You are here: > Archives for styrofoam

A Green Superbowl

Written by

Today I was a guest on The Good Green Witch with Rhonda DeFelice and our topic was Carbon Offsetting.

You may have the opinion that it’s damaging and another form of greenwashing. As in it may lead people & corporations into thinking you don’t have to do anything to reduce your carbon footprint, just pay to have it offset. Similar to thinking you can sin all week as long as you go to confession on Sunday. It just doesn’t work that way. You may also be of the opinion that carbon offsetting is another step (not the only) in being responsible in lightening your own environmental impact. This is my view for the record. I don’t do it all the time but I have used Terrapass to offset my flights and UPS shipping offsetting for my packages.

I read a blogpost about this years Superbowl being the ‘greenest ever’ including purchasing  15M MW equivalent in renewable energy certificates to offset the carbon emissions produced by the Super Bowl XLV. So if the Superbowl can go green, how about some of you 100+ million people watching the game follow their lead and green up your watch party? Typically I don’t watch the game but I am interested in how they are going to promote their green efforts!

So what can you do to green your Superbowl?

Here are a few tips:

Use real plates, glasses & silverware and cloth napkins. If you don’t have enough dishes for the amount of people coming to your party, have everyone bring their own set. This makes cleanup easier as well, since everyone will usually just rinse and take their dishes back home. If you are having a potluck they are already bring a dish anyway. If you must use one time use, choose bio degradable or at least recyclable (make sure you recycle them). Please for the love of all things sacred do not let any Styrofoam into your party!

Have enough food & drink but don’t go so overboard that at the end of the day their is too much extra that just gets wasted. Superbowl is donating their extras to food banks and homeless shelters, you could do the same. Designate someone ahead of time that will take care of this.

Shop local and organic. I’m not suggesting 100% (I’m pretty sure Dorito’s aren’t either of those) but do what you can. Expand on your vegetarian & vegan menu. Be creative and go beyond the celery you have with your buffalo wings.

Serve Green Beer! And I don’t mean the kind you will be drinking this St. Patrick’s Day. I mean eco beers. Sierra Club has some recommendations. If you have a lot of people, go ahead and get that keg it’s less packaging. Of course you want a nice pilsner glass with that and not a nasty plastic cup.

Of course recycle and compost what you can.

Turn down the heat, you don’t need it with all the people in your house. Not to mention keeping warm from your vegetarian chili and eco friendly beer. And of course all your yelling for your team.

Did you know you can get a Fair Trade Football for your own halftime game?

These are really quite easy tips that anyone can implement. What are you doing to green your Superbowl?

Styrofoam

Written by

Lately I have noticed more Styrofoam cups than usual. This of course makes me crazy. So I am on a mission to get businesses to stop using them. Twice in the last week or so I have  spoke with the businesses who carry them about considering alternatives. The same answer from both was plastic cups are four times more expensive.  OK, I know I would probably bitch about the plastic too but at least that is better than Styrofoam. Or is it? And if regular plastic cups that can be (but probably won’t be) recycled are too expensive I don’t even know what to say about the biodegradable cups that I would prefer.

When I started this post I realized I’m not even clear on why it’s so bad, I just know that it is. So I did a little research before I got on my soap box and here is the short list of what I found:

It’s non-biodegradable, non-recyclable, the HFC’s mess with the ozone contributing to the global warming thing we have going on and the chemicals found in it mess with peoples health.

Recently on a lunch break with a co-worker we had left over food and we discussed which was the lesser of the two evils; throwing away the leftover food or using a styrofoam carryout container. Here is some combined research and I apologize for not being able to credit the site this info came from (somewhere on Google).

The answer to the question of the lesser of two evils is an easy decision:

Leaving your left-over food in a restaurant to waste and will break down in a landfill is far less harmful to yourself and to the environment than taking the polystyrene (styrofoam) plate that leaches carcinogenic into your body and will still be sitting in a landfill 500 years from now.

+ The EPA and the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) have both classified styrene a possible human carcinogen, with strong links to breast and prostate cancer.

+ An EPA report on solid waste named the polystyrene manufacturing process as the 5th largest creator of hazardous waste.

+ Styrofoam is made with petroleum.

+ Some polystyrene today is manufactured with HCFC-22, a greenhouse gas and harmful to the ozone layer.

+ 25 billion styrofoam cups are thrown away annually in America alone.

+ The National Bureau of Standards Center for Fire Research identified 57 chemical byproducts released during the combustion of polystyrene foam. The process of making polystyrene pollutes the air and creates large amounts of liquid and solid waste.

+ Polystyrene recycling is not “closed loop” – collected polystyrene cups are not remanufactured into cups, but into other products, such as packing filler and cafeteria trays. This means that more resources will have to be used, and more pollution created, to produce more polystyrene cups.

So when your out at a restaurant you can think ahead and save waste a few ways.

Don’t let your eyes be bigger than your stomach.
Share a meal with someone, saves money too.
Bring your own reusable container for your leftovers.
If you have leftovers ask if the carryout box is styrofoam and if it is make sure you mention why you are not going to use it. Telling the manager will also have an impact, of course don’t be a jerk about it just let your voice be heard.