E-mail Sherry Listgarten About this blog: Climate change, despite its outsized impact on the planet, is still an abstract concept to many of us. That needs to change. My hope is that readers of this blog will develop a better understanding of how our climate is evolving a...  (More) About this blog: Climate change, despite its outsized impact on the planet, is still an abstract concept to many of us. That needs to change. My hope is that readers of this blog will develop a better understanding of how our climate is evolving and how they want to respond, and will feel comfortable asking questions and exchanging comments on the topic. It is important that we develop a shared understanding of the basic science and impacts of climate change, to make sense of our actions and policy options going forward. My background is not in climate science, and I'm not even particularly green; my hope is that helps to make this blog more relatable. I studied math and neurobiology on the east coast before moving out here in 1987 for grad school in computer science. After working in the tech industry for about 25 years, I retired a few years ago to better align my time with my priorities. I love spending time outdoors, and feel deeply our responsibility to this incredible planet that we call home.  (Hide)

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Two points. Clean Up Days. They don't recycle anything, all goes into the same trash truck and then compacted, breaking the items while the owners watch! What do you think about the trend for period panties, many of our young women are using? The idea is that these panties have to be throughly rinsed to get rid of all blood before being washed "in the normal way". The amount of water used to thoroughly rinse these before normal washing is a bad idea in California, in my humble opinion.

P.S. Here's a link to an article about period panties for those unfamiliar with the concept. Web Link

Great post - you focus a lot on what restaurants can do, but there are also things that customers can do. When you go to a restaurant, do you ever take your leftovers home? If so, bring your own plastic containers (like my family does). Your focus is mostly on restaurants, but I'd also like to encourage the use of reusable produce bags. I go to the California Ave. farmers market every Sunday, and over the years I've seen fewer than 5 other customers that use reusable produce bags. Finally, bringing your own mug to your favorite cafe. I think Peets gives you a 10 cent discount. The discount needs to be higher. And I hope that everyone reading this blog goes to Peets web site and asks them to follow Starbucks lead with using reusable cups. When Peets disallowed bringing your own mug during the pandemic, I (like many others) got hooked on Peets' to-go app (order your coffee from home, and it's ready when you get there). But now, we should all bring our own mugs. Sure, it might take 3-5 extra minutes - but do you really not have those 3-5 extra minutes to spare? The future of our planet is worth it.

Every time I'm forced to use a goopy mess of a paper straw, my willingness to be subjected to the arrogant micromanagement of climate activists diminishes yet further. This initiative seems to be more of the same.

Further to my comments on period panties, I have been thinking about disposable diapers. Back when our children were born, there was ongoing debate about using a diaper service rather than disposables which were filling landfills with sewage. The diaper services advertised how well rinsed their cloth diapers were as well as touting that you back the same diaper each time rather than receiving a shared set of diapers. I remember discussions about how much water it took to make a disposable diaper compared to the amount of water each diaper needed to be thoroughly laundered between uses. I wonder if those discussions are still part of parenting information.

I'm glad you reported on people taking a more holistic view, like Oakland's Cam Anh. All too often we miss the forest for the trees, like the silly straw fetish, without considering the big picture of what we are trying to achieve. It's not like we have any shortage of landfill space in the US, but rather that shipping trash, methane emitted from dumps, and trash pickup volume from e.g. Cam Anh have real costs. If it's cheaper to dump our plastics in US landfills than ship them across the oceans, that's fine with me, but if it's overall even cheaper to avoid generating trash in the first place that's even better. The Starbucks reusable cup project sounds like it will be big enough to generate some real answers on the acceptance and costs of such a process.

