Circular Economies

To slow the release of carbon into the atmosphere, we can turn to renewable energy and biodegradable packaging, but to stop it, we need to return to a circular economy, with localized nodes all over the world.

Our current global and local economies depend on "natural resources" and "human resources" with the assumption that these are limitless, that the earth possesses or will continue to generate enough raw materials for the endless production and transport of new goods. In fact, many of our global industries depend not just on stable markets, but continuously growing ones, for financial stability. We have now reached the point where this will no longer allow for environmental sustainability.

In order to reach a point of truly circular economy, we need to reuse, recycle, compost, or burn (as fuel) everything we produce. And we're doing a terrible job at that.

While glass and metals can readily be recycled and similar products created, with less energy output than refining new materials, recycling plastic is much more difficult. Plastic, once produced, can't be melted down and re-used in the same form.

Water bottles (#1 plastic), for instance, can be made into fleece sweaters, but not into new plastic water bottles. There's a problem, though: every time you launder that fleece, you release microplastics into your town sewer system, and they end up in the ocean where they're killing wildlife.

Here's a table from Oxford University that summarizes how plastics are generally recycled by communities:

Go here for the full-size image

It turns out, though, that the situation isn't quite as dire, in theory: Plastics labeled  #2, #3, #4, and #5 can be turned into plastic wood. The town of Long Branch started a program last year to recycle plastic bags and wrappers (#4). They promised a park bench after 500 pounds of packaging was collected, and this January, the first bench was installed near Lake Takanassee.

Meanwhile, the town of Middletown, NJ recently opened a styrofoam recycling center, open to residents of the entire county. It only collects styrofoam used in packaging and shipping, not food-grade products, so you still need to get a reusable mug for your Dunkin Donuts coffee, and avoid take-out that's packaged in styrofoam.

There's a breakdown, however, been theory and practice. Between 1950 and 2015, the amount of plastic products produced annually rose almost 200-fold, from 2 million metric tons per year to 381 million metric tons, and only 9 percent of that was recycled.

We need to do better, and when it comes to plastics we need to address this in several different ways.

Governments need to enact carbon taxes to encourage corporate and individual consumers to use less carbon, by making it more expensive.

Producers of plastic products need to do a better job of making containers out of more easily recyclable products when possible, researching and developing biodegradable containers, and avoiding excess packaging.

Consumers need to send a message through individual purchases and buying habits that we don't want plastic. We need to:

• stop buying bottled water and other products packaged in single-use plastics
• refuse excess packaging, for instance when we buy loose produce
• advocate with local and state governments to enact plastic bag bans, and meanwhile make the choice to use reusable bags for our shopping
• boycott Dunkin Donuts and other corporations that still use styrofoam instead of paper hot drink cups, and tell them why

... and more. Those are starting points, not end points. We need to move to an economy where everything we produce can be repurposed in some way. It's going to take imagination and persistence. If we don't do it voluntarily, the effects of climate crisis will force the issue.

Avoiding Plastic, Week One

A week into my commitment to avoid single-use plastics, an update.

The knife and fork set that my dad gave me, with 1960s-era vintage plastic handles, is traveling in my bag. I’ve been packing lunch and even dinner to avoid take-out. I ate out once, and put the leftovers in a plastic container I had with me, rather than taking a new one that I would then end up throwing away.

For the most part, I feel pretty good about it.

Sunday, though, was a fairly epic failure. I drove my son to Jenkinson’s to apply for a job and went to a coffee shop to wait for him. I ordered a latte — in a paper cup, because for once I didn’t have my reusable mug with me — and didn’t think to ask them not to put on a lid.

He got hired on the spot. I didn’t even have time to drink the coffee before we headed back to join some people at a restaurant for lunch.

One fender-bender later, we got hung up for so long my friend ended up getting my meal wrapped up to take home. I ended up with a salad in a styrofoam clamshell, rice in more styrofoam, and tofu and broccoli in an aluminum container with a plastic lid.

Plastic 2, Heide 0.

Still, it’s been easier than I anticipated. It’s also making me take a hard look at my grocery cart. 

A bottle of ketchup or hot sauce that will last for a few months seems less problematic than the box of tofu that will make one meal, or the tub of vegan yogurt that I’ll finish in three or four breakfasts. I’m paying more attention to whether I can get a comparable item packaged in glass, which is fully and indefinitely recylable, unlike plastic*. I’m avoiding the containers of delicious but environmentally disastrous tomatoes. 

