Los Alamos County Environmental Sustainability Board

After 10 days of plastic bag excitement in Los Alamos County (LAC), I took a week off of researching and writing about saving plastic bags ... just to save my sanity, and to do the laundry.  I think I know more about plastics and recycling than anyone should know ...

Tonight I returned to my work, to find several updates from the Sierra Club regarding their crusade to ban plastic bags in LAC .

See Take Action to Ban Plastic Bags, What About Plastic Bags?, and Join the Facebook Campaign.

Back in November 2014, the Los Alamos Environmental Sustainability Board (ESB) had a discussion at their regular monthly meeting about a plastic bag ban. At the urging of the Sierra Club and the League of Women Voters (LVW), the board passed a resolution encouraging the County Council to ban plastic bags.

From reading the minutes of their November 20th meeting, I have a few points I'd like to expand on:

1. "Mr. Han [a board member] asked Mr. Shelton [LAC Public Works Director] if plastic bags can be recycled.  Mr. Shelton said there was a limited market for plastic bag recycling, and the bags are only recycled when the market is profitable to do so." (This is paraphrased from the meeting minutes, available as a PDF from the ESB's website, see link above.)

As I have explained,  there is a market for plastic bag recycling.  Los Alamos County, however, is not working with Hilex-Poly / Novolex to use their recycling facilities to recycle plastic bags.  In fact, the LAC needn't be involved in plastic bag recycling at all.  We know there are bins at Smiths for bag recycling.  We know that everything placed in these bins will be recycled. Companies like TREX are part of the market for plastic bag recycling as well, and that recycling is becoming more dynamic and accessible as time goes on.  The Sierra Club, and the misguided ESB have failed to explore all of the options for plastic bag recycling before wanting to impose a burdensome and intrusive ban on the families of Los Alamos.  Why can't they tell the truth?  Why are they so fixated on forcing others to adopt their lifestyle choices?

2. I am also profoundly disappointed in board-member Suzie Havemann's comments in this discussion.  Ms. Havemann is a local real estate agent in town.  She, of all people, should know that a ban like this will not appeal to people who want to move to Los Alamos.  If we want our town to be vibrant and welcoming to new people, a plastic bag ban is not the answer.  If anything a ban presents a very hostile image to the public -- we cannot afford to be hostile.  I've said it before and I will say it again, one of the best things about living in Los Alamos is the fact that we generally let people live the way they want, free of judgment.  A plastic bag ban, will reach into each of our homes, affect our lives and pick our pockets.  If you want to use reusable shopping bags, then do it!  Let the rest of us make our own economic decisions.

3.  The minutes of the November 20th meeting indicate that the only way to get an ordinance before the County Council is to circulate a petition.  So I will be watching for this petition to surface, and I hope those that wish to preserve their freedom will do likewise and spread the facts about plastic bags and why bans are bad.

So what can you do?

Consider writing a letter to the editor of the LA Monitor or the Los Alamos Daily Post.  The contact information is here:  

Mike Cote at the LA Monitor can be reached here: lacommunity@lamonitor.com. In the subject line put, "Please forward to Editor, Mike Cote".

And Carol Clark at the LADP here:  caclark@ladailypost.com

Consider writing the ESB: esb@lacnm.us

Write a letter to the County Council:  countycouncil@lacnm.us

Tell your friends about this blog and Save the Bag: Los Alamos on Facebook. 

Do your own research on this topic, so that when it comes up in conversation you will be ready for the discussion.

The LAC Environmental Sustainability Board's website is HERE.  There are also PDFs of their agendas, as well as the minutes of their meetings.   Read these minutes, attend a meeting the next time plastic bag bans are on the agenda, and plan to attend a County Council meeting when this comes us.

Names to look for in the future on this issue:

Jody Benson -- Sierra Club, author of emotionally charged letters to the editor.
Mark Jones -- Sierra Club, chair of the Pajarito Chapter.
Lynn Jones -- Sierra Club, League of Women Voters (LWV).
Barbara Calef -- President of the Los Alamos LWV.
Philo Shelton -- Los Alamos County Public Works director.
Members of the ESB:  Stephen Boerigter (chair), Sarah Terrill (co-chair), Cliff S. Han,

Suzie Havemann, Don Machen, Sandra West, Sneha Saraogi.

Let's keep up the good fight for freedom to choose, and the ability to live as we please in Los Alamos County.  We are good stewards of our resources and we do govern ourselves when it comes to litter, plastic bags and being environmentally responsible.  Let's keep the Sierra Club and the government out of our lives!

