PLASTIC SOLUTIONS
I recently learned that plastic bags will be banned in the stores in Santa Cruz County. The plastic bags that come from Safeway are 100% recyclable and there was a place to return them outside the store. They can be washed and reused 125 times. The paper bags are not recyclable at the dump in Ben Lomond. The only paper product they recycle is cardboard, so all the paper bags, newspapers, magazines and so on go into the general pile that becomes landfill somewhere. There are a lot of good reasons to ban plastic, but not all plastics. Some are made from corn oil and are biodegradable, some can be reused, some can be crushed into new products, some can be melted down and made into more plastic bags.
This ban on the plastic bags that have become the liners in our trash cans, the trash bag in our cars, the bags we reuse around the house, in favor of paper bags seems counterproductive. The paper bags are thin and the handles come off. And they cannot be reused and they can’t be recycled but the plastic bags are sturdy, can be used many times and are recyclable, so it seems this new ordinance should be looked at a little deeper. As it is now almost everything that’s not metal or glass or cardboard, or returnable clear plastic bottles and milk jugs goes into the general pile of garbage and that is just loaded on big transport trucks and shipped to different places to become a mountain of eventual toxic waste.
The recycling center used to be set up with bins for clear plastic, colored plastic, and milky plastic and if we did that, even if the colored plastic, for instance, has no use today, at some point in time it can be or at least dealt with in a specific way. As it is now there is no way to separate the broken window glass and sheetrock, yard clippings, household garbage, paper and plastic bags from each other. Anything we can do to reduce our waste is a good thing.
Michael Dunn
ENDANGERED MONARCHS
Scientists have completed their annual Thanksgiving Monarch Count with Lighthouse Field as the most important overwintering site in CA out of 400 sites. 1,303 Monarchs were counted in Lighthouse Field, 200 at Natural Bridges and 107 in Pacific Grove.
UCSC Biologists and USGS Scientists are working to determine the cause of the steep decline from last year’s count of 10,000, and the increase over the past three years.
Monarchs are Red Listed as Endangered by the IUCN and are being reviewed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Department this month to re-list their status from Vulnerable to Endangered.
Santa Cruz is the place the Monarchs want to be! Locals know why 🤣
Fiona Fairchild Monarch Activist 🦋
