All Our Energy

The international event comes to Long Beach, NY.

The BYOBagLB campaign will organize many events in the month of July 2016 to raise awareness of the dangers and damage plastic pollution causes, and issue the Plastic Free July challenge to you!

Take the challenge:
Attempt to refuse single-use plastic during July. “Single-use” includes plastic shopping bags, plastic cups, straws, plastic packaging… anything that’s intended only to be used once and then discarded. Too daunting? this time, try the TOP 4 challenge (plastic bags, bottles, takeaway coffee cups, & straws).

The rules:
Remember, it’s not going to be easy! It is a challenge, not a competition so don’t worry about being perfect.
Collect any unavoidable single-use plastic you buy. Keep in a dilemma bag and share it with us at the end of the challenge.
It’s up to you how long you participate. You might decide to go plastic-free for a day, a week, a month or longer! However long you choose will still make a contribution.

Why you should participate?
Apart from the small amount of plastic which has been incinerated, EVERY piece of plastic ever produced still exists on earth somewhere. In the first 10 years of this century MORE plastic was produced than the entire last century!

RSVP and share the event here

Sign up for the challenge here

Follow the participants’ blog here

See all the LBNY Plastic Free July events here.

Why use something for a few seconds that is going to spend the rest of your lifetime trying to break down in landfill? We must change our habits.
Let’s start here, let’s do it together!

State senators voted to leave no other way but tax all taxpayers for the costs of the plastic pollution created by some. 
 
Yesterday the New York State Senate took extreme measures to undo current state laws on home rule.  Smultaneously they expanded the power of individuals and corporations to pollute with plastic bags at will, and socialize the cost of that by taxing the general public and future generations to deal with that issue.

 
The legislation officially overturns the upheld right of municipalities to form their own laws, known as “home rule”
They did all that and in one fell swoop, codified into the tax code to now require public taxes be used for whatever is necessary to clean up any plastic bag pollution issues.
This precedent also has far reaching effects for other forms of pollution.
The SENATORS posited the completely avoidable charge to receive a bag was a tax so voted to stop it. In reality they actually VOTED TO OFFICIALLY CODIFY TO SOCIALIZE THE COSTS OF PLASTIC BAGS AND TAX EVERYONE for the plastic pollution (and maybe other kinds) of some.
Senators have also been saying there’s a public health issue: this is a complete fabrication, as hygienic uses of bags, such as for meat, are already exempt from the law.
And in the most shameful terms, many of these Senators have falsely hidden behind seniors and low income communities to undo New York City’s hard compromised bag law, as people with low-enough income to receive food stamps are already exempt from the law.
What these Senators really are saying is low income families and seniors are simply incapable and too irresponsible to bring their own bag to a supermarket.
We completely disagree and believe everyone could take pride in not destroying their neighborhood, much less the planet for a few minutes convenience. In fact most low income people suffer much more greatly from “food deserts” where no supermarket exists in their neighborhood. They pay premium convenience store prices for everything they buy.
Senators, if they really cared, could have helped these low income people exponentially more by dealing with that issue, that costs them dimes more for every grocery item, plus to pay for a “free” plastic bag in the costs of those items. Instead they voted to “spare” them the nickel they probably wouldn’t have otherwise had to pay.

The last thing New York needs is regressive senators undermining state and municipal law.
These Senators think all New Yorkers are entitled not only to a free checkout bag, but that the unconfined consequences of that bag should be socialized to all;  it’s ok to tax everyone to cover those costs, from towns’, cities’, and the State’s tax rolls, but also the actual cost of the bags are still being included in the price of every item currently purchased anyway.

Those taxes are just fine by them.