More Water Fountains

We need more water fountains like this one. Thanks Susan Dominus from the NYT.

Long time no blog, I know. Just in the supermarket buying some things. While I know it is nearly impossible to avoid things plastic, here are some things to look out for;

Juices. Man are they all in plastic bottle? Well, no not all. There are many that come in glass.

But what jolted me back into this blog was the tea bags. No, not the tea baggers, but the tea bags sold by companies like Celestial Seasonings. They wrap there box in plastic. Talk about redundancy. Others however, like Bigelow use only a non-plastic box.

So keep an eye out in the supermarket for the big, (juice) and small (tea).

No Plastic wrap

Plastic Wrap

A study of The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is underway

Scientists study huge plastic patch in Pacific.

Australia Town-Good on ya!

Check this out fellow plastic watchers. Now this is taking the initiative.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090709/ap_on_re_au_an/as_australia_bottled_water_ban

Bottled Water Disaster

My brother passed this along. The numbers are scary, but the pictures are even scarier. 

Recycled Air

I found out via David Pogue from one of his "Tweets" on Twitter that Delta Airlines had a big recycling program. Here's an article from Delta's Blog that talks about it. Mind you, it's a bit biased being that it's THEM talking about THEIR recycling program (and from 2008 no less), but it sounds good. Now if only we could get independent proof.

Up, Up and (Do) Away! (with plastic cups)

Fellow BTPH travelers. When soaring at 30,000 feet, does your flight attendant serve you several cups of water, each in its own plastic cup. Why not keep the first cup and have them refill that with your favorite hydrating liquid? On average, 54,159,736* passengers per month travel on US domestic flights. If, conservatively, each passenger has 1.5 drinks (some flights don't serve any, others serve 2 0r 3) Those 1.5 drinks becomes 81.2 million cups in just one month of air travel. And that is just for U.S. flights. That, my friends, is a lot of cups.  So I encourage you to save your cup and while your at it, tell the person in the seat next to you to save their cup also. Better yet, bring your own reusable cup.

Safe travels. 

 *Data source: faa.gov and bts.gov

More For The Creative Recycler

Continuing in my theme of getting creative with recycling, I have recently discovered a nifty website called Superuse.org. They are made up of a group of designers, architects and other creative folks interested in new ways to recycle. So why not check out their site and instead of chucking all those plastic water bottles, make a lovely Mother's Day gift out of them.

Plastic thoughts

Here is an interesting website. Send it around to raise awareness.

Here's another one. There are many interesting statistics and lots of info on this site about plastic, aluminum and glass.

A few quick stats:

In 2006 36 BILLION (plastic) bottles of water were sold in the US. That is approximately 4 billion pounds of plastic (just from water bottles). Add to that soda and juice bottles, and the salad type containers from the previous blog, and the numbers get kind of heady.

According to some reports a one-liter plastic water bottle uses 1/4-liter of oil to produce.

And now a chart:

Recycling Rates by Material and Class, 2006

		Aluminum cans	PET plastic bottles	Glass bottles	Total
11 Deposit states	Carbonated	78.7%	71.2%	72.7%	76.1%
	Non-carbonated	49.3%	35.2%	36.4%	36.9%
	Average	75.8%	44.4%	63.6%	61.4%
39 Non-Deposit States	Carbonated	35.1%	13.6%	12.4%	24.2%
	Non-carbonated	35.1%	13.6%	12.4%	24.2%
	Average	35.1%	13.6%	12.4%	24.2%
US Total	Carbonated	45.4%	27.0%	29.4%	36.9%
	Non-carbonated	42.1%	21.5%	21.4%	29.0%
	Average	45.2%	23.5%	27.8%	34.7%

23% of PET plastic on average. Not good. 

Now the good news. Some legislation is being passed to try to stem this ugly plastic tide. See this website to find out if your state is included and what they are doing.

Ok, enough stats for today. Thanks for reading.

Salad Scourge

Hey plastic watchers, we have to come up with a creative solution for this. This is just one Deli in NY. Think about how many of these salad containers are being thrown in to the heap everyday, just in Manhattan alone. It makes me sick to think about it. What do we do?

For The Creative Recycler...

Hi folks, first time contributor, so I thought I'd throw a creative hat into the ring. There's a really great website that I frequent called Instructables.com and it shows you how to make just about anything. BUT, for our purposes, they also have a great "Green" section on re-purposing items you no longer need (like Plastiki!) or even how to make solar panels for the more advanced "maker". So before you chuck out another plastic bottle, go to this site and see if you could make something with it first!

The Instructables.com "Green Area"

Let's all start thinking about how we live our lives and how it affects everyone else.

Jonny

Earth Day Part II

In commemoration of Earth Day, the Empire State Building glowed green.

Not one to be in a woman's shoe store so often, I found myself in a Payless today as I escorted some out of town visitors through NY. Perhaps this was serendipitous in light of this blog. This sign was sitting by the counter. They also offer a line of shoes made with recycled plastic. That deserves a break-the-plastic-habit green thumbs up. 

Happy Earth Day

Believe it or not Earth Day started in 1970. Seems it has lost its luster recently, which is odd given what seems to be a more focused public eye on on the environment. There was even a parade in  New York City. Given all the mess a parade generates, perhaps it is best there is not one today.

Nonetheless, Earth Day is of course fitting to the theme of this blog, so just a reminder to especially kind to be Mother Nature today. 

One more thing about Chinese take-out

Not to harp on the chinese food people, but something else occurred to me. If you do not use the duck sauce or soy sauce that are always loaded into your order, ask that those plastic packets are also left out. If you do like those things, having your own bottle at home will eliminate the need for those packets as well.

Break the plastic habit

I am starting this blog and a website called www.breaktheplastichabit.com for a simple reason. We (the world and particularly the U.S.) use and throw away too much plastic. 

This is not a call to the end of ALL plastic usage. Plastic does serve many good purposes. However, this is a gentle reminder to be on alert to the unnecessary and wasteful usage of most things polymer.

My inspiration for this comes from my observations of the seemingly unconscious usage some people seem to have towards this environmentally unfriendly product.  My neighborhood of the Upper (upper) West side of Manhattan is the perfect (though not singular) example of this practice. Even though I carry my groceries to the register in my own canvas bags, the baggers mindlessly start to load my things into not a single, but a double bag of plastic.

I know you must have your own anecdotes and stories, so please contribute to the blog and website by offering your own tales, links to other websites, helpful hints, articles, book recommendations or anything else you may deem appropriate to help raise awareness of this worldwide problem. (If you are a non-English speaker I welcome your posts as well.) 

At worst, these sites will stand as a place to vent your frustrations on the subject. At best, perhaps they can be a catalyst for change.

Steven

To understand the full impact discarded plastic is having, my first recommendation is to check out info on what is being called "The Great Garbage Patch at http://www.greatgarbagepatch.org/. I first learned about this in the book "The World Without Us" by Alan Wiesman. And the March 30, 2009  New Yorker article "THE MAKING OF THE PLASTIKI" describes this man made ocean plastic dump.

This is just a start, I hope to see both the blog and the website grow into full maturity over time. But as for right now, I had to do something. My chinese take out doesn't need to include 4 plastic forks AND chopsticks. Besides I am taking it home where I have perfectly useful non-plastic silverware.