San Francisco, CA - They’re everywhere. On the streets, in gutters; even collecting in pools of water. Little orange and white rolls of paper and tobacco. Cigarettes. Once used, these unfriendly remains haunt our down towns and our backyards. But it’s time to say goodbye to the orange and white…in San Francisco at least. San Francisco Board of Supervisors Budget and Finance Committee unanimously supported a measure that will help get rid of the stubs of used cigarettes.
We’re a little slow sometimes around this blog, as news of this yarn and clothing hit the internet in early January, but it is still worth a mention here as a yearn worthy yarn.
Alexandra Guerrero, a Chilean designer discovered that by using found cigarette butts, she could clean them and then spin them with wool to produce a yarn to knit and crochet into clothing.
Apa Sherpa, 49, has climbed Mount Everest a record 18 times but now he’s preparing for a 19th, this time to clean up the mess left by the thousands of climbers who have scaled the mountain since 1953.
Apa, a high-altitude guide, plans to take the Eco Everest Expedition up the mountain to clean up garbage left by previous expeditions. Climbers have noted the build-up of waste on the mountain for several years.
In less than one day, nearly 400,000 volunteers in 104 countries found and collected 11,439,086 items of litter from beaches and waterways.
The garbage cleanup was part of the Ocean Conservancy’s annual Coastal Cleanup. Information about the types of garbage found during the cleanup was compiled into a report that will help planners to understand and address the problem of litter.
Schlumpy? Huh? Schlumpy’s an 8-foot plastic bag ball touring the country to build awareness of the 100 billion plastic shopping bags Americans use each year. That’s right… billion!
I may be biased by my happy life in South Korea, but still I think there are two things that Japan does better. Firstly, Japan excels at making foreign tourists feel like rock stars. Several years back on a school exchange trip to Hokkaido, my group and I received enough popular adoration to make us feel like the Beatles in their heyday. Secondly, Japan is immaculate. For instance, Sapporo may be the fifth biggest city in Japan with a population just larger than Manhattan’s, but when I visited there I saw neither a single plastic bag nor newspaper littering the streets.
Now, it must be said by way of comparison that Korean cities are by and large much cleaner than American ones. Or at least it’s fair to say that the dodgiest parts of Korea’s large cities are still much nicer than their American counterparts. Almost unimaginable in Korea are the dingy, urine stained shop fronts of San Francisco’s Market Street or the sprawling cardboard-house ghettos of LA’s Skid Row. However, almost everywhere you go in Korea you’re unfortunately bound to run into litter.
How could we not want the safest, healthiest litter for this little lady?
Our hunt for an alternative cat litter began when our vet said that clay litter was a respiratory irritant. The more we researched cat litter, the more we learned that clay wasn’t just bad for our sweet kitties, it was bad for the planet. Clay, which makes up about 90% of the cat litters on the market, does not biodegrade. On top of that, much of the clay used in cat litter comes from strip mining. Yikes! Luckily there are all sorts of good options out there!
Are you looking for a community, environmental project for your family? Keep America Beautiful is launching its 2009 Great American Cleanup today with its campaign “Green Starts Here”.
The Great American Cleanup begins today with a national launch event in Waveland, Miss., which will help restore a hurricane-ravaged town along the Gulf Coast. It will continue through May 31 with additional national events being held in New York City on Earth Day and Nashville on May 14.
Millions of volunteers will work to rid streets, waterways and public spaces of litter and illegal dumpsites. Communities will green up parks, schoolyards and other public spaces and hold recycling drives and educational events.
The New York Times reports that various plastic bag-reduction initiatives around the country are stalling – or flatlining – due to economics. The plans in the works in places like Seattle, San Francisco and New York have included charges of 5 to 20 cents per plastic bag – and in some cases, paper bags – at, for example, grocery stores.
The intent is – was – to foster a reusable bag culture and wean consumers off their plastic bag dependency. Now, critics are saying the rough economic road we’re on these days is cause enough to halt progress of those initiatives – and related legislative proposals.
I have always hated KB Toys, and I have honestly only been the store three times in my life. I’ve searched the packed shelves of junk toys for a glimmer of something that I could give my children that was not made of plastic, commercialized, oversexualized, gender specified, or Chinese made. Thus, I was not saddend to hear this junk toy store was going out of business.
KB blamed the difficult economy for the filing, but toy industry experts said wrong decisions by the retailer hastened its demise. It had shifted its focus to mall-based stores, saddling itself with high rents just as shopping-center traffic was dropping; it stopped selling video-game consoles; and it moved its merchandise mix away from hot toys and toward closeouts.
Over half of schools in England have achieved Eco-School status, UK Environment Secretary Hilary Benn announced today.
“Schools have an important part to play in helping young people to build a greener future for us all and it’s young people that will lead the way in creating a healthy environment for future generations,” says Secretary Benn.
Run by Keep Britain Tidy, the Eco-Schools program encourages children and teachers to make their school more environmentally-friendly and sustainable. They follow a simple seven step process covering themes including waste, healthy living and biodiversity.
