Tag Archives: the environment

This is somewhat related to plastic bag bans, right? I wonder how effective/adopted these will be across the country. "The ban, set to take effect in January, is part of a statewide push to reform bottle laws".

Via heyennovy

This is Going to Leave a Mark

In the court of public opinion, Toyota is circling the drain. There's reason for them to have hope, though, because BP just plummeted below them. And rightfully so.

Small Charges Lead To Big Results

"When it goes from zero to even a very small charge, it can feel very bad," said Dan Ariely, an economics professor at Duke University. "It creates a very small financial burden but a very big emotional reaction."

That quote from an interesting article in The New Republic that talks about the success of the Washington, DC plastic bag tax. On 1/1, stores began charging shoppers a tax of a nickle per plastic bag and bag use has gone down 50%. The article then makes the connection to a carbon tax and how even a tiny fee is better than no fee because of reason Ariely states above.

The article also mentions a failed $0.20 bag tax in Seattle that potentially reached too high. Nickle bag tax for everyone!

Giant Plastic Island In The Atlantic, Too

Awesome. Just fucking awesome. As if the giant fucking plastic island in the Pacific wasn't enough, there's also a giant fucking patch of plastic in the Atlantic, too. For someone who hates sharks as much as I do, you'd think I wouldn't care. But I do, because these giant fucking islands of plastic and trash don't go away and we have no idea what they're going to do to ecosystem of the ocean, let alone the world.

The newly described garbage patch sits hundreds of miles off the North American coast. Although its east-west span is unknown, the patch covers a region between 22 and 38 degrees north latitudeâ€”roughly the distance from Cuba to Virginia (see a U.S. map).