What a slow news week it has been! Let’s see if we can wrassle us up some fun links.

• A chair made of plastic bags? Looks uncomfortable. I’ll take the chicken. [TechLime]
• Turning shirts into bags in Chattanooga! [Chattanooga Times Free Press]
• Salvation Army finds success in plastic bag collecting. [Pioneer Local]
• Everything is political, even tote bags. [Sydney Morning Herald]
• A businessman against disposable bags? Inconceivable! [Paul Orfalea’s Blog]
• Fashionable reusable totes at Albertson’s, apparently. [Light Bulbs]
• Make sure that what you throw in the recycling is actually, you know, recyclable. [Komo News]

There are a ton (and that’s a conservative estimate) of reusable bags on the market right now, and as you may have noticed right now, they are not all created equal. From hundred-dollar designer charity bags made from authentic third-world rice sacks, to the super-cheap and bright-colored boxy ones hanging in a row by your local grocery check-out stand, there is a world of choice when it comes to your reusable shopping needs. So what do you go with? According to the Norwich Bulletin, it’s all about strength and durability — which, really, makes perfect sense. They also have a few pointers regarding what to look for when it comes to picking the perfect bag.

If you’re in the reusable bag market, you need to know a few things. The most durable ones are made of polypropylene and stamped in a woven pattern. These often sell for less than $1 each.

Score one for the bright and boxy ones! The article goes on to mention the necessity of the durable bottom and the rack loop for easy loading, and to sum up they leave us with an easy to handle checklist:

A good shopping bag

- Is waterproof and tearproof

- Has handles sewn down the sides

- Has a bottom insert

- Has a rack loop

- Costs less than $2

That is certainly easy enough to remember! If you haven’t yet gotten on the reusable bagwagon, this might be something to keep in mind when you finally climb aboard.

Jacy Bolden, City of Encinitas Environmental Advisory Committee Coordinator, sent out an e-mail on Wednesday evening, September 10th, after the City of Encinitas City Council, in a 3-2 vote; approved moving forward with a phased-in plastic bag ban with a fee on paper bags and additionally with an option of allowing a self-imposed fee on plastic bags. There was a specific directive that there be significant education that it be phased in slowly, for the committee to work with both residents and the business community — developing a ‘reasonable’ plan and timeframe.

Okay, Encinitas First, we mostly knew that before. Is anything new in the works in the near future?

The new EACC meets monthly, and the next meeting will be Thursday, October 23, at City Hall. The Encinitas Chamber respects the courage of the Council for taking leadership in this action and will monitor the progress of the committee monthly as the EACC considers different options. Already the suggestion that the City implement a plan that allows shoppers to use a plastic bag, pay a 25 cent fee at time of purchase that is refundable like the can and bottle program that the State of California currently runs might be acceptable to local business owners and help modify shopper behavior while not putting the entire responsibility for change on the local business owners and retailers. For more information, watch these pages; the Chair of the EACC, Alek Cannan, has agreed to write a monthly report that will follow the committee’s progress and report on their direction in the pages of our newsletter as the “ban” proceeds toward a public hearing and possible Council approval.

So, in short: nothing too much has changed. Yet. But stay tuned on the 23rd to see if a vote is taken on when to officially put the ban into effect — and, more importantly, how and how quickly it should be done. Interesting times in Encinitas, though, that’s for sure. We’ll keep you posted!

• A popular topic this morning: how do you remember your reusable bags? [The Green Routine]
• Are the Barbados ready to go green? [The Nation Newspaper]
• The Cayman Islands definitely are! [Cayman Net News]
• Eight ways to Go Green at the office. [Live Science]
• Go Green with your wardrobe while you’re at it! [RedOrbit]
• A friendly reminder: reusable bags only work when you use them. AZ Daily Star]
• A friendly reminder on sorting out your plastics. Summit Daily News
• Bags for Breast Cancer Awareness at Sunflower Markets! [KTNV]
• A brief reusable bag guilt trip. [Mom to Mom]

Maybe it’s just personal bias based on their stylish furniture and tasty meatballs, but IKEA has always seemed to have a singular sense of practical-yet-extraordinary innovation. Example #1: my ridiculous indispensable Kitchen-in-a-Box set, awesome! Example #2: over a year ago (before it was popular!) IKEA was among the first companies to start advocating reusable bags. While still offering filmy disposable plastic bags, they would come at a price of five cents to help discourage overuse. Now, however, it’s all about to change — it has been announced that IKEA is phasing out the disposables.

The company set a goal last year of slashing plastic bag use by 50
percent from 70 million bags to 35 million in 12 months. To do this,
the company sold the plastic bags for a nickel, as well as reusable
bags for 59 cents.

