|| Reduce Plastic Bag Use - BYOB!

CAST'S REUSABLE BAG CHALLENGE RESULTS

OUR NEXT CHALLENGE - BREAKING THE BOTTLED WATER HABIT

THE FLOATING PLASTIC ISLAND

A VISUAL LOOK AT PLASTIC BAG STATISTICS - CHRIS JORDAN

DOWNLOAD A BAG REMINDER CARD HERE

CHECK OUT THIS SLIDESHOW ON PLASTIC BAG CONSUMPTION - University of Florida

Have you been to the Summit County landfill? On any given day you can see plastic bags lining the landfill’s fence or dancing in the branches of surrounding aspens and forests. Not a pretty sight. And it’s a shame to think that plastic bags can only be recycled once!

In the good words of County Recycling Manager, Kevin Berg, “Plastic bags aren’t a recycling problem, they are a consumption problem.” You see, the issue starts at the stores not at the recycling site.

Americans use between 300 and 700 plastic bags in one year and most of these end up in the landfill. Not only do they blow out of landfills like they do here in Summit County, but plastic bags photodegrade or break down into small toxic pieces when exposed to sunlight. These small bits can seep into our water and soil. A plastic bag’s useful life may be counted in minutes but it can take a plastic bag hundreds or even thousands of years to break down in a landfill environment.

There are options for recycling plastic bags but it condones and even encourages single use behavior. People often use more plastic bags when they know that they can recycle them later. Sometimes the act of recycling goes without complete understanding for all that is involved… such as the use of non-renewable resources in the production phase.

Why use plastic bags in the first place? We have readily available alternatives and solutions to plastic bags - reusable bags that you can bring to the store every time. Remember to bring your own bag! Each reusable bag has the potential to eliminate the use of an average of 1000 plastic bags in its lifetime.

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|| Cast's 2009 Reusable Bag Challenge Results

The results are in and Summit County came in 3rd place for the Reusable Bag Challenge. Nice job Summit! Our community saved 411,680 plastic bags from our landfills by bringing our own reusable bags. To put that into single-use perspective, we saved nearly 40 bags per person (based on town populations). Together, all the participating towns eliminated the consumption of an estimated 5.3-million single-use disposable bags. Our collective impact was substantial! If we've saved over 5.3 million plastic bags from a wasteful life in the landfill in only six months, think about what we can do in a year, five years, or a lifetime.

The Reusable Bag Challenge may be over but we have an even bigger environmental challenge ahead of us. So keep BYOBing Summit County.

For more information about starting a Plastic Bag challenge in your own life, please contact Jen Santry at jen@highcountryconservation.org.

Some info from CAST about environmental issues associated with plastic bags:

BagIT - A documentary about plastic bags and other plastics...

REEL Thing Productions, a production company based out of Telluride, CO, is working on a feature-length documentary—working title BagIT—about plastic bags and other plastics and their effect on the environment and on human health.

WATCH BAGIT FILM TRAILER HERE

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|| Join us for Summit County's Next Challenge...

Here at the Conservation Center, we get a lot of questions about what small proactive steps individuals can take to make the biggest environmental impact. One of the greatest things you can do for the planet is to break single-use habits. The two things that always come to mind are plastic bags and plastic water bottles. This year, I took the pledge to completely eliminate both items from my life. And I have to say, I haven’t missed either one!

The useful life of a plastic water bottle is very similar to that of the plastic bag. They both provide about 15 minutes of convenience (sometimes less, sometimes more) and then we no longer need them or want them. And like the single-use bag habit, our obsession with convenience – a fresh bottle of water available to purchase just about anywhere – has a dramatic negative impact on our environment.

According to New American Dream:
"Everything we consume has a climate impact, but manufacturing and trucking water bottles to homes with clean tap water seems particularly wasteful. The Beverage Marketing Corporation reports that Americans consumed 31.2 billion liters of water in 2006.

Manufacturing all those bottles requires 900,000 tons of plastic, the equivalent of more than 17 million barrels of oil, and emit more than 2.5 million tons of carbon dioxide. Trucking around all those heavy bottles emits even more greenhouse gases. Beyond the climate impact there's the massive waste - 86% of water bottles aren't recycled. Moreover, while the demand for bottled water is up in the U.S., the Environmental Protection Agency had found that 90 percent of tap water domestically is safe to drink. Furthermore, studies show that at least 40 percent of bottled water is just tap water!"

Here's New American Dream's Top 5 Reasons to Give Up Bottled Water:

1. Disposable plastic water bottles are not meant for multiple uses.The #1 polyethylene terephthalate (PET) is fine for a single use, but reuse can lead to bacterial growth and leaching of dangerous chemicals.

2. Bottled water is full of oil. Making bottles to meet Americans’ demand for bottled water requires more than 17 million barrels of oil annually, enough to fuel some 100,000 cars for a year. To put it another way, the entire energy costs of the lifecycle of a bottle of water is equivalent, on average, to filling up a quarter of each bottle with oil. (Pacific Institute)

3. Bottled water is expensive! Drinking the recommended daily amount of water using bottled water can cost an average of $1,400 per year; drinking the same amount from the tap costs around 49 cents for the year. (NY Times)

4. Your tap water is fine to drink. Tap water is more highly regulated than bottled water and over 90 percent of water systems meet EPA's standards for tap water quality. (If the taste or color is a little off from your tap, your pipes are probably at fault—a simple filtration system should do the trick to take both aesthetic problems away.)

