Down On The Urban Farm

I woke up this morning to this email in my inbox. I have often pondered ways to have the manufacturers wake up about the amount of solid waste they use for packaging. I really like this one.

Hi Greg,

Saw your article about one-use throw-aways in the paper. Here's something kind of related: in Germany (my wife's a German national), household garbage is weighed as it is collected and the homeowner is charged by weight for its disposal.

Even more interesting is that a store is required by law to accept (at time of sale) and dispose of any packaging material used in a product they sell. Since consumers would rather the store pay for the garbage, they often leave such materials behind.

Since the stores themselves want to save money, they have put pressure on manufacturers to reduce the amount of packaging material.

The result is that one sees far less of recycle-unfriendly things like bubble-packages, etc. over there.

...Derek

I think it's safe to say that most people recognize the triangle-shaped recycle symbol on the bottom of plastic products. I've often wondered what the different numbers mean. So, we asked our researchers on the Your Guide to Green Team to check it out and here's what we learned.

A wide variety of plastic products are available today and each type melts at a different temperature and displays different properties. The plastics industry developed identification codes to label these types of plastic in order to efficiently sort them for recycling. To designate the plastic products into distinct types and uses, the system assigns a number 1 through 7 that generally is found on the bottom of containers.
To help us understand further what they all mean our awesome researcher Maura Yates gives us the lowdown in This Weeks View.

I am a wine aficionado, albeit an amateur, I still like a nice glass or two of red. Blends seem to be my favorite, but I'll try any glass once. At the same time I also have this deeeeeeep green streak in me. Organic, sustainable, green - I stuck my little toe into internet wine cellar and this is the beginnings of what I found...

Organic Consumers Association's article on growing organic grapes.

The tip of wine sustainability.

Eco Friendly Wines

Interesting take on the grape mush left over...

and one wineries take on defining sustainability.

It's a story you Don't want to miss.

Have you ever wondered just where our stuff comes from and then where it goes. I for one have spent many (probably thousands) of hours pondering just that. Exiting the restaurant and dumping my styrofoam plates, plastic cups and utensils in the trash...I pondered what happens with the stuff when it is wrapped up in a plastic bag and magically transported away. As IF throwing them away was some place that handled them and not just stored them in some forgotten underground hideaway for the next few millenniums. Let us not forget out iPods, cell phones, tv's washers, cars, batteries and the list goes on and on.

I call them one use assets or items and in many ways all of the items above from the plastic cup to the car is a one use asset that gets used up - some in flash of a moment and others in a matter of years. THIS is what has been occupying my mind for the past few thousand days.

So from a technical perspective how does all this stuff get from here to there and from there to me? Well I stumbled across a great video on just that, called the Story of Stuff and is well worth the 20 minutes invested so that we can all GET the impact of our choices. Here is what they have to say...

"What is the Story of Stuff?
From its extraction through sale, use and disposal, all the stuff in our lives affects communities at home and abroad, yet most of this is hidden from view. The Story of Stuff is a 20-minute, fast-paced, fact-filled look at the underside of our production and consumption patterns. The Story of Stuff exposes the connections between a huge number of environmental and social issues, and calls us together to create a more sustainable and just world. It'll teach you something, it'll make you laugh, and it just may change the way you look at all the stuff in your life forever."

So just what is the Story of Stuff? Click here to watch.

As the concerns about the polycarbonate bottles mount we have been looking at what we as a company will do. Articles like the one below have fired concerns about what is really happening to our health as we consume liquids from all plastic bottles. I personally believe in what one of my professors in grad school taught - Prudent Avoidance. If there is some question about the safety of something like a plastic bottle...don't use it. There are plenty of solutions in the stainless steel realm and you can also reuse a glass bottle.

"Worries about hormone-mimicking BPA used in sports bottles led a major Canadian retailer to remove Nalgene and other polycarbonate plastic containers from store shelves in early December. BPA—or bisphenol A—mimics the effects of estrogen in cells and some researchers and environmentalists revealed it can be toxic and cause several types of cancer (breast and prostate) as well as developmental, neural, behavioral, and reproductive harm (miscarriages and other reproductive failures), and obesity and hyperactivity in animals. Fred vom Saal, professor of biology at the University of Missouri and one of the study’s chief authors said the panel reviewed 700 published articles on BPA, practically all published in the last 10 years, yet US health and environmental regulators “are pretending they’re still in the dark.”" Read more>>>