12/3/10 - Driving Home

Did you know that the chasing arrows recycling symbol is unregulated?

Meaning: put one on my butt and no one can stop me. Doesn't mean my butt is recyclable.

I've been thinking about all the spin that is taken as truth about the recycling arrows. Watching the documentary BAG IT was the first time I got my eyes opened wide about how little actually gets recycled, and how most of our plastic waste gets shipped overseas to be burned in open air facilities, which in turn poisons the people working for pennies a day to deal with our garbage.

Author, Annie Leonard, has traveled to 40 countries and visited hundreds of factories where our plastic waste is dumped. According to Leonard, in just one year over 75 million pounds of U.S. plastic waste went to Hong Kong. She equates recycling to be the “opiate of the masses.” We all know that feeling of guilt-free release when we drop a plastic container into a recycling bin.

This re-melting also poisons the air, water, and soil of the foreign country who bought our dirty plastic. Because manufacturers want virgin plastic, or plastic nurdles to be used in the making of their packaging.
I got home from my trip last week and saw that my friend Harry who writes The Flotsam Diaries had been thinking about the same thing. He did such an amazing job of dispelling many of the recycling myths that I want him to get full credit, and for you to go to his website right now and read his post, "The Downward Spiral, or "The Triangle is a Lie."" Please.

Careful, you may not be able to close your eyes after this one.

"** The American Chemistry Council loves to talk up the value of plastic recycling. Look for their symbol on many recycling Web sites. Also look for them as sponsors of recycling initiatives nationwide. But their own fact sheets dispell the myth. 50+% of recycled #4 plastic was sold to developing nations in 2008. Many have much lower standards for their plastics and permit very contaminated plastics to be melted together and used in food packaging. Each grocery bag you recycle may be poisoning a family somewhere on the other side of the world." - The Flotsam Diaries

This post is a little light on the gritty truth for me, but may help you dispell some of the recycling myths further. It is a practicle giude to which numbers are recycled, into what, and how often.

"WHAT DO RECYCLING SYMBOLS ON PLASTICS MEAN" - THE DAILY GREEN

Day 167 - Oct. 27, 2010

life guard tower 26 - Ocean Park, Santa Monica CA

trash collected for 20 min.

1.5 pounds

668.8 pounds
Tonight is the last night to vote for Danielle in the Britta Filter for Good Film Project. Her entry is called, "Our Daily Ocean: A Story of Butts." She's very gracious to consistently site her inspiration as this blog for her 20 min. beach cleanup in Wrightsville Beach, N.C. that she does with a twist, but all the action is because of her.

She counts the cigarette butts she collects during those 20 minutes and keeps a tally of those. So far in 15 days she has collected, (with the help of her three small children and husband Aaron) 7,360 CIGARETTE BUTTS. That's insane.

Hopefully a short film that will air during the Sundance Film Festival if she wins will go a long way to banning smoking on her home beaches in North Carolina. So vote for her tonight!
It was a gorgeous 84 degree October day here in Santa Monica with many surfers enjoying the waves until the sun went down and beyond.
CRUSH PROP 23 needs you! Sponsored by Credo, this campaign wants to get out the vote to squash Prop 23 on Tues.. You can type in your zip code and search for events in your area to:

STOP TEXAS OIL: HELL NO ON 23

Did you know that you can't recycle number 5 plastics?

Did you also know that most, if not all yogurt containers are made from number 5 plastic?

(I love yogurt!)

Did you also know that the chasing arrows symbol that we have all come to associate, or be synonymous with recycling, is not regulated?

At all?

I could put a chasing arrows symbol on my butt if I wanted. Well, you get the point. GENIUS marketing... BAG IT, the documentry is where I learned all the fun facts that I listed above.
I've started doing yoga again after a long hiatus. I've joined in on the odd class here and there over the last two years, (probably all of 5) and so the 5 minute headstand we did in class (I was against the wall for support...) has sent too much oxygenated blood to my head I think because all that is running through my head right now to end the post with is, "Ahhh... pretty. sunsets good. love California....pretty....ahhh.) Mix and match as you choose. I think I'll leave it there.

Day 129 - June 27, 2010

life guard tower 26 - Ocean Park, Santa Monica CA

trash collected for 20 minutes

3.8 pounds

510 pounds total

TODAY I PARTNERED WITH OCEANS 4EVER - THE (MOM) CINDY & (DAUGHTER) ALEXA TEAM - WHO WENT OUT TO THEIR LOCAL LAKE IN INDIANA FOR A 20 MINUTE CLEANUP. THEIR FINDINGS TO FOLLOW.

THEY WERE ALSO A PART OF THE OCEAN HERO AWARDS FROM OCEANA.

READ MORE ABOUT THEM HERE.

JOIN THEIR BAKE FOR THE OCEANS SAKE!

This is recyclable. If you define recycling as a closed loop, meaning that the material that you start with is recycled into the material that you end up with.

