Garbage Maven: Look for a new, improved recycling label [Updated]

Anyone who tries to do the right thing and recycle has experienced it: the utter confusion that certain products induce with their packaging. But a new label tries to address the vague and oftentimes misleading recycling messages.

The How2Recycle label, pioneered by the nonprofit environmental group GreenBlue, will soon appear on Yoplait yogurt packs, Aveda acne pads, Orville Redenbacher popcorn and a few other brand-name products as part of a pilot program to reduce consumer confusion and to encourage more recycling.

The new label is based on the On-Pack Recycling Label used in Britain and can include up to four icons indicating if a material is widely recycled (such as cardboard), recycled in limited cases (such as Yoplait's plastic yogurt cups), not yet recycled (such as mylar) or requires store drop-off (the case in many cities for plastic grocery bags).

Picking up after Fido in a post-grocery-bag world

Angelenos who have been giving their plastic grocery bags a second life as doggie-doo pickup receptacles and trash-can liners may be wondering what they’re going to use as a replacement once the city’s ban goes into effect. The answer is simple: Try one of the many other types of plastic or packaging that come home with you from the store. During a typical grocery shopping trip, about 7% of the purchase’s environmental impact lies in product packaging, according to Bob Lilienfeld, editor of the ULS Report. Non-recyclables such as junk food wrappers are best because they would go in the trash anyway, but bread bags, cereal box liners and dozens of other plastics can do the trick.

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-- Susan Carpenter

Photo: Daniel Allen cleans up after his puppy. Credit: John Doman / Associated Press / Pioneer Press

Plastic bag ban: Pros and cons of reusable alternatives

Reusable grocery bags are becoming almost as ubiquitous as the single-use plastic bags they’re designed to replace, but the choices can be overwhelming. Canvas? Nylon? Tyvek? Hemp? Any bag that’s repeatedly reused is more environmentally friendly than single-use plastic, but the greenest choice isn’t always clear. Each material has pros and cons, and ultimately the best alternative to the single-use plastic bag is the one shoppers are most likely to remember to bring to the store.

Here's a comparison of some of the most common totes, including ones made of that felt-like fabric (called nonwoven polypropylene) that is so common:

Garbage Maven: Recycling cellphones at the ecoATM

Mobile devices are discarded more rapidly than any other type of electronics, yet only 11% of them are recycled, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. But something called an ecoATM is working to change that.

The ecoATM is a self-service kiosk that helps people dispose of cellphones and other mobile devices. The machine uses electronic diagnostics and artificial intelligence to evaluate electronics' value and pay customers on the spot with cash or credit.

The company the makes ecoATM is based in San Diego. It began rolling out its machines in 2010 and has been operating 50 ecoATMs at malls around California, including the Glendale Galleria, Westfield Century City and Westside Pavilion. Thursday marked the kickoff to another round of openings, starting at malls in Brea and Orange and continuing later this month in Baldwin, Westminster, Ontario, Burbank and the South Bay.

Recycling needs to be convenient, financially rewarding and immediate to prevent people from throwing cellphones in the garbage, ecoATM Chief Executive Tom Tullie said.

Although California is one of the few states that bans electronics from landfills because of the hazardous materials they may contain and their potential to be reused, many cellphones still end up in landfills. Recapturing raw materials such as copper and plastic saves the energy, expense and environmental cost that go into mining and processing new materials.

Eco-friendly packaging influences shopping decisions, study says

More U.S. shoppers are interested in choosing eco-friendly packaging, but they're confused about which types are best for the environment, according to a study on packaging and the environment released Monday.

The study from the New Jersey marketing firm Perception Research Services reports that 36% of shoppers in 2011 were likely to choose environmentally friendly packaging, a 29% increase over 2010. Half of the shoppers polled said they were willing to pay more for such packaging. One-third of the shoppers said they bought more of a product if its package was labeled "recyclable" or "made from recycled material," and a quarter of the shoppers said they have switched brands for more eco-friendly packaging.

One in five shoppers said packaging didn't include enough environmental information and provided confusing claims, the study found. Many respondents said they didn't know which packaging was best for the environment.

