An article over at Groovy Green (the sidebar, folks, it’s all about the sidebar) caught my eye with the catchy headline “How Starbucks Could Have Saved the World“. It’s about disposible coffee cups and incentives not to use them. While discounts for reusing mugs and encouraging people to drink from real cups while in the store are nice gestures, what we really need are some superstar style mavens to declare reusable “in” and disposible “out”. A friend and I were discussing the other day that while it’s one thing to refuse a plastic bag at the deli and tuck your groceries into a Brooklyn-chic tote, it’s another thing entirely to carry your own tupperware to avoid take-out packaging.
Starbucks and fashion stigma
Wednesday, September 20, 2006Mavens at London Fashion Week
Wednesday, September 20, 2006
And speaking of style, the fashionistas at style.com, treehugger, fiftyRx3 and fabulously green are all raving about the green garments on display in London this week. If two points make a line and three blogs make a trend, then this eco fashion must be some hot shit.
Weekly Compactor
Tuesday, September 19, 2006
This week in trash news:
- Ivoirians arrest French execs in sludge scandal; the UN is pretty sure its rules were broken; and, my friend Kimberly informs me, the Dutch company doing all the toxic dumping is the very same oil biz that got Kofi’s son in so much trouble;
- Serbia ships nuclear waste to Russia;
- A trash heap in Durham, North Carolina, has been burning for over a week;
- Upper East Siders are no longer immune to dump truck traffic and funny smells;
- Bermuda beats Manhattan in most-waste-per-capita-generated-by-an-Island contest;
- And India hopes to turn tons of trash into megawatts of power.
amero-canadian trash accord
Tuesday, September 19, 2006
The city of Toronto held an emergency meeting on trash today to draft a “contingency plan to handle the city’s garbage and sewage sludge in the event of a border closure.” You see, the U.S. and Canada have been at war, or at least at skirmish, for years over which country is the other’s dump. Michiganders in particular are angry that companies like Waste Management can import foreign trash and deposit it in landfills in their state. In response, the House of Representatives recently passed a bill that would grant states the right to ban garbage from other countries. The bill is a long way from becoming law and will likely undergo many changes along the way.
Meanwhile, Michigan’s senators are brokering deals with Ontario officials to slow the flow of trash from our neighbor to the North.
waste fest 2007
Tuesday, September 19, 2006
If you blog it, they will come! Today has been a great one for comments (new ones are peppered throughout the blog, so check out the archives). The gold star goes to the trashie who alterted us to an upcoming, international, artistic, trash-related event called WASTE and organized by a Czech collective known as CESTA. Applications are due November 15th, so you creative types might want to start your plotting ASAP.
Thanks for the tip, Stephanie!
where my trashies at, yo?
Tuesday, September 19, 2006Garblogging can be a thrilling pastime, but I couldn’t do it without your encouragement and active participation. Thanks to all who have been clicking through as I’ve launched everyday trash these past couple of weeks, thanks to the artists whose work I’ve been reposting and thanks especially to the peanut gallery for the snarky commentary. Please, please, keep it coming!
A reminder on the rules of the game: comments are very welcome, as are tips, feedback and suggestions for future items, new entries are posted at least daily and all posts relate to trash.
radical reuse
Tuesday, September 19, 2006
While searching for material for a ‘trash on the radio’ post, I came across this entertaining and informative transcript in which Terry Gross interviews Peter Coyote, an actor and a member of the now-defunct street theatre group The Diggers. In it, Coyote says that during his era “the feeling was: there’s more than enough to go around and that you could build a creative and even elegant life off the garbage.”
umbrella extravaganza
Monday, September 18, 2006
Phase II of the Umbrella Inside Out competition starts today. If you thought the winning fashion design was impressive, prepare to be amazed by these durable and biodegradable umbrellas of the future.
women in trash
Sunday, September 17, 2006
While reading through the latest newsletter from DSNY, New York City’s trash authority, I came across a tiny item in the congratulations section that mentioned the recent promotion of two women to the rank of deputy chief. I guess the city of New York felt the story was bigger than garbage, because the mayor’s office issued a press release, not the department of sanitation.
I don’t have much commentary to add to this story. It’s a mid-level administrative rank and not surprising that women have not yet surpassed deputy chief given the staunch old-boys-club nature of both sanitation and New York City.
It is interesting, though, that garbage collection in our country is such a male-dominated industry given the widely-held cultural belief that wives should pick up after their husbands and sons and not the other way around.
