By Sommer Saadi
Green Right Now
As I unloaded my groceries onto the conveyor belt, I realized I was buying more than could fit in my reusable bags.
“Can you try to fit everything in these?” I asked, handing over my assortment of canvas totes.
“I can try,” the cashier answered. “But it’s no big deal, I can just use plastic bags for whatever we can’t fit into the ones you brought.”
“Oh no,” I said. “No plastic bags. Please.”
She stared back at me. She had already stretched out a plastic bag and was ready to load.
“I have this thing,” I told her. “I just really hate plastic bags.”
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April 7th, 2009
By Laura Elizabeth May
Green Right Now
Berkeley Farmers Markets announced Monday that it will be the first farmers market to eliminate the use of plastic bags and packaging from their three weekly markets. They will be hosting a Zero Waste Event on April 25 from 10 a.m. – 3p.m to kick off the new campaign.
“Berkeley, a city known for its progressive politics, is once again taking the lead by phasing out plastic bags and packaging at its farmers’ markets,” said Ben Feldman, Program Manager of the Berkeley Farmers’ Markets, in a statement. The plastic bags are harmful for the environment and can take up to 400 to 1000 years to break down. The markets now encourage shoppers to bring their own cloth bags or previously used paper or plastic bags.
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Related Topics: · Berkeley Farmers Market, Boulder, Irvine, Monterrey, plastic bags
February 11th, 2009
By Robert Lilienfeld
Green Right Now
My New Year’s Resolution
Fifteen years ago, the big environmental issue making headlines was whether to use cloth or disposable diapers. We were supposedly going to be buried by the disposables, as they were filling up our landfills so fast that we would soon run out of places to put our trash. To better understand the problem, my co-author, Dr. William Rathje of The Garbage Project at the University of Arizona, was dispatched by a variety of environmental, government and business groups to study the composition of landfills all across America.
What Bill and his associates found was not at all what people expected them to find. Diapers were actually a rather small part of the typical landfill makeup. Also, when all the data on production, transportation, water and energy usage were factored into the equation, the data indicated that disposable diapers might actually produce less environmental impact than cloth ones.
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Related Topics: · paper bags, plastic bags, recyclables, RobertLilienfeldBlog, Use-Less-Stuff
December 4th, 2008
By Barbara Kessler
Green Right Now
Guess what city just mandated that businesses disclose their toxic chemicals, put a five cent price tag on plastic bags and set up a future ban on the sale of bottled water at city-owned centers as well as plastic take-out food containers?
Portland? San Francisco? They’ve taken some similar measures. But no, the latest municipality to get aggressive with consumer waste is Toronto, Canada’s largest and apparently greenest city.
This week the Toronto City Council set in motion a sweeping effort aimed at reducing the number of plastic disposables – grocery bags, water bottles and take-out cartons – that wind up in the local landfill.
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Related Topics: · disposable containers, plastic bags, Toronto, toxic waste
November 13th, 2008
By Harriet Blake
By now, most people are familiar with the ubiquitous bright green (and blue and pink) totes that supermarkets are touting to replace hard-to-recycle plastic bags.
Many customers dutifully carry them to and from grocery shopping each week, often receiving 3 to 4 cents in return. But what about those folks who are less conscientious?
Mayor Michael Bloomberg of New York City has a solution: charge shoppers six cents for each plastic bag they use. The mayor’s proposal is a work in progress, but environmental groups are pleased.
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Related Topics: · Chico bags, Dallas, Los Angeles, Mayor Michael Bloomberg, New York City, plastic bags, reusable totes, Seattle
July 24th, 2008
By John DeFore
In another development sure to result in gray hair, if not legal action, for those in the plastics industry, the city of Los Angeles voted this week to ban plastic bags by July of 2010.
The city’s action isn’t a law, though: It will only become one if the state of California fails to [...]
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Related Topics: · ban, Los Angeles, ordinance, plastic bags, San Francisco
January 22nd, 2008
By John DeFore
Whole Foods announced today that it will stop making plastic bags available at checkout lines — aiming to use up existing stock quickly enough to be completely plastic-free by Earth Day, April 22.
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Related Topics: · plastic bags, Whole Foods
