This past Spring my 6th grader was working frantically to complete "community service" hours to satisfy a requirement for his school. A small charter school with great test scores - it has a really strong emphasis on learning to be aware of the community. We have to complete 12 hours of community service each year and my wife usually sets up activities that "qualify" and my son and I head off on Saturdays. We have cleaned up woodlands, planted trees and on one very memorable occasion - we worked prepping fruit trees to be given away in downtown LA to families that had applied to a special program. I now know exactly how a pear tree should be pruned back to have the best chance of growing when replanted! Who says school is not fun?
On an outing in June we found ourselves at the Ballona Wetlands and worked a 4 hour shift pulling trash out of the waterways and filling 55 gallon trash bags. In 4 hours we filled 2 bags and it was very hard work. The interesting thing that I realized after the first hour was that everything we were pulling out of the water - was plastic - no paper!
Despite the fact that we print with responsibly managed forests (FSC and SFI certified) it has been a tough couple years for a life long printer. I still get emails from people with little "signatures" that say "please don't print this email unless necessary" or something to that effect.
So....it was all plastic! I can't imagine that there was zero paper trash thrown out - but certainly it seemed to have just disappeared! Logically - most newspaper and paper will just fall apart very quickly with moisture and turn to mulch. But plastic? Not at all. That day at least it seemed like candy bar wrappers, plastic bags and bottles last forever!
In August 2011 the California Supreme Court ruled unanimously that cities have the right to ban the use of single-use plastic bags without conducting and environmental impact report (EIR) first. A lawsuit against Manhattan Beach claimed that the city should have conducted an EIR prior to banning plastic bags in 2008. As part of the decision the court admitted that there was some environmental issues with paper (of course) but went on to say that "no evidence suggests that paper bags use by Manhattan Beach consumers in the wake of the plastic bag ban would contribute to those impacts in a significant way"
While convenient - plastic is bad on many levels and paper has this really nice amazing quality of breaking down easily in the environment. This was something I understood but filling those trash bags really drove home the reality. It did make me feel pretty good about being a printer and for those of you that design printed materials - it should make you feel pretty good too!
-Sean
http://deltagraphics.com/
