California's Ridding the State of Foam
source: http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/opinionla/la-ed-foam-20110527,0,1668360.story
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- EthicalVegan
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Editorial
Ridding the state of foam
Legislation that would ban foam in much of California is a big step forward, but it should be amended to allow a more gradual shift.
Photo: Debris, including plastic foam, that passed through storm drains along the Third Street Promenade [Santa Monica, California) collects in a separation unit near the Santa Monica Pier. (Mel Melcon / Los Angeles Times)
May 27, 2011, 6:52 p.m.
The rap on polystyrene foam — better known by the trade name Styrofoam — used to be that it hung around in landfills without decomposing and couldn't be recycled. But these days, practically nothing breaks down in landfills because they are regularly compacted and covered. And the foam now can be recycled in dozens of California cities, though many of them offer only limited service.
So has the foam cup become an upstanding citizen in a more green-conscious world? Not quite. It's been fingered as one of the major culprits, along with plastic carryout bags, of plastic pollution in the oceans and other waters. It's difficult to screen foam out of the runoff that enters the ocean because the material breaks easily into ever-tinier pieces, according to the California Coastal Commission. Until recently, the state has left cities to patch together a piecemeal effort to address the problem. But now, legislation is scheduled to reach the state Senate floor Tuesday that would ban foam in much of California. The bill would be a big step forward in many ways, but it should be amended to allow a more gradual shift.
Coastal cities face new storm water regulations that require them to reduce the amount of plastic trash in the ocean. As a result, 50 municipalities have banned or restricted the use of foam food containers — the coffee cups and ubiquitous hinged "clamshell" boxes used for takeout — requiring restaurants and groceries to use either biodegradable or easily recyclable substitutes such as hard plastics or aluminum. Biodegradable containers, such as cardboard or fiber boxes, cost about 50% more, a few cents per container.
The bans appear to help. San Francisco found that within a single year, the amount of foam litter had been reduced by more than a third; what remained came mostly from other sources, such as packing materials. Despite concerns before they were put in place, the bans haven't caused the closure of restaurants or noticeably higher prices for takeout food. McDonald's, a bastion of low-priced food, led the way back in 1990, when it worked with the Environmental Defense Fund to overhaul its food packaging. Though the company still uses foam cups for hot beverages, paper wrapping and cardboard boxes replaced the old foam containers.
SB 568, by Sen. Alan Lowenthal (D-Long Beach), would extend the foam container ban statewide starting in 2014, except in jurisdictions that meet certain levels of recycling for the material. School districts would get an extra year. Los Angeles Unified alone serves 650,000 lunches a day, using a mix of foam and biodegradable trays.
Too quick a ban could keep recycling efforts, which the industry supports, from getting off the ground. The bill should be amended to give cities and businesses more time to beef up their recycling efforts before instituting the ban. And then it should be passed. The impact on eateries and consumers is tiny, while the cleanup of plastic ocean trash is imperative.
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- Green, Environment, California, Pollution, 23 more
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Ian_Judge_Lord
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"For all our earnest recycling, America is still seen as a terribly wasteful country. It’s a stigma we’ve earned and are trying to overcome with our own unique blend of guilt and hypocrisy. On the first night of my trip, while brushing my teeth in the bathroom of my $270-a-night hotel, I noticed a little sign reading SAVE THE PLANET!
Okay, I thought, but how?
The card reported the amount of water used every year in hotel laundry rooms and suggested that, in having my sheets and towels changed on a daily basis, I was taking this precious water directly from the cupped hands of a dehydrated child. I noticed there was no similar plea encouraging me to conserve the hot water that came with my fifteen-dollar pot of room-service tea, but that apparently was a different kind of water. I found an identical SAVE THE PLANET card in each of my subsequent hotel rooms, and it got on my nerves in no time. I don’t mind reusing a towel, but if they’re charging that much for a hotel, I want my sheets changed every day. If I’d felt like sharing my bed with trillions of dead skin cells, I would have stayed at home or spent the night with friends. I was never the one paying for the room, but still, I resent being made to feel guilty for requesting a service an expensive hotel is generally expected to perform.
Pandas and rain forests are never mentioned when it comes to the millions of people taking joyrides in their Range Rovers. Rather, it’s the little things we’re strong-armed into conserving. At a chain coffee bar in San Francisco, I saw a sign near the cream counter that read NAPKINS COME FROM TREES – CONSERVE! In case you missed the first sign, there was a second one two feet away, reading YOU WASTE NAPKINS – YOU WASTE TREES!!! The cups, of course, are also made of paper, yet there’s no mention of the mighty redwood when you order your four-dollar coffee. The guilt applies only to those things that are being given away for free. Were they to charge you ten cents per napkin, they would undoubtedly make them much thinner so you’d need to waste even more in order to fight back the piping hot geyser forever spouting from the little hole conveniently located in the lid of your cup.
Traveling across the United States, it’s easy to see why Americans are often thought of as stupid. At the San Diego Zoo, right near the primate habitats, there’s a display featuring half a dozen life-size gorillas made out of bronze. Posted nearby is a sign reading CAUTION: GORILLA STATUES MAY BE HOT. Everywhere you turn, the obvious is being stated. CANNON MAY BE LOUD. MOVING SIDEWALK IS ABOUT TO END. To people who don’t run around suing one another, such signs suggest a crippling lack of intelligence. Place bronze statues beneath the southern California sun, and of course they’re going to get hot. Cannons are supposed to be loud, that’s their claim to fame, and – like it or not – the moving sidewalk is bound to end sooner or later. It’s hard trying to explain a country whose motto has become You can’t claim I didn’t warn you. What can you say about the family who is suing the railroad after their drunk son was killed walking on the tracks? Trains don’t normally sneak up on people. Unless they’ve derailed, you pretty much know where to find them. The young man wasn’t deaf and blind. No one had tied him to the tracks, so what’s there to sue about?"
David Sedaris (1956 - Pres.) (from "Me Talk Pretty One Day")
http://books.google.com/books?id=WVKiq9stTNgC&pg=PT76&dq=Me+Talk+Pretty+...=onepage&q&f=false - 12 months ago
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Ian_Judge_Lord
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UtopianSky
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All of our disposables should be made out of stuff that can burn without releasing toxins, and then they should be burned to generate power.
We could kill two birds with one stone that way.
Or two pigs with one bird, if you play Angry Birds. :)
- 12 months ago
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UtopianSky
