Monday, December 19, 2011

Socialist Plot to Take Away Your Plastic Bags!

Thank you for checking back in.  Here is some recent news from the "Zero Waste" front.  StopWaste.Org recently proposed two new ordinances for Alameda County: 1) a "Mandatory Recycling Ordinance" and a 2) a "Single Use Bag Reduction Ordinance."  I will give some information on both proposals.  The information in this post is mostly obtained from the project EIR, posted on stopwaste.org.  An article appeared in the Yodeler online this past summer, written by Debra Kaufman (I think) from Stopwaste.org reporting on the general intentions of StopWaste to put these proposals forward.

In case you wanted to know, StopWaste is a hybrid of the Alameda County Waste Management Authority (ACWMA), an independent agency, and the Source Reduction and Recycling Board, approved by Alameda County voters in 1990 as part of Alameda Cty Measure D.  Its offices are at 1537 Webster St., only blocks from my office at Kaiser, and I know some of the staff who work there through my past non-profit activities.  I have had generally good interaction with StopWaste, and am impressed they are able to carry on their work despite the uncertain financial situation facing area cities, and the complicated politics of being a hybrid "agency" / voter approved board.

Getting back to the proposals, the proposed county wide mandatory recycling program (CWMRP) would charge a fine "for putting things like newspapers, aluminum cans and food scraps in the garbage instead of recycle and compost bins."  The Oakland Tribune recently reported on the program.  The goal is to divert 90 percent of materials that could be recycled or composted, such as paper, plant debris and food, from city dumps by 2020. Right now 69 percent gets composted or recycled.  Phase 1 would begin in July with businesses, haulers and the owners or managers of multifamily buildings such as apartments.  As the project EIR puts it, the CWMRP is supposed to "maximize recovery of recyclable and organic materials and reduce the disposal of recoverable materials."  This goal is tied to the effort to reduce carbon dioxide emissions through needless trucking of waste to landfill.  If  more waste that can be separated and recycled, the less waste needs to be trucked from Oakland to Altamont Land Fill (40 miles away) and from other East Bay cities, as well.

The plan begins with paper, cardboard, food and beverage containers and a variety of similar materials. Phase 2 would start July 2014 and expand to mandatory composting. San Diego, San Carlos, San Francisco and Sacramento are among other California cities that have put mandatory commercial recycling rules on the books.  Though there is a long list of suggested rules to apply to different properties, including single family, multi-unit, commercial / business and retail tenants, the basic gist of it is that everyone will be required to separate their waste, for instance newspaper and carboard, from the regular trash, in case they were not doing so already. The EIR states on page 10: "The difference will be that the garbage containers will not be as large or as full, and the recyclables and organics containers will be more completely filled, more often."

The second proposed ordinance is the very benign sounding Single Use Bag Reduction Ordinance.  This ordinance would "ban" single use plastic bags and force county stores that sell packaged food to charge a .10 fee for each paper bag, incentivizing customers to bring their own, reusable, bags.  If adopted, the "bag ban" *(ban on plastic, fee for paper) would begin January 1, 2013 and affect about 1,900 stores in the county.  These stores include drug stores, supermarkets, pharmacies, grocery stores, convenience food stores and liquor stores. Restaurants, take-out food establishments, charitable thrift stores and retail stores that don’t sell packaged food would be exempt from the ordinance.

While you might think this ordinance would not attract as much opposition as the first one, in fact it's just the opposite.  The plastic bag fee proposal got the retailers and plastics manufacturers, under the umbrella of an organization named "Save the Plastic Bag Coalition," to write a 27 page EIR comment letter (check the  EIR document linked above if you want to read the letter).  This letter, signed by the coaliltion's legal counsel, makes the case that a) plastic bags aren't as big a problem as we think they are, b) banning plastic bags while charging a fee for paper bags will not reduce greenhouse gas emissions, because the paper bags, which require more energy to create than plastic, will not be recycled as the author of the proposal assumes, and c) the proposal is unfair to plastics manufacturers because it bans plastic bags while only charging a low fee for paper.  Or so I understood.  I may be misinterpreting this letter.  It's so very long and full of spurious claims doubting the findings of the EIR.  I basically see this letter as an attempt to threaten the county with a lawsuit - which occurred before when other CA municipalities tried to ban plastic bags (including Oakland).  The pasticbaglaws.org website in fact points to one of the culprits of the current predicament: AB2449, passed in 2006 under then Gov. Schwarzennegger, which, while requiring stores over a certain size to provide plastic bag recycling bins, bans these same stores from charging a fee for plastic bags:

"The bill would declare that certain matters regarding plastic carryout
bags are matters of statewide interest and concern. The bill would prohibit
a city, county, or other public agency from adopting, implementing, or
enforcing an ordinance, resolution, regulation, or rule that requires a store
to collect, transport, or recycle plastic carryout bags or conduct additional
auditing or reporting, or imposing a plastic carryout bag fee upon a store,
except as specified."

