If you're one of the cool kids with an iPhone, than this post is for you. Oh, also, if you're one of the cool kids with an iPhone, in San Francisco. You also have to like recycling. So, for the two of you left, great news! Recycling in San Francisco just got way easier with the EcoFinder app, which helps you find recycling centers near to where you are, based on what you need to recycle! Awesome. And look! A handy video!
The plan is to cover 10 recycling trucks in textile designs from the Design Center. The decision to jazz up the trucks came about partly because Philly is also kicking off a new single system recycling program in which citizens no longer have to sort their recyclables.
Way to go Philly! Way to make the planet beautiful in two ways!
Be sure to enjoy the beautiful trucks below (via wetjetset) More
Boston nonprofit Newbury Film Series is focusing on waste and how we all can recycle, reclaim and redefine. They have put out a series of webisodes that focus on folks that are taking the excess of waste and finding creative, innovative ways to deal with the problem. The videos also help viewers to understand the impact of their consumption to get in touch with how they affect the planet.
All the videos are free and up on http://www.whatiswaste.com. One of my favorites is below, it focuses on the New Belgium Brewing Company in Fort Collins, Colorado - which is where my parents went to college and is right next to where I was born!
Via NYT: Environmental groups such as NRDC and Greenpeace are making a call to action to Americans obsessed with soft toilet paper. We decided to poll our followers on twitter (@takepart) to see what our eco-friendly community prefers, and shockingly just 11 percent of you voted for recycled TP. (Note: This does not reflect the single vote for leaves.) With just under 10 percent of precincts reporting, we're calling it for premium.
Not only does premium TP require the pulp from live trees, but some of those trees are cut from old-growth forests. So why are we so resistant to make the switch? I mean, even the celebs used recycled toilet paper at the Oscars this year. And The Good Human claims that if every household switched one regular roll to a recycled roll we'd save 470,000 trees and 169 million gallons of water.
You can takepart by consulting Greenpeace's handy pocket-sized guide before you buy your next 24-pack.
And if Mardi Gras is doing great things for New Orleans tourism industry, just imagine what it does for the bead industry? According to Jaunted.com the goodies tossed from Mardi Gras floats rack up millions of dollars in sales each year, with individual float riders each disbursing nearly a thousand dollars worth of stuff. I wonder how much trash Mardi Gras beads create? (and I don't just mean the topless kind, eh oh!) So if you're out on Bourbon Street flashing your fanciness for plastic pieces, takepart and send your beads to the Arc of Greater New Orleans chapter (this group helps parents and their children affected by mental retardation and related developmental disabilities) and they'll resell them with profits going to eco-activism.
This April, Junk Ride 2009 will be cycling 2,000 miles from Vancouver to Tijuana to discuss plastic marine debris, and larger issues of sustainability. Plastic Soup or Garbage Patch? Whatever you call it, the obscene amount of plastic swirling around in our oceans is killing marine life and threatening our health. Dr. Marcus Eriksen and Anna Cummins from the Algalita Marine Research Foundation will ride down the West Coast, giving away samples of polluted ocean surface to educators, organizations and legislators to raise awareness of the problems and call for an end to The Age of Disposable Plastic.
The 100 samples of plastic and plankton Junk Ride will hand out, were collected during previous Algalita voyages. And for their most recent project, JunkRaft, members of Algalita sailed from Los Angeles to Hawaii on 15,000 plastic bottles and a Cessna 310, to bring international attention to the problems of plastic debris. Check it out: More
The other day Andy alerted us to growing trouble in the recycling market, but it seems some 2nd graders in West Virginia have taken recycling matters into their own hands. What began as a class recycling project at Ruthlawn Elementary in South Charleston, W. Va., evolved into a town wide collection program, where other parents and other students were dropping off their recyclables and kids were finishing their milk, just so they could recycle the bottle. And when the county announced a need to stop recycling because of rising costs, the students began a letter writing campaign to the local government asking them to keep the recycling programs. It seems their pleas were heard, as the city found a way to continue paper recycling! Let's hope these young activists can help restore the full program and inspire other students worldwide to demand a cleaner future.
I've always found the tradition of Christmas trees sorta odd. I mean, we cut down a tree, put in our house, decorate it, then throw it away. According to http://www.christmas-tree.com the fir tree is associated with Christianity, beginning in Germany almost 1,000 years ago when St Boniface, who converted the German people to Christianity, was said to have come across a group of pagans worshiping an oak tree. In anger, St Boniface is said to have cut down the oak tree and to his amazement a young fir tree sprung up from the roots of the oak tree. St Boniface took this as a sign of the Christian faith. But it was not until the 16th century that fir trees were brought indoors at Christmas time.
Alrighty, well what to do with your tree once the holidays are over? Well, Louisiana does something sorta special when it comes to Christmas tree recycling. They use trees to help restore coastal marshes. The trees are placed in fenced areas to protect coastline from salt water intrusion and to enhance sedimentation. In total, 600,000 trees have been placed in the Louisiana marsh in fenced corrals that now span 45,000 feet. Learn more about Louisiana's tree recycling program at http://www.cgernon.com/sptf/recyc.htm
You might think that this economic downturn (officially a recession, I suppse, at this point) recycling would go up, what with the reusing of things, but apparently the exact opposite is happening. The New York Times reports that the recyclables market has completely tanked, leaving people unable to sell used cardboard, metals, newspaper, or plastic.
Ordinarily the material would be turned into products like car parts, book covers and boxes for electronics. But with the slump in the scrap market, a trickle is starting to head for landfills instead of a second life.
In the past, cities have been able to sell the recycling they picked up at a profit, thus actually turning recycling programs into revenue. But now, that's completely changed. More
To save trees, reduce recycling hassels, and quit the clutter, a lone college student has launched Yellow Pages Goes Green, a campaign to eliminate the unsolicted delivery of phone books.
When you receive the yellow and white slabs on your front step, do you:
a) Plop them in a corner for use as a door stop or high chair?
b) Test your strength by attempting to tear one in half?
c) Peruse the pages in search of new friends, baby names, or prank call victims?
d) Continue construction of your phone directoy fortress to keep out unsolicited mail?
If you answered yes to any or all of these questions, the time has come to remove yourself from the vicious phone book cycle. And you should probably get out more. While some people still use phone books for actually looking up numbers, most of us could probably live happily without the old clunkers.
takepart by opting out of receiving phone books and support the movement to eliminate waste and save paper. It's free, easy, and who knows what new hobbies you might take up!
How does this impact on the health of the trout? It looks so wrong! What can it do to anyone who eats this poor animal? What is the motivation for this? Greed.
Recycling isn't usually a very glamorous thing but in Philly they are working to change that.
New Orleans is filled with 
I've always found the tradition of Christmas trees sorta odd. I mean, we cut down a tree, put in our house, decorate it, then throw it away. According to 
You might think that this economic downturn (officially a recession, I suppse, at this point) recycling would go up, what with the reusing of things, but apparently the exact opposite is happening. 
