Story of Stuff writes new chapter on Change

Annie Leonard and the good folks at Free Range Studios have been turning out some of the most effective videos on stuff ever made.

Starting with the Story of Stuff (in 2008), which showed the lifecycle of everyday things from extraction, production and use to disposal, they've now launched a series called The Story of Change. 

Change starts with the premise that citizen engagement--not shopping--is key to creating a better world--and provides a mini-roadmap for getting more involved.

It's well worth watching and sharing widely.

If you're looking for a project for students related to Stuff and Change, here's an idea: Ask your students to identify one material object that is about to be thrown away (plastic cup, candy wrapper, broken TV, worn out shoe). Next: have them trace the life cycle of the object:

• Where was it made? Who manufactured it? 
• What is it made of? 
• How did they come to cross paths with it?
• What happens to the object once it's thrown away?

Object life cycles can be traced with maps, photos, cartoons, video, collage--whatever medium students select to tell the story best.

Then, in the spirit of Stuff have them look at a few key questions:

• Was this object needed in the first place?
• Could the useful life of this object be extended?
• Could it be re-used or recycled?

And in the spirit of Change, looking at all the student objects as a group, have students consider:

• What policies/practices could be enacted as alternatives, to promote environmental health and sustainability?
• What individual and collective actions can they take to promote these policies?

Need resources? Check out: Why Should I Care about Waste.
and the Make Change podcast.

Holidaze

As good as the holidays can be to re-connect with one another and all that we hold dear, this time of year can also generate a surfeit of stuff. The volume of waste we produce during the season generally goes up by about 25 percent between Thanksgiving and New Year's Day, 5 million extra tons of household waste, according to the U.S. EPA.

Alot of waste (about 80 percent) is made up of shopping bags and wrapping paper. But after that initial flash of delight, it often ends up in our landfills. Fortunately, these are materials that can be easily recycled--and still be really great.

A few tips:

BYOB (bring your own bag), is of course a quick/easy way to reduce the use of shopping bags. Just have a few bags handy when you need them. And when you go to the store, try to pack stuff into  fewer bags. Does the cardboard box of garbage bags really need its own bag? This may seem like a really small thing, but reducing plastic bag waste adds up.

Wrapping paper is also a relatively easy thing to reduce--since all around us there is paper and other materials that we can repurpose to make even more beautiful and original packages. Maps and catalogs can make really cool packages--and finding unique ways to create cards and wrap gifts is a great craft for kids. Need inspiration? check out: "Unwrapping the Holidays" from "improvised life."

In San Antonio, if you have a Christmas tree to recycle, you'll want to keep this info handy about recycling options.

And shopping locally will not just cut down on fuel and support local businesses--it may also help you recycle a little of your own energy--and sanity.

More tips and links:

Recycle during the holidays - from the U.S. EPA

Reduce holiday waste - from the U.S. EPA

Suggestions from Stanford. 

San Antonio Recycling - Video on Do's and Don'ts (videos in English and Spanish)

In thinking about the holidays, or any other day, my heart goes out to the community of Newtown, Connecticut. I want to express my deepest condolences. You are in my heart and in my thoughts.

Aluminum to Styrofoam

Looking for a place to recycle the odd bit of this or that? Check out the San Antonio Express-News recycling directory (published this spring).

On Tap: Bottled Water Drains Resources

Let’s face it, in the belly of the recession, with about 14 million of us uemployed, concerns about things like recycling tend to move to the back burner. In a state of economic triage, how can we afford to think about “saving the trees?”

But it’s a false choice, because reducing unnecessary consumption and recycling save both resources and money, while being easier on the planet.

Take bottled water. In the U.S., where we are the top consumers of bottled water in the world, a bottle of water costs somewhere between $0.50 and $2.00. Tap water, depending on where you live, can cost something like $2.00 - $2.50 per CCF, where a CCF (100 cubic feet of water) is equal to 748 gallons. Now that’s thirst quenching.

Is bottled water more highly regulated for safety? No. The FDA keeps an eye on bottled water; the EPA oversees water from the tap. But under the EPA, water utilities must provide consumer confidence reports annually on water quality; whereas the FDA does not require that kind of reporting from bottled water manufacturers.

