Talk about a vertical site with bite... check out reusablebags.com. These people are informed, committed, and energetic about countering the disposition to disposables in our gluttonous shopping culture. They fight bags, they fight bottles, they fight school lunch trash. They fight the whole idea of use-it-and-toss-it.
The throw-away plastic bottle is a complete abomination. Hardly any are recycled. They escape the garbage, blow around, litter the sides of every road, float down streams and gutters, clog storm drains, foul the waters -- all for the sake of convenience. What a lot of hooey. Assuming that we don't have access to potable tap water, are we really so feeble and lazy that we can't be bothered to keep liquids in refillable containers? How hard can that be? At home, not so hard. On the road in megalopolis, damn near impossible. When we travel, we always end up with a half dozen store-bought containers. If they're glass or aluminum, they're easily recycled. If they're that cheesy thin plastic, we carry them around, refill them a bunch of times, then store them for when we can get them to a recycling place elsewhere in our state. (Our town only recycles glass and metal.)
A couple of weeks ago a few of us went out with the Branford Land Trust and cleaned up the local marsh for a while. Here's a picture of some of what we found. Aside from two large tires, styrofoam from broken docks, and detached lobster pot floats, most of the jetsam was cans and disposable plastic bottles. Hateful things, really.
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~ Doug Logan, New Energy Watch
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