I imagine a costs-savings over a plastics-savings, but the word from Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA) is that plastic SmarTrip vouchers were being replaced with paper ones, beginning last month.

We don’t get vouchers — among other things, I administer transit benefits for work; this information is behind a login — and WMATA will use the plastic until the stock is exhausted, so I don’t know if the change is in effect.

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An interesting item among the legislation already submitted to the Episcopal Church’s General Convention. That body meets in July. If passed the measure would resolve to “ask the Church to restrict, starting immediately, the use of bottled water at General Convention and at other Church-sponsored activities.”

A045 at General Convention site

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Good news. The D.C. Council has passed unanimously a bill that charges a five-cent fee for grocery-style shopping bads, plastic or paper, for the sake of the trash-filled Anacostia River. (Part of the collected fee will go to fund durable bags for low-income Washingtonians.)

Reportage from DCist and WashingtonPost.com.

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Thanks to the last comment from JMcK, I started reading her blog The Unplastic Life, and I hope to meet her when she’s back in D.C.

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I’ve been using reusable grocery bags for years, but not for any reason the hip or fashionable would recognize. First, I had no car for long periods in Georgia, and that meant long walk and bus waits to get groceries: overloaded plastic bags cut into your fingers. (I also used a backpack to shop.) Second, my dreadful little apartment had a roach problem and both plastic and paper bags — if saved — gave them convenient homes. If thrown out, well, that’s wasteful. Mesh bags from the co-op were ideal.

Fast forward to today. Now everyone has them, and it’s hard to find a big event in D.C. where someone isn’t using the reusable bag as giveaway swag. The problem is that most are made of a nonwoven plastic fiber that, after a few months use, tears and becomes unusable. More trash; the plastic bag problem only reduced and delayed. (It will probably help the river pollution problem since there are fewer of them and they’re not so light as to blow anywhere, but that’s not a solution to the plastics-in-environment problem.)

So now, when proffered a freebie bag, I say no unless it’s one of the rare ones made of muslin. They wear harder, could be prepared if need be, and will biodegrade. (The Swiss and British legations have had them at events here in D.C.)

Of course, you could buy or make a muslin, canvas or string bag: what a notion!

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Trying to make household appliances last longer, to keep their plastic in active use and out of landfills. So when my old cordless phone’s battery wore out, I ordered one from an eBay vendor. Cheaper that way. (I care about low cost, too, to a point.)

Little would I guess la_tronics — whose appeal was free shipping — would ship my order in a rigid all-cardboard “gator pak”

Of course, the product did come with a small plastic blister; I assume there’s some plastic in the battery itself, but that was a given and the packing isn’t.

Note: I received no compensation for this notice; indeed, I have not contacted the vendor about it.

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My male office-mates know I’m an advocate of double-edge razors: they save money, plastic and provide a superior shave.

Martin Higgins (Plasticless.com) had a post today about safety razors — but if you see the one he notes, avoid it; I got one and it’s awful — and the subject of shaving brushes came up in the comments.

And further, what if you want a brush that’s plastic-free and animal-free? Well, tough. It’s one way or another. And given the choice, I’ll take a brush with plastic and no animal bristles. (I also wear plastic, leather-free shoes.)

Fortunately, the Body Shop has one with synthetic bristles (read: plastic) and a wooden handle, which makes up for the plastic handles they usually have.

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We can agree that plastic packing peanuts are best avoided, who actually seeks them out? Indeed, they seek us in the goods we order or gifts we receive.

We get many at work, and they’re not recyclable through the usual waste streams. But shipping companies will sometimes take them and reuse them.

The Plastic Loose Fill Council has a zip code based finder for places that will take packing peanuts, but even in D.C. none were close enough to justify the effort, when work time is considered. (I try only to model behavior a reasonable person would imitate.)

But since I saw the D.C. participants were USP Stores, I called the closest one and even though they weren’t on the list, they gladly accepted them.

A note on my workflow: I test packing peanuts with a drop of water. The still-rare starch-based ones get sticky and dissolve and so I dispose of them in the breakroom sink. best not to mix the kinds in case the plastic reaches an area where they really can be recycled.

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I’m not a terrible fan of plastic, unless I come up against a product that really is better made of plastic than an alternative. A toothbrush head comes to mind.

That, and the world is already filled with plastic waste. How might we make something of it?

OK, the RepRap (Replicating Rapid prototyper) is something the hacker kids love: a device that prints three-dimensional items — layer by ultrathin layers — and might use waste thermoplastic to make new items.

Sure, the current plastic-for-everything economy won’t work with these, but that’s my point. This could be option when we do need plastic tools, and where we it makes sense to treat it as a valuable resource.

See this Open Source Ecology article for details and an interesting video

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The heart of a proposed District of Columbia law — the Anacostia River Cleanup & Protection Act of 2009 — is a provision to restrict what bags D.C. retailers may use. Out go recyclable plastic and kraft paper bags. Recyclable bags are OK, but they must be labeled such and there’s a fee for their use. (“Produce” bags and the like are excluded; not great, but probably politically essential and not likely the source of much of the pollution.)

Read the bill here.

It is Bill B18-0150 and you can follow the process here.

I support it, both for the cleanliness of the beleaguered, bag-choked Anacostia River, but also for the sake of the city and region.

There’s a public hearing about it on April 1, details here.

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