Also, bottled water is expensive to process, package, transport, and distribute. A study by the Pacific Institute found that in 2006, “producing the bottles for American consumption required the equivalent of more than 17 million barrels of oil, not including the energy for transportation.” Also, it takes water to make water. According to this same study, it took 3 liters of water for every 1 bottled liter produced. And then there’s landfill. Recycling reduces waste and cost - but buying less bottled water in the first place is the real resource-saver.

The bottom line? Studies find that bottled water is often no healthier than water you get from the tap, but it costs 10,000 times more. At the same time, the production and consumption of bottled water increases use of fossil fuels, and raises greenhouse gas emissions and air pollution.

No doubt: It’s hot out. We all need a long, cold drink. But why not serve it up at cost that we can really afford - and a price we want to pay?

Resources and to Learn More:

Pacific Institute Factsheet on Bottled Water

Story of Stuff Video: Bottled Water

Discovery Channel: Bottled Water Carries Hidden Costs

San Francisco Department of Public Health - Bottled Water vs. Tap: Making the Healthy Choice

Special thanks to photographer Maheash Nelanka for sharing an image of water in Creative Commons!

Plastic Bag Gets Boot in Brownsville

A high-pitched scream emanating from a million single use plastic bags could be heard across the Valley on January 5th when Brownsville became the first Texas City to roll out a plastic bag ban. Or did that pain cry come from the executives of Texas’ plastics industry?

If the latter, it may be in large part because plastics turned out to be as lucrative as Mr. McGuire implied when he told Ben in The Graduate to think about the “great future in plastics.”

Soon after 1967, when The Graduate hit U.S. theaters, plastics streamed into American grocery stores. And since their introduction in the 1970s, they have come to dominate the grocery market. As the cost to produce plastic bags fell to a penny per bag, the industry grew, and bag use became ubiquitous at checkout counters. It is said that today between eighty and ninety percent of all grocery bags are plastic.

Your bananas merit a plastic bag and so do your eggs, milk and bread--all before slipping inside another bag. We bag just about everything as if encasing vegetables and fruits in translucent film could protect us and our families from life’s larger, unseen harms.

But the urge to enwrap has ushered in a new era of pollution and waste.

“Plastic - especially plastic bags and PET bottles - is the most pervasive type of marine litter around the world,” according to research by the United Nations Environmental Programme. The finding was followed by a call by the UNEP for a World-Wide Ban on Pointless Thin Film Plastic Bags.

“[Plastic bag] manufacture requires large quantities of petroleum,” reports Newsweek, “And, once discarded, they tend to take flight in a puff of wind, snagging in trees and fences or floating in bodies of water, where they can choke marine life and birds. As litter, a plastic bag's life expectancy is far greater than a human's — 1,000 years or more.”

Adding to this list of concerns, the City of Brownsville asserted that plastic shopping bags…

• “have a significant impact on the environment such as contributing to unsightly litter on the streets, sidewalks, beaches, clogging sewers and drainage systems, and polluting the Resaca waterways”
• “are difficult to recycle and currently contaminate material that is processed through Brownsville composting program”
• “create a burden on the city’s solid waste disposal process"
• “have significant environmental impacts each year, including felling of over 14 million trees, and use of over 12 million barrels of oil for bags in the U.S.; and
• “cause the death of well over 100,000 marine animals."

Based on these problems, Brownsville found that it is “in the best interest of the health, safety, and welfare of the residents of Brownsville to reduce the cost to the city of solid waste disposal, and to protect the environment by banning the use of plastic checkout bags.”

No doubt there are things to iron out with plastic bag bans. Charging customers to buy bags at check out is generally regressive—impacting people the most who have the least. But at least Brownsville and other cities are on a path to sorting this out--and we can help by learning from their experience, passing single use plastic bag bans in our own cities and towns, and sharing what we learn in Texas and other states.

Actions you can take:

1. Use fewer plastic bags and reuse the bags you have. You can recycle used plastic bags by dropping them off at bins located outside HEB stores.

2. Get cloth bags out to everyone. For free. Consider an idea taken up by youth in the Ecoppell Club -- to provide free cloth bags to the residents of Coppell, Texas. Their goal? Eliminate the use of plastic bags not only in Coppell but “in United States and even the world”

3. Support schools, recycling at the same time. You can recycle plastic bags and help schools earn cash through HEB’s Enviro-Bag program.

