Plastic-Bag-Free-Olympics?

That's what Greener Upon Thames in the U.K. is proposing and it sounds good to us! They are trying to persuade London Mayor Boris Johnson and Olympic organizers to host a plastic-bag-free Olympics in 2012 and calling for a total ban on all outlets at the Olympics from issuing plastic bags. Click Here to help out by signing their petition.

I smell collectible reusable bags! I doubt that they will be as stylish as this retro bag from the 1960's but hopefully it happens and they make the most of this opportunity. Up next: getting all athletes to utilize reusable water bottles and finding alternatives to the single-use gooey gel packs.

The Story of Bottled Water

From the folks that brought us 'The Story of Stuff', this animated documentary highlights many issues with bottled water in an easy to understand way. You probably know most of the content so the best thing to do is pass it on to someone who may still need convincing... Rob Nixon posted this great little flick here a month ago - definitely worth a second viewing!

Precycling, You Doin' It?

This tidbit from the Cape Cod Times made me think about something I've been doing but didn't have a clever name for: Precycling! 

I hope you are recycling, but have you ever thought about precycling? Precycling is making buying decisions based in part on the amount of packing you will have to dispose of once you get the items home. Make sure plastic containers are recyclable and that there aren't layers and layers of plastic on items that will end up in the landfill. It's all about paying attention.

Some cool articles and tips on Precycling:

EDF Article: Precycling: Shopping for Future Generations
Everybody shops. But not everybody realizes how environmentally important it is to shop consciously...

Consumer Reports Blog: Buzzword: Precycle
What it means. Precycling represents the next generation in residential-waste management...

Indiana Recycling Coalition: Precycle

Precycling -- think of it as the choices you can easily make before you recycle or discard packaging or almost any household item. [This piece has some great helpful links]

New York State Department of Conservation: Let's Precycle
Hey, New York!...PREvent waste before you reCYCLE!

Are you precycling? What sort of things are you doing to reduce waste and Rise Above Plastics?

Graphic courtesy of Indiana Recycling Coalition

A Tale of Entanglement

There will never, ever be enough videos to educate about the impact we're making on the globe.

In my mind, it's pretty clear... we're competing with Dancing with the Stars and Grey Anatomy.

We're competing with Yahoo, Goggle and eharmony.

We're competing with the top issues in our collective minds.

When I say we're competing with those things, I mean that in order to get our message across we need a combination of tonage (lots of hits, views, interactions) and targeted media (messaging that makes people go, "hmmm" and change their daily habits). The challenge is that... every other message is also trying to do these things. Thus, we're all competing for mindshare. Check out the above links and you'll better understand the challenge we have.

So, it's with that spirit that I post yet one more educational video for you to view, pass along, agree with or not.



A Tale of Entanglement from Plastic Ocean on Vimeo.

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