41 million. That’s the number of plastic bags thrown out in the City of Boulder in just one year. Those are the findings from a report by EcoCycle. Nationwide, shoppers use 102 billion plastic shopping bags every year. Last year in Boulder County, residents discarded 781 tons of disposable plastic bags. Each individual bag on average weighs a mere 0.0013 pounds, so when you do the math, the number of bags in the waste stream for the county is around 120 million.

Thanks to the advocacy of a bunch of great, environmentally tuned-in young people, Boulder has a chance to do something about the plastic bag epidemic. Anyone who’s watched the City Council meetings on Channel 8 has seen the students from Fairview High School’s Net Zero Club and Summit Middle School asking the nine council members to tackle this problem. The students want to see the city take action. So do I.

It’s not like we’d be the first community to regulate disposable plastic bags. San Francisco, Washington, D.C., Palo Alto, and Los Angeles County have all passed legislation aimed at reducing or banning these hard-to-recycle products. In Washington, D.C., after a five cent fee on plastic bags was imposed, their use declined by a whopping eighty-two percent.

EcoCycle estimates that if we were to put a ten cent fee on plastic bags, use would drop by sixty three percent; if we were to put a twenty cent fee in place, use would drop by eighty-three percent.

We have an opportunity to do something in Boulder to reduce the use of these bags which have a wide range of damaging effects, from plastic-choked gyres in the ocean to clogged storm drains to litter. It’s the right thing to do for the environment. As we move forward with tackling the plastic bag epidemic, we need to work with the local merchants who would be affected, their customers, and the students who have advocated so passionately for change We should also carefully study the programs that other communities have put in place and how successful they have been. Finally, we should always remember that there is no such thing as a free plastic bag. We are all paying for them in the cost of the products we buy.

So, c’mon council, let’s give the green light to move forward and take advantage of this opportunity!

If you’re a homeowner, you’ve undoubtedly faced a few repair projects over the years … a leaky faucet, a clogged toilet, or perhaps a broken fence post.  And being the proud ‘do-it-yourselfer’ that you are, you’ve promptly trundled off to the store each time to purchase the necessary items to fix the problem.  Depending on the project, and the inventory of your home tool selection, at least a few of these trips have likely involved the purchase of an incredibly job-specific and marvelously effective tool; such as, in the case of the broken fence post, a post-hole digger (a simply wonderful invention).  And yet, despite your gleeful anxiousness to race home, get started, and revel in this tool’s spectacular effectiveness, I’m willing to wager that more than once you’ve stood in line at the cash register, waiting to plunk down your hard-earned

You’re not alone.

In fact, you probably have far more companionship in this experience than can be said for the tens of thousands of poor, lonely post-hole diggers currently sitting quietly in dark corners of garages across America, each patiently waiting to show their worth when another of your fence-posts someday needs to be dug up and replaced – even if that ‘someday’ is five years from now. Meanwhile, in most towns, somebody, somewhere, is in need of a post hole-digger almost every day.

In short, we don’t all need to own post-hole diggers. And similarly, we don’t all need to own 20-foot ladders to get to those gutters clean-outs once a year, or tree-trimmers for the pruning we do once every five years, or tile-cutters for the once-a-decade when we get sufficiently inspired by a looming visit from our mother in-law to redo our guest bathrooms. The redundancy of each of us owning such items is both a waste of money and a waste of resources … not to mention how much space these things take up in our cluttered garages, workrooms, and basements.

Thankfully, there’s a simple solution. It’s called a Community Tool Library. As the name suggests, a Tool Library is a place where citizens can borrow tools from a shared tool inventory, thereby reducing our collective need to purchase redundant, seldom-used tools, and providing new opportunities for those with limited tool access.

And of course, you don’t have to be a homeowner to use the Tool Library. Whether you’re working on a community service project for a local nonprofit, building an affordable home with Habitat for Humanity, cleaning up a park with your church group or neighborhood association, restoring a trail with a local environmental group, or merely building a small piece of furniture – the Tool Library is there to lend tools to any individual or nonprofit organization that needs tools to complete their work.

