Items found Tuesday, December 2, 2008

Recyclables:

• 5 plastic bottles (1 Vintage water, 1 Aquafina water, 1 VOSS water, 1 Turkey Hill lemonade, 1 E&J VSOP brandy)

Reusable:

• 1 small plastic bag

I hadn't seen VOSS water before. It's bottled in Norway. As always, my mind cannot grasp the appeal of water brought to the United States from other continents. It would make some sense if this was one of the areas affected by drought, but this is a wet area with plenty of annual precipitation.

Tally of items collected in November 2008

RECYCLABLES

• 13 aluminum cans (10 beer, 1 seltzer water, 2 Diet Coke)
• 18 glass bottles (15 alcoholic, 3 non-alcoholic)
• 48 plastic bottles (28 plain water, 1 alcoholic, 19 other)
• 3 torn plastic bags

REUSABLES

• 1 huge carrier bag
• 7 medium sized plastic carrier bags
• 20 small plastic bags of a size suitable for dog waste
• 4 blue pens
• 2 paper clips
• 1 rubber band
• 1 coat hanger

TRASH

• 1 plastic bag too torn for reuse that couldn't be recycled because it lacked a resin number
• several loads of random trash from a lawn
• multiple plastic items at the entrance to a drain

There are no surprises in November's tally. As expected, the cold weather meant that I found fewer recyclables than in October. Also as expected, I didn't bother to stop and pick up as many reusables as I could have. In particular, I went past many rubber bands without picking them up. I just didn't want to deal with taking off my thick gloves so I could pick them up.

I feel guilty about my failure to pick up the rubber bands, along with all the polystyrene cups, plastic chip bags and other trash I routinely ignore. I'm aware that there's a lot more I can and should do to clean up the environment. At the same time, I want to avoid the burn out that would undoubtedly occur if I tried to pick up every piece of trash I went past. Perhaps a reasonable compromise would be to designate one day per month Clean Up Day, and on that day go out with lots of bags and pick up as much trash as I can.

Green beer packaging

I don't drink beer, and in the past I seldom gave beer a second thought. Then, I started picking up other people's discarded recyclables, and my recycling bin quickly filled up with beer bottles and cans. I soon came to realize that the way beer was packaged constituted an environmental problem, especially given the number of cans and bottles not recycled.

A beer drinking friend just showed me a fascinating article on the environmental benefits of purchasing beer from brewpubs. I'd barely been aware of the existence of brewpubs, but apparently they're more common than I thought. They sell beer brewed on the premises, which means that the kegs and growlers (containers for beer) can be reused over and over again. This means no single-use bottles or cans, and no trucks hauling heavy cases of beer across the country. It sounds wonderful.

Part of me wants to find the addresses for local brewpubs and encourage my beer drinking friends to patronize them instead of bars and restaurants selling canned or bottled beers. However, most of the drinkers I know do the majority of their drinking in private homes, so brewpubs will be useful to them only if customers are allowed to bring in empty bottles and have them filled to take home. The friend who made me aware of the brewpub article said that, as far as he knows, no local brewpub does this.

Still, at least in principle, beer from brewpubs seem to be an excellent alternative to beer sold in heavy glass bottles or plastic-lined aluminum cans. Although I'll never patronize a brewpub myself, for the sake of the environment I want to keep an eye on local brewpubs' offerings and make the information available to eco-minded friends who drink.

Items collected Monday, December 1, 2008

Recyclables:

• 4 plastic bottles (1 Sprite, 1 Diet Coke, 1 Deer Park Eco-Shape water, 1 Deer Park regular water)

Reusable:

• 1 plastic carrier bag

The Deer Park Eco-Shape bottle listed above is a large one that originally contained 1.5 liters of water. It was dumped early last week, half filled with urine. I left it where it was, hoping that somebody else would deal with it, but it was still there today. With much reluctance, I held my nose, poured the urine out, and brought the bottle home for recycling. The bottle was found on the same street where I've previously come across numerous bottles of urine, so I suspect it was dumped by the same culprit, even though all urine bottles found up until now originally contained Diet Pepsi.

Recyclables collected Thursday, November 27, 2008

• 3 plastic bottles (1 Pepsi Wild Cherry, 1 Velicoff vodka, 1 G2 electrolyte beverage)

Items collected Wednesday, November 26, 2008

Recyclables:

• 1 glass bottle (LandShark lager)
• 1 aluminum can (Natural Ice lager)

Reusable:

• 1 blue pen

The pen listed above is the third blue pen found in two days.

Items collected Tuesday, November 25, 2008

Recyclables:

• 1 plastic bottle (Aquafina water)
• 1 aluminum can (Diet Coke)
• 1 glass bottle (Miller Lite)
• 1 torn plastic bag

Reusables:

• 1 paper clip
• 2 blue pens

The blue pens were found in different neighborhoods. Oddly, even though it's fairly unusual for me to find pens, when I do find them, I often find several in different locations on the same day.