Category Archives: Uncategorized

Plastics at the Rio Earth Summit

Daniella Russo, a co-founders of the Plastic Pollution Coalition, was in Rio de Janeiro last week for the Rio+20 2012 Earth Summit. I asked her about what did   –and didn’t — happen at the international gathering: Q: What were you … Continue reading

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Plasticity 2012

Do you have a cool idea for reusing used plastic bottles? Have you thought of innovative ways to collect and recycle plastic trash? If so, check out Plasticity 2012, a one-day forum that will be held next month alongside Rio … Continue reading

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Whose Wish List Counts?

One of the chief defenders of the plastics/chemicals industry is the Washington DC law firm of Keller and Heckman. Founding partner Jerome Heckman has represented plastics  for decades going back to  the industry’s first public relations crisis in 1959 when … Continue reading

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The new new bag defenders

FYI bag warriors: In January, the American Chemistry Council handed over defense of the plastic bag to the Society for the Plastics Industry — plastic’s older, but smaller and poorer trade association. The advocacy team, now operating under the name  … Continue reading

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Will Bag Bans Take Off in California?

If I were a betting person, I’d wager we’ll see a wave of plastic bag prohibitions coming out of California communities over the next year. And I’m guessing that unlike the first round of bag measures that were inspired by … Continue reading

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Plastic Groups Team Up

Plastic has long been a balkanized industry, fraught with internecine rivalries. For years, there was bad blood between the industry’s two biggest trade groups, the Society for  the Plastics Industry (SPI) and the American Chemistry Council (ACC). But there’s nothing … Continue reading

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A New Bag Battle

  In the old days — say, four years ago — bag battles  were centered on the plastic or paper question. Which was always something of a red herring since the issue at stake is really our dependence on single-use … Continue reading

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Blight to Beauty

Plastic shopping bags may be a blight on the landscape, but Jessica Lee, a student at Parsons The New School of Design, has found that these puffs of polyethylene also contain a certain hidden grace. For her thesis project, Lee … Continue reading

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To Burn or Not to Burn

The U.S. has a dismal record recycling used plastics: scarcely seven percent get a shot at a second life. But the plastics industry is starting to rally behind a new option for dealing with plastic waste: burning it for energy. … Continue reading

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Plastic Portraits

Tess Felix, a Bay Area artist, wrote me recently about work she has been doing with plastic beach debris.  Felix said she first got the idea after a huge storm in February, 2010: [It] washed tons of plastic garbage out … Continue reading

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