The blog formerly known as   Fake Plastic Fish

Category Archives: Issues Plastic Bags

November 24, 2007

What’s wrong with this picture?

Out for a nice stroll, buying nothing yesterday, Michael and I were dismayed to see Telegraph Avenue lined with plastic bags full of brown leaves. What’s wrong with that? Everything!

Our city councilwoman, Jane Brunner, has been working on getting more trees planted along our streets. Do more trees mean more garbage for the landfill? This beautiful compostable material gets sealed up in a plastic bag to mummify with the rest of the garbage instead of being returned to the soil to nourish new trees? If that’s the case, someone’s not using their noggin.

I’m going to call the city on Monday and get to the bottom of this. Oakland ought to be handing out compostable leaf bags and hauling them to our commercial composter. Well, I rescued one bagful for my personal compost. Any other Oaklanders could do the same. Even if you don’t have your own composter, you could free the leaves from the plastic and empty them into your gre… Read the rest

November 8, 2007

It’s plastic! Evert Fresh is made out of plastic!

Read 12/20/2007 update to this post here.

Sorry to go all Charlton Heston on you. It’s just that, based on several blog posts I’ve read, a lot of people seem to think that Evert Fresh green produce bags are plastic-free, and they are absolutely not. After calling the company several times a week for over a month to try to reach the owner, Lynn Everts, I finally received the information I needed today from his assistant, Tyra. She told me that the bags are indeed made from low density polyethylene (the same type of plastic in disposable grocery bags) combined with a special clay called oya which helps to keep produce fresher longer.

I have no doubt that these bags work. But I find it ironic that we would choose to purchase an ultimately disposable plastic bag (these bags can be reused up to 8 times) made from a material that lasts forever in the environment in order to preserve something that is completely biodegradable. Personally, I’… Read the rest

September 17, 2007

Some of my best friends are plastic bags!

Recently, I’ve been reading quite a few anti-plastic bag articles that contain statements like, “Plastic bags are evil,” and advocate taking all your plastic bags to the local recycler and replacing them immediately with reusable bags.

Now, as you know, I’m all for refusing new plastic bags while shopping and bringing my own reusable bags with me. I don’t see any need for the creation of new plastic bags in this world, not with all the environmental problems associated with their manufacture and disposal.

But once a bag has been created, once it’s already here in this world, is it really evil? I don’t think so. In fact, a few weeks ago I posted an ad to my local Freecycle group requesting used plastic grocery bags from anyone who had a bunch they weren’t going to use. Why? Because far from being evil, plastic grocery bags are quite handy.

Look at it this way. If we’re all trying to reduce the a… Read the rest

August 21, 2007

Direct Action, Part 2: Temescal Farmer’s Market, Revisited

It’s me and Tina, the fake plastic fish, after lying awake for hours Saturday night, stumbling out of bed at 6am, and lugging a card table and folding chair on a mini hand truck half a mile down the street to the Temescal Farmer’s Market. We are located in a great spot in the “free speech” area where shoppers enter and exit the market. We have our table set up and photos displayed. We are psyched and ready to go! Well, I am. Tina is just hanging out, which isn’t much different from what real fish do.

As it turned out, I didn’t need the chair. I spent the entire four hours on my feet handing out “Don’t Think About A Plastic Bag” flyers as folks passed by, with a friendly, “Can I give you some information about plastic?” As I expected, the reactions were mixed: some took the flyer politely; others outright refused or looked away; a few started to walk away until they heard the word “pl… Read the rest

August 14, 2007

Success! My letter to Comcast

Just because I think plastic bags should be re-used multiple times doesn’t mean I want new ones literally showing up on my doorknob, but that’s just what happened a few days ago. I came home to find this advertising piece from Comcast hanging there in a plastic bag. Talk about instant irritation! “Holy crap!” I shouted to no one in particular. “I go through all this effort to bring my own bags so I don’t have to tote new ones home, and then the bags start coming to me!”

Well, I hadn’t written one of my busy-body e-mails in a while, so last night I sat down to do just that:

Date: Tue, 14 Aug 2007 00:25:20 -0700 (PDT) From: Beth Terry Subject: Consumer complaint regarding Comcast promotional door-hanger To: tracy_baumgartner@cable.comcast.com, Andrew_C_Johnson@cable.comcast.com, corporate_communications@comcast.com

Hello. I am a Comcast cable television customer.