Palo Alto- leading the world in virtue signaling. Their moto should be “Ask us , we know how to do things right and for a reasonable cost" (bike bridge over 101 for example)

This article mentions some great programs the City is partnering with to get food service businesses on board with reusables- including my organization's work with Tootsies. But several years ago, when the City adopted the foodware ordinance that forces businesses to use more expensive compostable foodware, that policy was supposed to be Step #1 in a 3 phase process. Next up was enacting policies that would require businesses to charge customers for disposable take-out cups and requiring that restaurants only use reusables when serving customers on the premises. What happened to that plan? There are already many California communities that require reuse for onsite dining and others that tell take-out businesses to charge customers for disposable cups while also allowing a customer to use their personal reusable cup to avoid the charge. Some of the cities that have adopted one or both of these policies include Arcata, Berkeley, Culver City, Los Angeles County, Fairfax, Pacifica, City and Co of Santa Cruz, Santa Rosa, and Sebastopol. I hope Palo Alto doesn't just stop with making businesses buy more expensive disposable foodware - that only perpetuates a climate -harming throw away economy. Miriam Gordon, Upstream

I truly love Sherry's posts here. Well written. Detailed. Clearly an expression of concern for the climate. But I always end up asking myself do they really address what I believe to be an existential threat to the planet that the world is largely ignoring? I get that every step in the right direction is a step in the right direction, and should be an example to the world. We won't be able to afford cutlery. You will be lucky to have food you can pick up with your fingers, or at least our offspring will.

Once again, an amazing variety of comments. We have the enthusiast Eddie, who is already BYO’ing and would like more people to do this small thing. The interested Mondoman, who understands the disparate costs of consumption and is intrigued by the Starbucks effort. The doomer-inclined Eeyore, who worries it’s all too little too late. The annoyed Joseph, who not only thinks this kind of effort is too little but is highly aggravated by some of the effects. And the broadly dismissive Victor, who denigrates it all as virtue signaling. What’s interesting to me is, whether and how much progress we make on climate change depends on which of these views are reflected in which proportion among voters and consumers in the real (offline) world. I will write more about this next week. @Miriam: Thanks for your work on this! You are right about the phasing, which you can find on page 184 of this report. Paula said that those efforts have been put on hold. At least one issue is that not all food service establishments have dishwashers, and the dishware services have been spotty. But that certainly doesn’t preclude, for example, charging customers for disposable items. It seems to have worked well for bags. When I asked Paula about these follow-up phases, which the city was very excited about two years ago, she said they are still worried about the timing and impact. She pointed to the reusable pilots -- moving forward with enthusiastic participants to prove out the model -- and also talked about the impacts of SB 1383, which I will write about later. The city agrees 100% that they want to move beyond single-use disposables, but they are trying to find the right timing and approach. Do you have a dashboard of when the cities adopted which policies? That would be interesting. @Bystander: It is true that washing reusables is a cost and, as you say in your third post, that the cost needs to be compared with the cost of producing the disposable alternatives. An amazing stat I saw once is that it takes 8 gallons of water to make a single paper plate. I haven’t seen the analysis for period panties, but I think it’s terrific that women have reusable options like cups and panties and not just disposable tampons and pads. Periods can be a nuisance and they can be expensive, and these options help to address that, with an eye towards sustainability as well. IMO the suitability of these newer options is best assessed by the people who live with periods every month.

I'm surprised no one has mentioned incinerators. Apart from the problem with NIMBYs, they are a better solution than landfills for trash disposal. I also want to point out that disposable trash really isn't a significant contributor to climate change. Misconceptions abound in this area. Also, in many cases cures can be worse than the disease. Web Link It is easy to think that something that if something is inconvenient, it must be good, and conversely if something is convenient, it must be bad. In my opinion, this goes to the root of the problem of gathering support for effective environmental and climate measures. Convenient solutions are the best solutions. We should stop talking about plastic straws and instead talk about what is important and what works.

I really want to emphasize that if every individual eliminated all single use plastics in their personal lives, it would have very little impact on climate change.

Well, while we're throwing ideas out there for better dealing with bodily functions, I think there should be discussion on bidets, both to alleviate the need for "single use" toilet paper, as well as bum health. It strikes me as a no-brainier, but like with gas stoves, there are cultural barriers I guess.

Please don't give them any ideas, TimR, or we will find toilet paper banned in Palo Alto.

@JosephED, that was hilarious, thanks :) @BobB: You make good and important points. Poorly conceived and ineffective efforts/mandates/bans can do much more harm than good. I'll try to have more of a discussion about this and where to draw the line in my next post (not sure if that will be this Sunday or next). Thanks for the great comments.

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