Seattle follows in the steps of eco-friendly San Francisco with a restriction on plastic shopping bags
Seattle is poised to join the ranks of San Francisco and Ireland by imposing restrictions on the use of disposable shopping bags. The City Council vote on the proposal—expected to pass by a wide margin—will occur this summer and would take effect at the start of 2009. While Ireland and San Francisco have banned plastic bags outright, Seattle’s proposal will instead impose a twenty-cent fee on every paper or plastic bag used by consumers at the point of sale. (The proposal also bans styrofoam food containers.)
The debate over which bag is more environmentally friendly has recently come to an impasse. People long assumed paper was the logical choice because the bags could be readily recycled and would naturally degrade. Plastic, while inexpensive to manufacture and transport, will never biodegrade (and may very well end up floating in the Pacific ocean.) Unfortunately, paper’s benefits at the end of the line are largely outweighed by the disproportionally large amount of water and energy needed to make them in the first place. Not to mention, both will take up landfill space if simply tossed in the trash.
All these factors combined to be the impetus for Seattle’s mayor, Greg Nickels, to introduce the fee proposal.
Via NY Times
- 0 Comments
- Tags: Bag Fee, Environment, Plastic Bags, San Francisco, Seattle
Architects imagine what San Francisco might look like in 2108 (hint, we finally get those flying cars)
What will San Francisco look like 100 years from now? According to the winning entry in a “city of the future” contest, residents will live in a forest of sinuous towers.
IwamotoScott Architecture took home the $10,000 prize for its “Hydro-Net” design, which also envisions an underground web of carbon-nanotube-walled tunnels where people travel in hydrogen-fueled hover-cars. Hydrogen would be produced in algae ponds and distributed through the tunnel nanotubes. And “geothermal mushrooms” would tap heat from deep within the earth to power hilltop steam baths with views of the city.
All of which is a nice antidote to today’s gloomy predictions of peak oil and Arctic melting. Of course, the architects don’t have to explain who will pay for all this nifty technology.