An aluminium can can become a can again.

A glass bottle can become a recycled glass bottle.

Paper can become recycled paper.

BUT THERE IS A MYTH ABOUT PLASTIC RECYCLING. PLASTIC GETS DOWN-CYCLED -

meaning that the plastic bottle or bag you start with at the beginning of the recycling loop takes chemicals and a lot of energy to make the plastic pliable enough to mold into a new plastic item.

This usually means an inferior plastic product, like single use plastic siding for houses which when it reaches the end of its life, is simply thrown away. But there is no away....
Annie Leonard who did, "The Story of Stuff," has now done the "Story of Bottled Water."

I think that I have mentioned this before. In this short documentary she goes to India to visit the mountain of plastic bottles that are just sitting there in landfills that have been shipped from the USA. Astounding and disturbing, please watch.
What does a water bottle have to do with the BP Oil Disaster? (I read in a comment on Beth Terry's site Fake Plastic Fish yesterday that a reader of hers refuses to call it a "spill". She's right, it is not a spill it is a "geyser" an environmental disaster of proportions never before seen on earth. Period. That was a horrible sentence to write.)

Anyway - plastic bottles are made from petroleum based plastics. Drink soda or water out of plastic bottles? Increase our dependence on oil. Allow more companies like BP to say they are just fulfilling the demand of the consumer......Sounds harsh? It isn't. The Cove director said (paraphrasing here) "Want to do something to help the Gulf? Don't ever drink out of a plastic water bottle again!"

Please read Beth Terry's informative post on WHY YOU CAN'T CLEAN UP THE PACIFIC GARBAGE PATCH. This is something I'll cover more about in future posts. She does it so well on her blog that I urge you to go there and inform yourself.

THANK YOU BETH!!

Day 43 - August 13

Life Guard Station 26, Ocean Park, Santa Monica CA

trash collected for 20 min.

estimated pounds collected today - 3.9

estimated pounds collected to date - 243.3
This is the first thing I saw as I stepped from the sidewalk, to sand and the wooden boardwalk to the beach beyond. The Daily Water Bottle....one in every collection, at least. I later gave it to a man going thru all the trash cans, and looking in the sand for recyclables. By our house in a neighborhood of Santa Monica called Sunset Park, people start going thru the trash at 4 a.m.. If they wake me up I get upset. But should I be? Of course no one wants to be awoken before dawn by clanking bottles and rustling trash, but out of financial necessity they are scraping together extra income and recycling in the process.
This is a picture of the tide line on the beach. Part of my "strategy" when collecting is to follow along where the water dumps seaweed, straws, plastics, balloons and other trash into a tangled pile. Sometimes it is hard to tell what is natural from trash, straw from feather. Unfortunately it doesn't take long to spot the garbage, but often twice as long to unravel it from the rest. Disclosure - some seaweed has gone straight into my bag, adding natural material into the tally of trash pounds, but only when everything is so intertwined it looks like a trap for some unsuspecting marine animal to get strangled in once the water takes it back to sea.
The Santa Monica Pier. Heal the Bay, a local marine conservation organization in Santa Monica publishes a beach report card. Can you guess what the beach around the pier gets? An F, almost every time. Heal the Bay is listed in my links section, or click here.
I get a magazine called Orion - Nature/Culture/Place. In the July/August 2009 issue I read something I want to share here:

On page 1 - From the Editors

THOSE OF US WHO PAY ATTENTION TO THE LARGER STATE OF HUMAN AND NATURAL AFFAIRS ARE BOMBARDED DAILY WITH TRULY HORRIFIC NEWS. IT COMES RELENTLESSLY, THROUGH THE MEDIA, FROM SCIENTISTS AND ACTIVISTS, IN CONVERSATION WITH FRIENDS AND NEIGHBORS.

AS AUTHOR AND ACTIVIST PAUL HAWKEN DECLARED TO GRADUATES AT THE BEGINNING OF A COLLEGE COMMENCEMENT ADDRESS THIS SPRING -

"YOU ARE GOING TO HAVE TO FIGURE OUT WHAT IT MEANS TO BE A HUMAN

BEING ON EARTH AT A TIME WHEN EVERY LIVING SYSTEM IS DECLINING, AND

THE RATE OF DECLINE IS ACCELERATING."

THERE IS A BLEAKNESS ALL AROUND US. THERE IS ALSO EXTRAORDINARY OPPORTUNITY TO REMAKE THE WORLD.

"IF YOU LOOK AT THE SCIENCE ABOUT WHAT IS HAPPENING ON EARTH AND AREN'T PESSIMISTIC, YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND DATA," PAUL HAWKEN SAID IN THE COMMENCEMENT ADDRESS. "BUT IF YOU MEET THE PEOPLE WHO ARE WORKING TO RESTORE THIS EARTH AND THE LIVES OF THE POOR, AND YOU AREN'T OPTIMISTIC, YOU HAVEN'T GOT A PULSE."