5. At least 40 percent of bottled water is tap water anyway. That’s right: you are paying a huge premium on water that you could have just gotten from your tap in the first place. (Natural Resources Defense Council) You probably like tap water more than bottled water, too!

Join HC3's 2010 campaign to Break the Bottled Water Habit. You can take the pledge today...

"I pledge to Break the Bottled Water Habit by Thinking Outside the Bottle and using a reusable water bottle instead of buying bottled water. I also pledge to support the efforts of local officials to stop spending public funds on bottled water and prioritize strong public water systems over bottled water profits." Take the pledge online here.

And take these proactive steps:  Use your own (plastic-free) water bottle and make the decision to cut single-use water bottles out of your life. I guarantee this life recipe will have you well on your way to saving the planet.

Want to know more? Here are some great resources:

Tapped the Movie
Stop Nestle Water.org
Corporate Accountability International - Think Outside the Bottle
Klean Kanteen
Tappening.com - Think Global Drink Local
Blue Gold - World Water Wars
Katie Couric's Bottled Water Debate - Katie Couric talks to "Tapped" filmmaker Stephanie Soechtig and Joe Doss, president of the International Bottled Water Association.
The Story of Bottled Water by Annie Leonard

|| The Floating Plastic Island

There is a plastic something growing in the Pacific. Scientists have described it as a plastic “soup” and some even call it a plastic "island."

It was discovered over a decade ago as floating plastic garbage between the coasts of California and Japan. At the time, sailors and researchers sized the Pacific garbage patch as larger than the state of Texas. Since then, biologists have dedicated their lives to studying the plastic mass. A few years ago it was reported to have grown to double the size of Texas. Now, this plastic sea monster is double the size of the United States!

Also known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch and the Pacific Garbage Vortex, this diagram shows how trash (yellow dots) entering the sea from land along the Pacific coast is caught by the gyre. On its way, the trash is conentrated and eventually ends up in one of the two shown gyres. As a consequence, in these areas, the surface water contains six times more plastic than plankton.

You may have seen the gloomy photos of sea turtles gagging on plastic bags or sea birds nesting in beach landfills. However, it is difficult to relate to such tragedies when Summit County is over a thousand miles away from the Pacific coast. Plastics still have a substantial affect on our mountain community as well as other ecosystems. In fact, the majority of the ocean’s litter originates on land.
Yes, nearly 80 percent of the sea’s garbage started its journey inland. Think about it. Here in Summit County, not only do plastic bags and bits blow into our forests and trees, they find their way into our water systems including pristine rivers. In the city, plastics sneak into storm drains. From Lego blocks to barbie dolls, these petroleum-based plastics are eventually carried out to sea. So in reality, all of us, in the mountains or on the coast are responsible.

The ocean is a vast being and you can start to see why some people have got away with throwing debris, chemicals, cars, dead bodies… into its seemingly bottomless pits. Once garbage is dumped, the ocean gobbles it up and the garbage magically goes away. In the past, trash would break down in a fairly short time with the help of marine microorganisms. Once plastics were introduced into the stream, everything changed.

Instead, we created a massive plastic sea monster. Once again we’ve thrown manmade materials into nature and now have to reap the consequences. Unfortunately, we’ve out-smarted and somewhat defeated natural bacteria needed for biodegradation.

Plastics photodegrade or break down with the help of sunlight into tiny toxic bits that microorganisms refuse to digest. Even more frightening is that these small plastic polymers are sponges for pesticides, electronic wastes, and other pollutants. Not only has man created indestructible plastic particles that will out-survive even the hardiest cockroach, we have doused the particles in dangerous toxins and pollutants. And all of this is free-floating in our oceans?

Once these toxic plastic fragments are released into the ecosystem, they accumulate in underwater currents known as gyres. In this plastic garbage whirlpool, scientists have found everything from syringes and cigarette lighters to toothbrushes. Marine biologists have even found natural zooplankton and other small sea creatures mixed in with thousands of colored plastic crumbs referred to as a “plastic-plankton soup.” Other items such as drums full of hazardous chemicals, barnacle-covered volleyballs, and plastic coat hangers have also been discovered in this whirlpool waste.

Researchers have recently discovered that there are six pounds of plastics for every pound of naturally occurring zooplankton in the ocean. The problem is that zooplankton and plastic bits are ingested by fish and other sea creatures. Poisons then pass into our food web! I don’t know about you but I rather not eat from the plastic-plankton soup.

Now you are aware of the issue; and to some of you it may seem like the ocean is a faraway place and somebody else’s problem. But it is everyone’s problem! Until we stop relying on plastics as a way of life and we change our consumption behaviors, plastics will continue to be produced, used once or twice, and discarded. Why risk the plastic bottle or bag you use becoming a part of the floating plastic dump?

Become a part of the solution! Remember your reusable bags at the store. Stop the waste of plastic water bottles. Buy foods that aren’t wrapped in plastics. And speak out against needless plastics. Every step you take to decrease unnecessary plastics in your life makes a difference.

Want to know more? The Los Angeles Times put together an excellent online presentation called Altered Oceans: A five-part series on the crises of the seas with part four of the series focusing on the hazards of plastic ocean debris. Check it out here.

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|| Chris Jordan's Running the Numbers:

Running the Numbers looks at "contemporary American culture through the austere lens of statistics." Plastic Bags, 2007 (below), depicts 60,000 plastic bags, the number used in the US every five seconds. Click here to see Chris Jordan's entire exhibit including his other exhibit Intolerable Beauty: Portraits of American Mass Consumption.

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