Some jurisdictions are trying to do something about the problem. Mexico City has become the latest city to ban plastic shopping bags. Just weeks ago, a law passed in March by the local assembly became effective – with a one-year grace period during which no fines will be levied for violation of the ban.

Mexico City joins San Francisco, Mumbai, New Delhi and hundreds of other cities, as well as several countries, in banning the ubiquitous bags. Many cities and countries without an outright ban have taxed plastic bags to the point where people have virtually stopped using them. Ireland, for example, began charging for plastic bags in 2002, and, since then, usage has plummeted. The country has, in effect, forced its citizens to be more environmentally conscious.

Italy and France intend to institute their own bans next year. China and Australia have already done so.

Conspicuously absent from the discussion is the biggest user of all – the United States. While a few cities have banned the bags, they remain the exception rather than the rule, and the country continues to use as many as 100 billion plastic bags every year – some (think of the plastic bag your Subway sandwich comes in) for a mere few seconds.

San Francisco banned the bags in 2007, and the Los Angeles City Council unanimously passed a ban to become effective in July 2010. However, since then, questions have arisen as to whether an Environmental Impact Report (EIR) would be necessary under the California Environmental Quality Act. According to Paul Backstrom, the Field Deputy for LA Councilman Jack Weiss, that looks likely. Such a report would focus on “economic impacts to industry and small mom-and-pop shops.” And, Backstrom says, no one is sure how the city would fund the EIR.

Plastic bags do have their champions. The Save the Plastic Bag Coalition has fought plastic bag ban proposals in Oakland, Manhattan Beach, LA County, Palo Alto, Santa Clara County, San Diego, Santa Monica, Mountain View, Morgan Hill and San Jose. Its website argues that “Paper bags are far worse for the environment than plastic bags. Paper bags result in 3.3 times more greenhouse gas emissions than plastic bags. Paper bags use up 2.5 times more landfill space than plastic bags. Not to mention the trees.”

It is true that the manufacture of both paper and plastic bags involves significant resources. It also is true that paper bags take up more landfill space than do plastic bags. Then again, unlike paper, plastic takes hundreds of years to degrade. And the very thing that allows plastic bags to take up less landfill space – their light weight – also allows them to ride a stiff breeze to the tops of trees. (Then again, tens of millions of trees are needed to produce the billions of paper bags manufactured annually, so trees with bags in them or no trees?)

Many environmentalists argue that banning plastic bags and not paper bags isn’t really helping matters. They would argue for banning both and encouraging the use of reusable bags.

Currently, California courts aren’t universally friendly toward plastic bag bans, mostly holding that local jurisdictions must prepare EIRs, an exercise that often is beyond their financial capabilities. And, just as public opinion looked like it was moving inexorably toward support for such bans, the economy soured, and even fairly affluent and liberal Seattle voted down a usage fee.

And, as New York Times reporter William Yardley pointed out in an article about plastic bag bans nationwide , environmental groups aren’t making such bans a top item on their agendas, which, as he noted, are more likely to “focus on broad federal issues like carbon emissions, renewable energy and use of public lands.”

In the end, the answer to the question at the end of the checkout line – “plastic or paper?” – is currently best governed by personal preference and values.

Well, the California Sustainability Alliance can help.

The University of California system won one of the CSA

The organization, which brings together key stakeholders to overcome barriers to sustainability in areas like climate action, smart growth , renewable energy, water-use efficiency, and waste and transportation management, is accepting nominations for its second Sustainability Showcase Awards. The Awards recognize successful sustainable policies, programs, practices and technologies implemented by leading organizations in five categories:
• Commercial Building Organizations
• Multi-Family Housing Organizations
• Local Governments
• Water Agencies and
• Sellers of Other Products or Services.

Winners in each category will be honored at the California Sustainability Alliance Showcase Awards Luncheon to be held in February 2010 and will be featured in showcases on the Alliance’s website. Of the five winning organizations, the organization that best exemplifies a comprehensive adoption of sustainability policies and practices in all aspects of its business and operations will be announced as the Grand Prize winner at the awards luncheon and featured in a video documentary highlighting its successes.

Nominations will be accepted until Midnight, October 30, 2009. Winners will be announced on December 1, 2009. The entry form is online at http://sustainca.org/showcase/showcase2009.

The Alliance held its first Sustainability Showcase awards ceremony at a luncheon held on February 10, 2009. Secretary Rosario Marin, former Treasurer of the United States and then Secretary of the State and Consumer Services Agency in California, delivered the keynote address and presented awards to the Inland Empire Utilities Agency, Thomas Properties Group and the University of California.

