Bad news: only pastics #1-2 accepted

Recycling Jackson received unfortunate news from Northwest Refuse: they're no longer accepting colored glass or plastics numbered #3-7.

"Due to circumstances beyond our control we are unable to locate a market and are therefore no longer able to accept the above items as recyclable materials," Northwest told us in a letter.

Now they're only accepting clear glass and plastics #1 and #2.

The recycled material market hasn't been kind to recyclers lately.

Northwest tells us that they're working on updating the drop-off site signage to reflect the changes. It was nice when we could say any type of plastic is acceptable for recycling; let's hope we get back to that soon.

Choosing a safe reusable water bottle.

According to Lifehacker, "Americans consume 28 billion single use bottles of water per year and roughly 80 percent of those end up in a landfill." And considering how much bottled water we drink, all the plastic takes up a lot of space...somewhere.

The Good Human addresses some of the bottled water concerns, including a list of the best reusable bottles you can buy. The worst are PET (polyethylene terephthalate) bottles - the same kind Aquafina, Coke, and other water, juice, and pop bottles come in.

The site concludes that the best kind of reusable water bottle is one made out of stainless steel:

Ideally, the best way to drink water on the go would be an aluminum or stainless steel water bottle, as they seem to exhibit the least amount of health concerns out of all the choices. Add in the fact that they can be used over and over again with no degradation and do not need to be recycled each time you use one, they really are the “green” choice. And since upwards of 40% of bottled water is actually just tap water in disguise, buying it seems like not only a health risk due to the plastic leaching possibilities, but also a wallet risk due to wasting money on something you already have at home!

What kind of water bottle do you use?

Thanks Fazoli's for the waste

This is why people complain about too much packaging in our world today.

Look at that. A simple piece of cheesecake from Fazoli's inside a container big enough for the entire cake. And because I bought two pieces, I got two of these monstrosities. Why couldn't they just stuff two pieces of cheesecake inside THIS package?

It's horrifying. And it's a good thing we have plastic recycling in Jackson County now. These two containers may need a whole bin to themselves.

Aquafina is tap water, and therefore is nothing special.

That's what the Simple Dollar author says in a great rant on the evils of plastic-bottled water. The author says to think about the cost, the environmental impact, and the fact that it is plain ol' tap water.

Preach on!

Whole Foods says 'BYOB'

Whole Foods won't say paper or plastic - they'll say bring your own.

That's thanks to their new "Bring your own bag" (or BYOB) program, outlined on their site here.

When you bring your own bag to any Whole Foods shopping location, they will give you a refund of 5 cents per bag. They also have their own canvass bags, as we've lauded before, available for the usual 99 cents.

But what about paper? Says Whole Foods:

We aren’t trying to settle the "paper vs. plastic" debate. We say "reuse!" instead. But when you don't reuse, we provide 100% recycled (and recyclable) paper bags.

Bottled water: scourge of the Earth?

Salon.com ran a great question-and-answer piece, "Ask Palo," where a reader asked if bottled water was really that bad, environmentally.

Palo makes a statistical and moral case:

First, the manufacturing of plastic bottles, which are often made from nonrecycled virgin material, requires vast quantities of petroleum, and only 12 percent of this material is recovered for recycling. The total mass of an empty 1-liter bottle is around 25 grams (this varies from brand to brand) and it is made from PET (polyethylene terephthalate). One kilogram (1 kg = 2.2046 lbs.) of this type of plastic requires around 6.5 kilograms of oil, uses 294 kilograms of water (this includes power plant cooling water), and results in 3.7 kilograms of greenhouse gas emissions. Based on my calculations, an empty 1-liter bottle requires over 7 liters of water in its manufacturing process, uses 162 grams of oil, and results in over 100 grams of greenhouse gas emissions. (That's about 10 balloons full of carbon dioxide, or how much an average car emits over half a kilometer or one-third of a mile.)

Next, the distribution of bottled water, often by container ship from the other side of the planet (Fiji, Evian, San Pellegrino), is fuel intensive and results in greenhouse gas and sulfur dioxide emissions. Transportation emissions are measured in grams of greenhouse gases (in carbon-dioxide-equivalent units) per metric ton per kilometer. Shipping by container ship emits about 17 grams of carbon dioxide per ton km, while trains release 56 grams per ton km, trucks spew 102 grams per ton km, and jet aircraft belch 570 grams per ton km. So the important factors in transportation emissions are weight, distance and transportation mode. Since we can't alter the weight of bottled water and companies will automatically select the most efficient and cost-effective means of transport, we are left to control the distance component through our consumer choices.

