Break out the good champagne!

According to Bloomberg, Disney is the latest company to join a growing list of corporations that have decided to stop the use of single-use plastic straws. Earlier this month, The Washington Post reported that Seattle became “the first major city in the United States to ban drinking straws,” and Starbucks announced that it would remove single-use plastic straws from its 28,000 stores by 2020. To round out this plastic-free parade, in June BBC News reported that McDonald’s will replace plastic straws with paper ones in all of its UK and Ireland locations, starting in September.

For those of you on the front lines of the single-use plastic straw movement, we hope that these recent moves in corporate America will encourage you to keep fighting the good fight. These huge shifts signify not only that your efforts are having an effect, but that the removal of single-use plastic straws is becoming the new norm in our society. At a time when it feels like so much in the world is going wrong, it is refreshing to learn that some things are going right.

To learn more about plastic pollution and an inspiring global effort to reduce plastic waste, read our blog post from last July, Plastic Waste & The Ocean Cleanup.

Sources:

Golum, Rob, “Disney Joins Cast of Companies Abandoning Plastic Straws,” Bloomberg, 2018.
Wootson, Jr., Cleve R., “Seattle becomes first major U.S. city to ban straws,” The Washington Post, 2018.
“Disney Expands Environmental Commitment by Reducing Plastic Waste,” The Walt Disney Company, 2018.
“McDonald’s to ditch plastic straws,” BBC News, 2018.
“Starbucks to Eliminate Plastic Straws Globally by 2020,” Starbucks, 2018.

This month, we look at a new law that bans offshore drilling in New Jersey state waters and the rocks of Oman that have the chemical potential to help fight climate change.

NEW JERSEY BANS OFFSHORE DRILLING IN STATE WATERS

On April 20, Governor Phil Murphy signed a bipartisan bill, A839, into law. The bill bans offshore drilling for oil and natural gas in a three-mile ocean stretch that the state controls. The new law is an important step to help protect New Jersey’s 130 miles of shoreline, which contribute in large measure to the state’s $4B tourism industry. A839 requires that the state Department of Environmental Protection review any oil and natural gas development proposals in the Atlantic region in order to assess the potential impact on New Jersey’s coast. While the law does not block drilling in federal waters, it does prohibit the approval of any facilities or infrastructure related to it.

The signing ceremony took place at the Point Pleasant Beach boardwalk on the eighth anniversary of the Deepwater Horizon spill — the largest oil spill in American history. “Our coast is a national treasure and the home of so many personal memories of millions of people,” Murphy said before he signed the bill. “Today and together we’re making sure the Jersey shore remains a place where only good memories are made.”

Sources:

Johnson, Brent, “Murphy bans oil drilling off N.J. shore (and tries to stop Trump),” New Jersey On-Line, LLC, 2018.

Racioppi, Dustin, “To counter Trump, North Jersey bans offshore drilling in state waters,” NorthJersey.com, 2018.

OMAN ROCKS TURN CO2 INTO STONE

On April 26, The New York Times published a story on how the rocks of Oman turn carbon dioxide (CO2) into stone. Peridotite is a type of igneous rock found in the oceanic crust and mantle of the earth. According to scientists, tectonic forces raised the rock formations of Oman 100 million years ago. Once exposed to air and water, peridotite contains a high level of chemical potential, which means that it can absorb large quantities of free energy before it attains chemical equilibrium with the environment.

CO2 is the most prevalent greenhouse gas, and we have filled the atmosphere with billions of tons of CO2 since the start of the Industrial Revolution. As air and water flow through the rocks, CO2 is chemically transformed into carbonate minerals through a process known as carbon mineralization. Evidence of carbon mineralization is seen in the white veins that marble the rocks of Oman.

