Love and hate by the five-cent bagful

Back in the days when plastic bags were not invented yet, my grandmother never needed one. After all, life was simple those days. No need to clean after the pets, since they didn't have one. No need for garbage bags, since a) they didn't produce that much waste b) they dumped all the waste in the garbage bin.

When the plastic bags came into picture, in early 20th century, they were to replace paper bags which back then were known as inefficient and number one contributor to killing trees. Plastic bags were light, water proof, and only took a small storage space. They became popular and soon gave new shape and color to the way we shop.

It took us 50 odd years to realize that plastic bags are indeed as inefficient as the paper bags, if not more. They use up another natural resource, oil; they don't disintegrate; they end up in the landfills; they are a known hazard for the marine life.


Time for a change? You bet.

We have since welcomed the new, the reusable bag, eco-friendly alternative to the plastic bag in our consumer driver lives. We know that manufacturing these bags uses scarce, expensive energy. However, durability will make the average cost of energy used per bag lower than plastic or paper bags.

Holding a chic reusable bag is more than making a fashion statement. It's regarded as responsible! While we are gradually buying into the idea of purchasing our first and second R-bags and reducing our plastic bag footprint as a result, our city decided to pull a plastic bag tax on us to hasten the process.

Many took issue! Many are unhappy. It's added insult on injury, to be asked to pay an extra 5c per bag after you spend $$$ in a store. It's understandable. Especially, for some of us, the free plastic bags served a variety of purposes in our households.

In a consumer driven culture a moral lesson can be taught only by attaching a price tag to it. Only then we realize the value of what we have taken for granted. The point here is that, the reusable bags are great and they are a good solution to our over a century old quest for efficient, environment friendly packaging and storage. But, a coup de tat against plastic bag was not necessary.

Each of the products we switched from/to had their own set of pros and cons. Perfect has not been discovered and/or invented yet. We could continue using plastic, paper, and/or reusable and our environment will still be fine, if only we learned the art of moderation.

If each party involved did its part, the impact will be effortless and huge. If we used one less bag on each trip to the supermarket, we could reduce the usage by a lot!

The imposed tarrif or in the case of Inida the $2000 fine are just measures to curtail the wasteful behavior and culture.

Can we save the World Economy?

The guiding light of capitalism that is not having any form of state intervention in society has proven to be flawed. The first signs of this flaw ironically became obvious around the time that societies with heavily state regulated economy were going through a revolution, (Revolutions of 1989 and end of the Cold War). We bid socialism, communism and fascism farewell and claimed that they are dysfunctional systems. Almost two decades later we find ourselves dealing with another dysfunctional system.

We have come to a full circle.

Despite all the human intelligence at our disposal and coupled with all the state of the art technology we have failed to build a sustainable, peaceful, healthy and prosper society for ourselves and for our future generation.

The calamities of the past year, reminds me of Ayn Rand's masterpiece, Atlas Shrugged. Society fails due to ever increasing influence of state in market. One may notice, that the calamity that we are experiencing are due to the complete opposite reason --lack of governance.

In a panel discussion organized by Columbia University Earth Science Institute, (http://www.earth.columbia.edu/worldeconomy/), George Soros, Financier and Philanthropist, described systems imperfect he then added that human beings are imperfect as well.

In the past few months, all of us, more or less, have followed politics (more than ever, I would say) despite the fact that over the years our hope in them has diminished. (Case in point: less than 59% of Canadians voted in the past election.) We have seen governments that are inefficient, self-serving, bureaucratic --simply put-- good for nothing.

Therefore, it is in the hand of you and I; simple, ordinary, hard working citizens, to build a sustainable present and prosper future in our communities. Although, we may be imperfect, but we have witnessed enough mistakes to know right from wrong, I believe.

Those countries that don't have it and their governments don't have a greed for it and have been able to curb their dependency on it, enjoy peace.

For the rest of us the saga of fretting over the peaks and valleys of its price, the fight between the suppliers and the cartels will continue.

I am talking about oil!

Press for change! Signing up for epost...

Adieu to receiving bills in the mail. I am open to change and trying something new. I am motivated to help the environment. One less printed bill means one less reason to cut down a tree. I am going to sign up for epost!

I don't want to think about why epost is available in 2008 and not in 1950 when early signs of forest depletion and global warming became visible. I know better; it's better to arrive late than never. I don't want to speculate Post Corporation's intentions that they are thinking "green" now because if they don't they may become extinct (companies have started sending their customers the Estatements, we email more than we mail.) I am just glad they thought of it; it's better to arrive late than never.


For Post, going green is a fundamental change. It uproots a 4 century old tradition of delivering to the door of millions.
If the future of the mail is electronic. There are things I shall miss. I shall miss the stamps and the taste of the sticky glue after I licked to stick it to the envelope. I shall miss the friendly smile of the mail carrier. I shall miss a hand written note.