...When compared with the price of tap water, bottled water costs up to 50,000 percent more (and many brands get their water from municipal water supplies).

Bottled water also represents a major ethical dilemma, given that millions of people around the world lack access to clean and safe drinking water. Currently, over one-sixth of the world's population, or about 1 billion people, routinely lack access to safe and clean drinking water. Just 20 percent of our annual $75 billion expenditure on bottled water could provide for the drinking water needs of less fortunate people around the world. If we assume that one well is needed to meet the minimum needs of about 100 people, and if we assume an average cost per well of $1,500, we would need to spend $15 billion globally. According to these assumptions, we collectively spend five times more on bottled water each year than it would cost to eradicate the 1.8 million deaths of children due to waterborne illness each year.

So think about that next time you reach for an Aquafina: some kids don't have access to clean water out of a bucket, let alone a plastic bottle.

Make my bag canvas.

The world is starting to hate plastic grocery and shopping bags - and for good reason. The things are slowly but surely taking over the earth.

Much buzz has sounded over the giant, Australian-sized plastic heap in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. It's a giant Atlantis of rubber ducks and plastic bags.

But just last week I noticed my favorite grocery store, Meijer (who is already doing pretty well environmentally), has provided canvas-style shopping bags for purchase. The price? Ninety-nine cents. The style? A snazzy royal blue and green.

I snatched three of them up, figuring that my $3 would help ease my conscience over using so many plastic bags over the years. That, and they make a pretty profound statement: in the checkout, there were a few shoppers who took notice of my new take-homes.

Meijer isn't alone. Local grocer Polly's Country Market, with locations from Chelsea to Adrian and everywhere in between, provides the sturdy shopping bags too, and also for 99 cents. It's a trend that includes the famous "I am not a plastic bag" bags from our friends in the East. People are eating them up.

This is a trend that we at Recycling Jackson couldn't be happier about. Just this weekend, while working at the site, I noticed people bringing their plastic recyclables wrapped in - what else? - plastic grocery bags. They don't take up as much room as, say, your Tide detergeant bottle. But add them all up together in one bundle, and you're talking about a big petroleum-based monster.

So do us all a favor: spend 99 cents a week and stock up on reusable bags. Just remember to bring them in each time you shop, and spread the word.

- by Dave Lawrence, RJ VP

Exciting news in plastics.

Northwest Refuse sent us some exciting news, via our former president Travis Fojtasek. They are now accepting dry cleaner bags, bubble wrap, and black plastic garden and nursery pots.

Hurray!

Travis also told us that, when you recyle plastic bottles, you can keep the screw-top lid on. Northwest will accept those from now on, too.

The list of acceptable plastics keeps growing!

When Black Friday comes.

Looking for a green way to shop? Try Cooler, a site that calculates the environmental impact of your holiday shopping. Divine Caroline also has 13 ways to grab green gifts this holiday season.

Caroline suggests memberships to national parks, rugged plastic water bottles, bikes, and books:

Knowledge is power, and these books could revolutionize the way a friend thinks about mundane things like food, driving, and this little place called earth.

Shopping for a green (as in inexperienced) greenie? Try the Go Green gift bag starter, the perfect gift to brainswash your waste-happy friends and family.

And don't forget to recycle all those shopping bags and cardboard boxes.


by Dave Lawrence

Keillor calls it quits...with plastic.

[From Garrison Keillor's weekly column on Salon.com]


Sep. 26, 2007 | I am sorry, Evian and San Pellegrino and Dasani and all the other bottled waters out there -- Aqua Velva, Wells Fargo, Muddy Waters, Joan Rivers, Jerry Springer, whatever -- but the current campaign against paying good money for bottled water when tap water is perfectly good (and very likely purer) is so sensible on the face of it that I am now done with you. Fini. Kaput. Ausgeschlossen. No more designer water. Water is water. If you want lemon flavoring, add a slice of lemon. You want bubbles, stick a straw in it and blow.

My father, a true conservative, would have smiled on this. All his life he resisted the attempts of big corporations to gouge him by selling him stuff he didn't need and so he was not a consumer of high-priced water, any more than he would've purchased bottles of French air or Italian soil. No, San Pellegrino and Perrier got rich off the pretensions of liberal wastrels like moi who thought it set us apart from the unlettered masses. We ordered it in restaurants for the same reason we read books we don't like and go to operas we don't understand -- we say to the waiter, "Perrier," to give a continental touch to our macaroni and cheese.