Worldwide carbon emissions estimate nearly 40 billion tons per year, but scientists project that the 200-mile long, 25-mile wide, northern stretch of Omani peridotite can store at least one billion tons of CO2 annually. And Oman is not the only place where peridotite rocks are found. Albania, Papua New Guinea, and Northern California contain vast stretches of peridotite, and scientists and geoengineers have begun to think of methods by which to accelerate the natural process of carbon mineralization. With a form of geoengineering known as direct-air capture, it is possible to build machines that suck CO2 out of the air and pump it into peridotite rocks.

To read the full article, click here.

Source:

Fountain, Henry, “How Oman’s Rocks Could Help Save the Planet,” The New York Times, 2018.

In light of the coming storm and the potential for flooding in various neighborhoods, we want to share three useful safety tips, courtesy of Mass.gov and State of New Jersey Office of Emergency Preparedness.

1. Make a family emergency plan.

Listen to the evacuation alerts in your town. In case of emergency, separation, or evacuation, choose two places for your family to meet. The first place can be near the house, like a favorite family restaurant or a relative’s house. The second location should be farther away, beyond the evacuation area. Enter “in case of emergency” (ICE) contacts into each family member’s phone. Include the contact’s name, phone number, and address, and be sure to include at least one out-of-state contact. And keep those gas tanks full.

2. Prepare for power outages.

Charge those cell phones, laptops, and other electronic devices! If you have a portable battery charger, make sure it’s charged as a backup. Replace the batteries in your flashlights and stock up on candles, firewood, or a generator if necessary. Keep the doors closed to unused rooms in order to preserve heat, and set your freezer and refrigerator to their lowest settings. A closed refrigerator will keep food cold for about four hours while a closed freezer will keep food cold for about 48 hours. If you see a downed power line or if you are dependent on equipment that requires electricity, call 911. Bonus: Have a few games prepared that aren’t dependent on electricity. Our favorites are Quiddler, Scrabble, and Taboo.

3. Assemble an emergency kit.

Think of everything your family needs to be self-sufficient for three days: One gallon of water per person per day; a three-day supply of non-perishable food that does not need to be cooked; personal hygiene items, medications, clothes, and shoes; copies of any necessary medical information or important documents; a first-aid kit, whistle, wipes, and any necessary pet supplies.

Sounds super serious, but your safety is important enough to be take seriously! And taking the steps to ensure that the above items are in place will only help you feel prepared and secure in case things do get serious.

We hope that everyone is safe out there and that, if the need arises, we’ll all be good neighbors and help out in any way we can.

Sources:

“Prepare Your Home for Emergencies,” Mass.gov, 2018.

“Plan and Prepare for Emergencies,” State of New Jersey Office of Emergency Preparedness, 2018.

Help preserve the beauty for future generations so they can fall in love too… learn about how to properly recycle by downloading the Remyndr app today. Have a very Happy Valentine’s Day.

Tom Cherry, CEO and Founder of Remyndr

Did you know that every person in the United States creates about 4.5lbs of garbage every day? That is equivalent to 1,643 pounds a year! But where does it all go once you throw it away? Introducing Trash Unwrapped. A blog series dedicated to getting your garbage or recycling questions answered.

So, once your throw your trash away and take out the garbage, now what? Well simply put, it’s in your neighborhood trash man or lady’s hands. From there, your trash typically makes its way to a Transfer Station, or in some cases, an Energy Recovery facility. If taken to a Transfer Station, the trash will be sorted and then re-transferred to its final destination. Sometimes this is a landfill where waste is buried and left to decompose. This process can take hundreds if not thousands of years.

Another option is an Incinerator or Energy Recovery Facility. This is where your garbage is burned into ash and heat—often times to generate energy. For every 10 garbage trucks filled with trash, only one will remain (filled with ash) after going through the burning process. The hot, burning trash heats up pipes overhead filled with water, which then turn into steam. This steam activates generators that give the plant, (and sometimes those nearby, residents or hospitals), energy to use.

The last option is that trash is taken to a recycling center where it will be transferred to a manufacturing plant so materials can be used to make new products. Pretty cool right?