Please share this blog post with your like minded friends, and join Save the Bag: Los Alamos on facebook.

Do you give a hoot?

One of the common arguments for a plastic bag ban is that bags clog up water ways eg:  rivers, streams, and the oceans.  Usually the example is given of rivers in Bangladesh or some other far off place  where water ways are teeming with discarded plastic bags.  Here's a newsflash, those far away waterways are also teeming with everything else too -- raw sewage, food waste, soap residue, household trash and so on.  (A college professor once told me that every time he'd ever visited the Ganges River in India, he'd see human and animal corpses in the water as well.  Quick, let's ban animals, dying and people too!)

In this country if there are plastic bags in a stream or near the seaside, it is not a plastic bag problem, it's a litter problem.  People who toss plastic bags aside, will probably toss everything else aside too, things like water bottles, soda cans, and food wrappers.  Banning plastic bags is not going to prevent people from littering.   We're not solving the problem of litter, by banning plastic bags.   Many people have mentioned that if you go out and hike the trails in Los Alamos County the most common pollutants you will find are water bottles and beer cans/bottles.  Are we going to ban beer in bottles?  Because we've already tried Prohibition and it was a spectacular failure.   Time will prove plastic bag bans as spectacular failures as well.

We always pack our trash out when we hike, in plastic bags no less, and throw it in our trash can when we get home.   Do you pack your trash out when you hike?  If you don't, commit to doing it this year.  My dad, the master Scoutmaster, also insisted that we always leave our hiking and camping areas better than we found them.  It's a hardwired habit to pick up garbage when we hike, or are out and about.  And now that I have my own children, I'm teaching them these same habits of good stewardship.

Perhaps it's time we resurrect Woodsy Owl and teach a new generation to "Give a hoot, don't pollute."  It would be the ultimate "#TBT = Throwback Thursday".   (And oh, how blissfully simple these times were.  Also notice at 21 seconds, the World Trade Center in the background ... I miss those towers.)

 

 

 

 

Make sure to join us on Facebook @ Save the Bag: Los Alamos, or share this blog post with your like minded friends in Los Alamos.  

Recycling at Smith's Marketplace

Recycling bins at Smith's, south
lobby, March 4, 2015.

One of the accusations or misunderstandings I've seen, in regard to plastic shopping bags, is that they can't be recycled, or that there is no place to recycle them.  Plastic bags are made of #2 HDPE (high-density polyethelyne), or #4, LDPE (low-density polyethelyne).  Both of these plastics are 100% recyclable.  See how they are recycled HERE.  If you are not reusing them in your home, you can drop them in the bins which are located in the lobby at Smith's.  They are then taken away, and sent back to the facility in the video to be remade into new bags. 

But what about the rest of Smith's?  I had the opportunity to speak with Eric Boehm, the store director of Smith's Marketplace here in Los Alamos.  He took me into the back of the store to show me what they do.  It was a hive of activity and very interesting. 

He told me that most of their merchandise comes shrink wrapped on reusable plastic palettes, or in heavy-duty plastic bins/boxes.  Both the palettes and the bins are sent back to the warehouse, washed and sanitized and reused time and time again.  If you've ever looked at one of the bins you will notice they all have tracking number on them too.  They are the blue boxes you sometimes see around the store when the shelves are being restocked.

While I was touring the back of the store, I observed various things in shrink wrap eg: paper towels, toilet paper, pet food.  All of the plastic that these items are wrapped in is also recycled.  After something is unwrapped the sheeting is placed in a bag, and shipped back to the Kroger warehouse for recycling.  Right next to the plastic recycling area was a giant cardboard compacter.  Mr. Boehm estimates they fill it every day and send it off for recycling, and they fill the plastic recycling every other day and send it off for recycling.  He also told me that Smith's tries to reuse and recycle as much as they can.  None of the waste they generate with their packaging and shipping ends up in the County waste stream. 

As time goes on as well, better ways to recycle and deal with plastic and cardboard waste, will no doubt be invented and used by business, individuals and municipalities.  In addition to this, because of demands of people, increased access to recycling facilities is also becoming a reality.  Government bans would stop this innovation and would most likely harm the growing recycling industry.

Please join us on Facebook @ Save the Bag: Los Alamos, and make sure to share this blog and the group with your likeminded friends in Los Alamos.