In the absence of the ability to charge a fee for plastic, municipalities and counties across the state are instead opting to go the more strict route of banning plastic bags altogether.  And manufacturers and retailers are predictably protesting.  However, they have no right to protest - they should have allowed cities and stores to charge a plastic fee back in 2006, but instead it was their influence that led to AB2449 being written (or flawed, in my opinion) so as to forbid this common-sense practice.

By the way: the Save the Plastic Bag Coalition has an interesting web page that disputes the size and scope of the "Pacific Garbage Patch" in the Pacific Ocean.

In summary, I am glad that StopWaste.org has come forward with these 2 ordinances despite the challenge it will be to implement it, to educate the public and then enforce the terms.  I wish we could do what other nations have done - like Canada, Australia and Europe, where they charge a fee for both paper and plastic bags.  The essential problem appears to be, as usual, our own political culture.

Wednesday, November 30, 2011

Links I need to refer to

Pardon my interrupting the exciting flow of information coming to you via my blog but I am putting in some links here for my own use.  I used to have my own web domain for such things but it got to be too expensive so this is my alternate method.

SunGard to Implement MACESS.exp at Kaiser Permanente; Three-Year Claims Payment Consolidation Initiative Takes Advantage of Advanced Business Process Management System.

Wednesday, July 13, 2011

Visit to Wausaukee

Since I am not a big fan of air travel on holidays, I decided to visit Wisconsin the weekend after July 4th and see what the parentals are up to instead of fighting the crowds and firework toting yahoos spoiling my North Woods peace on Independence Day.  This worked out pretty well and I am happy to report I got through the entire weekend without hearing a firework or gun being shot off – a real rarity for Wausaukee and Wisconsin.

Arriving on AirTran at Mitchell Airport at 7 in the morning, it was nice to get picked up by Dad in the same type of car that my parents have been driving for 40+ years (used car no less than 10 years old).  The weather was in the low 80s and humidity noticeably higher than where I live in the Bay Area, though I am very aware that I am spoiled living in a climate that has no temperatures lower than 50 nor higher than 85, with hardly any humidity year-round (except when it rains). 

I noticed there was a lot of construction work being done near Mitchell Airport, and this was also nothing new since it seems like construction has been going on there since about 2000.  I did not stop in the City of Milwaukee once during my visit, just driving by north and south on my way to Mequon, Wausaukee, and back.  The City looked as it always does in summer: clean, orderly, green and quiet.  I read in the newspaper about the “mobbing” by a gang of pre-teen and teenage youth in the Riverwest neighborhood (about 1 mile inland from Lake Michigan, not far from UWM).  It's a little hard to believe this stuff happens in as serene a place as Milwaukee.  I even hung around that neighborhood when I went to UWM 1997-99.

I also read about as the usual crowds of people and sweltering temperatures at the Summerfest grounds along the Lakefront.  Summerfest appears to be as popular as ever, even including a footrace this year where about 1,000 people suffered from dehydration because of high heat and humidity and the race organizers running out of water.

One common theme in Milwaukee in the summer, then, is crowds of people trying to enjoy themselves, to exercise or in the case of the Riverwest youth mob, to commit crime together.  So there is definitely a social element in Milwaukee!

We left for the northern town of Wausaukee around 3 p.m. the same day, allowing me to catch up on some sleep after the red-eye flight.  The weather was fine and Mom had even gotten the usual chocolate croissants for the car ride, which is about the only time she gets sweets from the bakery.  We got to Wausaukee about 6 and the first thing I did was buy a fishing license at the local gas station on the way to the cabin so I could go bass fishing, which is just about my favorite thing to do there.  Luckily I had provisioned some new rubber worms and worm-hooks the previous year, so I was “geared up” and didn't need to purchase extra.  There are not many good stores left to buy fishing tackle in Wausaukee anymore.  Like other small towns in America, Wausaukee is losing out the the big retailers in other towns 20, 30 and 40 minutes away.  But I digress.  I do not fish for bass with anything other than rubber worms and craw-dads these days, with maybe a Fat Boy floating minnow to mix it up.  Rubber baits are where it’s at in summer.  You've got to throw some bait down where the bass hang out and just about hit them on the head with them before they will bite.  At least, that's how I like to think.  And when those bass do bite, it’s exciting action and the pulse and fight of a healthy fish of just about any size is hard to beat in terms of fun and excitement.