Day 30 - June 24

Life Guard Station 26, Ocean Park, Santa Monica CA

trash collected for 20 min.

estimated pounds collected today - 3.9

estimated pounds collected to date - 178.7
My daily plastic water bottle...

Here is a link to the Rise Above Plastics Blog hosted by Surfrider.

By the way, the West Los Angeles/Malibu Chapter meeting is next Tues., June 30, at the Santa Monica Youth Hostel, at 7:00. 

Santa Monica Youth Hostel is located at 1436 Second St., Santa Monica 90401
Do The Dew! Isn't that the slogan put forth by this brand? How about Recycle the Dew Damnit!

Does it have the same ring? Maybe not........

Here is another link for a site called The Action Recycling Center 

There you can find out fun facts like:

United States in two weeks produces enough cans, if stacked end on end, would be high enough to reach the moon.
I've mentioned Dr. Carl Safina before of the Blue Ocean Institute, which can be found in my links section of this blog. As I was uploading my pictures I went to my bookshelf to find his book, Voyage of the Turtle, which is missing. Rats!

But I found Song for the Blue Ocean, also a great book by Dr. Safina.

"For each pound of shrimp kept, two to eight pounds of sea creatures are killed and dumped. In the western Pacific, the region with the highest by-kill, an inconceivable-but measurable-nine million metric tons of marine life are killed and discarded annually." - Song for the Blue Ocean.

What does a plastic sand toy turtle have to do with shrimp you may ask? Well, a lot. Until the 90's shrimp nets had no exit for turtles to get out of their nets that drag across the ocean floor. Turtles graze on sea grasses and other things there, and so were often caught in the nets. They died. Now there is something called Turtle Escape Devices, or T.E.D. for short, that are put into the back of the net. It works like a trap door to let the turtles out. This was a 20 year battle that Dr. Safina expands on in Voyage of the Turtle, a book mostly about the Leatherback Turtle. He also says that, "Shrimp fishing is like going deer hunting, and cutting down the forest to find the deer." 

I choose not to eat shrimp. I also don't mention it when I am with friends at a sushi restaurant, but maybe I should. I try to just be an example, and if it comes up, tell them why I don't eat shrimp. I don't want to be a "preachy tree-hugger", but perhaps I should mention it more. Many people do not know why shrimp fishing is so destructive. 

"I've learned that you can't please everyone, and that it is best not to try to. My feeling is: Know yourself, and allow yourself to be known, and you will have lived." - Dr. Safina

I guess I'm mentioning the shrimp....

Day 23 - June 3

Leo Carrillo State Park, Malibu, California

trash collected for less than 20 min.

estimated trash collected today - 5.3

estimated trash collected to date - 155.4

I like this sign. Someone was trying very hard to make the point that recycling is important and hip too. ha!
These are the steps leading down to my favorite beach. I started writing my book here. I drove every friday, (my day off then), for six months from Eagle Rock to this beach and wrote my first draft by hand sitting on the rocks. Anyway, there are a lot of cans to throw your trash, and/or your recycling into.
Recently, Gov. Schwartzenager proposed the closure of 80% of California's State Parks to help balance the budget. California will loose out on 350 million dollars in revenue this year if they do. Not to mention the local economies that will take a hit if their state park can no longer accept visitors. California is facing a deficit of over 24 billion dollars. Can the US government bail us out too? After the car companies and the banks...throw some our way. It was suggested on one of my favorite half hour radio shows last week called Left, Right and Center

You can find their show on 89.9 KCRW NPR radio on fridays at 2:30 and repeated at 7pm in Los Angeles.

The cons of closing the parks are many:

- increased risk of forest fire because people will still go in.

- illegal dumping (trash, chemicals, home appliances maybe?)

- lost revenue to the state and local economies

- lost opportunities for people to be out in, and enjoy nature.

I'm sure there are a lot more......

The pros:

- The animals that live in the parks get a reprieve from human interaction and impact on their environment. (if they get out of a potential forest fire, or away from anything that has been dumped into their environment because there is no one to enforce the law)

A little thin on the pro side....
The funny, or really sad thing about this diaper picture is that I wrote a line into my book that says, "I even saw a dirty diaper once on the beach back home." I had never seen a diaper on a beach until today.
Ah, plastic bags.......never seen these on a beach before.
Really?

Also, I collected trash for less than 20 minutes today, just the immediate area around me. I came up here to listen to a taping of my book where I wrote it. That is why I broke my own guideline of collecting in the same place every time. Today was a special exception.

I wish I had weighed one empty can and one empty glass bottle separately because......
I collected just under two pounds of recyclable cans and bottles from the beach. As you remember if you have been reading from the top of this post, there are at least two trash cans at the top of the stairs to dispose of this trash. 2 pounds filled a bag to bursting.
This place is also special to me because just north of this beach is where Garen and I were married last Dec. 6th.