Back when the economy was booming, San Francisco and several other U.S. cities were confident they could ban, tax or require the recycling of plastic shopping bags, considered a blight on the environment and a waste of resources.

But according to the New York Times, the deepening recession has caused most of those efforts to stall.

Momentum for imposing fees or bans has expanded from a few, often affluent, liberal cities on the West Coast — San Francisco was the first big city to ban plastic bags, in 2007 — to dozens of legislative proposals in states like Connecticut, Maryland, Massachusetts, Texas and Virginia.

Some officials say they fear a public backlash if they were to raise fees in an economic downturn; others say governments need the revenue now more than ever. Still others say a cleaner environment, not revenue, is their only goal.

Do you think these bans and fees should be implemented regardless of the economic climate? Will they be successful?

One of the most fraught issues in the disposal of e-waste is proper handling of the sensitive material contained on old hard drives. It’s understandable, since the deliberate or inadvertent release of steamy chat logs, passwords or bank records contained therein could be deeply embarrassing or financially devastating.

Unfortunately, hard drives are not easily erased. A cottage industry has emerged during the past two decades specializing in recovering lost data. Just formatting a disc can still leave most or all of the information recoverable.

NPR tackles this conundrum as part of its All Tech Considered series. The piece points out the great lengths to which some folks will go to ensure their data goes to the grave:

Jon Armstrong knows how to reformat the old Macintosh computers, but he isn’t as familiar with PCs. He is going to try removing the hard drives before recycling, but if he can’t he might try more extreme measures.

“I will drill into the drive and just wreak havoc with my drill bit,” he says. “Just get a big old drill bit and brrrrrrr, go in and destroy the drive inside the computer.”

Professional e-waste recycling outfits have devised more elegant solutions to the problem, but there is still the matter of convincing clients that drives will be properly handled.

If your firm handles e-waste, how do you reassure your customers that their hard drives will be handled appropriately?

Dire warnings about dwindling landfill space and a flood of obsolete TVs entering the waste stream seem quaint when compared to the peril of space junk careening toward you at 17,000 miles per hour. And recent reports (like Scientific American pondering the danger it poses to the Hubble repair mission or Wired listing the weird items in orbit) indicate that there’s a lot more of it up there than you might expect:

There are about 19,000 objects in Earth orbit, most of it junk, Nicholas Johnson, NASA’s chief scientist for orbital debris, told the AP. In addition to 900 satellites and approximately 1,000 “large” (bigger than four inches, or 10 centimeters) remnants from the February 10 collision, the sum of what’s floating in the cosmos includes trash from manned space missions. Some of the satellite collision debris could remain in orbit for up to 10,000 years, we noted last week—and if more accumulates, the chances of additional crashes will increase by 2050, Johnson told the newswire. (The European Union has a “code of conduct for outer space activities” that includes taking “appropriate steps to minimize the risk of collision.”)

Does it freak you out that there’s so much trash flying around and around a few miles above our heads? Or that it could actually fall out of the sky and hit you?

Think rap and waste education don’t mix? You are wrong. So very, very wrong.

The employees of the West Palm Beach Sanitation Department have produced a rap video as part of their effort to educate the public about their services.

We can’t wait until these guys team up with the Dust Brothers.

(Link courtesy of the NSWMA’s Environmentalists Every Day blog.)

Penton Media Inc., the corporate overlord of WasteExpo and Waste Age, is launching the Waste Training Institute at WasteExpo 2009 in Las Vegas. The institute will be introduced during a free session, open to all badged attendees and exhibitors, on Tuesday, June 9 at 1:45 p.m. Interested participants can also register for two 90-minute workshops.

“Costing and Pricing of Services – Part 1” – will be held on Wednesday, June 10 at 9 a.m. “Costing and Pricing of Services – Part 2” – will be held on Wednesday, June 10 at 3:15 p.m.

For more information, click here.

In the ’70s, leisure suits were the uniform of choice for men on the cutting edge of fashion, or so one would assume based on department store catalogs of the period. But now we’re closing out the ’00s, and men demand a suit that reflects their no-nonsense, green sensibility. A suit that says, “I CARE about the environment. A LOT.”

Department stores, heeding the call, are once again blazing a fashion trail as Sears introduces EcoGIR, suits manufactured entirely from recycled plastic. As reported by Gizmodo, it takes approximately 13 two-liter PET soda bottles to make one EcoGIR suit, which retails for $150. So before you go and lay down some plastic to buy Armani, consider wearing it instead.