Anyways, I headed out in the canoe about 7 p.m., allowing me to put in 2 quality fishing hours.  Being in the lightweight fiberglass canoe, I got blown around a bit on the lake, though, so that I was not able to do much good bottom-fishing.  Without an anchor or trolling motor (our family does not believe in technology), the fishing is usually just not very productive when there is any wind at all for me.  I need those still, windless, humid North Woods sunsets to liven up the fishing action, when the water gets calm and glassy, you can see bugs swirling around the boat  (and up and down your neck and arms), the fish are sometimes feeding on surface insects, and frogs croak on the shoreline.  I love that feeling and weather and stillness, only occasionally broken by my canoe paddle, a passing motorboat or my uttered curses when I again miss a cast and have to untangle my line from some weeds or from my own gear.


I did see a loon up close, which was neat, and a really beautiful sunset on the lake (I took this on my cell phone.)

That same evening (after fishing) some family stopped by so I caught up on the latest Lewandowski/  Paluta / Napierkowski  news.  This is always good.  It seems a lot of information gets exchanged in Wausaukee this way.  When I am there and talking to relatives, it is usually the best way to learn about the family goings on, graduations,  weddings, babies, new/lost jobs, and also less fortunate situations.  Our family just is one of those that likes to know your business.  I guess  it's part of what they call being "close-knit."

The next day, Saturday, Uncle Roy met me at 8 and we headed out on the pontoon boat for our next round of fishing.  Again, I got skunked, though this time I had the advantage of a big boat and motors (both outboard and trolling), more gear and a good vantage point.  However one of the rods I took was Dad’s old spincast set from about 1980 that doesn’t cast worth a darn anymore.  So that messed me up.  Plus, I just was plain not concentrating and missed many casts (even more than the previous night).  Also, the fish just weren’t biting on my bottom fishing lures.  Uncle Roy caught 2 bass, embarrassing me, using his Rapala floating minnow.  He threw them both back (neither fish was much to brag about.) 

Coming back to land, I had the usual healthy breakfast and then we had our requisite post-breakfast / brunch conversation about many things but nothing important.  Then I got to participate in Cabin Work Day 1, meaning I got to help Dad do some of the work there is to do around any log cabin in the North Woods.  In this case, that included cutting dead wood (or in our case, a 20 inch diameter log), moving the cut wood, digging dirt up, moving dirt to another spot, dumping dirt and raking dirt.  That was mostly it for Saturday.  I sweated up a storm and it felt pretty good.  The sweat was making my shirt heavy and running down the top of my nose.  I never sweat like that in California, except sometimes when I go for a bike ride, but even then it’s not the same kind of sweat – it’s more like a salty sweat, where I lose lots of minerals and my skin gets all crusty, but the wetness evaporates instantly because it’s so dry.  So, anyways, it was a sweaty, dirty day in Wausaukee.  In the evening I did not fish, because we were invited to dinner at 7 at Uncle Tom and Aunt Harriet’s.  They have a cabin at the end of the road.

On Sunday, I got up a little later, around 9, and again went fishing.  This was round 3 in case you are keeping track.  Finally, I got my bass.  I was fishing the area around Stein’s – not too far from the public boat landing where I have had success several times before.  I placed my rubber worm in a perfect spot, bounced it once and immediately could see the line go taught and start to move through the water.  This is always an exciting moment, when the fish takes the bait and moves with it.  The suspense is will you be able to hook the fish, and then will you be able to bring the fish to the boat without the fish spitting out the lure, tangling itself on some underwater obstacle, or otherwise dashing your hope of finally landing something?  In this case, I was in luck.  I got to enjoy the feeling of the pulsating bass fighting on the end of the line, tugging and jerking the line and even making the drag click.  It jumped out of the water at least twice as the largemouth are apt to do, trying to spit out the lure, but it had swallowed it and was hooked very firmly.  So it was just up to me to reel the fish in.  I did not take any picture though it surely would have been entertaining and fitting for this blog.  The fish could not have weighed more than about 1 lb. and was about 14 inches long.  Nevertheless it put up a nice fight and I always feel sorry when I have to hurt the fish by removing the hook.  Even after 25 years of  fishing I still feel bad.  I eventually was able to extract the barbed hook from inside the fish’s gullet and, observing no blood and no damage to the gills (you always should keep a fish if its gills are damaged), I put it back in the water and watched it swim off.  Hopefully it will live to fight another day, maybe even on my bait.