The Inland Empire Utilities Agency was recognized for innovation in integrated resource management, exemplified through a diverse portfolio of best-in-class projects and initiatives that range from green buildings, energy efficient water and wastewater systems and operations, and renewable energy, to fully integrated management of the region’s water, energy and biosolids resources.

Thomas Properties Group, which partnered with the State and Consumer Services Agency to make the California Environmental Protection Agency headquarters building one of the greenest in the country, was recognized for its leadership in greening California’s real estate and in integrating sustainable design and operations into all aspects of its products, services and investments.

The University of California was recognized for excellence in environmental leadership and the best example of a customer-initiated partnership through which students, employees and campus administrators are successfully collaborating to address climate change, clean energy, green buildings, sustainable transportation, environmental purchasing and waste reduction on all of the University’s 10 campuses.

“Not long ago, there wasn’t much a landfill could do with methane, except burn it,” points out Brendan Schlauch in the September issue of Governing magazine. “That cuts down the pungent smell and makes nice with neighbors who are unfortunate enough to live near a landfill. Recently, however, localities have come to see methane not just as a stinky nuisance but also as a valuable commodity. Hundreds of landfills around the country have begun transforming methane into electricity and biofuels. The gas can be sent directly to buildings to run heating and cooling systems, can be purified into natural gas, and liquefied or compressed to power garbage trucks and city buses.”

The magazine offers the Development Authority of the North Country, which owns and operates a landfill in New York, as an example. DANC pipes the gas out of the landfill and sends it to a facility where it is processed into heating fuel and used to power an electric plant. Carbon credits offered by the California Action Reserve (CAR), an independent nonprofit that helps organizations both in and out of California to determine their carbon footprint, help foot the bill for the operating costs.

Schlauch states that methane’s relatively short life (nine to 15 years in the atmosphere as opposed to 50 to 200 years for CO2) makes scientists “optimistic that major reductions in methane emissions could lead to a slowing of short-term climate change.”

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Landfill Methane Outreach Program can’t help these gas-to-energy projects financially, but it will work with landfills to help them determine the economic feasibility of such projects and to find sources of financing. And CAR offers carbon credits that can be sold to other organizations.

Governing points out that “a growing number of private companies are working with municipal landfills to tap these offsets as revenue source. For example, an outfit called Blue Source will pay the upfront costs of a municipal landfill-gas-to-energy project, in exchange for a piece of the profit from offsets trading.”

Landfills may one day power entire cities if methane can be effectively harnessed.

San Francisco currently recycles about 72 percent of its waste, the best percentage in the country. Composting food waste could up that figure to 90 percent, according to some estimates. Additionally, food scraps, plant waste and other organic materials decompose in landfills, creating methane, a greenhouse gas that is 20 times more potent than CO2. According to the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, an organization dedicated to environmentally friendly development, the global warming impact of methane emissions in the short term is 72 times greater than the impact of CO2. (See Methane to Energy post above)

In a June 2008 report, Stop Trashing the Climate, the Institute noted that reducing materials going to landfills and incinerators could be equivalent to shuttering 21 percent of the country’s 417 coal-fired energy plants.

“San Francisco has the best recycling and composting programs in the nation,” Mayor Gavin Newsom said. “We can build on our success.”

The city sends its food scraps and other compostable material each day to the Jepson-Prairie composting facility in Vacaville, Calif. Owned by Recology, the facility uses the scraps to create soil amendments that it sells to vineyards, retail soil bagging operations, landscapers and the erosion control industry,

The Jepson-Prairie composting facility turns San Francisco's food waste into soil amendments.

According to the Environmental Defense Fund www.edf.org, the U.S. has 30 percent of the world’s cars but emits 45 percent of the world’s global automotive CO2 emissions; an estimated 450 million tons are emitted by personal vehicles alone.

So, on the 22nd, give your car the day off. Hop a subway or ride a bike. The planet will be grateful.

The women – volunteers and community groups – grow herbs like thyme, sage, oregano and basil, along with lettuce, tomatoes, peas, eggplant and pepper and a variety of flowers. The garden is supported by the Bronx Botanical Garden, Greenthumb NYC and For A Better Bronx (FABB).

According to a 2008 article on Scienceline, the South Bronx has the highest rates of asthma and diabetes in the city. The streets of the community are lined with fast-food joints, and residents often have no information about healthy eating and few options for purchasing fresh produce.

