Waste_Inbox

Supermarket Salvo: Plastic bag makers and the nonprofit group Keep California Beautiful have launched a campaign aimed at persuading Californians to recycle more plastic grocery bags and bring their own bags with them when they shop.

Workers at several grocery chains are wearing "Got Your Bags?" buttons, and signs bearing that slogan are being posted at store entrances. Also, the message is being broadcast over grocery store public address systems.

The campaign is the latest salvo in California´s plastic bag war. As the San Jose Mercury News reports:

"In each of the last three years, the legislature has debated -- so far to no effect -- a statewide 25-cent fee on bags at supermarkets and drugstores to discourage bag use. Meanwhile, city governments from Malibu to Oakland have enacted bag bans, justified mainly as litter-control measures.

"Bag makers have fought back, suing three cities to overturn or limit the bans. They are now sponsoring legislation that would impose a fee on manufacturers to fund local litter control efforts, with the catch that the money would be available only to cities that haven´t banned plastic bags.

"The industry is helping to fund the ´Got Your Bags?´ campaign, hoping to show that more recycling and reuse can achieve the same litter-reduction goals as a ban."

Trash Mystery: In July, Baltimore switched from twice-weekly trash pickups and twice-monthly recycling pickups to once a week for both, and the change has done what it was supposed to do, sort of: City officials say the amount of residential trash being collected has dropped 29%, while the collection of recyclables has risen 53%.

But Baltimore´s biweekly tonnage-collected statistics paint a more telling picture, and a peculiar one. While 2,300 fewer tons of trash are being picked up every two weeks, recycling collection has increased by only 334 tons. So almost 2,000 tons of material that the city used to collect every two weeks is going elsewhere. But where?

Baltimore´s trash detectives have some sleuthing to do.

Pete Fehrenbach is managing editor of Waste & Recycling News. Past installments of this column are collected in the Inbox archive.

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