Though Wolf Lake is a much prettier place than shown here, the size of the fish shown above is about the same as I caught.  The bass I pull out of Wolf Lake have a noticeably darker color.  They are also good to eat, if I bother to keep them and clean them.

The rest of Sunday was spent working, though at the more leisurely pace that Dad now works at since he is retired.  Our big task was to repair the 20+ year old raft, which needed all the bottom boards mended sort of like an IKEA bed frame.  This was not a complicated operation except for the fact we needed to flip the raft over to work on the bottom, and the raft weighed approx. 800 lbs or more because of the weathered wood, degraded foam insulation core, nails, screws and boards.  Using some of Dad’s special Neanderthal engineering tricks (apply leverage using long posts), however, we did manage to lift the raft enough to rest it on some of the cement bricks, after which we had to recruit the 3rd adult in the party, Mom, to help flip it over in an act of brute force.   Luckily we were able to do this without damaging the raft too much or our own backs.  

After some discussion and the usual debate between Dad and myself how to best do any task, we sealed off the rotting insulation core with plastic sheeting and staples and then replaced the rotten bottom boards with new ones and nailed them on the frame.  I had actually suggested we just throw out the insulation cores and salvage the wood from the raft, since mice had decided to make a nest in it some winters ago and the Styrofoam pellets were coming off the foam, and I suppose, leaking into the water.  But surprisingly, mending and fixing the raft felt pretty good, and we made quick work.  So my worries were unnecessary.  After sealing off the foam with plastic sheets, and then replacing / re-nailing the bottom boards, we flipped over the repaired raft once more using the above mentioned technique, onto some waiting logs.  Imagine the Egyptians or the Incas moving some large stone around on round logs and you get the picture.  We finally leveraged the raft back into the water after which I went for a refreshing walk through the famous Wolf Lake muck (up to 1 ft. deep in parts) and positioned and then anchored the raft in the deeper water.  Then I went for a quick swim and came in for a nice dinner.

So we'll just have to wait till next year to determine if that raft should finally be salvaged for parts.  I wouldn't bet on it!

In the evening on Sunday (before fishing) I went up to Uncle Roy's to look for mushrooms in his woods (there were none, it was too dry) and chat a bit more.  On the way back to the cabin I ran into this young family of skunks waddling down the side of the road.  They acted pretty oblivious to my presence.  I suppose I could have tried to scare them but I was afraid of tempting the skunks to emit their spray.


This was about the most exciting wildlife I saw the whole weekend, with the exception of a bunch of deer on the fields, and some loons and sand cranes in / near the water.


Sunday after dinner, I went fishing one final time with Uncle Roy for 90 minutes, had no action, and we decided to call it a night.  It was time to once again leave the cabin.  I'll be back in September.

So anyways, that is the highlight of my July Wisconsin trip.  I won't go into details about Monday (though I was around) because that was mainly spent on the computer dealing with work and other responsibilities.




I hope I did not bore you too much with this more detailed account of my activities, but some family members and friends seem to appreciate this style of writing better.  I am glad if you were able to be entertained by this.

Tuesday, June 14, 2011

Cleaning Up

This past week I finally started doing something I've been putting off for 5 years: CLEANING MY CARPET.  You see, I live in a 60s era apartment building near Piedmont Ave. and all the units have the same bland grey carpeting (I have some friends in the building so I know what their places look like.)  This grey carpeting is fine, generally, except that it accumulates dirt and shows stains after a while if you don't clean it.  Especially when you are the type who likes to cook on their own or fix their own  bikes inside their apartment (even if I tried to use newspapers to catch the grease - it didn't always work.)  So then you have all these GREASE STAINS and they make the carpet (and therefore the place you live in) look crappy.  Yet, if you're like me, you just sort of ignore it, realizing that the effort needed to actually deal with the problem would take more time than you are willing to spend to fix it.  And to be honest, it never really bothered me much, until somebody pointed it out.  Which somebody eventually did (almost 2 years ago, to be exact).  Actually, it was more than one person.

