Getting Real about Plastic

Paper v. Plastic? Tote bags win (again).
If you’ve been looking for more information on the paper v. plastic question, this occasional feature by the Washington Post may lend you a hand. The piece offers a quick, visual comparison of consumption, production, pollution of each material and considers how readily each biodegrades and can be recycled. The feature notes that while four in ten of us think that plastics will biodegrade over time, petroleum-based plastic resists degredation. Its strength, in other words, is its greatest weakness. For more information, visit the Washington Post online.

Decoding the Codes
What are those codes on the bottom of plastic containers? It turns out that they refer to the resin content of bottles and containers. For more on this, visit this chart from the American Chemistry Council.

Plastic clogging Our City’s Waterways – and Something You Can Do Did you know that plastic bags are the number one item pulled out of San Anto waterways during the Basura Bash cleanup? You can help reduce plastic waste by joining Basura Bash 2010 on Saturday, March 27th.

What is Basura Bash? Basura Bash is the biggest single-day waterway clean-up in Texas and, according to the organizers, the only event that collects recyclable waste products. Volunteers are needed to collect trash and recyclables from the banks of our local waterways, including the river at Brackenridge Park, Salado Creek at Martin Luther King Park, San Antonio River Mission Reach at Mission County Park, and a host of other locations. To get invovled...

For videos on the impact of plastic on oceans and marine life, see below. Note that the Marine Society (second video) doesn't stop at cleanups and surveys; it takes data on plastic trash back to product manufacturers to call on them to come up with solutions.