Ninety-two percent of customers eschewed the plastic bags, the
retailer said. Now the company will pull plastic bags completely from
its U.S. stores in October, just as it did in the United Kingdom in
June, and in Australia in December. The company donated the proceeds –
more than $300,000 — from the sale of the plastic bags to America
Forests to plant trees.

Pernille Spiers-Lopez, president of IKEA North America, touts the plastic bag project as a success, stating that it “truly demonstrates that our customers care deeply about our global home and that we can all work together to be sustainable and environmentally responsible.” It truly is. Perhaps more companies should take notes from IKEA’s playbook — and if that just so happens to involve serving tasty meatballs for while you shop, then so be it. It’s all in the name of good business and a happier world.

Photo via Flickr!

Let’s take a timeout from our normal topics to address a rather unusual, but completely valid, environmental concern — garbage disposals. I came across an article in Slate yesterday, where a troubled reader wrote in with this question:

I’m sorry to say I live in an apartment without a composter for organic waste. Given the circumstances, am I better off feeding my leftover mashed potatoes into the garbage disposal, so they don’t end up in a landfill? Or should I throw them in the trash can, so they don’t end up the water supply?

A very good question, and certainly one that warrants some time and discussion! Though it doesn’t seem to weigh heavily on many peoples’ minds here in the United States, apparently other countries are already starting to tackle it, on the basis that the benefits versus costs of garbage disposals are ambiguous, to say the least. On the one side, water treatment plants are made to handle what your dirty dishes dish out:

It is true that with the major exception of grease and fats—which can block pipes and cause overflows—water-treatment systems are designed pretty well to handle most of the scraps you might have left over from dinner. The leftovers you shovel into the sink will eventually make their way to a wastewater plant, where the sewage goes through “grit treatment,” which strains out the largest solid matter. (Sewage treatment is one of the few disciplines in which you can use words like grit, sludge, and scum as technical terms.) Whatever stuff gets separated from the water is either landfilled, condensed into fertilizer, or digested by microorganisms.

On the other hand, every instance of waste inevitably has consequences:

Still, dumping waste into the water system has environmental costs. There is evidence that the effluent that is pumped back into local water streams does affect their chemical composition and aquatic life. In extreme cases, the result can be something called eutrophication, which occurs when a higher concentration of nutrients results in algae blooms. According to one Australian study, the eutrophic impact of sending your food waste down the disposal is more than three times larger than sending it to the landfill. You’ll also be using a lot more water if you decide to go with the disposal—and you’ll be indirectly responsible for the extraction of the metal needed to make the appliance.

The article does note that studies on both sides of the debate tend to be rather biased toward whatever program or company funded the study. Then, there’s the question of landfill transport versus water consumption, and every other variable. Basically, it all comes down to your individual circumstances. How is the drought situation in your area? If water is running low, you may want to avoid, well, running it whenever possible (and trashing your food scraps rather than sending then down the drain). Check into your town’s water treatment program and effectiveness, and make sure you can be trusted not to accidentally stuff bacon grease and chicken bones down your kitchen pipes.

And remember: if you have the means to compost, it’s better than any of the above.

Photo via Flickr!

As we know, reusable bags are good. Very, very good. Every time we take them out, every time we halt the production of just a few more disposable plastic bags, we are doing a service to our planet. But what happens when we purchase reusable bags, take some more free promotion bags, and then consistently forget them at home? As the Wall Street Journal reports, if you’re not going to actually use them, they can go from very good to very, very bad in a heartbeat.

Used as they were intended, the totes can be an environmental boon, vastly reducing the number of disposable bags that do wind up in landfills. If each bag is used multiple times — at least once a week — four or five reusable bags can replace 520 plastic bags a year, says Nick Sterling, research director at Natural Capitalism Solutions, a nonprofit focused on corporate sustainability issues.

But well-meaning companies and consumers are finding that shopping bags, like biofuels, are another area where it’s complicated to go green. “If you don’t reuse them, you’re actually worse off by taking one of them,” says Bob Lilienfeld, author of the Use Less Stuff Report, an online newsletter about waste prevention. And because many of the bags are made from heavier material, they’re also likely to sit longer in landfills than their thinner, disposable cousins, according to Ned Thomas, who heads the department of material science and engineering at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

To make a long story short and painfully obvious, it takes resources to make reusable bags, too. If you treat them like disposables, or hoard them up and yet continue to use disposables when you make your weekly shopping trips, the result is even more waste than we begain with.

Maybe the problem is with the newfound ubiquity of reusables. Perhaps it is hard for people to take full ownership of something they received as a free promotion. Maybe, bummer though it is to even think so, people actually need highly overpriced designer bags to make them desirable and valuable enough to use.