It’s a common complaint of those working in the trash industry that they don’t receive much love from the public. But a Florida alligator may be downright besotted with the garbage truck that serves the area surrounding her home at the Sarasota Jungle Gardens.

From an MSNBC.com report:

Twice a week, a city garbage truck growls nearby and hoists garbage bins into its cavernous maw, Attitude, who’s been at the park for about 10 years, jerks her head up, hoists her tail and lets out a bellow for the ages.

Caretakers at the attraction aren’t sure whether she’s in love or in fear. She may be mistaking the truck’s low-level rumble for another gator’s love song, to which she is singing the second part harmony, or protecting her territory from a scaly intruder.

‘It’s one or the other,’ said Chris Costanzo, marketing director of the park. ‘But the way she’s carrying on, we’re pretty sure it’s a mating thing.’”

Hey, what happens in Sarasota stays in Sarasota.

In the wake of declining tax revenues and a growing budget problem, the city of Philadelphia is considering adopting a “pay as you throw” financing mechanism for its garbage collection. According to radio station WHYY, the city could raise $106 million annually through such a program, and the average Philadelphia household would pay $260 in fees a year.

The radio station’s Web site is asking readers to chime in with their views. Here are some quotes from a person supporting the plan:

My hard work, my tax dollars and the fact that my household only produces about 3/4 of a bag of garbage per week can stop subsidizing the guy down the street who seems to be running a small meat processing plant out of his basement.

And some quotes from someone who opposes it:

Trash pick-up is a service the city should provide to its residents for free. I’d like to think that our taxpayer dollars support this basic service. To me, core city services include fire, police, snow removal, and trash collection. Because of the budget crisis, the city has already scaled back its snow removal to primary and secondary streets only, which basically means the main roadways. As a result, our local side streets were a mess during the most recent snow storm.

What’s your take on “pay as you throw”?

You have to admire Greenpeace. They’re not afraid to look foolish in service of their cause. Take for example our Russian friend here, who donned a quite charming anthropomorphic recycling bin costume to help protest the construction of a waste incineration plant in Zelenograd, Russia. According to the environmental blog Planetsave, the campaign has collected around 90,000 signatures in opposition to the facility. Unfortunately, the police weren’t among the signatories, and took it upon themselves to arrest the grinning green garbage bin … twice.

Click over to Planetsave for additional photos of the arrest of the hapless recycling bin, who the police seemed to have trouble fitting into the back of their squad car.

If you’re entering downtown Atlanta, that is.

From a press release from the Georgia World Congress Center Authority:

The Georgia World Congress Center Authority announced this week that it has joined forces with its downtown Atlanta neighbors to form a Zero Waste Zone. This will be the first zone of its kind in the southeast and one of the first in the nation. Members, which include local restaurants, attractions and hotels, have pledged to recycle, reuse spent grease for the local production of biofuel and to compost or donate food residuals in order to drastically decrease the amount of waste going to landfills. The Authority, which includes the Georgia World Congress Center, Georgia Dome and Centennial Olympic Park, is proud to be one of the initial members of this green initiative.

The Zero Waste Zone of Downtown Atlanta is organized through a partnership between Atlanta Recycles and the Green Foodservice Alliance, and is working in conjunction with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Region 4 and the Pollution Prevention Assistance division of the Georgia Department of Natural Resources.

While the Georgia World Congress Center Authority has focused on many green efforts over the past 18 months, the convention center’s latest initiative was launched this week . Levy Restaurants, the Authority’s official foodservice operator, partnered with Washington, D.C.-based EnviRelations, LLC, a partner of Closed Loop Organics, to begin composting food items from the facilities for the next year.

Additionally, the Authority has a long standing partnership with the Atlanta Community Food Bank and donated over 30,000 lbs. of residual food from events to the organization in 2008.

“Our goal,” said Kevin Duvall, assistant general manager of the Georgia World Congress Center, “is to adopt practices that meet the demands of our customers, attendees and staff. At the same time we want to reduce the impact that our 3.9 million square foot facility has on the landfill. During this process we’ve reminded ourselves that being ‘green’ is a journey and not a destination. The Downtown Zero Waste Zone reinforces a lot of initiatives that we’re already tackling and it is propelling us to move forward on new ones.”