The blog formerly known as   Fake Plastic Fish

Monthly Archives: May 2010

May 28, 2010

Could California be the First State to Ban Plastic Bags?

11/09/2016 Update: Six years after this post was written, California has FINALLY banned plastic bags across the state!

I’m pissed off. I live in a city, like many others in California, that wants to ban plastic shopping bags, but we can’t. Oakland, Berkeley, Richmond, Los Angeles, Palo Alto, and other California cities are under attack by the plastics industry. None of these cities has been able to put their plastic bag bans into effect because of industry deep pockets that have successfully sued to require each city to conduct an environmental impact report (EIR) showing that banning plastic bags would not have a detrimental impact.

Our cities cannot afford to spend $150,000 to $200,000 each to conduct EIRs. That’s why nothing has come of Oakland’s bag ban or any of the others. My city can’t afford to keep enough cops on the streets (just ask Michael, who got mugged several months ago right across from our house),… Read the rest

May 22, 2010

Hey man, got any more red pills?

This is your last chance. After this, there is no turning back. You take the blue pill – the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill – you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit-hole goes.

Three years ago, I took the red pill and swore off plastic.

Last year, on my hands and knees sopping up a spilled glass of wine, I found another red pill under the couch and, mistaking it for a vintage M&M, popped it in my mouth.  I haven’t had a drink since.

This February,  a third red pill fell out of a book I was reading, and I swallowed it before I realized what I was doing.  I think you know what happened.  I just can’t look at meat without seeing the living animal it once was.

So, I was just wondering if there were any more red pills I should worry about finding because all this “Wonderland” is getting to be a drag. For example, last night, I was out having drinks and … Read the rest

May 19, 2010

Plastic Lives Forever

Wow. Watch this heartbreaking video about our plastic legacy, set to Queen’s Who Wants To Live Forever. Many of the images will be familiar, but it also contains haunting footage I’d never seen before.   How does this make you feel?

Hide or Take Action?

Watching a video like this makes me want to go back to bed and eat an entire Entenmann’s chocolate fudge cake under the covers, plastic window box and trans fats notwithstanding.  Who cares when we are so screwed?

And then, once again, I realize that I am living in the future instead of the present moment.  We’re not screwed, yet.  We’re all still alive, and there is work to be done.  We can stop when we’re dead.  For now, let’s smell the flowers (because there’s still so much incredible beauty in the world) and get back to the task at hand: loving this planet and each other in the best ways we know how.… Read the rest

May 14, 2010

Environmental Film Leads to Anger Eating

What do you do when you have to sit through a very stressful film about how corporate America is destroying the planet, and the screening takes place in a night club so everyone else has a drink in their hand to take the edge off, and you’re trying to keep it together with a glass of water?  And also? You used up your last prescription bottle of Xanax and don’t plan to get it refilled for various reasons, the least of which is the plastic bottle.

I found myself in that condition Wednesday night, seeing the film Tapped for the 3rd time and feeling just as angry as I did the first time I saw it.  Tapped, which I reviewed last year, is all about the bottled water industry and covers infuriating information most people are unaware of.  Wednesday’s screening was hosted by SF Surfrider, who invited me to come and talk to people about ways to live with less plastic.  So I did that and got into an argument with one of the sponsors (and his brain-splittingly… Read the rest

May 11, 2010

Holy chocolate covered almonds, Batman!

They’re plastic-free (Whole Foods bulk bin), meat-free, and at the rate I’m eating them, I should be three sizes bigger by this summer. (That jar was full a week ago.)

This is the opposite of conscious eating, I think.

Not beating myself up. My addictions are doing a good enough job of that already.

Just need to breathe.  And maybe have a good cry today, before I do anything else.… Read the rest