A cursory Google for international comparisons reveals that:
- In India, garbage-free village initiatives offer job opportunities for women;
- Women in Jordan used a Global Fund grant to go door to door collecting trash, then turned their local garbage dump into a community greenhouse;
- Egyptian women sort trash and sell what they can to fund women’s health programs;
- And local teams of women environmentalists in Mozambique spend their mornings getting rid of cesspools of trash and their afternoons educating their neighbors on how to avoid malaria and cholera by coming up with new ways to dispose of household waste.
It would appear that women the world over are taking the tidyupper sterotype and, if not rejecting it entirely, at least turning it on its head.
Famous trash in American history
Sunday, September 17, 2006
When I mention to people that I have a trash blog, I am often told the story of a garbage barge that circled the world looking for a place to dump its contents. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that people remember this tale from the late eighties. After all, who could forget a story that involves a standoff between a tugboat hauling Long Island waste and the Mexican Navy? Today, while looking into the Marbro barge and the tugboat Break of Day (the dynamic duo that star in the infamous tale), I discovered that a set of paper recycling principles has since been named for the barge.
The tugboat captain, incidentally, was from Louisiana, a state which refused to let in the trash and which, today, suffers more than ever from garbage problems of its own.
toxic slop smells like rotting eggs
Saturday, September 16, 2006
People living in Abidjan are angry and turning violent over the hundreds of tons of shipping sludge illegally dumped near their homes. In the past few days they have beaten up the minister of transport and burned the home of the port director. Twenty-six thousand Ivoirians have sought treatment for headaches and vomiting and difficulty breathing. The BBC took this powerful photo and reported that burning barricades have been set up around the city.
Meanwhile, Côte d’Ivoire’s President Laurent Gbagbo is un-rsvp-ing to a UN meeting on the future of his country next week. His opposition to the meeting seems to be that he 1) doesn’t want peace and 2) doesn’t like the part of the plan that calls for open presidential elections within a year.
Related posts:
Village Underground
Friday, September 15, 2006
And no, I’m not talking about the West Village jazz club. The British organization called the Village Underground is a new charity that’s reusing long-forgotten tube carriages (or subway cars to those of us on this side of the Atlantic) by turning them into studio workspaces and small shops for start-up businesses.
via the eco street blog
see also this amusing resource on the underground
Update on Côte d’Ivoire
Friday, September 15, 2006
It seems there has been yet another death by trash this week. A seventh person died yesterday from the ill effects of toxic waste dumped in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire. Earlier this week the entire parliament resigned over the scandal. The ministry of health now estimates 1,600 others are sick from “fuel slops” dumped by a ship described in varying news reports as “Panamanian” “Greek-owned” and “Dutch-based”, though I suppose it could be all three. The UN and French officials have confirmed that 400 tons of the toxic waste was dumped at several sites around the city.
Despite the known risks, trashpickers are returning to work.
Hedgehog Wars
Thursday, September 14, 2006
I just read on the Grist List (yet another kick-ass sidebar link) that McDonald’s has changed the packaging it uses for McFlurry ice cream to something more “hedgehog friendly”. Clicking through to the article, I learned that hedgehogs were squeezing into the containers and getting stuck inside.
It seems there is an entire organization in the UK dedicated to saving hedgehogs from just this sort of garbage-related peril and what’s more, they have a rival group out to kill the little guys.
Just goes to show you, under every trash lid is an entire world of quirks, nuance and issues. How does “Hedgehog Wars” sound as a working title for the first everyday trash documentary production?
the wee hours and teamstergate
Thursday, September 14, 2006
After seeing yesterday that Waste Management and the Teamsters were joining forces, I noticed the following headline on Solid Waste.com (one of many excellent sources of information and amusement linked from the side bar):
“Teamsters Appoint Morales Director of Solid Waste, Recycling”
You see, in my sleepiness, I misread Morales as morals, so you can imagine my surprise when I clicked through to discover that Morales is a person and not a sense of right or wrong.
I was also surprised to see that Jimmy Hoffa’s son is president of the Teamsters (yeah, I know, where have I been) and that he rose to power after a scandal called Teamstergate knocked out the competition. I think I vaguely remember this ‘gate, but man do I need a Labor 101 course or to spend some quality time on wikipedia, the poor woman’s grad school.
everydaytrash 
