In response to Michelle Raymond's comments on refillables:
Call me a yuppie, but we drink our beer in glass bottles, purchase
ketchup in glass bottles and save our wine bottles for reuse. Why
should we stop collecting glass at curbside? That part of the system
isn't broken, so why "change it." (Okay, lets modify it to protect
refillable wine and beer bottles. Just because the distribution system
has changed doesn't mean it can't be changed again. - - Look at the use
of pesticides and the growing market for organic produce as an example
of whoops, we made some mistakes in the Green Revolution.)
Ok, a need for markets for plastics is obvious but there are many ways
to change the system. We could challenge food service providers and
other packaging manufacturers to provide products in readily reusable
and recyclable packaging. If film plastic were converted to a truly
digestible form of starch based material, I could then put it in my
compost pile or worm bin. I'd rather see research that way than
subsidize the plastic resin manufacturers by developing elaborate and
expensive plastic collection and processing systems.
Ann Schneider
Univ. of Calif. Santa Cruz Extension
Business Environmental Assistance Center (BEAC)
3120 De la Cruz Blvd.
Santa Clara, CA 95054
408 566-4562
408 748-7388 fax
aschneid@cats.ucsc.edu