The details of plastic bagdom are ever in flux. Cities are trying to ban them. Stores are giving people money to not use them.

Today, a major national pharmacy retailer joined the fray. CVS announced what is basically a 25-cent giveback for every bag a customer doesn’t use. Great deal, right? Especially when you consider that most grocery stores only give in the neighborhood of a nickel.

But there’s a catch. You need one of those horrid little cards — “loyalty” cards is what they’re often called — to take advantage of the deal. Actually, you need TWO of those horrid little cards.

Do I need to say here how much I hate all those horrid little cards and tags that we’re supposed to carry around on our key chains to get a discount at some store or other? Am I alone?

I have cards at two grocery stores. For a while, I had a card that gave me a free cup of coffee every tenth time. My pet food store gives me some kind of cut if I use their card. And so on. If I took advantage of all of the cards and deals, I’d just about need an extra purse.

So, yes, I rolled my eyes when I heard about yet another discount card, even though CVS promises theirs — a “GreenBagTag” in the shape of a green leaf — is made with corn-based material and 100 percent recycled silicone.

Except that the 25 cents really is a good deal, so bear with CVS in figuring out how it works. I've distilled it into ten easy steps:

1) Sign up for an “ExtraCare” card, which is free and entitles you to various discounts. You cannot get a GreenBagTag without it.

2) Hand over 99 cents.

3) The clerk will give you the tag. 

4) The GreenBagTag comes in a little package — it’s made of recycled paper, but still, go figure. Please save this so you can recycle it.

5) Next time you buy something and don’t use a bag, swipe the ExtraCare card AND the leaf-shaped tag.

6) Do it again.

7) Do it again.

8) Do it one more time. Only after the fourth bag denied does the computer tally a $1 discount, which CVS calls the “Extra Buck.” It’s printed on your receipt. Your paper receipt.

9) And now ... don’t lose that receipt! May I suggest paper-clipping it to your leaf card, just in case your key ring isn’t already bursting?

10) Next time you’re back in any of the 7,000 CVS stores in the nation, hand the receipt to the clerk, who will scan it to give you the ExtraBuck credit on your purchase.

Got it? Stay tuned for the tally on how many plastic bags this saves.
 

This weekend, I'll probably crank up the fireplace insert and start burning. Last year, using it for heat kept my oil usage to 440 gallons, a little more than half of what it was without the insert.

But not all fires, not all fireplaces, and not all woods are created equal. To help people sort things out, the Environmental Protection Agency has started a "burn wise" campaign to help reduce pollution from wood smoke -- which, as the agency notes, is "a mixture of gases and fine particle pollution that isn’t healthy to breathe indoors or out – especially for children, older adults and those with heart disease, asthma or other lung diseases."

It's like those days when people are burning leaves, and you think it smells so good. Actually, you're breathing harmful particles. And by the way, if you ant to purchase a more efficient wood-burning stove, you may qualify for a federal tax credit.

According to info from the EPA:

If you’re burning wood, you can have a cheaper, safer and healthier fire by following these tips:

· Burn only dry, seasoned wood. It’s better for the air and your wallet. Look for wood that is darker, has cracks in the end grain, and sounds hollow when hit against another piece of wood. Dry seasoned wood is more efficient at heating your home and can add up to significant savings over the winter. Never burn painted or treated wood or trash.

· Maintain your wood stove or fireplace and have a certified technician inspect it yearly. A certified technician can clean dangerous soot from your chimney and keep your wood stove or fireplace working properly, which reduces your risk of a home fire.

· Change to an EPA-certified wood stove or fireplace insert. These models are more efficient than older models, keeping your air cleaner, your home safer and your fuel bill lower, while keeping you warm in the winter. An estimated 12 million Americans heat their homes with wood stoves each winter, and nearly three-quarters of these stoves are not EPA certified. An EPA-certified wood stove can emit nearly 70 percent less smoke than older uncertified models.

More information on Burn Wise: http://www.epa.gov/burnwise  The site has all sorts of useful information and makes for interesting rummaging for a while.  It even has an on-line calculator that provides a cost comparison between different fuel types including hardwoods, softwoods, gas, oil, and electric.  And it solved the mystery of why, when I was camping in Nova Scotia earlier this fall, I saw signs warning against burning driftwood in the fire circles at each campsite. It releases toxic chemicals. Ack.