There will be books and pictures to remind us of the history. I know better; to gain something I need give up something else. I am all for change!

What is the oil price driven by?

The motivation behind this blog comes from the eye catching full page car advertisement that appeared in the daily Toronto Newspaper every single day during this past week.

What are the big shots behind these ad schemes thinking of, if at all? Presumably, they believe with incentives such as gas cards or cheap gas they can encourage consumers to buy more of their fuel inefficient, gas-guzzler cars.

These offers reek with greed. These short sighted auto industry movers cannot think of better ways to keep their pockets full of money.

I am sure they can for example spend portion of their money on improving the fuel consumption of their existing models but I suppose that is going to delay time to market and impact their share of market value!

While we all are anticipating worse news from the oil market, we are being encouraged to waste more of it and be content that someone else is going to pay for it.

Well, the good thing is for every yin there is a yang. If we have full page ads to lure us into buying cars, we have other tools to research about them at the same time.

Take this site for example. If you are looking to buy a new car this is a place to get you started. Here you can find gas mileage (MPG), greenhouse gas emissions, air pollution ratings, and safety information for new and used cars and trucks.

After visiting this page nothing, not even cheap gas for 3 years, can change my mind in what make/model I want to buy. (This is just a rhetoric. I have been using public transit and my bike for the past 3+ years now!)

From Forbes network:

The world's proven oil reserves were essentially flat in 2007 while production fell by 0.2 percent, the first decline since 2002, BP reported on Wednesday, when it launched its 2008 Statistical Review of World Energy.

On Tuesday, the International Energy (otcbb: IENI.OB - news - people ) Agency, the energy adviser for the world's industrialised countries, sharply lowered its projection for supply outside the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries.

Concern over long-term oil supplies has driven the recent spike in oil prices and prompted Wall Street banks to raise their price forecast to about $150 and $200.

"For sure, banks tend to focus on supply. It is easy for them to make assumptions of $200," Olivier Jakob with Petromatrix said. "On the other side, we have to look at price impact on demand. That's why the market is so volatile."

Maybe is not as important to know how we got here as it is vital to know we can separately or collectively free ourselves from dependence on fossil fuels.

Getting there by bicycle

I am thinking, if each business adds the direction to its location by bike to its web site more people will be motivated to leave the cars behind. I am thinking malls, shopping centers, banks, pharmacies and etc.
With the price of oil on the rise, with no slowdown in sight, it is becoming imperative to conserve.
Although we knew this was going to happen, after all we hit the $99 a barrel mark 2 years ago, we still feel we have been caught off guard.
Farmers driven by market are selling their crops of corn to producers of bio-fuels. This, along with high cost of energy, has shot the price of food up by 10-20%. There is no hard evidence to prove that bio-fuel is green alternative to fossil fuels.
I digress.
The point is, facilitating commuting by bike by providing information on the bike routes is an easy way of showing commitment to being green.

Redeem (your cell phone for $$$)

Along came a company (apparently they've been around since 1999) that buys your out dated old cell phone that you have been itching to dump for a better model (maybe even an iphone). Check them out if you have one!

Earth Hour 2008!

The hour I spent with a group of Columbia Alumni to clean up the small habitat for spawning fish and birds by Lake Ontario and turning out all the lights at my house between 8-9 PM sounds insignificant compared to my (un-intentional) daily contribution to climate change. So, how can I distribute the impact of Earth Hour over a year? Why not declare an Earth Year?!

In privileged places such as North America success of each cause relies heavily on how well people behind it can make the cause look, seem, sound cool and fun. Image is everything. Look around you, Green as a color, Green as an adjective, or being Green as a verb has become trendy. So, it should be easy to instill a Green culture.

Not so easy.

We are used to the "Good Life". Partly due to this, conserving, unless for short period of time, such as 1 hour per year, may not be something that comes naturally. Unless the media does its part and brain washes us. With the unlimited band width in our daily lives, media can turn us into Green junkies. I doubt they do that, for reasons that make an interesting topic for another time and blog.

All in all we will continue splurging.

From quirky to avant-garde

When Rolf Paloheimo first built his Healthy House back in 1996, he was regarded as a scientist with a strange experiment. Today he is considered, thanks to Al Gore's "Inconvenient Truth", an avant-garde environmentalist. His house is disconnected from city water and electricity grid. There is a zero-tolerance for waste; everything from water to human waste is recycled.

It's a fact that we are producing more waste than generations before us. Little attention is given to where does the waste go.

In 2000, Toronto households created 920,000 tonnes of waste or about one tonne per household. Only 24% of this waste was composted, recycled or reused. The rest went to landfills.

An exaggerated case of using landfills is shown in The Simpson's Movie; dumping the silo that Homer has been keeping his pig crap in, in the Springfield landfill is the last straw sort of speak to make the landfill overflow and cause hideous side effects. The aftermath of that event made us all laugh. But in reality this is no laughing matter.

