Oregon GOES OFF!

Characterized as a “$%&*-storm we've started”, by Surfrider Oregon Field Coordinator Charlie Plybon, is a little something that began as the local Portland Surfrider Chapter’s “Ban the Bag” campaign, which now has taken Oregon into hyper-drive on professing its disdain for the plastic plague statewide!

Here’s a rough time line: Portland Surfrider gathers 5,000 (not an over-night task, mind you, even in progressive Portland) toward their single-use plastic bag ban targeted at Portland-proper. The buzz grows and…lo & behold, State Senator Mark Hass, D-Beaverton, wants every store in Oregon to do the same: Ban The Bag. Wa-BAM!

Toward that goal, Hass is leading the charge on a bill, Senate Bill 1009, that is up for a hearing Tuesday in Salem that would outlaw single-use plastic bags at the retail level. The “hyper-drive” part of this is that this is a THREE WEEK BILL – T-H-R-E-E WEEKS! That is just nuts – how can any self-respecting plastics lobbyist dole out enough multi-martini lunches and freebie boondoggle junkets to the Greek Isles, etc, etc, etc in that miniscule span of time?? (For perspective, a California plastics bill now being considered is being given a two year [TWO YEARS?] lifespan – ugh!)


I love this Sen. Hass quote about SU plastic bags: “They contribute to litter, are minimally recycled, regularly gum up recycling sorting machines, harm marine life and are made from fossil fuels. I don't think people understand the true cost of these bags," …‘nuff said, homie.


Ahhh – the concept of “True Cost”, tru dat!! Nice job of bringing it all back home Mark! Therein lies the inherent, inbred, insipid “nature” of plastics – especially the single-use demons. AND a politician with his spinal cord attached to his brain stem - heretoforeunheardof – it’s all coming together in O-R-E-G-O-N!

Article Link Zone:

Both articles mention Surfrider's 5,000 signatures toward the ban:

OregonLive article ... Statesman Journal article

The Stateman article quotes Gus Gates Surfrider's Oregon Policy Coordinator.

You can participate in an online poll about the ban here.

So, DIG IT…and stay tuuuuuned.

Plastic bags ALIVE...?

Plastic bags have taken on a life of their own and formed their own grassroots organization: the Save the Plastic Bag Coalition. Talk about evolution! Plastic bags went from non-existence to organizing their own social movement in a span of less than 50 years. Impressive, to say the least.
But are they really alive? According to the Sacramento Bee, plastic bags are fighting for their crinkly lives. Read this article to find out the answer.

point - counter point

nice little back and forth in the comment area... check out the wend piece here

Sea of Trash

Sea of Trash
By Donavan Hohn, New York Times

Off Gore Point, where tide rips collide, the rolling swells rear up and steepen into whitecaps. Quiet with concentration, Chris Pallister decelerates from 15 knots to 8, strains to peer through a windshield blurry with spray, tightens his grip on the wheel and, like a skier negotiating moguls, coaxes his home-built boat, the Opus — aptly named for a comic-strip penguin — through the chaos of waves. Our progress becomes a series of concussions punctuated by troughs of anxious calm. In this it resembles the rest of Pallister’s life.

A 55-year-old lawyer with a monkish haircut, glasses that look difficult to break, an allergy of the eyes that makes him squint and a private law practice in Anchorage, Pallister spends most of his time directing a nonprofit group called the Gulf of Alaska Keeper, or GoAK (pronounced GO-ay-kay). According to its mission statement, GoAK’s lofty purpose is to “protect, preserve, enhance and restore the ecological integrity, wilderness quality and productivity of Prince William Sound and the North Gulf Coast of Alaska.” In practice, the group has, since Pallister and a few like-minded buddies founded it in 2005, done little else besides clean trash from beaches. All along Alaska’s outer coast, Chris Pallister will tell you, there are shores strewn with marine debris, as man-made flotsam and jetsam is officially known. Most of that debris is plastic, and much of it crosses the Gulf of Alaska or even the Pacific Ocean to arrive there.

The tide of plastic isn’t rising only on Alaskan shores. In 2004 two oceanographers from the British Antarctic Survey completed a study of plastic dispersal in the Atlantic that spanned both hemispheres. “Remote oceanic islands,” the study showed, “may have similar levels of debris to those adjacent to heavily industrialized coasts.” Even on the shores of Spitsbergen Island in the Arctic, the survey found on average a plastic item every five meters.

FULL ARTICLE