On Friday, April 26, 2013, the Austin American Statesman wrote an article about the future composting rules in Austin.
The Austin City Council approved a movement to require business owners to begin composting by 2016, and 2017 for small businesses. The compost will be picked up from each location by private haulers, and will also include pickup for other recyclable materials such as paper and plastic. This new regulation is to help the city of Austin achieve its zero waste goal by 2040.
This article came to a surprise to me because I did not know that the city was aiming to improve Austin's overall waste. The author of this article did a great job describing what the new rules will be, and how the city plans to conquer this issue. The author came from a place of the facts, and used comments from local business owners to show the benefits of this program.
As an advocate for recycling and reusing wherever possible, I am impressed that the city of Austin is taking an initiative to improve our overall living conditions. Reading this article not only informed me of this plan, but allowed me to understand how the city will make composting a normal activity in Austin. Another key point is that the city is allowing several years for business owners to comply with the new regulations. This extra time will relieve stress of complying within a short window of time, and will undoubtedly save owners money in the long run.
Over time I hope to see more cities following the model that the city of Austin is providing. This will have tremendous benefits to our planet, and will heighten awareness for conservative living.
Friday, April 26, 2013
Wednesday, April 10, 2013
Commentary on "Bags in a Pickle"
On Friday, March 29, 2013, blogger of Perry's State wrote an article titled "Bags in a Pickle." Below is my comment on this artice:
Dear Perry's State,
I really enjoyed reading your article on this issue. This has been a recent hot topic in Austin, and continues to have arguments on both sides of it. While I do agree with some of the comments you have made, others I do not. Yes, there are so many other ways we can help the environment by reusing and recycling products. I am a strong advocate for environmental awareness, and I agree that we could all be doing more to help. I love you give different examples of how the plastic bags can be used, and I have done many of those things with my previously used bags. The unfortunate truth in my opinion though, is that the plastic bags do not need to be used in stores to carry our food. The fact is, the ban was put in place to encourage shoppers to bring their own bags. This helps with the two problems you wrote about: the extra waste of plastic bags AND the complaints of more trees being cut down to make paper bags. The whole point is not to simply replace plastic with paper, as this would be counter-productive, but to replace BOTH with washable/reusable bags. If everyone did this, the wastefulness of both would be at a minimum. I realize that this is easier said than done, since there are people out there that are not fortunate enough to purchase reusable bags. I would love to see the city of Austin become more of an advocate for this, and put a larger emphasis on "Free Bag" services. There are some speed bumps in this process of change, but all-in-all this is a WONDERFUL change to be happening. The beginning stages of this process are going to be rough, but hopefully over time only using reusable bags will become normal procedure. I hope that your stores troubles will be reduced as shoppers become more aware of the benefits of this change. We will ALL benefit, let us make this a global change!
Dear Perry's State,
I really enjoyed reading your article on this issue. This has been a recent hot topic in Austin, and continues to have arguments on both sides of it. While I do agree with some of the comments you have made, others I do not. Yes, there are so many other ways we can help the environment by reusing and recycling products. I am a strong advocate for environmental awareness, and I agree that we could all be doing more to help. I love you give different examples of how the plastic bags can be used, and I have done many of those things with my previously used bags. The unfortunate truth in my opinion though, is that the plastic bags do not need to be used in stores to carry our food. The fact is, the ban was put in place to encourage shoppers to bring their own bags. This helps with the two problems you wrote about: the extra waste of plastic bags AND the complaints of more trees being cut down to make paper bags. The whole point is not to simply replace plastic with paper, as this would be counter-productive, but to replace BOTH with washable/reusable bags. If everyone did this, the wastefulness of both would be at a minimum. I realize that this is easier said than done, since there are people out there that are not fortunate enough to purchase reusable bags. I would love to see the city of Austin become more of an advocate for this, and put a larger emphasis on "Free Bag" services. There are some speed bumps in this process of change, but all-in-all this is a WONDERFUL change to be happening. The beginning stages of this process are going to be rough, but hopefully over time only using reusable bags will become normal procedure. I hope that your stores troubles will be reduced as shoppers become more aware of the benefits of this change. We will ALL benefit, let us make this a global change!
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