I said last week I thought it would be almost impossible. On Sunday, I was foiled by one mistake and one bad driver. But I’ve definitely reduced the amount of plastic I would otherwise have used during the week, and I’m feeling good about going into week two

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* You can sterilize a glass bottle and refill it with beer, or whatever, or you can break it up and make a new bottle. You can’t make a plastic water bottle into another water bottle. Contamination problems mean that food-grade plastic can only be recycled for non-food uses, like fleece sweaters (that then shed microfleece particles every time they go through the washer) or plastic park benches. Either way, it’s not going away.

Six Pack Rings

I sent an email message to Margaret Chin and Brad Lander today. They are the sponsors of the bill passed in May and scheduled to go into effect in October that requires grocery stores in New York City to charge customers five cents per plastic bag used.

I'm hoping they'll consider taking on the issue of those vile pieces of plastic that connect cans of beer and soda.

Readers, do you have any suggestions about how to deal with these? Can soda cans be packaged in cardboard like beer bottles? Do you know an inventor who can come up with a better way?

Or is the best solution to quit drinking soda, and switch to water?

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Thank you for sponsoring legislation to charge a fee for plastic bags in NYC,  and getting it passed.

I'm writing to you today to ask if you'd consider taking on six pack rings, those plastic yokes that hold soda and beer cans together and then go into the landfill.

Many people cut them into little pieces before putting them in the garbage to avoid the problem of birds choking to death in them.

But the little pieces end up in the ocean, where fish and turtles and other marine animals mistake them for food and eat them. They also contribute to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch and other marine trash vortexes.

Thank you for considering this.

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Update: I got a reply from Vincent Fang, Council Member Chin's director of budget and legislation, saying he's going to look into it.

Update 2: I got a reply from someone in Brad Lander's office saying she's interested in the issue. And then I saw an article about a small brewery that has developed edible six-pack rings. If New York lawmakers can find a way to encourage soda and beer companies who do business in the city to adopt these rings, it could have much wider impact eventually.

Outdoor Workers

So, I'm back to biking to work in the winter. My students think I'm nuts. Lest anyone think I'm heroic for braving the cold, I want to offer a short list of people who work outdoors, year round, no matter the weather:

Mail carriers.

Delivery people. Some of them, like the UPS and Fed Ex carriers, get to sit in a truck in between having to go out in the cold and hump boxes around. Others get around on foot or by bike. Next time Seamless shows up at your door with lunch, consider an extra big tip.

Garbage collectors. I have to wonder if the heat of summer is worse than the cold, given the stench August produces.

Farmers. Animals and fields need to be tended, year-round, or you and I don't eat.

Traffic and parking enforcement officers and school crossing guards. Standing in one place, like the crossing guards mostly do, is the coldest winter job I can imagine. At least a lot of the other outdoor jobs involve moving around, therefore generating body heat.

Maintenance workers. You know, the ones who make the flowers look pretty in the summer, and shovel snow and spread salt in the winter. The ones who show up for work three hours before you do, to make sure the walkways around your office are clear and safe.

Back on the Soap Box

I don't know when the world decided it needed liquid soap instead of soap in bars. I think it had something to do with the emergence of germ-o-phobia and the addition of anti-bacterial chemicals to everything a couple of decades ago. And I totally get that bars of soap in places like public bathrooms can totally be germ magnets.

But for home use? Most soap sold in bars is still packaged in paper.

Liquid soap, however, is packaged in plastic. And it's ... kind of the same thing as bar soap, except with a lot of water added. So you get a double-whammy of extra petroleum: the single-use plastic package that goes in the landfill when the soap is all gone*, and the extra water weight that makes up extra shipping volume and weight.

Bar soap works great for handwashing. It works great as a body wash in the shower. Certain bar soaps (I like Dr. Bronner's) work well on dishes. And you can even get bar shampoo from a couple of manufacturers.

Just like body wash, there are lots of varieties: glycerin soap that won't clog your pores, deodorant soap, soap with lots of moisturizer to keep your skin from drying out. Some of the bar shampoos work better with dry hair, some better with oily scalp.

So, do me a favor? Think about switching from the plastic bottle full of soap to a nice solid bar the next time you run out.
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* IF the soap is all gone. The design of a lot of the packaging makes it very difficult to use up all of the contents, so if you don't think to cut apart the bottle,  you end up throwing a quarter of the contents away.