4. Contact your City Council member to see what plans they have for putting a plastic bag ban on the table.

References:

The Graduate (1967) (video clip)

Marine Litter: A Global Challenge (2009) by the UNEP

Taking Aim at All Those Plastic Bags (NYT article)

Battle of the Bags (newsweek.com)

Copy of the Brownsville Ordinance posted by Plastic Ban Report

Still time to recycle the tree

A lone Christmas tree, rolled onto its side against the median strip, was spotted this morning on I-10, just near Fresno. Maybe it missed this weekend's drop off date but you don't have to.

You can still drop off a tree 8 - 5pm on on January 15th and 16th and while you're there, pick up a little free mulch for the spring garden.

Here's the map of drop off locations and the "411" from Solid Waste Management.

San Anto City Council Says Yes to Recycling for Multi-Family Units

The sky was an especially bright shade of blue that afternoon on December 9th, when San Antonio's City Council voted unanimously to approve the multi-family recycling ordinance that ensures that "residents living in multi-family units have convenient access to recycling programs."

Multi-family recycling, the ordinance asserts, is "a key component of the 10-Year Recycling and Resource Recovery Plan approved by City Council in June 2010 [where] multi-family property units represent approximately 30% of all housing units in San Antonio and generate between 100,000 and 150,000 tons of waste annually."

The plan is to roll out recycling on a schedule that calls upon the biggest complexes to jump in first by July 2011 and to have all complexes--from 3 units to 300 units--on track to recycle by April 2012.

Here is a link to the ordinance with all the concomitant “whereases” and “be it ordaineds (suitable for framing!)

So break out the champagne. Uncork the sparkling cider. Then, save up those bottles for a collection COMING SOON to your apartment, condo or townhouse.

Congratulations to ALL who worked hard on making this happen!

City to Vote today on Apartment Recycling

Get a sitter. Pull out the coat a tie. The City of San Antonio is scheduled to vote today to recycling plan for apartment complexes.

Here's a link to the City Council Agenda:

https://webapps1.sanantonio.gov/agendabuilder/printAgenda.aspx

Place: City Council Meeting, Municipal Plaza Building, City Hall Complex, 114 W. Commerce.

If you can't attend, consider contacting your City Council member today:

http://www.sanantonio.gov/council/

Here is a briefing document, presented by Solid Waste Management

An excerpt:

"Ensuring that San Antonio residents living in multi-family units have convenient access to recycling programs is a key component of the 10-Year Recycling and Resource Recovery Plan approved by City Council in June 2010. Multi-family property units represent approximately 30% of all housing units in San Antonio and generate between 100,000 and 150,000 tons of waste annually. According to the Environmental Protection Agency's estimates, over 50% of household waste is paper, plastic, metals, and glass. These items are generally accepted in a single-stream recycling program."

Here's an article by the San Antonio Express News

Why Moore is not More and Talk on Zero Waste Tomorrow Night

The people who made The Story of Stuff have now produced The Story of Electronics. In it, they note that Moore's law (that digital technology will improve at dramatic if not exponential rates) need not mean More stuff (that electronics must be designed for the lifespan of a fruit fly).

Want to learn more about how to reduce e-waste and take steps on the path toward zero waste? There's a gathering tomorrow night that might be just for you: Why Zero Waste and How to Get There!, convened by the Alamo Sierra Club

Tuesday, November 16, 2010 6:30 PM
Witte Museum, 3801 Broadway, San Antonio TX 78209
210-357-1900

More details:
Join the Alamo Group of the Sierra Club at its monthly general meeting to hear Robin Schneider, Executive Director of Texas Campaign for the Environment and member of Central Texas Zero Waste Alliance, talk about countries, states and cities that are setting goals to significantly reduce waste and create recycling for the 21st century. She will also discuss how the Alamo Area can join with other Central Texas communities to create jobs through sustainable production and consumption.

At the Witte Museum, 3801 Broadway, at 6:30 pm, socializing starts at 6.

Need to catch up on the coverage?

Spread the word. A vote on apartment recycling for the City of San Antonio could reach City Council as early as this winter.