Packaging had the biggest effect on buying behavior if it was labeled "recyclable," "made from recycled materials" or "easier to recycle," or if it was marked with a recycling symbol. Packaging that said it used less material did not have as large an impact on shoppers' decisions.

Consumers were more likely than previously to check if the packaging could be recycled before buying a product. From 2008 to 2010, just 17% of consumers checked to see if packaging could be recycled; by 2011, that number had risen to 23%.

"We're seeing a great opportunity for manufacturers to provide truly value-added packaging to their target shoppers by making it more environmentally friendly," said Jonathan Asher, Perception Research Services' executive vice president. He said manufacturers that label smaller, thinner packaging as eco-friendly when the intention is merely to disguise cost reductions only tests shoppers' goodwill.

Perception Research Services, whose clients include consumer products manufacturers such as Hewlett Packard and Johnson & Johnson, has been conducting studies on consumer attitudes about packaging and the environment since 2007. One thousand consumers from across the country were surveyed for the 2011 study on packaging and the environment.

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-- Susan Carpenter

Photo: Ecovative Design's EcoCradle wine shipper made from mushrooms. Credit: Mycobond

The Garbage Maven: How to dispose of old medication?

Like a lot of Americans, I have a cupboard that has accumulated bottles of medicine so old, I can’t even remember what brought me to the doctor to get them. There are expired antibiotics, nasal sprays, cough suppressants — all of which I’d like to dump as responsibly as possible. The question is: How?

California hospitals generate almost 30 million pounds of pharmaceutical and contaminated packaging waste, according to the California Department of Resources Recycling and Recovery. Nationally, 7.8 billion needles are discarded outside of healthcare settings each year, the Coalition for Safe Community Needle Disposal has said. And more than 250 million pounds of unused, dispensed medications are generated annually, according to Sharps Compliance, which runs a take-back program.

Insulin needles and drugs of so many different types have enormous implications not only for the environment but for human and animal health. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is detecting prescription and over-the-counter drugs at “very low” but increasing levels in drinking water, according to its website. In 2009, the EPA added the antibiotic erythromycin and nine hormones to its Contaminant Candidate List, which identifies substances that might require future regulation.

Santa Monica, Costa Mesa try to reduce junk mail [Updated]

Four Southern California areas have joined Chicago, Seattle and a growing roster of other cities working with Catalog Choice to cut the junk from residents' mail. Last week Santa Monica, Redlands and areas served by the Costa Mesa Sanitation District partnered with the Berkeley-based junk-mail opt-out service to help residents stop unwanted catalogs, phone books, coupons, circulars, credit card offers and other unsolicited mail before it's sent. Pasadena will launch in April. [Updated Feb. 16, 2012, 2:15 p.m.: The original version of this post said Pasadena's partnership with Catalog Choice launched last week.]

Each city was given a dedicated website to connect residents to the Catalog Choice program. Such links have more than doubled junk mail opt-outs in Berkeley; Santa Fe, N.M.; Brookline, Mass.; and other cities where the program has been in place since launching last year, according to Catalog Choice founder Chuck Teller.

"The participation rate is what we're trying to drive," Teller said. In the slogan "reduce, reuse, recycle, reduce," he said, "reduce is the Holy Grail. Recycling is not good enough because it costs a lot of energy and it doesn't all get recycled."

Each household that stops junk mail can save a city $10 in disposal costs annually, Teller said.

Since Santa Monica added a link to the junk mail opt-out service to its website on Feb. 6, 83 of its 89,000 residents have signed up. That may sound insignificant, but "it's about 1,500 pounds of paper that we have saved in just those 83 residents," said Kim Braun, resource recovery and recycling manager for the city of Santa Monica.

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The Garbage Maven's goal: A kids' party with no trash

-- Susan Carpenter

Photo: A U.S. Postal Service truck delivers mail. Four Southern California areas are working with Catalog Choice to cut the junk from residents' mail. Credit: Allen Schaben / Los Angeles Times

The Garbage Maven's goal: A kids' party with no trash

I used to be the sort of mom who strung Mylar balloons with ribbon strings for my son's birthday parties. For each of his eight years, I handed out goody bags stuffed with candy and 99 Cents Only Store toys. I bought cakes topped with plastic decorations. I served junk food and Capri Suns. I was oblivious to the mounds of waste I was generating. I just wanted to throw the perfect party.