How can we divert more of our waste from the landfills?
The immediate answer is to recycle and reuse. Why not reuse that old shower curtain as cover for items in the pantry or the outdoor furniture or reuse the old toothbrush to scrub stain from the household items or reuse it to wax the shoes.

Operation Green Ontario

Ontario will invest $79 million in planting 50 million trees--this is the largest pledge to the UN campaign to build a billion trees world wide.
It is estimated that adding this many trees will reduce Ontario's CO2 emission by the amount generated by 172 million cars for 100 km by 2054.

Bottled water no longer hot

Bottled water is being added to the list of things bad for the environment. After being around for as long as I can remember they are being criticized for their adverse effects on environment. Considering the amount of green house gases produced and amount of energy consumed for their production and distribution, it is hard to drink water out of a bottle without the guilt feeling of the damage they cause the environment. Watch out for cities like San Francisco and Salt Lake City that are jumping on the vagabond of banning the bottled water. The bottle water industry has to find creative ways to survive the bad rap.

CN Tower Illuminated

Just when every major city in North America, including Toronto, is trying to conserve, NY City has a mandate to convert all its yellow cabs to hybrid and San Francisco is cutting greenhouse gas by 25% by 2020,we hear CN Tower, the world's tallest building today (553 m), is getting a face lift which involves being outfitted with LED lights that shoot up the elevator shaft over the "bubble" and straight to the mast. Just how much watts per day are we talking about? But, wait! Apparently the LEDs are high tech --they consume 60% less than when the tower was last fully lit in the 1990s. I think it's okay then?

Here's a green ... there's a green ... everywhere's a green

People have gone completely "green mad". Every other page of a recent issue of a local newspaper contained one or two articles on environmental friendly topics. From green fashion to green spring cleaning tips and ideas, you name it; it was covered!

Later, I heard on BBC radio, that people are lining up to buy, get this, a designer shopping bag, that says, "I am not a plastic bag". They drive their not so environmentally friendly cars to the stores that have these bags on sale--5 pounds each--and then drive back home. All stores are now sold out of this item!

Don't get me wrong. I am a true believer that it is our duty to utilize natural resources responsibly. If we don't run out of the resources we have available, in our time; our children and children's children more likely will.

But, what surprises me is how majority of us advocate a cause only if and when the image is "cool".

Paper or plastic?

Taking public transit to work could be such fun but at times irritating, I mean how many of you have had the pleasure of listening to someone else’s eating or ipod--these are the two I have experienced--while traveling to work and probably trying to catch up on your sleep or meditate about the day ahead.

Today the guy behind me was having his breakfast as if he is having it in front of a loud speaker. It reminded me of Lynn Truss’ book, Talk to the Hand, saying that many people have adopted the self-absorbed attitude of the worst role model in the world, Bart Simpson –My bubble, my rules and if you don’t like it, you know where to go!

On a different note, it was in the news that San Francisco is imposing a ban on plastic bags. The law passed 10-to-1. I wonder what the one person opposing the law had to say. Well, this wasn’t mentioned, very typical journalism style. Why waste the precious space to talk about the 1 opposing. It’s great that we are trying to conserve but let’s just not be too hasty. In the 80’s the paper bag was replaced by plastic bag. Ever asked why? Well maybe the following data from www.plasticbag.com can shed some light:

“When it comes to reducing solid waste, bigger definitely isn't better. The less material you use to make a package, the less waste you have to recycle or dispose of after you've used (and reused) it. Take a look at how the facts stack up for plastic bags.

• The smaller volume of plastic bags can help conserve landfill space. Nothing degrades fast enough to extend the useful lives of modern U.S. landfills...not paper, not plastics, nothing, according to Dr. William Rathje of the University of Arizona Garbage project.
• 30 percent less material is used to produce today's plastic bag than the bags made just five years ago
• Compared to paper grocery bags, plastic grocery bags:
• Consume 40 percent less energy than paper
• Generate 80 percent less solid waste
• Produce 70 percent fewer atmospheric emissions
• Release up to 94 percent fewer waterborne wastes “

An Inconvenient Truth

It was so pleasant hearing the birds chirp on my way to work yesterday. But, it struck me that how odd it is to have this lovely experience early February in a city that is notorious for its long and rough winters.
What is portrayed in the eco-documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, made my hair stand on end. It is too much to take in 90 minutes but the irony is what Al Gore presents eloquently and with excellent visual effects in 90 minutes is the consequence of our doing in the past 90-100 years.
We have come to believe that terrorism is the 21st century's biggest threat. But what we will be facing as a result of global warming is far more serious. We notice the unusual changes in weather, the arrival of invasive insect species, the extinction of some of the species and the spread of disease all around us.
The good thing is we can reverse the effect of green house gases by controlling the emission of carbon dioxide.
As individuals we are contributors to the global warming hence we can be part of the solution. Become part of the solution today!