NYC.gov Environment -- Information on water, air quality, recycling and more.
plaNYC -- Official government site for making NYC a sustainable city,
Hudson River Foundation -- Supports scientific research and the management of the Hudson ecosystem.
New York City Environmental Fund -- Fosters active community stewardship of waterways, shorelines, parklands and open spaces in and around New York City.
The Council on the Environment of NYC -- A non-profit dedicated to greening neighborhoods, creating environmental leaders of the future, promoting waste prevention and recycling, and running the largest farmers market program in the country.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 [...]
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.