If not properly disposed, waste can end up harming the environment and polluting our air and water. Who wants that? This is why it’s so important that we put our trash into the proper containers.

Here are 10 simple everyday things you can do to lessen your trash build-up:

1. Recycle Glass. Recycled glass reduces related air pollution by 20 percent and related water pollution by 50 percent. If it isn’t recycled it can take a million years to decompose.

2. Use one less paper napkin.
 During an average year, an American uses approximately 2,200 napkins—around six each day. If everyone in the U.S. used one less napkin a day, more than a billion pounds of napkins could be saved from landfills each year.
3. Use both sides of paper. 
American businesses throw away 21 million tons of paper every year, equal to 175 pounds per office worker. For a quick and easy way to halve this, set your printer’s default option to print double-sided (duplex printing). And when you’re finished with your documents, don’t forget to take them to the recycling bin.
4. Recycle newspaper.
 There are 63 million newspapers printed each day in the U.S. Of these, 44 million, or about 69%, of them will be thrown away. Recycling just the Sunday papers would save more than half a million trees every week.
5. Rethink bottled water.
 Nearly 90% of plastic water bottles are not recycled, instead taking thousands of years to decompose. Buy a reusable container and fill it with tap water, a great choice for the environment, your wallet, and possibly your health. The EPA’s standards for tap water are more stringent than the FDA’s standards for bottled water.
6. Plant a tree.
 It’s good for the air, the land, can shade your house and save on cooling (plant on the west side of your home), and they can also improve the value of your property. Make it meaningful for the whole family and plant a tree every year for each member.
7. Recycle unwanted wire hangers.
 Wire hangers are generally made of steel, which is often not accepted by some recycling programs. So what do you do with them? Most dry cleaners will accept them back to reuse or recycle.
8. Recycle aluminum.
 Twenty recycled aluminum cans can be made with the energy it takes to manufacture one brand new one.
9. Reduce junk mail (including paper bank statements). Feel like you need to lose a few pounds? It might be your junk mail that’s weighing you down. The average American receives 40 pounds of junk mail each year, destroying 100 millions trees. There are many services that can help reduce the clutter in your mailbox, saving trees and the precious space on your counter tops.
10. Plastic bags stink. Each year the U.S. uses 84 billion plastic bags, a significant portion of the 500 billion used worldwide. They are not biodegradable, and are making their way into our oceans, and subsequently, the food chain. Stronger, reusable bags are an inexpensive and readily available option.

Do you have any additional suggestions on how to cut down on waste? If so, let us know in the comment section.

Tom Cherry, CEO and Founder of Remyndr

Sources:

50 Ways to Help the Planet

The Lifecycle of Garbage

With a New Year on the horizon, there is no shortage of New Year Resolution articles and blog posts popping up. From exercising and eating right, to giving up smoking, recycling or spending more time with family – the intention is always there, but not always the follow through.

It’s important to set yourself up for success when creating your New Year’s resolution list, (that is if you’re creating a list at all). How you ask? By remembering the 66-day rule.

On average, it takes more than 2 months before a new behavior becomes automatic — 66 days to be exact. And how long it takes a new habit to form can vary widely depending on the behavior, the person, and the circumstances.

Take recycling for example; to be successful, it will be important to recycle diligently for about two months. Once you make it past this milestone, you are well on your way to achieving your goal for the remainder of the year.

It’s always easier to break new goals up into smaller more attainable pieces. If you start off by saying that you will recycle everyday for the whole year, the likelihood of that happening is slim. Now, by breaking it down into weeks and giving yourself a more tangible timeline your recycling goal is much more attainable.

Remember, 66 is the magic number. Focus on making it to March 7th and the rest of the year should be a cakewalk… that is if you’re still eating cake by then. Whatever your goals are for 2016, we hope this post helps you achieve them! Leave us your thoughts and New Year’s resolutions below.

We wish everyone a Happy and Safe New Year’s Eve!

Tom Cherry, CEO and Founder of Remyndr