(Clean Ocean Action photo)

On Saturday, Clean Ocean Action is holding its annual beach clean-up in New Jersey. Apparently, there's always plenty to do. Last year, 5,163 volunteers collected 289,976 pieces of debris from 63 locations during two cleanups, held in spring and fall.   The total weight was 36,041 pounds. 

Plastics overall pretty much always top the list of items.  But as far as individual items, cigarette filters remain the most ubiquitous, smoking bans at various beaches notwithstanding. According to the 2008 annual report, the  "Roster of the Ridiculous," which lists the most unusual items found, include: 1977 Bradley Beach badge in Point Pleasant, a Canoe, bottle of Holy Water, $20 Bill, beer keg, Whole Jar of mayonnaise, containers from Asia, a refrigerator door, a vacuum, a ship brace from an old ship, a high chair, and 500 pounds of lumber.

The beach sweep events are more than people picking-up trash from beaches, the nonprofit association points out. The intent is also to build community support for solutions to marine litter, as well as raises awareness about the negative impacts of litter on wildlife and the ocean.

The sweeps will be held from 9 a.m. to 12:30 p.m., and you can get information about where to meet at the organization's website, www.CleanOceanAction.org

Speaking of things washing up on beaches, Congress is taking steps to get cruise ships to quit dumping raw sewage into coastal waters. According to Friends of the Earth, cruise ships are now allowed to dump raw sewage just three miles offshore -- which is roughly as far as you can see to the horizon. So if you're at the shore, and you see a cruise ship ... 

On Wednesday, U.S. Sen. Richard Durbin (D-Ill.) and U.S. Rep. Sam Farr (D-Calif.) introduced legislation that would end the dumping. It would establish a no-dumping zone in waters within 12 nautical miles of U.S. shores and strengthen standards for treatment of waste outside that zone. The bill also would require an onboard monitoring program. 

"This practice is not only disgusting, it can threaten the public health, coastal tourism, fishing economies, and marine ecosystems,” said Neesha Kulkarni, legislative associate at Friends of the Earth, in a prepared statement. “Advanced technology is available to treat this waste, but the cruise industry has failed to install this equipment on a majority of its ships. The Clean Cruise Ship Act would put a stop to this practice and hold the cruise industry accountable.”

 Some ships carry 7,000 passengers and crew. In one week, a ship with 3,000 passengers can generate 200,000 gallons of sewage and 1 million gallons of graywater (water from showers, floor drains, and kitchens).

"The cruise ship industry is way overdue to take responsibility for its actions,” Farr said. “It’s ironic that the cruise industry relies on a clean ocean and pristine coastlines for its livelihood, but doesn’t put in the effort to sustain them. This carelessness must not be allowed to continue.”

More information can be found here.

President Mohamed Nasheed at the meeting.

Momentum is building toward an international day of climate change action this Saturday. The day is the brainchild of Bill McKibben and his organization, 350.org, which is attempting to inspire the world to respond more diligently to the challenge of climate change. Many scientists was 350 parts per million is the safe upper limit for carbon dioxide in our atmosphere. Problem is: We're now at 390.

The movement is spawning all kinds of activities not only this Saturday, but all week and beyond.  I love the one held last Saturday in the Maldives, a country that would be one of the first to be submerged under rising waters caused by melting polar ice caps. President Mohamed Nasheed and his ministers held an official cabinet meeting under water. With scuba tanks. (Yes, they'd been taking lessons.) They communicated by hand signals.

In Philadelphia, the main event will be at Independence Mall, beginning at 1 p.m.  Speakers will include Ray Anderson, described as a "radical industrialist and environmental heavyweight," and Katherine Gajewski, the city's Director of Sustainability.  Afterward, people will do a human graphic formation _ arranging themselves into the giant number, 350.  They plan to take a photo from the top of the Bourse. The local website is www.350philly.org

Elsewhere in the world,  Israeli, Palestinian and Jordanian activists will gather on the shores of the Red Sea and arrange themselves into the pattern of huge 3’s and 5’s and 0’s.  In China, students at 300 universities are coordinating scuba marches with people dressed in snorkels and flippers.  Images from more than 3,000 other events will stream across screens in New York City’s Time Square.

For more information and events, go to www.350.org.  

Other events in the region not necessarily tied to 350.org, but nevertheless about climate change, include a  clean energy summit planned for Thursday in Media at Delaware County Community College, hosted by state Rep. Bryan R. Lentz.  It will include a panel of regional and national clean energy experts, and they'll talk about renewable energy, including how the country can strengthen national security by reducing dependency on foreign oil, and how it can create jobs here at home instead of outsourcing manufacturing overseas.
 

