HELPING TO STOP PLASTIC AND PAPER BAGS
Cable TV’s Sundance Channel is airing “Addicted to Plastic,” a documentary by Ian Connacher. Sundance describes it as “an international odyssey revealing the disturbing long-term effects of the most ubiquitous and versatile material ever invented.From styrofoam cups to artificial organs, plastics are perhaps the most ubiquitous and versatile material ever invented. No invention in the past 100 years has had more influence and presence than synthetics. But such progress has had a cost.
For better and for worse, no ecosystem or segment of human activity has escaped the shrink-wrapped grasp of plastic. Addicted To Plastic is a global journey to investigate what we really know about the material of a thousand uses and why there’s so darn much of it. On the way we discover a toxic legacy, and the men and women dedicated to cleaning it up.
Addicted To Plastic is a point-of-view style documentary that encompasses three years of filming in 12 countries on 5 continents, including two trips to the middle of the Pacific Ocean where plastic debris accumulates. The film details plastic’s path over the last 100 years and provides a wealth of expert interviews on practical and cutting edge solutions to recycling, toxicity and biodegradability. These solutions – which include plastic made from plants – will provide viewers with a new perspective about our future with plastic.
Note about Short Version “The shorter version uses a third-person perspective on plastic, without the filmmaker acting as tour guide. The shorter version also excludes the chapter on toxic ingredients in plastic because the section was the easiest to cut as it veered away from the disposability issue of plastic waste. Issues of marine debris, recycling, and bioplastics remain identical to the longer version.” Ian Connacher, filmmaker
Source: sundancechannel.com
bullfrogfilms.com
Imagine collecting thousands of empty plastic bottles, lashing them together to make a boat and sailing the thing from California to Australia, a journey of 11,000 miles (17,700 km) through treacherous seas.
You’d have to be crazy, or trying to make a point. David de Rothschild is trying to make a point.
De Rothschild hopes his one-of-a-kind vessel, now being built on a San Francisco pier, will boost recycling of plastic bottles, which he says are a symbol of global waste. Except for the masts, which are metal, everything on the 60-foot catamaran is made from recycled plastic.
“It’s all sail power,” he said. “The idea is to put no kind of pollution back into the atmosphere, or into our oceans for that matter, so everything on the boat will be composted. Everything will be recycled. Even the vessel is going to end up being recycled when we finish.”
You have been on the ocean for 54 days now. How is it going?
Really well. I have to keep pinching myself that we are floating on a boat made out of 12,500 2-litre reclaimed plastic bottles.
Why is your boat, the Plastiki, built out of these bottles?
We thought they would make a tough hull but we also wanted to highlight the bottle’s status as one of the most disposable plastic items we buy. This project is about taking a symbol of dumb plastic 1.0 – the single-use, throwaway kind – and making it functional. The Plastiki gets 68 per cent of her buoyancy from the bottles.
Environmentalists’ knee-jerk reaction is often to vilify plastics. Instead we need to differentiate between the throwaway kind – the bottle, the bag, the polystyrene foam – and the smarter materials like the laptop I’m using now or the lifesaving machinery in hospitals. The latter have a valued place in our society and a longer life cycle but we need to re-engineer them to have a closed-loop life cycle, so that they are recycled over and over.
Is this kind of smarter plastic incorporated into the design too?
Yes. The structure of the boat is made out of a material called self-reinforced polyethylene terephthalate (srPET). It is a single-substance material which means it is easily recycled.
What is srPET used for today?
Not much. It has been around since the 1980s but there hasn’t been the desire to take it out of the laboratory. It is slightly more expensive than less green alternatives, but I think the market is starting to move on. People want to know where their materials come from and how they affect the health of the planet.
Did you offset the carbon footprint of manufacturing the boat?
Our footprint was a lot smaller than it could have been because we manufactured a lot of the boat ourselves off-grid, using solar power. When we got into tracing the carbon footprint of all the stuff we had ordered, it actually became financially restrictive for us to do the analysis. We got a quote from one company that was of the order of $100,000 to do a full analysis of our carbon footprint.
A lot of firms brand themselves carbon neutral but they don’t say when their neutrality began – you have to go all the way down the supply chain.