Here's a quick roundup of recent news:

The City of San Antonio is preparing to require apartment complexes to start recycling programs. Story by Texas Public Radio

Vote postponed but still planned for December - Story by San Antonio Express News

Work on ordinance underway - Story by San Antonio Express News

Less is More: Pathway to Zero Waste Gains Ground

If you tune in to Texas Public Radio, you’ve likely heard the host of new broadcasts of late on sustainability in the city and the region.

This includes TPR's Living Green programming and podcasts, along with a set of new recycling resources.

An important link is to AACOG’s resource recovery page, where you can find out where to drop off no-longer-needed computers, televisions and other e-waste.

The timing is right, as the city moves forward on a pathway to zero waste initiative.

As it stands, an area study shows that despite the growth of Bexar County, only 18 percent of waste is being diverted to recycling programs. And a big portion of this is comprised of organic materials (“green waste”) that could be enriching our soils instead of languishing in our landfills.

Another big cache of waste comes from the cans, bottles and newspapers that wind up being trashed, merely for the lack of adequate apartment recycling options.

We can do something about this – and are likely to have the chance when a new proposal for apartment recycling is proposed this fall.

Keep an eye out for the proposal to City Council. It’s a chance for us, in an everyday way, to make our city a healthier, more sustainable place.

Earth Day Pledge/Hawaii

This just in.

The Sierra Club is calling for Earth Day Pledges and with your pledge you'll be entered into a drawing for a trip for two to Hawaii. Taking reusable bags to the supermarket instead of using paper/plastic is one of several pledges you can make. To find out more, make a pledge, or compare progress in TX to other states...

Home Wreckers and Water Savers

Habitat creates Home Wrecker Crew.

With leadership from Chris Martin at its Walzem Road Home Center, Habitat Humanity of San Antonio recently kicked off a new deconstruction program aimed at helping to salvage usable fixtures from houses slotted for renovation.

The project gives good, re-usable materials a second life; sparing them from the project dumpster and landfill and has the added benefit of reducing hauling costs for contractors and providing an itemized (tax deductable) donation receipt to owners.

To learn more or to volunteer, visit Wrecking Crew online or contact Chris Martin at 210.599.7109.

If you’re in the market for materials for your apartment, home or garden, it may be worth a visit to one of Habitat's Home Centers.

Home Centers sell new and used home improvement materials and proceeds fund Habitat for Humanity S.A. All this, and they’re helping to keep windows, tile, doors, cabinets, and light fixtures in use and out of local landfills.

Speaking of saving precious resources…
There are still a few days left (‘til April 1) to take part in SAWS Fix a Leak Program. While you’re at it, you’ll be earning a $5 credit for yourself and a $5 contribution to Texas Public Radio. To check out the water audit…

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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.

Jared Diamond: A Case for Change

In his talk to a full house at Trinity University earlier this month, Jared Diamond opened with an anecdote about his first visit to Texas. Then part of a Harvard-led debate team, he and his partner were evidently bested by the Texas team, led by none other than Barbara Jordan.

Dr. Diamond went on to share with us a message of concern and hope. Informed by the study of advanced societies through history that have collapsed, he posits, for failing to see and solve key environmental problems, he warns of the risk of modern-day “ecocide.”

Diamond takes hope, however, in groups across the globe that have learned by example to collectively take up the challenges that face them, and adopt bold solutions. Such solutions aren’t engendered by politicians that pit environment against economy, but rather in recognizing the wisdom that sound environmental policy is sound economic policy.

Taking a page from Dr. Diamond’s book, if we invest in good solutions today for managing waste; securing clean energy; and protecting forests, wetlands, and other habitats, we too have a much better shot at a healthy future.

It’s a point worth raising the next time someone asks why we’d want to cut down on the waste of one-shot materials that go from grocery store shelf to landfill; why we’d want to reduce over-use or build, produce, travel and live in ways that don’t eviscerate the living world around us.

Together, Diamond suggests, we can make smarter choices; and together, we can make a difference.

Next up at Trinity: New York Times Foreign Affairs Columnist Thomas Friedman, author of Hot, Flat and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution – and How It Can Renew America. The lecture will take place at Trinity University at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday Feb. 16, 2010, in Laurie Auditorium. Like so many good things, it is free and open to the public.

Bag it

A few weeks ago I went to a conference at which, instead of the standard bag-swag, they gave us a thin set of just-the-essential materials in one of those grass green HEB bags, donated by HEB. No, the bag wasn't as swank as some but it brought home the point: we can all find little and not so small ways to move away from overuse.