Enough. Man is capable of reform once presented with the facts, and the fact is that bottling water and shipping it is a big waste of fuel, so stop already. The water that comes to your house through a pipe is good enough, and maybe better.

So now I wonder, "What else am I doing that is too dumb for words?" A woman leaned over to me the other night and said, "You'd look so much better with your eyebrows trimmed." This is just the sort of advice a man yearns for -- you don't want to be walking around with eyebrows the size of sparrows for the rest of your life. Thanks for the tip, doll. What else? Maybe there are words I mispronounce, like "harbinger" or "inchoate." I'd be happy to be set straight.

I was in Berkeley, Calif., the other day and drove past a Lutheran church and then a Baptist: Perhaps some stereotypes have leaks in them. And when I was in Berkeley, a man told me in as kind a way as possible that my grasp of economics is fragile and I should not write about it in this column. Probably right.

I knew a boy in the fourth grade who insisted that it was the Chinese who had bombed Pearl Harbor, though fourth grade is sort of late to be thinking such a thing, and when our teacher showed him pictures in a book that pinned the infamous deed on the Japanese, he was sort of relieved to be able to give up his idea and not have people yell at him, "You're crazy." He reformed.

I gave up watching television 25 years ago because I liked it so much even though I couldn't remember what I had watched the day before and could see that if I went on as a viewer my life would become a blank. And now I refuse the iPod because it is an audio bubble that shuts you off from the world, which is where good ideas come from.

Reform feels good, take it from me. To correct course and avoid the reef and find clear sailing is the great tonic of life. A man grows a beard for the pleasure of cutting it off. And now I have the pleasure of boycotting bottled water for tap.

There is much we do not understand -- power cords in the briefcase, for example: You set them in neatly and a few hours later they are completely entangled with each other, and who knows why? -- but the stupidity of buying bottled water in America is easily grasped by even the dullest.

Thirsting for plastic.

Water is expensive.

This according to a New York Times column (Aug. 1, 2007) that pointed out if you got your eight glasses a day from bottled water, you could spend $1,400 every year. Compare that with the $0.49 it would cost from plain old tap water.

Consider this: all that plastic costs barrels of oil. All those bottles cost money and CO2 to ship cross-country. Only 23 percent of bottles are recycled, and states like Michigan don't offer a deposit as an incentive.

Recycling Jackson has reported on the thirst (pun intended) for recyclable plastics: companies can't collect enough used plastic bottles, even though the demand is high. Companies are willing to pay decent money for someone's used Aquafina (which is tap water anyway) bottle.

Plastic bags, however, are a totally different story. They're a pain in the ass, according to a Salon.com story about the difficulties of recycling the jelly-fish like bags:

"Every year, Americans throw away some 100 billion plastic bags after they've been used to transport a prescription home from the drugstore or a quart of milk from the grocery store. It's equivalent to dumping nearly 12 million barrels of oil," writes Katharine Mieszkowski.

Only one percent of those are recycled.

Some have said plastic is better than paper, but you can't grow more oil like you can more trees. "The only salient answer to paper or plastic is neither," says the article.

When I attended a Mariner's game during a recent Seattle, WA trip, I noticed that everywhere I looked there were bins for recycling plastic pop, juice, water, and - yes - beer bottles. And when the game was over (they lost to Texas by one point), the announcer even reminded the audience about the recycling bins.

What do Seattle Mariner fans know that we don't?

I'll admit: I'm a fan of bottled water. It tastes good, it's portable, and I can make a health and wellness justification when I bypass the sugared soda pop for a liter of the clear stuff.

But paying $1 or more for a bottle of the same stuff I flush in my toilet seems absurd, doesn't it? This is the same stuff I use to clean my dishes, wash my car, and brush my teeth. And it's still the safest and cleanest in the world. Some parched countries in the Sahara would give a lot for a teaspoon full of what I watch go down the drain every morning.

So recently I've started drinking plain tap water. And you know what? It's not that bad. I add a few drops of lemon juice if I don't like the taste, plop in a few ice cubes, and away I go. I'm not any less satisfied. My thirst is just as quenched, and I didn't contribute any more plastic molecules that will be around longer than the cockroach.

The critique is two-fold, involving both the use and waste of plastics and the mania behind obtaining fresh water from somewhere besides the garden hose. The more you think about it the more ridiculous it seems.

All that craziness has me thirsty. Time to grab a glass of cool, clear...

Well, you know the rest.

[by Dave Lawrence]