Community Tool Libraries – A proven concept

Tool Libraries currently operate in more than two dozen cities nationwide, including: Austin, Berkeley, Buffalo, Cedar Rapids, Columbus, Kansas City, Missoula, New Orleans, Oakland, Philadelphia, Portland, and Seattle. All of the tool libraries enjoy enthusiastic support from their communities and report rapidly growing consumer demand. Portland, Oregon, for example, has just opened its third community Tool Library in the last five years. The Berkeley and Columbus Tool Libraries have each been operating continuously for more than 30 years, with Berkeley loaning more than 50,000 tools in 2009. To watch a recent ABC News feature story on the West Philly Tool Library please click here.

A Boulder Tool Library

The time has come to bring a Tool Library to our fair city, and on behalf of the Center for ReSource Conservation (CRC), I am pleased to announce the final phase of development for the launch of the Boulder Community Tool Library. The mission and objectives for the Boulder Community Tool Library are as follows:

• To lend a broad array of basic tools to citizens and civic organizations
• To provide a simple, practical, and vital community service: affordable tool access
• To build community equity with a bulk approach to resource sharing
• To reduce community purchasing burdens and associated waste; thereby lowering our collective resource footprint
• To support the tool needs of community service organizations (such as public schools, civic agencies, neighborhood associations, churches and faith-based entities, low-income housing builders, environmental groups, urban agriculture and community gardeners, open space caretakers, etc.), thereby helping them better achieve their public service missions
• To provide educational opportunities through ‘how-to’ classes and DIY workshops
• To open the Boulder Community Tool Library to all citizens of Boulder County

What kind of Tools will be available at the Tool Library?

• Basic construction tools (carpentry, plumbing, concrete, masonry)
• Landscape and gardening tools
• Painting tools and ladders
• Electrical and basic power tools
• Cleaning and custodial tools
• Safety equipment

‘One-Stop Shopping’ for Tools and Materials

• The Tool Library will launch at the current site of the CRC’s ReSource Yard, thereby building on the success of the ReSource program, which offers a wide array of used and recycled building materials at affordable prices
• Together, the Tool Library and ReSource present a unique opportunity to provide customers with ‘One-Stop Shopping’ for the bulk of their tool and material needs

The Tool Library is currently targeted for launch in the summer of 2010. We’ve secured $6,000 in matching funds, putting us halfway to our current target.  The CRC is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization, donations are tax-deductible. If you have any questions about the Boulder Tool Library, or would like more information about how you can further assist our efforts, please contact Adam Jackaway at 720-771-9813 or email adamjackaway@yahoo.com.

CLICK HERE to support the Tool Library launch

(Please write “Tool Library” in the comment box)

Recycling in Boulder is nationally recognized, but if the truth be told we will need both of our hands to acknowledge our current situation : one hand to pat ourselves on the back, and the other to wag our fingers and say “tsk tsk” because we have so much further to go.  While Toronto and San Francisco have roared ahead to accomplish 70% recycling rates, Boulder is stuck in the 40’s, and until we build a couple more facilities and create a few new regulations, we’re going to stay stuck.

Here are a few things we need to do over the next five years:

• Build a publically-owned, privately operated composting facility similar to what we did with the new County-owned recycling facility nine years ago;
• Build a “C & D” facility to handle construction and demolition debris.
• Issue public contracts to the private sector for the collection of all waste – both residential and commercial – so that we can create the proper financial incentives which reward recycling and penalize landfilling.  Today, the market is rewarding the dirty old system of dumping our resources into the ground, so, it’s time to create a new set of market rules;
• Require the “source separation” of all discards in homes and businesses.  After 33 years of promoting voluntary recycling, and not even getting to a 50% recycling rate, it is time to simply say “It’s the law, sort your discards.”  The folks in California are way beyond us, and they are now debating a statewide law for ALL businesses to source separate.  If we can’t do this simple thing in Boulder – go from one mixed-waste trash can to three source-separated bins for recycling/composting/trash – then I fear that America is never going to evolve quickly enough to help solve the global warming crisis!

I am pro-business, and local economy and jobs.  Eco-Cycle now has 66 people on a $2.5 million payroll recycling over 55,000 tons per year, the most ever in our history!  Compare that to the 6 jobs that would be created if all the stuff we recycled were instead being landfilled, because the rule of thumb is one job for every 10,000 tons buried.    Boulder needs to get serious about creating a local Zero Waste Economy, and it will benefit us all by reducing greenhouse gases, creating local jobs, and protecting the air and groundwater.  And, rest assured, the local trash hauler will keep hauling, (hopefully with more competition) and the only folks that won’t be happy in the future will be the landfill owners.  Ah well … can’t please everyone!