March 3rd, 2007 by Eric
Just about the only concession that airlines are still willing to give away for free these days are soft drinks. And they do give away a lot. If you assume that these cans and bottles get recycled, you would be wrong. According to a recent Natural Resources Defense Council report, 80% get thrown away. Put in perspective:
The U.S. airline industry discards enough aluminum cans each year to build 58 Boeing 747 airplanes– ¦ and discarded 9,000 tons of plastic in 2004 and enough newspapers and magazines to fill a football field to a depth of more than 230 feet.
The airlines' recycling rate is at 17% compared to the national average of 31%. By getting their recycling efforts up to our own standards:
Enough energy would be saved each year to power 20,000 U.S. households, and carbon emissions would be reduced by an amount equal to removing 80,000 cars from the road.
Even the airlines and airports would stand to benefit financially. The Baltimore and Seattle-Tacoma airports which have recycling and waste management programs and found that they save an average of $100,00 per year. Even their coffee grounds go to a compost dump.
The solution clearly lies on the ground. Airlines would be much more likely to recycle if there was a viable program at each airport. What can we do to help? How about starting a petition online to submit to your nearest airport. I plan to carry a letter to give to the manager of each airport I fly out of or into (give yourself an extra ten minutes). Because even if we got just one airport to change, hey, that's progress.
Photo by this frequent flyer.
March 3rd, 2007 by Matt
If only we could all be as strong as the Associated Press:
The Associated Press decided to give up a major vice last week: its addiction to stories about Paris Hilton. In the past year, Hilton has appeared on the wire an average of twice a week.
The wire service’s entertainment editor Jesse Washington sent a memo to staffers on Feb. 13 that said, barring any major events, the AP would not run any mention of Paris Hilton on the wire.
Before Hilton, I thought that the person who’d made the most out of the least talent was Jimmy Buffett (I mean, I don’t even like margaritas). This section of the press should be applauded for erasing the name of the woman named after La Ville-lumière who shall not be named again here (at least after this post) any time soon.
The press, even the entertainment press, has an obligation to the culture, whether they like it or not. Thomas Jefferson put the importance of a strong and responsible press this way:
The basis of our government being the opinion of the people, the very first object should be to keep that right; and were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.
More and more, I think Jefferson would replace “newspapers” with “citizen journalists,” but this move by the AP is, in all honesty, a step in the right direction.
So what should we do in response to this editorial decision? Why, send the AP an email at info@ap.org.
Feel free to copy and paste mine, which went like this:
Dear AP:
Thank you for pulling Paris Hilton from your wire reports. You’ve made Thomas Jefferson a little prouder, and Paris Hilton a little poutier — two good things that go good together.
Feeling French,
Matt Zambito
I simply couldn’t stomach a photo of Ms. Hilton, so I thank
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