But I should really hope not. It’s really not too hard, guys! We just need a little practice. Keep them next to your grocery list, keep them in your car — whatever it takes. We’re trying to save our planet by reducing waste, not speed it along with good intentions. Let’s get on it.

Photo via Flickr!

With a lack of any major news (which we have to admit is better than bad news), it seems like articles relating to recycling and conservation right now are getting more and more regionally specific. Last week we visited Olympia, WA, and Janesville, WI. Today, we continue on our Eastbound journey and end up in Ithaca, where the Ithaca Journal has some ideas of how to get environmentally conscious around the city.

At a coffee shop

Many of us stop at a coffee shop on the way into work to get a jumpstart to the day. But what happens to that Styrofoam or waxed paper cup that housed the coffee you just purchased? Bring an insulated cup or thermos with a lid next time, and ask your barista to fill it up instead of a disposable cup. Even if the cup is recyclable, it’s still a resource that has to be produced and then recycled. So bring your own cup and drink up!

All right, the coffee shop reusable cup is a no-brainer these days, but this one actually surprised me:

At a winery

Wineries are a big part of the culture in the Finger Lakes, and bring tourists and locals, alike. There are little things that you can do on your next trip to help limit the amount of waste being produced and still enjoy yourself. Some wineries provide samples of their wine in small plastic containers with labeled lids, and if you’re at one of them, ask if you can be served the wines in a wine glass instead.

Who thinks of conservation and thinks of wineries? Well, why not? Besides, drinking wine from a wine glass always feels a little more elegant than a plastic lidded container, doesn’t it? Tell the sommelier that you don’t want the plastic molecules to unfavorably add to the flavor of your drink. While the original article is geared toward Ithaca residents, this particular spot of forethought could no doubt be applied to any of our wineries here along the West Coast as well, no?

Photo via Flickr!

• Wal-Mart: not as keen on waste as you might have believed. [Reuters Business and Finance]
• A young man tries to find the words to describe his inner struggle with eco-consciousness. [The Lariat Online]
• And then, along came the snarky rebuttal! [Mission Laughter]
• The plastics industry continues to cry foul. [The Nor’wester]
• Composting: the D’Artagnan to the “Three Rs” Musketeers? [Berry Berry Quite Contrary]
• FYI: October’s Recyclable of the Month is… plastic bags! Get ‘er done! [The Swellesley Report]
• Speaking of conservation, what can architecture students build with $10? The answers may surprise you. [The Hook]
• Want to help make a green quilt of many colors? Send away… [Quilting With Kimberly]
• Tasty, tasty recipes — and a brief discussion on reusable bags. [NOLA]

Photo via Flickr!

The program includes commitments to a goal to reduce the use of plastic
bags by 50 per cent in five years; consumer education initiatives to promote
the use of reusable shopping bags; appropriate and meaningful incentives to
encourage consumers to reduce plastic bag demand; and the provision of
collection points for single-use plastic bags to be recycled where possible.
It also includes annual monitoring and reporting to ensure progress is made.

“With an estimated 1.5 billion plastic bags distributed in B.C. each
year, retailers are going to need help from our customers to meet this
target,” said Max Logan, B.C. Director, RCC. “Retailers can provide the
alternatives, but ultimately its up to customers make the best choices.”

The partners will work jointly to implement a practical, province-wide
‘reduce, reuse and recycle’ solution for plastic bags distributed in retail
stores. This will ensure that British Columbians in all regions will enjoy
similar benefits through this industry-led plastic bag stewardship program.
“Independent grocers are an integral part of B.C. communities and that’s
why we are participating in this co-operative initiative,” said John Scott,
President and CEO, CFIG “It will see less litter on neighbourhood streets and
we look forward to working with all retailers, governments and consumers to
make this happen.”

Well, okay. You all know how I feel about “proactive approaches” by now. (And if you don’t, in a nutshell it’s mostly that we have given people plenty of education and proactive chances to improve their ecological habits and it hasn’t worked, so it seems that negative reinforcement like a tariff is the most effective option.) But on the other hand any progress is still progress, as British Columbia’s Minister of Environment knows.

“The B.C. government applauds the retail sector of British Columbia for
taking a proactive approach to reducing the number of plastic bags that are
distributed each year in B.C,” said Barry Penner, B.C. Minister of
Environment. “Anything we can do to reduce the amount of garbage going into
our landfills is a step in the right direction.”

The article acknowledges that the success of this plan will rest on British Columbia’s residents and consumer population, so let’s hope you guys up north live up to your potential. Make your country proud!