A few days ago, I was dis… Read the rest

August 2, 2007

Be careful on the Reusable Bags Bandwagon

With the recent surge in anti-plastic bag sentiments, a lot of folks are jumping on the reusable bags bandwagon. I think it’s great that people are starting to give a thought to the bags that they use to carry their purchases home. But not all bags are created equal, and I wish more people would think about the type of reusable bag they choose, rather than rashly purchasing the cutest thing they see in another expression of thoughtless consumption.

I’ve been thinking about the issue of reusable bags for some time, but I am moved to sit down and actually write this out tonight after reading a review of Reisenthel’s nylon shopping bags on SustainLane.com. The reviewer says that she was glad to find the compact, foldable Reisenthel bags, made by a German company, because she sometimes forgets to take her large Trader Joe’s tote bag with her and ends up with a collection of new plastic bags from the store. With the Reisenthel nylo… Read the rest

July 29, 2007

Plastic Farmer’s Market: My letter to Urban Village Farmers’ Market Association

So, we’re supposed to eat locally, right? To save transportation fuel, to support our local farmers, and to limit our pesticide exposure. And I’m very lucky to have a weekly farmer’s market just down the street within walking distance. The irony is that at our small Temescal Farmer’s Market, at least half of the vendors are selling prepared foods in plastic wrap or plastic containers. And the other half, the folks selling actual produce, offer only plastic bags to shoppers.

Now, I do bring my own bags with me so that I don’t have to use a new one. And I’ve also been bringing back my green plastic strawberry basket each week and returning it to the strawberry vendor who sells his strawberries al fresco (as opposed to the other strawberry vendor who encases his in clear plastic containers.) But many customers don’t come with their own bags and must use the new plastic bags that are offered. And it’s d… Read the rest

July 14, 2007

Tina, eat the plastic food!

Another sleepless night. Another wacky “art” project. Meet Tina. Tina’s tummy is full of plastic bags. And that’s okay, because she’s a fake plastic fish. In fact, her whole body is knitted from plastic bags… from the plastic bag “yarn” ball I made the other night. Click on images to see larger.

And remember, plastic bags are not evil. How can they be? They’re just plastic bags. It’s the overproduction of and disposal of them by humans that causes harm to other living things. So here are a few plastic bags that, for the time being, are just hanging out being a fish called Tina.… Read the rest

July 10, 2007

Plarn It! Has she really started knitting again???

The last time I picked up the needles was March 2006. And I haven’t actually picked them up again yet. However, I did stay up all night on July 3, watching movies and making this big “yarn” ball (a.k.a. “plarn”) out of plastic grocery bags. (I should categorize this post under “Projects for Obsessive Insomniacs.”)

Did you know that crafty people are finding all kinds of uses for plastic bags in order to save them from the landfill? Here are just a few:

Instructions for creating the plastic bag “yarn” A knitted plastic tote bag (they use a different method for creating the yarn) Fused plastic bag fabric Here’s an article on TreeHugger about all kinds of plastic bag DIY projects.

So what am I going to knit with this ball of nontraditional yarn? Stay tuned…… Read the rest

July 5, 2007

It’s official: Oakland bans plastic bags

Good news reported in yesterday’s Oakland Tribune:

The Oakland City Council Tuesday banned petroleum-based nonbiodegradable shopping bags in an effort to reduce the amount of waste Oakland sends to landfills and prevent the plastic bags from polluting the environment.

The ban would apply to stores with gross annual sales of more than $1million, which would include all supermarkets and chain drug stores.

However, the measure would not apply to restaurants or fast food eateries.

“It’s a good first small step,” said Councilmember Patricia Kernighan (Grand Lake-Chinatown). “It’s not going to solve all of the problems in the world.”

The new law does not apply to the sacks provided by grocery stores to bag fresh fruit and vegetables or meat, only those bags shoppers get at the check stand.

So, this ban does not address the problem of all the plastic bags used for bulk foods at stores like Berkeley Bo… Read the rest