Happy New Year!

Happy New Year folks! I can't believe how the years are just flying by now. The days are long but the years are short. Now that we've been settled in the city of Chicago for about 2 1/2 months I feel that I can return to my composting ways. My makeshift composter that I had made last year from a laundry hamper has been curing for the past few months in my in-law's backyard. As a novice composter, I didn't take into account of moving (again) or these cold wintry months where decomposition takes twice as long. The design of the compost was also poor because of its rectangular shape and open top, it was hard to stir the compost. I've just been browsing on the internet today and found a great blog called enviromom. Its written by two mom's who have taken on the challenge to greenify their lives and family. There was a short post and a video about the way their families compost, which was ingenious! One family uses the Earth Machine (which I am about to purchase) while the other family buries food scraps in their garden. I am loving their blog and their ideas! Here is their composting post.

Anyway, it's a new year and I wish everyone a happy and hopeful one! My new years resolution for this year is to 1) always have hope for the future and 2) work on building better and stronger relationships. What are yours?

PET depolymerization - a chemical recycling process!

Plastics are ubiquitous. They are in our clothes, coffee mugs, and car batteries just to name a few examples. As the world population continues to grow so does our consumption of plastics. Polyethylene terephthalate or PET, better known as recycling plastic #1 is one particular plastic we encounter daily. If you have ever consumed a soda from a plastic bottle, chances are this plastic bottle had a recycling #1 stamped on the bottom of it. Unfortunately, PET bottles don't get recycled the same way as cardboard or metal does. Meaning the soda bottle you tossed into the recycling bin doesn't get washed out and refilled and then restocked at your local grocery store or vending machine. Nope, they usually will get filtered out the waste stream and crushed, ground up and then reused into a product that doesn't require high purity PET plastic material.

But what if we could actually recycle PET plastic back to a form where it is highly pure? After many years of research, scientists at IBM and Stanford have found an organic catalyst that would do just that. Dubbed as a chemical recycling process or depolymerizing plastic, PET bottles are heated in ethylene glycol in the presence of an organocatalyst. The end result is the isolation of bis terephthalate (BHET) in high yield with minimum waste products. BHET can then be transformed back into PET plastic.

A Youtube video about this process can be viewed below:

What will this mean for the future of plastics? Maybe we will be able to recycle and reuse PET plastics rather than burying them our landfill.  Now that's pretty awesome.

NY city's Soda "Ban"

This post isn't quite environmental, but anyone in New York City or heading to NYC will be affected by the soda "ban".  I put ban in "quotes" because nowhere in the measure does it ban the sale or consumption of soda itself, just the size of the cup that is sold in.

According to the Centers of Disease and Prevention, about 1/3 of Americans are considered obese (obesity = body mass index (BMI) greater than or equal to 30 - calculate your BMI here). Obesity causes numerous health issues such as type 2 diabetes, heart disease, stroke, and some cancers just to name a few. Obesity is preventable and providing healthcare is costly. In the wake of America's fight against obesity, Mayor Michael Bloomberg's plan to ban the sale of soda's that are 16 ounces or more is passed by the New York City's Board of Health, the first law of its kind in the country.

What does this law entail?

1) The law does not allow restaurants, fast-food joints, delis, movie theaters, sports stadiums, or food carts from selling sugary drinks in amounts larger than 16 ounces (~0.5 liters). Most places won't be allowed to stock cups that are larger than 16 ounces.

Picture taken from http://www.sovereignman.com/expat/brainwashing-starts-with-this-two-letter-word-7035/

2) It's not a ban on soda, it's a cap on the size of soda that you will be allowed to purchase. You are still allowed to drink as much soda you wish, the catch here is that you'll need to get a refill.

3) Fruit juices, beverages that are over 50% dairy-based, alcohol, and diet sodas won't be affected.

4) The law goes into effect in six months, March 12, 2013

I understand how people are against this measure because it oversteps our ability to make free choices for ourselves i.e. Big Brother is yanking our 16 ounce soda off the shelves! Who is to say that we can or cannot consume over 16 ounces of soda? On the other side of the argument, should we have to pay for other people's healthcare because so many are sick because of their inability to lose weight. And by putting a cap on how much soda one can purchase may deter them from drinking an excessive amount of sugar? I am going to remain politically neutral for this blog, so that argument is for you to decide and brew over.

More articles about the soda measure can be read here, here, and here.

*** Update 3/11/13

New York State Supreme Court Justice Milton Tingling puts a block on the sugary drink ban in New York!!!! The soda ban would have went into effect tomorrow if passed.

Read more about it on CNN here