Take bags, for instance. While bans on plastic bags are gaining momentum worldwide, there's debate about whether that just leads to more use of paper. It's possible to limit or eliminate both--by going TOTE. The humble tote is strong, has handles, can be re-used, and is good for everything from books to fruit. It is said (though not confirmed) that a well-made tote can replace 1000 plastic bags. That doesn't mean we oughta go tote-buying-crazy. As Pablo Paster points out, the production of bags of all types of material (canvas, cotton, polyester, polypropyline) does have its impact. But within reason, the reusable bag beats disposables, handles down.

Don't want to buy totes new? Need a project for kids or the kid in you? Kismit and Morsbags show you how to make your own tote from materials you already own.

And here's a video to share by Good Magazine.

A Weed is a Plant

A movement is afoot that deserves our attention: the quest for Zero Waste. The zero waste case brings to mind the quote by Emerson that a weed is just “a plant whose virtues have not yet been discovered.” That connection may not be coincidental, as zero waste takes its cues from the natural world. In nature, it’s pointed out, cycles “function without producing waste.”

Here are a few examples of companies and cities striving to reduce waste or to go waste-free. According to Eco-Cycle, Fetzer Vineyards reuses and recycles paper, cardboard, glass, and other materials, and composts thousands of tons of grape pomace a year. The winemaker has reduced waste to landfills by 96 percent since 1990 and is pursuing a zero waste-goal. Hewlett-Packard is recycling metal, cardboard and plastic, diverting over 90 percent of solid waste and reportedly saving a million a year. Seattle adopted a zero waste strategy for the city in 2007. Austin approved a zero waste plan this past year. Also in 2009, Dallas County Commissioners Court passed a resolution for producer takeback recycling for electronic waste.

Artists are also playing a part. The late San Antonio artist, Rhonda Kuhlman, gave new life to castoff bottle caps and candy wrappers, converting them into sculpture and jewelery. You can visit her work--and tributes to Rhonda--online at Rock Paper Scissors Collective--a collective that she started with fabric artist Jane Bishop.

Where waste is recognized as a resource, rather than a useless byproduct, all sorts of creative new ways to convert so-called garbage into gold emerge. And the concept urges us upstream—to look for processes that eliminate waste altogether.

San Antonio just started a committee on zero waste – to find out more, contact your City Council member or the City Solid Waste Department.

relief fund

My heart and thoughts are with the people of Haiti and all those who have lost loved ones there. If you are also moved to help with the rescue and recovery, NPR has put together a set of how-to-help resource links; and the San Antonio chapter of the American Red Cross is calling on all of us to donate to the relief fund. One immediate way to help, set up by the U.S. State Department and the Red Cross, is to text “Haiti” to 90999 to send a $10 donation. Feel free to use this space if you have other resources you'd like to share.

Happy holidays

As the holidays draw near, we are wishing you joy.

The season in all its glamor is also a chance to trim back the pomp/circumstance and focus on the things that really matter. A day off to hike, cook, raise a glass, light candles, hibernate(?) Maybe an evening with friends; a go-cart race; a trip to Enchanted Rock(?) Dancing! To set the mood, here are a few tips for a greener holiday.

Top of the list is to wrap gifts in old maps and comic pages. Don't know about you but that really takes me back...

And if that weren't enough, fans of re-use at Stanford tell us that "If every American family wrapped just 3 presents in re-used materials, it would save enough paper to cover 45,000 football fields." No elves have been dispatched to test this, but it is Stanford.

So here's to your holiday being bright. To things that cost nothing but mean the most. And to all you do to make the world a better place.

TX Recycles Day

On a beautiful fall San Anto day, scores of people came out to learn about recycling in the city and pick up hints from Helioise, the keynote speaker.

At our table, kids--and no small number of adults--loved the puzzles/games on recycling and the Top Ten Reasons to Recycle. And many people signed up to get involved in community activism.

If you had the chance to come out, thank you! If not, here are a few links to online resources for kids:

Puzzle by TeacherVision

Wordsearches by Euless

and the latest Facts and Figures on Municipal Solid Waste in the US (EPA)

And an open question: What do you think are the best ways to teach recycling?