But groups like “Learn It, Grow It, Eat It” (LGE) are trying to change that. A collaboration of the Council on the Environment of New York City’s Environmental Education, Open Space Greening and Greenmarket programs, LGE is housed in four high schools and three community gardens in the Morrisania section of the South Bronx. The group is incorporating high school health education with its support of community gardens (there are more than 600 such gardens in the city). The organization also offers high school credit for garden maintenance.

The President is a fan of high-speed rail. In June 2008, noting that engineers in China were developing a 300-mph train, he told the U.S. Conference of Mayors, “I don’t want to see the fastest train in the world built halfway around the world in Shanghai. I want to see it built right here in the United States of America.”
The U.S. currently has just one high-speed rail system – the Amtrak Acela Express system that connects Boston to Washington, D.C., via New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore. Acela trains average 68 miles per hour but do reach 150 mph during the trip.
Internationally, trains are considered “high-speed rail” if they reach 125 mph. But the FRA defines express, regional and emerging high-speed rail as three separate entities.
• High-Speed Rail – Express: Frequent, express service between major population centers 200–600 miles apart with intermediate stops. With top speeds of at least 150 mph, these systems are intended to relieve air and highway capacity constraints.
• High-Speed Rail – Regional: Relatively frequent service between major and moderate population centers 100–500 miles apart with some intermediate stops. Top speeds of 110-150 mph, grade-separated, with some dedicated and some shared track. These systems are designed to relieve highway and, to some extent, air capacity constraints.
• Emerging High-Speed Rail: Developing corridors of 100–500 miles with strong potential for future Regional and/or Express service. Top speeds of 90-110 mph on primarily shared track (eventually using positive train control technology) with advanced grade crossing protection or separation. Intended to develop the passenger rail market and provide some relief to other modes.

In April, the FRA released it’s a plan for development of high-speed rail in the U.S., identifying 10 corridors as potential funding targets.
• Northern New England Corridor—Boston, Portland/Auburn, Maine; Montreal, Canada; Springfield, Mass.; and New Haven, Conn.;
• California Corridor—Sacramento, San Francisco, San Jose, Los Angeles, San Diego;
• Pacfic Northwest Corridor—Eugene and Portland, Ore.; and Seattle and Vancouver, Wash.;
• South Central Corridor—Tulsa and Oklahoma City, Okla.; Little Rock, Ark.; and Dallas and San Antonio, Texas;
• Gulf Coast Corridor—Houston, New Orleans and Mobile, Ala.;
• Chicago Hub Corridor—Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland, Kansas City and St. Louis, Mo.; Louisville, Ky.; Milwaukee and Minneapolis/St. Paul;
• Florida Corridor—Tampa, Orlando and Miami;
• Southeast Corridor—Richmond, Va.; Raleigh and Charlotte, N.C.; Columbia, S.C.; Atlanta; and Jacksonville, Fla.;
• Keystone Corridor—Pittsburgh, Philadelphia; and
• Empire Corridor—Buffalo and Albany, N.Y.
On June 17, the FRA issued interim guidance to applicants covering grant terms, conditions and procedures until final regulations are issued. The agency will evaluate grant proposals for their ability to make trips quicker and more convenient, reduce congestion on highways and at airports, and meet other environmental, energy and safety goals. The FRA plans to begin awarding grants in mid-September.

The village has made becoming the country’s first zero carbon emissions community its goal, according to a piece by Sarah Mukherjee, environment correspondent for BBC News. It all started when Garry Charnock, a local resident, attended a literary festival where he heard the government’s former chief scientific adviser, Sir David King, talking about the need for action on climate change. “I came away wondering how I could make a difference,” he told the reporter. “And I realized that the little things, switching off lights, turning down your thermostat, that sort of thing, could make a big change overall if you did it at a community level.”
Charnock pulled Roy Alexander, another villager who is also professor of environmental sustainability at the University of Chester, on board, and the idea took off. Now, by doing the easy things like turning down the thermostat, the village has reduced its energy consumption by 23 percent. Charnock and Alexander even convinced the skeptical owner of the local pub to pitch in, telling him he could save as much as £250 by turning off his cooker in the mornings and keeping the beer outdoors rather than running the cooler in the winter.
Now the village is home to solar panels, wind turbines and other sources of alternative energy. And residents have successfully lobbied for a path linking the school, the railways and other communities to encourage walking. But the biggest plus to come out of the whole endeavor was the sense of community the project inspired. “I’ve lived in the village for 25 years, and I’ve met people I’ve never met before as a result of the project,” Lynn May, a local businesswoman, told the BBC.