alabama

Jan. 2, 2007
Taking Up the Battle
By Amanda Hardy, Lagniappe, Mobile AL

Heaps of paper, glass, plastic and aluminum in landfills reaching higher than the RSA tower, millions of Styrofoam take out containers forming one horrifying monster who haunts the earth for an entire millennia before it biodegrades: these are the images in the nightmares of environmental crusaders around the world. Many feel the environment is being mindlessly destroyed everyday, even here in Mobile, but there are a few people who are taking up the battle to make our planet and city beautiful again...

OR Audubon Pledges to Use Reuse

“Plastic bags are the ecological bane of the world,” said John Gaylord, board member of Oregon's Audubon Society. The organization is recommending 14 ways for members to green up, and asking them to pledge:

Jan. 15, 2007

Corvallis Audubon Society goes green
Theresa Hogue, Gazette-Times, Corvallis, OR

An organization such as the Corvallis Audubon Society, which focuses on wandering the wilderness looking for bird life, would seem a good place for folks with an interest in sustainability and “green” living to naturally congregate...

Saving Money Saving the Environment

January 06, 2007
Saving Money and Saving the Environment
WAGblog, Pamela Spiro Wagner

Say it costs the chemical companies $1-$2 to produce 500 grocery bags, which I hate to say but that may be all it takes. Still, think how many grocery bags a large store uses, at least millions a year. Multiply that by the number of stores there are that use plastic bags, Walmart and all such stores included, and you can see why stopping the use of them could save quite a bit of oil as well as reduce a lot of landfill and unsightly litter.

Army chooses Paper Over Plastic

Even the US Army is cutting back on plastic bag use, though from a purely cost-cutting motive. According to this article, paper bag costs have increased 34 percent in the past three years, while plastic bag costs have risen 84 percent. Reusables are just an afterthought here:

Dec. 21, 2006
Choose paper over plastic bags at U.S. commissaries
Army News Service, Defense Commissary Agency, Fort Lee, VA

Commissaries are hoping shoppers in the U.S. will say yes to paper bags for bagging their groceries as part of the Defense Commissary Agency's measures to offset major cost increases of plastic and paper bags...

Inventor of the Dreaded Bag Passes Away

In the late 1970s, this North Carolina inventor developed the high-density plastic grocery bag. He helped make it the ubiquitous plague it is today. He must have recognized the problems at some point, because after he retired, Gordon Dancy started Phoenix Recycling, dedicated to recycling many of the plastic bags used in grocery stores:

Dec. 23, 2006
Myrtle Beach tinkerer dies
Kelly Marshall Fuller, The Sun News, Myrtle Beach, NC

A Myrtle Beach man who helped spread the phrase "paper or plastic" died Wednesday at Georgetown Memorial Hospital. Gordon Dancy, 67, who developed the high-density plastic grocery sack, spent his time improving items that would make the world run more smoothly, said his son, Mark Dancy...

Where to Get Reusable Bags

Reusable bags seem to be hanging on every chair back and doorknob at my house, but some people might not be so lucky. Californians Against Waste has a website full of helpful info, including this list of places to get reusable bags:

How Do I Get a Reusable Bag?