Ways to be

green in 2008

Is being green on your list of New Year's resolutions? It's easy to be green in Napa. For example, you can increase your efforts at home by recycling more at the curbside in your single stream blue cart; drop off all your e-waste for free at the Napa Recycling & Composting Facility year-round; and you can attend one of the city's upcoming home composting workshops, which are free. What may not be so easy is understanding the ins and outs of recycling -- especially recycling of plastics. There are a lot of different products in the marketplace, and it can get confusing. Here are some answers to commonly asked questions.

What's the deal

with plastic bags?

Every second, Californians discard 600 plastic bags. Plastic bags litter the environment, use up valuable resources and fill up landfills. The most direct way you can make a difference is to make the switch to reusable bags for shopping. Your second-best option is to use recyclable paper bags when you shop. If you do end up with plastic bags, these should not be placed in your curbside recycling cart. Plastic bags tangle in our recycling sorting equipment and are expensive to sort. But you can recycle clean plastic bags at most grocery stores, drug stores and large retailers. Look for a container in front of the store. You can bag together all types of plastic film, including shopping bags, produce bags, dry cleaning bags, freezer bags, plastic wrap, newspaper bags, bubble wrap, shrink wrap and shipping air cushions with the air released. The plastic should be clean and dry. Don't include any black plastic bags. For specific drop off locations, visit www.naparecycling.com.

I like to drink bottled water. What's wrong with that?

There's nothing wrong with bottled water, but you may want to think twice about single-serving plastic bottles. Plastic is made from oil, a finite resource. Even though recycling plastic bottles helps, consider this: manufacturing a plastic bottle generates 100 times more toxic emissions than manufacturing a glass bottle. That's the true environmental cost of plastic water bottles. And unlike glass, paper products and metals, which are recycled over and over again, plastics are usually "downcycled" into non-recyclable materials such as plastic lumber. It's better to avoid buying products in plastic bottles in the first place.

Styrofoam, yogurt containers, deli trays... why can't I recycle these plastics?

A deli tray may be branded with a #1, just like a water bottle, yet it contains different dyes, softeners and other chemicals required to shape it into a tray. This mix of additives changes the properties of the plastic and makes it incompatible with the plastic used to make bottles. To add to the confusion, the plastics industry's use of the chasing arrows with its numbering system leads most to believe that any container with arrows is recyclable. The industry says it never intended the symbol to indicate that a container was recyclable or had recycled content, but simply used it as a catchy graphic to highlight the identifying number. Recyclers requested that plastic container manufacturers change the graphic since it is misleading, but the industry has resisted efforts to modify it.

The city of Napa and Napa Recycling & Waste Services are always looking into accepting more plastics. In the meantime, we encourage you to avoid purchasing these non-recyclable plastics, drop-off your Styrofoam at your local shipping store, and buy in bulk to avoid excess packaging. For more alternatives, visit www.naparecycling.com.

What difference does recycling make?

Recycling and composting are easy and efficient methods to save energy and reduce the production of greenhouse gases. In 2006, more than 100,000 tons of materials were recycled or composted at the Napa Recycling & Composting Facility. By keeping these valuable resources out of the landfill, we decreased carbon dioxide emissions by 79,044 metric tons and used 439,991 million fewer BTUs of energy. To put it in perspective, this is enough energy to power all the homes in Napa for three weeks. This savings is the equivalent of taking 6,443 passenger cars off the road and conserving more than three million gallons of gasoline.

So what else can I

do to be green

in the New Year?

Purchase products made of recycled materials, resist products that are over-packaged, drink tap water, start a backyard compost pile, switch to reusable grocery bags, max out your recycling efforts at home and at work. For more tips or details, look for the Recycling Guide in the yellow pages of your phone book, and visit www.naparecycling.com. Learn more about composting at the upcoming workshops at various locations throughout Napa Valley starting in March. Find our more about the composting workshops at www.cityofnapa.org/compost.

"Napa City Update" provides information from Napa city officials about on-going projects of public interest. The column appears on the first Tuesday of each month. All information is from the City of Napa.