The event will be held from 10 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Panelists include Panelists include Lentz,  Dr. Jerry Parker of the college, a Truman National Security Project representative, Tony Girifalco of the  Delaware Valley Industrial Resource Center, Nathan Willcox of PennEnvironment, Steve McNally, of the  International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local Union 654, Eric Thumma of Iberdrola Renewables and Drew Devitt of New Way Airbearings.

This week, military veterans are embarking on a 21-state bus tour to talk to citizens about the dangers of climate change and the threat to national security. On Wednesday at 6:30 p.m. they'll be in the mayor's reception room at city hall as part of a town meeting -- also with state Rep. Lentz. 

The tour is sponsored by Operation Free, a coalition of veterans and national security groups working together to raise public awareness about national security threats posed by climate change and the importance of building a clean energy economy that is not tied to fossil fuels. For more information about the tour, visit the Operation Free Veterans for American Power Bus Tour website (http://www.operationfree.net/on-the-bus/).
 

http://www.flickr.com/photos/martinlabar/ / CC BY-NC 2.0

Here's a great idea for how to expand an area's tree cover -- particularly in this region, where oak forests dominate.

Go pick up acorns and spread them around.

Think it's a joke? The Delaware Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control has been doing it for five years.

Earlier this month, 91 volunteers and agency biologists spread out to two state parks and the Smyrna rest area (just off Route 1) to collect acorns that had fallen in areas where seedlings would be unlikely to grow -- places like mowed areas along trail edges, open spaces, roadsides, etc. They encouraged landowners to help out as well, and one in particular wowed everyone. Betty Ann Cooper collected 150 pounds of acorns on her property in Frederica. Get this, she's 84. Her view: "I don't like to waste things." And, hey, the squirrels have plenty already, I'm sure.

Altogether, the department collected 1,191 pounds of acorns this year, the most since the program began in 2005.

The acorns will be scattered in reforestation areas to grow on their own.  Some also will be grown into oak seedlings to be transplanted later.

Okay, so the Halloween connection is about as hokey as it gets. In fact, I can almost feel myself gagging.

But what the heck: Vampire power sucks, as they say, and any time something comes along to help people kick the habit of keeping all those power-draining devices plugged in, I’m for it.

So welcome to a new website: www.VampirePowerSucks.com, which is the brainchild of iGo, a company that develops eco-friendly chargers and power management systems.

The problem is that in most homes, even when you think an electronic device is turned off, it’s probably not. In reality, it’s little electronic brain may still be humming along. It’s still remembering settings, noting the date, at the ready for an internet connection, ever on the alert for a signal from the remote.

Researchers say that the typical house has three dozen appliances that never really shut down. Want to explore? Look for anything with a little red light. That’s the first clue. Look for anything with a touch pad, a digital display, a remote control.

Some are just teeny drains. Like a cell phone charger. (Even if the phone isn't plugged in, it's drawing power.) Others are real power hogs, the Humvees of household suckers. According to Alan Meier, a Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory energy analyst who was one of the first to take the issue seriously, some of the new cable and satellite boxes draw 40 watts when “off” — about half of what an entire refrigerator draws. The cost at current PECO rates would be upwards of $50 a year.

I wrote about Meier and the issue over a year ago, but the points still stand. Click here to read the story. 

For those who want to explore their own hidden power hogs, the VampirePowerSucks website has an interactive graphic where you can find your devices on a list, “drag” them into a virtual home and see what you wind up with.
Or, you could get a Kill-a-Watt meter, which you plug into an outlet, then plug the device in question into the meter, and it reads out the power draw.

Or, you could simply be conscientious: Go around and unplug everything that you can think of.
 

Faith Chapel at Steelmantown (Steelmantown photo)

More and more people are interested in taking their eco-ethic with them into the grave.  They're deciding not to be embalmed, and they're looking for places where they can be buried not in a cement vault, but just in the ground. Dust to dust.

I wrote about the trend last November, and I'll copy the story below.

Meanwhile, for those interested in checking things our first-hand, a local cemetery that offers natural burials is having an open house this weekend. It's called Steelmantown Cementery, and its in the heart of the South Jersey pinelands, surrounded by Belleplain State Forest. Family members can hand-dig graves and bury their loved ones in a simple shroud or a pine or wicker casket.  The story of how it all came to be is at the end of the article below.