So, recently, over Memorial Day weekend, I was invited up to dinner at my friend Tom's house in Crockett.  (if you ever wanted to see a "ghost house" you should go there sometime.)  Tom showed me his carpet cleaner and this led to me thinking maybe it's time I gave it a try and clean my carpet like others have told me to do.  At the same time, I can dispose of different junk that I have accumulated over 5+ years living in this place.

Now if I had been smart, I would have taken some "before" pictures of the carpet and then also the "after" pictures to impress you with the result.  As a matter of fact, I do have some sections of the carpet still uncleaned (because most of the furniture needs to be cleared, it's a multi-stage process with me.)  So here they are:


The above picture (from my entrance) shows some of the dirt spots.  You will also note the lighter area, where I had an area rug covering it up.  Below is what it looks like now, after cleaning:


It's actually quite liberating cleaning your carpet.  I feel like, beyond the dirt I am ridding  my carpets of, I am also cleaning up a mess I've made in my personal life.  Of course that is not true: though the carpet is cleaner, my personal mess (from a recent break up) remains.  However, I can at least take heart that not everything in Mundus Kentus is a mess.

By the way, there is no environmental angle to this post.  I could have at least used an eco-degradable carpet soap, but alas, I just bought whatever they were selling at Safeway (there were only two choices: OxyClean or Pet Odor remover.  I chose Pet Odor because I used to keep some cats here for a friend.)

Thursday, March 31, 2011

Ferment Change coming up

So I'll use this blog to post something about an upcoming event I am supporting ... it's the 4th (5th?) annual "Ferment Change" event happening in May near downtown Oakland at solar powered Humanist Hall.

The best thing I love about this event is that it's all volunteer driven.  The second thing is that it's about making your own fermented food and drink which appears, especially in these recession-aware times, to have become fashionable.  In fact, everything that the "Shrinkage" article talks about - brown bagging, growing, dumpster diving, foraging, scavenging - these are all things that appear to have "emerged" in the East Bay as a new fad.  Heck, I went to the White Elephant Sale a couple weeks ago and it was a mob scene!

Anyways, since I'm sort of half way on the "planning committee" for the event (though I've successfully avoided showing up for a single planning meeting at Max's house :-)) it has given me inspiration to try my own hand at a few of the "crafts"  As a result, I'm learning to make Sauerkraut and Sourdough.  So far the sauerkraut is working, but I need more practice with sourdough bread.



All the proceeds benefit good causes.  So c'mon out and check the action - there are plenty of events to participate in!

Monday, February 21, 2011

Bob Morris Post on Why Environmentalists Failed to Mobilize Anyone at the Polls in 2010

Today I was checking in with the Sierra Club "Activist Network" (it's sort of like a Facebook application for the Sierra Club's 500,000+ members.)  Though the AN is not used very much, sometimes you do find really interesting and useful posts because of the specific environmental activist angle of all the participants.

One such A.N. post was from last November, which is by now 4 months out of date.  However, I have decided to write about it because the post follows nicely on my last post about money in politics.  My point in my last post, in case you don't want to read it, was that unlimited spending and money is the root problem of America's political system.  Bob's basic point, which sort of refutes what I was saying, is that money did NOT win last year's election for the GOP.  Bob feels that the GOP message resonated better with voters and so the GOP won.

I would disagree generally but not universally with Bob.  Where Bob reasons that the biggest failing of  environmental activists like me is an inability to communicate with our neighbors and friends, I would speculate that the elections are becoming more and more a "sounding board" of sorts for people from all walks of life, who vote for the party OUT of power if they are unhappy, and vote for the party IN power, if they are happy.  Since the economic crisis that started under W. Bush was so severe, and is still in strong effect, I would say that the last election was more a response by people frustrated with the economy, than people who were identifying with a specific idealogy (Democratic or Republican.)

I do like and respect Bob's thoughts on how to try to "talk to voters on their own terms," however.  Too often I am caught up in this trap myself, where I feel I have the moral high ground on an issue and approach it with a "how could you not agree with me?" type of attitude.  This is doubtless an unhelpful approach.

Anyways, for those of you who care to read it, here is Bob's post:
http://connect.sierraclub.org/post/ActivistNetworkBlog/enough_excuses.html