Stop the Plastic Madness

Single-Use Plastics

Zero Waste? Where can you start?

REFUSE THE PLASTIC

Step 1: Never, ever, take another plastic bag from a store.

It is simple enough, it just takes practice. Fill your car trunk, or bicycle basket with your cloth bags when you go shopping. If you have to, put a note on your steering wheel, or bike handles to remind you to take the bags when you go in the store. If you forget, go back out and get them. Or carry your few items home without a bag. This goes for fast food shopping too. You don't need that Subway plastic bag, your sandwich is in paper wrap and doing just fine.

Take your cloth bag into the other stores where you shop. If you forget, hold your receipt out and GO Commando! new definition: carry it in your hands without a bag!

American's use an astronomical number of single-use plastic bags, made out of petroleum. And they come back to haunt us, killing sea-birds, fish, acquatic mammals, and turtles. There is no reason to keep this cycle going. Reduce the waste. Don't use the plastic.

World's Biggest Garbage Dump - Video

Public State of Mind - Video

Want to do more? Join the Sierra Florida Waste-Minimization Team

Step 2: Refuse to buy plastic bags and plastic wrap.

So much of what you throw away or attempt to recycle is plastic. We can reduce this. Don't use plastic (petroleum) bags for garbage. Find paper or a bio-degradable alternative. There are plastic-looking bags made out of starch and other materials that can be composted and will degrade. Search the internet. Find alternatives. Get creative. Don't buy something that comes wrapped in plastic that you are only going to throw away when you get home.

Step 3: Start eliminating other plastics from your life.

Look for glass containers instead of plastic bottles. Find the alternative. It is not that long ago that we didn't have plastics. We used to buy more glass and paper containers. Can't we again?

Alternatives?

• • Buy juices in glass bottles and reuse the bottles for cold water and other drinks in your fridge. Its healthier for you and better for the planet.
  • Don't buy things that come in tubs of plastic. Butter and margarine come wrapped in paper; Yes, Laudry soap comes in cardboard boxes that can be recycled!
  • Look for alternatives to grocery items in plastic bottles. Get creative and try something new.

Send us your suggestions. We will post them and encourage others to find, even zany ways to get this stuff out of our lives. Send to miami-webmaster@florida.sierraclub.org

Plastic Island trash Disaster - Video

Music performed by Toby Gray and Alan Sitar Brown. Toby Gray:vocals, bass, Hammond B 3, guitar and percussion; Alan Sitar Brown: sitar and vocals.

Zero Waste for Florida

Florida needs to greatly improve its recycling rate. While our state has a goal of 75 percent, it currently is achieving only about 28 percent Other states, such as Oregon, are doing much better, and some individual cities, such as Nantucket, have achieved as much as a 90% recycling rate.

Goals:

• Create more than 100,000 jobs through recycling industries.
• Save 7,000 MW of power, enough for 5 million homes.
• Reduce greenhouse gases and our carbon footprint.

Zero Waste is a design principle and planning approach for the environmental management of resources. It aims to prevent waste by design rather than manage it after the fact. Sierra Club's Zero Waste policy addresses not only the quantity of waste we generate, but its toxicity, its contribution to climate change, and the important links between waste reduction and corporate responsibility.

We generate about 4.5 lbs of municipal solid waste per person per day in the U.S. That is several times the rate of European countries with similar standards of living. The production (mining, manufacturing and distribution) of goods generates an additional 70 lbs municipal solid waste (MSW) per lb of goods produced. Only 1percent of the "stuff" we buy is still in use after six months.

If the whole world consumed resources at the rate of the U.S., at least three planets the size of Earth would be required. Also, the costs of managing wasteful and hazardous products are borne largely by taxpayers and ratepayers.

Our system of extraction, processing, transportation, consumption, and disposal is tied to core contributors of global climate change. Greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) attributed to consumption and waste account for almost 37 percent of total GHG emissions. The zero waste approach is essential to reduce GHG emissions.

The two most common MSW management techniques used in the U.S., landfilling and incineration, are disposal technologies and not consistent with the zero waste concept. Legislation passed in Florida in 2010 allows counties whose waste is burned to produce electricity to claim recycling credit. The Sierra Club rejects the idea that waste-to-energy (WTE) is recycling. The energy extracted by burning (or any form of WTE) is less than 20 percent of what would be saved by recycling the material. Resources are destroyed and no longer available for producing new products, hence new virgin materials must be extracted to replace them; this extraction process is highly detrimental to the environment and not sustainable.

What you can do:

• Encourage your city and county officials to join the 103 mayors worldwide who have committed to zero waste by 2040. Collection of food waste and other organics is essential for high diversion rates--composting, or preferably, anaerobic digestion followed by composting. Composted material is a valuable soil amendment beneficial for Florida's sandy soils.
• Pay-as-you-throw (PAYT) fees for collection of waste are an effective technique for reducing waste and increasing recycling. Fees for the largest 96-gal trash should be several times those for the minimum size 20-gal can, with any amount of recycling material collected at no cost.
• Consider container recycling incentives. California increased its beverage container recycling to a 76 percent level by increasing the California Refund Value (CRV) payout from four to five cents for beverage containers under 24 oz., and from eight to 10 cents for containers 24 oz. and greater. These savings translate into reduced greenhouse gas emissions. Recycling 7.6 billion beverage containers is equivalent to removing nearly 300,000 cars from the road for a year.

Share our Zero Waste flyer

For more information
Austin Zero Waste Plan
California Recycling
Eco-Cycle Zero Waste
The Story of Stuff

Sierra Club "stop plastics campaign" information, Debbie Matthews  

Sierra Club Stand on Bottling Facilities in Florida.

The bottled water industry is a multibillion dollar industry and has many lobbyists. There are over 40 bottled water facilities in FL. These facilities pay for a permit, but after that, they do not pay Florida for the water. Perhaps that is one reason they are so attracted to our state. Legislation to create a tax or fee on these companies has repeatedly failed. Some of our springs are decreasing in their flow. Silver Springs has already lost 32% of its historic average flow. Some of the springs in the Orlando area are predicted to decline in flow by 15% in the next decade, as aquifer levels decline statewide.

And then, there are all the plastic water bottles that end up as waste ..... enough to drown us all in plastic.

Concerned residents successfully stopped a water bottling facility on the Santa Fe River that could have endangered the river's sensitive ecosystem. But the fight against corporate water bottlers isn't over.

The Suwannee River Water Management District (SRWMD) -- the agency that grants permits for water withdrawals -- ruled in 2010 that a bottled water permit for the Santa Fe River was not "consistent with the public interest." But large corporations won't just back away from all this free water they can sell.

Residents of Florida need to be on the lookout and make sure that their county and city commissions know you don't want to give away our precious water.