The open house is being held Saturday and Sunday from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.  

Here's the story: 

As the setting sun filtered through red and yellow leaves, West Laurel Hill Cemetery's Nevin Mann stuck a shovel in the ground.

He was planting a tree. And, in a way, nurturing the seed of an idea: a shift in the American way of death - a departure from chemicals, concrete vaults and manicured plots.

Mann, cemetery president and CEO, was ceremoniously opening a 31/2-acre "natural" burial ground at the 1869 Lower Merion cemetery, where 100,000 people are buried, including a Titanic survivor and sculptor Alexander Stirling Calder.

No embalmed bodies will be allowed in this area, which has room for 400. Only untreated wood and biodegradable shrouds can be used.

Markers will be little more than fieldstones; Bringhurst Funeral Home, which is on site, will help families conduct at-home funerals and make caskets.

Each year, along with their dearly departed, Americans bury 827,060 gallons of embalming fluid and 30-plus million board feet of timber, according to the Green Burial Council, an advocacy and certification organization in New Mexico.

Its founder, Joe Sehee, says we bury enough steel to rebuild the Golden Gate Bridge, and enough concrete vaults - to keep the ground over graves from sinking, which makes maintenance easier - to pave a highway halfway across the United States.

"A lot of people don't want to feel like their last act is one of pollution," he said. "I don't think people have embraced conventional funeral options as much as tolerated them."

Now people are being buried in coffins made of wicker or bamboo. In Ecopods of recycled paper. Even in simple shrouds. A San Francisco company offers them in linen, silk and ethnic textiles.

Green burial sites even include forests, grasslands, and other natural areas - with the burial money helping to keep the land undeveloped.

Markers might be nonexistent, with GPS coordinates the only thing guiding loved ones to the spot.

Sehee founded the certifying group in 2005.

So far, the council has approved seven casket and urn companies, more than a dozen cemeteries, a couple of cremation-disposition programs, and nearly 200 funeral-service providers.

Though still just a tiny part of the $11 billion annual U.S. funeral industry, green burials and funerals are gaining ground, industry officials say, because of the growth of a broader green ethic.

"It's a great movement," said Ellen Wynn McBrayer, spokeswoman for the National Funeral Directors Association and a Georgia undertaker who is "heading in that direction" herself.

"Some religions, and some people, prefer ashes to ashes, dust to dust."

True, some are repulsed by the idea of not embalming. But in a 2007 AARP funeral survey, one-fifth of respondents said they were interested in something more eco-friendly.

"If you drive a Prius, live an environmentally conscious life and read Dwell magazine, you are not going to settle for the options offered at a traditional funeral home," said West Chester's Donna Larsen, with A Natural Undertaking, a resource center for home funerals.

At West Laurel Hill, people had been asking about green funerals, Mann said after the opening a week ago. "We took the position of, if people want to do it, we ought to figure out how to help them."

Indeed, green burials are also seen as one more way people are taking back hallowed rituals, loosely akin to outdoor weddings and birthing at home with a midwife.

The home funeral may be the ultimate expression of a green burial.

About an hour after Rima Synnestvedt's father died in his bed, surrounded by his family, his three daughters and others bathed him with flower-scented water and dressed him in his favorite pants and corduroy shirt.

They lit candles and put on soft music. For about 10 hours afterward, friends visited John Synnestvedt, 78, and said their goodbyes.

Then the male members of the family lifted him into a coffin made of compressed cardboard. The next day, he was buried in a wooded plot at the Bryn Athyn Cathedral.

The ceremony four years ago fulfilled a promise Rima Synnestvedt had made to him. And to herself. "I think the body should be left in its natural state," she said.

In places that allow it, families are digging the graves themselves. They're decorating plain caskets with poems, messages, and grandchildren's tiny handprints.

In 2005, the movement got a boost from the HBO series Six Feet Under, which followed the lives of a family of funeral directors.

In the last episode, Nate, one of the owners, dies and his family lowers his shroud-wrapped body into the grave.

Lauren Ambrose, who played Nate's sister, later told a reporter that she wanted a green funeral, too: "I'm not really interested in being pumped full of chemicals and painted with salmon-colored lipstick."

Some have sneered that only among baby boomers, so obsessed with youth, could the idea of a green funeral gain traction. They wouldn't so much die as be replanted.