This year, I decided on something different. For my son's ninth, trash was the enemy. The goal: a party that generates zero garbage. There would be no Slinkies or wax candy mustaches. And Mylar? That was definitely out.

Throwing a zero-waste party was a challenge. I'm not going to lie. Certain items just weren't possible to eliminate, and the party needed to seem just as fun and “normal” as any of the previous birthday blowouts I've thrown. It's one thing to live environmentally conscious myself. It's another thing to ask parents I didn't know well to be part of the experiment, or to include my son, who splits his time between my house and his dad's, where recycling isn't as big a priority.

Garbage Maven: Must so much food end up in landfills?

As Americans across the country prep their 20-pound Butterballs for the annual gorge fest of Thanksgiving, I had a flashback to a story I reported earlier this year. An estimated 31% of all turkey purchased in the U.S. is thrown away.

Translate that percentage to Thanksgiving specifically, and that means of the 736 million pounds of turkey people intended to gobble down last year at this time, an astounding 228 million pounds ended up in the trash, according to the Meat Eater's Guide produced by the Environmental Working Group, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit. That's to say nothing of the Brussels sprouts, cranberry relish and mashed potatoes.

Food waste is the largest component of the municipal waste stream in the U.S., according to the Environmental Protection Agency. Annually, that piles up to 33 million tons, or 14%, of the country's solid waste. According to the L.A.'s Bureau of Sanitation, 27% of what's thrown in the black bin here is food. All the resources used to bring that food to the table are wasted with a single scrape of a plate.

Some of the reasons are obvious. Food in the U.S. is fairly inexpensive. Food goes bad. And when it does, the trash can is just so easy to use.

The green bin seems like it should be an option, at least for fruit and vegetable scraps, but Alex Helou, assistant director of L.A.'s Bureau of Sanitation and the guy in charge of the city's solid waste collection, said no.

“The state has weird rules,” Helou said. “If you have an apple that falls from your garden, you can put it in the green bin. If you eat an apple, the state considers that a food scrap and you're not supposed to put it in.”

Garbage Maven: New service stops junk mail before it's sent

Each year, more than 100 billion flyers, circulars, catalogs, donation requests, newsletters and other unsolicited pieces of standard class mail are delivered by the U.S. Postal Service, according to the 2009 USPS Household Diary Study.

Now the website that has processed more than 20 million catalog suppression requests in the last four years is unveiling a new service to stop even more junk mail before it's even sent. Tuesday, the Berkeley-based nonprofit, CatalogChoice.org, unveiled a new MailStop Envelope to prevent not only catalogs but credit card offers, grocery store circulars, phone books and other unwanted solicitations. Using a MailStop Envelope purchased from the website for $6.75, individuals can place as many as 15 labels from unwanted mail into the envelope and send it to Catalog Choice, whose staff will scan the labels and fill out companies' opt-out requests on behalf of its Envelope users. 

"If you have to go to every company yourself, it's so mind-bogglingly difficult. That's why we've built these tools to make it super easy," said Catalog Choice executive director Chuck Teller.

Until today, individuals who wanted to opt out of junk mail with Catalog Choice had to do so online. "But there are a lot of people for whom the Internet is still difficult, so the envelope has really been designed for those people," Teller said, adding that about 2% of American households are opting out of at least some types of mail through Catalog Choice.

Later this month, Catalog Choice will offer a downloadable app to allow users to snap a picture of a catalog or other piece of junk mail with an iPhone, after which the opt out will be processed by Catalog Choice.

Teller estimates that one tree is saved for each MailStop Envelope used to stop 15 pieces of junk mail for two years. He said the recyclable envelopes are locally produced by a "green" printer and printed with soy-based inks.

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Photo: MailStop envelope from Catalog Choice. Credit: Catalog Choice