Earth Blog

This week Mike Lee, an environmental reporter with the San Diego Union- Tribune, wrote an article that discussed the recent findings of a study about the “Great Pacific Garbage Patch” conducted by UCLA and Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego.

A rapid increase in the amount of plastic trash floating at sea has impacted the marine environment but not in the way you are thinking.

Jaymi Heimbuch over at treehugger posted a little bit about her experience at Midway Atoll National Wildlife Refuge where over 2 million seabirds live and the effects of the Pacific Garbage Patch are evident. The atoll might be remote but our plastic trash is still managing to ride the waves out to a part of the world most of us will never visit.

Heimbuch wanted to see firsthand what she had only seen on the Internet -the sad photographs of decomposing birds with the contents of their stomachs exposed.  Shards of plastic and even more identifiable objects like lighters, bottle caps, toothbrushes and fishing wire have all been found in birds that wash up on the island’s shore or die on the island.  That's why the Midway bird images are a poignant teaching tool: almost everyone that looks at the image can see something they have once used.

We have been following the Los Angeles City Council and their struggle to pass an ordinance banning single use plastic bags and charging a fee for paper bags for months now- since December to be precise.

Earlier this week during a three hour Energy & Environment Committee meeting the ban was revisited as the requested fiscal and community reports pertaining to a bag ban were given. This meeting also included a presentation of the proposed fiscal budget for the Department of Water and Power for the upcoming year by its commissioners.  

As more towns pass ordinances banning plastic bags, shoppers not in the habit of bringing their own reusable bags are scrambling to buy a few when they happen to remember. Some are simply going to take their business elsewhere- to neighboring towns where laws don’t prohibit stores from handing out plastic bags. The restrictions might cause inconvenience, which results in sighing and eye-rolling but communities are catching on to the idea of the bans quickly.

What isn’t a habit yet for people who currently use the canvas bags is laundering them regularly. 

According to a new survey by the Home Food Safety program only fifteen percent or less than one in six  Americans who have the re-usable bag wash them.  So while they are merrily carrying their bags their bags are happily carrying germs and bacteria.

Eco-rewards program RecycleBank, despite its known flaws, is a program that works for many people around the United States and in Britain.

Incentivizing home recycling on a municipal level with coupons for the mundane (buy one bottle of water, get one free) to fantastic (gift cards) would be icing on the cake for homes that consistently recycle. But not all homes do so and some towns haven't always had curbside recycling which means a commitment to one of the easiest ways to be earth-friendly isn’t present in every home. Therein lies one of the problems with RecycleBank.

In the past sustainable and socially conscious fashion was a bit bland. The misconception must have been: “Eco-conscious people like the Earth so let’s make everything look earthy!” or “Let’s put a whale on it!”  There is nothing wrong with earth tones and t-shirts, plain or printed, but sometimes a shopper is looking for an item that provides more color or fit. Fashion designers have stepped in to fill the need but their items can be expensive. Eco-fashion is a certainly a trend but it’s not trendy: meaning it’s here to stay. 

Is there a packaging material more delightful and entertaining than Bubble Wrap®, especially for children? Perhaps a giant cardboard box? But Bubble Wrap® is an instant hit and can provide hours of fun by popping individual bubbles, rolling around in it or stomping on it gleefully. Now you can bust out the bubbly-wrap for a celebration because today is the 12th Annual Bubble Wrap® Appreciation Day! 

Sealed Air Corporation, a global provider of packaging for a variety of industries, is the maker of official Bubble Wrap® and they have created bubblewrapfun.com to highlight their most popular product. 

Today is January 16th, 2012 so it’s been thirty days since Los Angeles City Councilwoman Jan Perry of the Energy & Environment committee asked that further information regarding a city-wide plastic bag ban/paper bag fee be brought for review. There are no meetings scheduled today, in observance of Martin Luther King Jr. Day but perhaps we will hear something this week?

Plastic bags come with a warning on them: TO AVOID DANGER OF SUFFOCATION, KEEP THIS PLASTIC BAG AWAY FROM BABIES AND CHILDREN. DO NOT USE THIS BAG IN CRIBS, BEDS, CARRIAGES, AND PLAYPENS.

What they should also have printed on them is: TO AVOID DANGER OF POLLUTION DO NOT USE THIS

BAG EVER. KEEP THIS PLASTIC BAG AWAY FROM SEA TURTLES AND FISH. 

Plastic bags are bad for the environment because they break down slowly in a process called photodegrading which means they never really go away. The tiny bits sit around contaminating everything they come in contact with their toxins. Marine life mistakenly ingest plastic bags and bits thinking it’s food. The Pacific Garbage Patch is estimated to consist mostly of plastics.

BizNGO’s (NGO stands for non-governmental organization) annual meeting starts today in Massachusetts. They are a workgroup started by Clean Production Action in 2006 when twenty-two environmental organizations and a variety of retailers joined forces to promote and develop safer and more sustainable products.  At the meeting they released two frameworks to assist companies in choosing sustainable plastics and safer chemicals for their products. BizNGO developed these frameworks with the help of companies with big names like Staples and Hewlett-Packard and environmental health groups.