Have you seen more plastic than fish in the water during your time at sea?
Yes, by a long way. The issue is far more ominous than people imagine, as the Pacific garbage patches are not just floating islands of trash. They are mainly subsurface – tiny pieces of material in the process of breaking down and floating in the top layer of the ocean where most species live and breed. When we look underneath the boat, the hull is covered in a fine, extra layer of plastic. It is tragic. From above, the oceans still look beautiful and untouched but just below the surface is this toxic stew that could quickly end up on our dinner plates.
Source: newscientist.com
The Assembly approved a bill today that would ban single-use plastic bags at supermarkets, pharmacies, convenience stores and liquor stores.
AB 1998, which would take effect for some stores as soon as January 2012, bans single-use plastic bags in hopes that consumers bring or buy their own reusable bags. Stores could also provide paper bags made of at least 40 percent recycled materials at a charge of 5 to 8 cents per bag.
The measure squeaked through the lower house with the bare minimum of 41 votes it needed to pass. It now heads to the Senate.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger issued a statement after the vote Wednesday praising the effort and pointing out that it would make California the first state in the nation to enact such a ban. Several cities — including Malibu, San Francisco and Palo Alto — have passed their own bag bans.
The bill’s author, Democratic Assemblywoman Julia Brownley of Santa Monica, called the measure “an effective policy approach that will move customers to use more sustainable alternative.”
“Keeping California’s oceans, beaches and parks pristine is vital to protect our marine life, our tourist industry and our fisheries,” she said in a statement. “Single-use carryout bags pollute our waterways and injure or kill marine life.”
But Republican Assemblyman Chuck DeVore of Irvine said on the floor that forcing consumers to use specific products wasn’t the job of the state, adding that he was worried about the spread of E.Coli, salmonella and other food-borne illnesses through reusable totes if single-use plastic bags are scrapped.
“We continue to go down the road of making more and more instructive laws, prescribing and dictating to the people of California precisely how they are to live their lives,” DeVore said. “I believe in these tough economic times, we should be focused on the basics.”
Several members, including Republican Assemblyman Jeff Miller of Corona, said they were concerned about pushing the cost of reusable and paper bags under the bill on to consumers.
“Hard-working families are struggling just to pay for their groceries, not bag them,” he said.
The bill is backed by retailers and environmental groups, among others, who argue that Californians already foot the bill through higher prices for generation and disposal of the more than 19 billion plastic grocery bags distributed annually in the state.
Opposition comes largely from the plastics industry and business groups, which say the ban would eliminate manufacturing jobs, raise consumer costs and put an extra burden on smaller stores.
Tim Shestek, director of state affairs for the American Chemistry Council, cautioned that the bill would create a “bag bureaucracy,” costing consumers $1 billion annually with the paper bag fee and stripping the state of $1.5 million in implementation costs.
source: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/03/science/earth/03bags.html
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/06/02/BAOE1DOUFF.DTL
No Plastic Day is a world wide event intended to bring awareness of the over consumption of disposable plastic goods such as plastic bags and bottles. It is well known that there are floating islands of trash in most of the world’s oceans. The huge amounts of plastic trash we all discard daily doesn’t decompose, doesn’t break down, and most of it is toxic to the animals that accidentally consume it. The current rate of plastic consumption is not sustainable and is starting to create a huge problem for marine life particularly. Fish eat toxic plastic bits. We catch the fish and eat the fish. Its only a matter of time before we’ve polluted our own food supplies with plastic trash.
No plastic bags – If you buy something from a store on No Plastic Day, bring your own bags. If you don’t have any cloth or paper bags, just reuse the plastic bags you already have. They’ll never biodegrade so you might as well reuse them if you already have them.
No plastic bottles – Drink water from the tap or buy drinks in aluminum cans or glass bottles if you must.
Limit your garbage – Almost everything you throw away is made of plastic. By limiting the garbage you create, you will reduce your plastic waste as well.
Be creative – Everyone’s situation is different and you will need to customize your own situation for No Plastic Day.
Be creative. Reuse, recycle, and reduce your waste. Consider it a personal experiment to find ways you can create less garbage and try to use no disposable plastics.
