On my flight to Chicago yesterday I picked up an abandoned USA Today and turned right to an article on page 3A entitled "S.F. shoppers might be sacked with 17-cent tax on grocery bags." (
See article.)
Finally, a progressive city in the US is proposing to do what countries like Ireland, South Africa, Bangladesh, Australia, China and Taiwan have already implemented: charging for paper and plastic bags. Some countries have eliminated plastic bags altogether.
See Article. For example, Ireland instituted a 15 cents-per-bag tax in March 2002, which led to a 95-percent reduction in use.
According to the USA Today article:
"The 50 million paper and plastic grocery bags used in San Francisco each year cost the city 17 cents apiece for cleanup and other costs, adding up to $8.5 million."
But Paul Smith of the California Grocers Association says:
"The fee is an incredible amount of money to a consumer."
Come on Paul. If each consumer spent about 20 bucks on 5 or 6 canvas bags they'd stop using bags altogether.
The article also claims that "US bag making demands 14 million trees and 12 million barrels of oil – the main ingredient in many plastics – each year." Of course, the American Plastics Council and the American Forest & Paper Association say those numbers are inaccurate. Go figure.
If the American consumers would just refuse a bag when they buy one item or an item that’s already in a bag (potatoes, for example), I’m guessing we’d save about 10% of the 100 billion plastic bags we use each year.
A couple of weeks ago Frontline did a special on Walmart. If you didn't see it, you can watch the entire program online at Frontline's web site. And the title was: "Is Walmart good for America?" If I had produced the show, I would have put a giant "Not in this lifetime" on the screen. End of show. Then I would rerun "Harvest of Fear", a show about a jellyfish's gene being placed in a potatoe plant.Frontline should do another indepth show on Walmart called, "Is Walmart good for the environment?" First, they'd show an interview with Lee Scott, Walmart's CEO, descibing how Walmart is using recycled paper bags and low flush toilets in their stores. Then you'd see a boatload of enviromentalist waiting in line to talk.
How can paying $.99 for a toy that breaks after about 5 uses be good for the environment. Not only does it end up in some landfill (far from your house or mine), it typically travels all the way from China on planes, trains and automobiles just to get to some stupid Walmart store. And, don't forget, the toy was most likely put together by a Chinese teenager who should be in school or playing sports or dreaming of a future.
I wonder how many of the 100 million Walmart shoppers each week (unbelieveable, isn't it?) would continue to shop there if the price tags had the actual cost of the item. For example, let's say you picked up a cheapo shirt and looked at the price tag. Here's what it might say:
In my family, we no longer shop at Walmart. We've bought about 10 products from Walmart in the last couple of years and almost all of them are tucked away in a closet or taking up valuable space in some landfill.
POSTED BY Wendy Richardson co-author of Nerdy Books AT 5:21 PM 2 comments
...and a little sunshine, some rotten leaves and a bunch of kitchen scraps.Last year, for Christmas, my husband bought me a compost bin. To be fair to him, I asked for one. I wasn't clear, though. I wanted one of those wooden ones with 3 bins side by side so I'd have one bin with new scraps, one with partially broken down compost and one that is ready to use.
Instead, he bought me the green cone. (www.greencone.com). Good idea but it holds only kitchen scraps and appears to be full of maggots. Disgusting.
After a little research, I found several articles detailing how to make a compost bin out of those wooden pallets you see behind just about any grocery store or Home Depot. Some web sites give pretty detailed info on building the bin - I like this article from the Do It Yourself network (www.diynet.com).
So, two weeks ago, after my son's soccer game, we ran around in our gas guzzling truck and found 5 pallets left on the side of the road to be thrown away. We brought them home, dug out a level spot near the garden, put one pallet on the ground, stood the other pallets on top of the first to make a box, then tied them together with old wire hangers. Voila. We had a compost bin.
Unless you live in a big city like New York and have no land or in an apartment building with rules (and neighbors), why not build a bin? If it doesn't work, you can always put it back by the side of the road like you found it.
POSTED BY Wendy Richardson co-author of Nerdy Books AT 9:14 AM 0 comments
Yesterday we celebrated my sister's birthday at her house. When the cake came out, so did the paper cups.My husband: "Oh no. Wendy will never let you use those!"
My sister: "Why not? They're biodegradeable. They're made from trees."
Me: "They may be made from trees but they're not biodegradable. I'll get the glasses."
She put them back on the shelf, I grabbed some glasses out of the cabinet and we sang Happy Birthday. I usually have to offer to wash the glasses to get my friends and family to put away the paper cups. This time I didn't. My husband was there.
My sister's argument makes sense. Paper is made from trees and, under normal environmental conditions, a tree will chemically breakdown (rot), enriching the soil with nutrients.
But a wax-coated, dyed blue, paper cup is not a tree. And a landfill is not a normal environmental condition. It's more like a tightly sealed storage container designed to inhibit degradation to protect the environment from harmful contamination. Deprived of air and water, even organic wastes - like paper and grass clippings - degrade very slowly in a landfill.
And what if paper cups did biodegrade? Should you use them? There is so much information on the web about the energy that goes into making a paper cup. One of the best sites I've found to explain some of these complex processes is the EIA's kid's page. They give the following argument for using plastic over paper cups. (I guess the argument for using neither is understood.)
I'm still curious about the biodegradability of paper cups under "normal circumstances". My kids and I have decided to nail a wax-coated paper cup to our garden fence to see how long it takes to biodegrade. That is, if we can find one in this house...
POSTED BY Wendy Richardson co-author of Nerdy Books AT 9:26 AM 5 comments