A great PSA print ad from Surfrider

A friend of mine shared this great PSA print ad from Surfrider today on Facebook, and I thought I'd share it here also. Well done, high impact advertisement that really gets people thinking.

LA County passes plastic bag ban

The LA Times reports on the recent environmental success in LA County, where a wide-ranging plastic bag ban was passed yesterday. The policy also implements a 10-cent fee for use of paper bags, making this policy one that is truly intended to change consumer behavior and expectations of getting free disposable bags.

Read more here: LA County passes sweeping ban on plastic bags.

As usual, the solitary no vote was also the solitary Republican on the council, who cites the tried and tested partisan message of "this will kill small businesses" and "poor people can't afford to buy bags." I have to go all talking head on you here, just for a quick moment, and say I am sick and tired of these false excuses. If you can, come up with a good rationale for the continued use of disposable bags - but please, don't patronize everyone by saying you oppose it for the poor people. Please.

Now, let's hope our state assembly can get their hands out of the lobbyist cookie jar and enact a state-wide ban.

Neutrogena's (Stock) Response

I received an email back from Neutrogena, that unfortunately looks like a form letter. I'm posting the entire contents below.

"Dear Wayne:

Thank you for contacting Neutrogena®. It is always important to hear from our consumers, and we appreciate the time you have taken to contact us.

Please be assured that at Neutrogena ® we have a strong commitment to our role as a responsible corporate citizen. The need to address the environmental issues which concern us all is a long-standing priority in our business. There is a corporate wide task force currently exploring and assessing innovative technologies and alternative materials appropriate to our products and the environment. Our environmentally-conscious packaging continues to be a primary focus of our product research and development efforts.

We share your concern and hope you will contact us again should you have any comments, concerns or questions in the future.

Should you have any comments or questions in the future, please feel free to contact us via our website, www.neutrogena.com, or by calling our toll-free number, 1-800-582-4048. Our specialists are available Monday through Friday between 8 AM and 5 PM EST and will be happy to assist you."

A letter to Neutrogena

After reading about the problem with polyethylene beads in body and facial cleansers, I quickly set about looking around the house for products that I use that may contain these ingredients. To my horror, 3 of the 4 products in my house do indeed use polyethylene beads! One, Neutrogena's Pore Refining Scrub, surprised me, as I've always viewed Neutrogena as a good company.

So, as any good activist citizen should do, I emailed them. Below is my message. We'll see how the company responds. I will keep you posted.

"I have always considered your company to be one of the "good" ones out there - a company I can be proud to support and that creates products that are not only good for me, but good for society also. So imagine my distress when I read a recent article describing the dangers of cleansers and scrubs made with polyethylene beads that wash down our drains, into the oceans and rivers, and become food for marine life - often contributing to their death by clogging up their intestines with indigestible plastic beads that results in fatal constipation (what a horrid way to die!) and then realized that YOUR product contains these beads!

With perfectly good natural scrubbing agents around, I cannot imagine any good reason to use an artificial ingredient such as these polyethylene beads in your product. You have, at best, ignored the effects of this particular scrubbing agent, and at worst deliberately DESIGNED a product that is destructive to our ecosystems and the organisms that live within them. It is irresponsible, inexcusable, and frankly, immoral.

I urge you to immediately begin phasing out the use of these polyethylene beads from your entire product line, and to conduct an audit of your product line for ingredients that may similarly harm the environment. You have a duty and responsibility not just to your shareholders, but to the people, communities, and ecosystems within which you operate. I hope that the high esteem with which I have always held your company in has not been a mistake - please make these changes NOW."

Trash Vortex, Part Deux

I thought I would share a recent article from the New York Times about the huge accumulation of plastic waste in the pacific.

Exfoliant DANGER - BOYCOTT

I am currently reading Alan Weisman's book "The World Without Us" that is part anthropological study and part thought experiment. Basically, Weisman takes the admittedly inconceivable premise of "what if humans disappeared, all at once, all together, tomorrow" and runs with it. Part of what he does is explore how we got to where we are, and how things would look after we disappeared - what of our "civilization" would remain, and what would not?

So, the part that has just distressed me is this. In it, he talks about the permanency of plastic. This is not news to most who follow environmental topics. Plastic is a nasty nasty substance that doesn't go away. He also quickly debunks the myth that biodegradable plastic bags are good. Apparently, they only degrade in optimum circumstances (which does not include the ocean, where many of them end up) and if they do degrade, they still leave fibers that can be dangerous for marine animals.

But, what has me MOST distressed is the fact that many cosmetic and industrial exfoliating agents are actually made with tiny plastic pebbles to scrub things away. So, we are not talking about plastic that escapes into the ocean on accident - no, we're talking about plastic that companies are putting into the products that are SUPPOSED to go into our water sources. This is a sort of mass pollution that I've not really heard of at all to this point, and really, is just criminal. There should be an uproar about this, but I've barely found any articles on it. (One of the few is this one from Slate.) We need to spread the word somehow.

Beyond that, please please please, read the ingredients labels for any cosmetics or facial wash that you buy - anything that promises to be exfoliate. If it has polyethelene or any derivative there-of, DO NOT PURCHASE IT. I would also highly suggest a complete boycott of any companies producing products with plastic beads as exfoliants. According the to researcher quoted by Weisman, a scrub like St. Ives' Apricot Scrub containing 100% natural exfoliating substances (usually made from ground seeds or grains) is fine. But many are not. Be a conscious buyer please! And SPREAD THE WORD.

A Trash Vortex?

Apparently all of our litter has decided to get together for one big party in the Pacific Ocean. Called the Pacific Trash Vortex or the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, this huge man-made "structure" on the ocean is caused by ocean currents carrying trash from our coastal waters into the deep ocean. A video from G-Word talks about how the vortex has take over ocean waters in some parts.

Don't believe me? It's on Wiki! :)

Read more at the Independent here which discusses the size and potential dangers of all that floating plastic gunk out there on the ocean.