But Liz Cohen, a hospice social worker from Princeton, sees it as "a true return to the earth, letting our spirits go where they go, and letting our bodies help to preserve life."

Prices for funerals, traditional or green, range widely, so it's hard to compare. But Sehee said an eco-death could cost about half of a traditional funeral, or $3,000 to $5,000.

Advocates say it's not just a way to cheap out. Direct cremation - without embalming - is still the least expensive.

Tawana Ford Sabbath, a social worker and manager of the Walter E. Sabbath Jr. Funeral Service in West Oak Lane, worries that green plots will command a premium, out of reach for some.

In a way, eco-burials are only a new label. Many in the Jewish and Muslim faiths already incorporate some of the same elements.

And caring for their dead is something families have done for centuries. It has only recently been relegated to funeral homes.

Among all the "new" green burial grounds is a small wooded area deep in the Pinelands, near Tuckahoe, N.J.

Dating to the 1700s, the Steelmantown Cemetery belonged to a Southern Baptist congregation that did not allow embalming or vaults.

The church burned in the 1950s and gradually was forgotten. Litter piled up.

But housing developer Ed Bixby knew about it. His mother had belonged to the church. And his infant brother had been buried there in a wicker basket in 1956.

It's a long story, but Bixby now owns the one-acre cemetery. He has protected it with a deed restriction, and plans to expand it onto an adjacent 7.5 acres. "Everything seems to come around in this life," he said. "All of a sudden, here we are, back to the way it was."

Bob Fertig, owner of the Fertig Funeral Home in Mullica Hill, has handled some of the services. He's seen family and friends carry a loved one to the grave, dug with a shovel.

"To watch the family be a part of that . . . to have them help lower the body in the ground, and then watch them as they replace the dirt. . . . It's a very profound, moving experience," he said.

"We, as a funeral home, decided we wanted to be a part of this."

Penn State's solar house in D.C.

Can't get to the mall in Washington, D.C., to see the solar decathlon competition? Now you can see videos of all the solar houses that have been built there -- one by a team of Penn State students -- to demonstrate the viability of solar power. The videos are available here.

The Penn State group is led by Abington's Kyle Macht. One thing I like about the house -- sight unseen, alas -- is that the team built it to seem homey. "When you walk in you can feel it. This is not a science fair project. It’s a home. We want people to say, wow, I could live here," said spokesman Tom Rauch. 

The floors and furniture are made of reclaimed barn wood. But the techno systems are amazing -- materials that absorb heat during a cold day and then radiate it back into the home at night. A bladder of water under the floor to do the same thing. An innovative photovoltaic system. A green roof.

You can check it all out at the team's website.

A Ben Franklin banner, both in the field and remade into a bag. (Center City District photos)

I have a ton of reusable bags, it seems. They're in my car, my kitchen, even a small one is in my purse. But virtually all of them are made of what I'll call fresh materials -- stuff produced specifically to make the bag. (The colorful exception is a TerraCycle bag made from those foil juice pouches.)

But the Center City District has come up with a whole new bag.  They've started making the sacks out of old banners that used to hang from the light poles, advertising various events. The banners, it turns out, are made from durable polypoplin fabric, and they used to just pile up in storage once they were taken down. 

Now, the banners, which are dirty when they're taken down, are sent for laundering to Philacor, a vocational training program of the prison system. The banners go into industrial-size machines and then -- I just love this part -- they're hung out to dry instead of being put into dryers.

Next, the banners go to Baker Industries, a nonprofit work rehab program that employs people who need help -- people with disabilities, parolees, people who are in alcohol or drug recovery, the homeless. Baker can get up to four bags from each banner.

The first banner bags out are from the Red Bull Soap Box Race 2008, the Philadelphia Orchestra's 2003 Christoph Eschenbach Welcome, Cirque du Soleil's Kooza, the Ben Franklin Tercentenary and CCD's welcome banner.

All bags are a limited edition, of course.  The district says prices may vary, depending on the retailer, but expect to pay $16.99 or more.  (Fancier than the bags sold at grocers, they have two interior pockets and are large -- 17 by 14.5 by 4.5 inches.) For now, they're only available at a few locations, including the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts gift shop at 128 N. Broad and at Open House Living at 107 S. 13th Street. The district says they'll also be at the Pennsylvania General Store in the Reading Terminal Market.

But just wait til these things catch on!