A brief conversation with the Mrs.

Me: I saw an almost naked man riding a bicycle when I was driving home the other day.

Her: What kind of bike was it?

Ike in Austin

A complete non-event. Very disappointing. It didn't rain. I didn't have a single branch fall, which is amazing, since our trees drop limbs if you sneeze at them. Luckily, we have no cedars, so there's not a whole lot of sneezing. Although if we did, I'd sneeze them all down, solving that problem. Er, yeah. So Ike didn't do nothin'.

Birds of Summer

Looks like the herons have taken off. Except one. An old, picked-over heron carcass appeared in our backyard today. I don't know how, because the thing was just feathers and bone now. I hope whatever happened doesn't keep the rest of them from coming back next year.

Update (June 27): Turns out at least one live bird remains. It's an adult.

Wind advisory

It has been astonishingly windy in Austin these last few days. The winds are strong enough to slam a car door shut. I don't know why it's happening. What's especially strange is that it's 95 ° and sunny while it's happening. We'll occasionally get windy days when a front moves in, but nothing like this. Very strange.

deposit systems

Austin is likely to ban plastic bags sometime in the not-too-distant future. That's a dumb idea. Plastic bags aren't good, but sometimes they're the best thing. They're great for trash cans. Nor are the alternatives cost-free, either in terms of energy, environmental impact, or convenience.

I do recognize that they've got some real negatives, though I have no idea how bad those negatives are. 1 billion bags per year in the US? Sounds like a lot, but they're pretty flimsy. 4.3 million gallons of crude oil sounds like a lot, but this is a country of 300 million. Everything is going to sound like a lot. 1400 tons in Austin landfills? Is that a lot? Maybe it's just a drop in the bucket. How big are the landfills? Does it really matter to me whether it takes 1000 years for them to break down? I figure once it's more than 100 years, it's basically all the same to me. 100,000 marine mammals sounds like a lot, but maybe the Port of Houston kills that many every day. I have no context for any of these numbers. Nor should I be expected to. But one thing I can definitely be counted on the pay attention to is money.

This is a classic case of misunderstanding the problem. The problem isn't that plastic bags exist. It isn't even that producing them uses energy and oil. The problem is that we throw too many of them away. That means more space in landfills and needing to use more energy and oil to make more.

That's where recycling comes in. My completely uninformed guess is that in the history of the world, we've produced enough plastic bags to go for another century if we just keep reusing and recycling what we already have, instead of producing new ones. Of course, we can recycle them now, but people don't. Then there's the litter problem; there are ugly plastic bags stuck in trees all around my neighborhood.

Up in Vermont, we had a deposit system for beverage bottles and cans. You paid 5¢ extra, and then got that back when you brought the bottles and cans in. Anyone who sold them had to take them back. When other houses in our neighborhood were being built around us, I'd go around to the construction sites and pick up all the bottles and cans that the workers just threw on the ground. It was a little dirty, but no big deal. I'd collect a few dollars worth in a half hour of walking around. Hey, free money. It worked so well to inoculate me against throwing out recyclable products that even now I cringe when I see someone throw a crushed aluminum can in the trash.

Deposit systems work a lot better than outright bans. People who need plastic bags could still get them. I could still use them as trash bags, though having a price on them would make me consider whether there was a superior alternative. We as a society would recycle a lot more. People like recycling, as long as they don't have to expend much effort. On the other hand, if they effectively got paid to recycle, they'd be a lot more motivated. Right now you have to expend extra time and effort to do the right thing. A deposit system means that people pay themselves to do the right thing. There would be a financial incentive to avoid litter, and for poor people to pick up litter. I'm startled that there aren't more deposit systems in operation. They seem as close to a perfect solution as you can get.

We could use a lot more deposit systems. At minimum, I'd like to see:

• Plastic bags - 5¢ each.


• Glass bottles - 10¢ each.


• Plastic bottles - 10¢ each.


• Beverage cans - 5¢ each.


• Cigarette butts - 3¢ each. This is the big one for me; they're not recyclable, but they're littered all over the place. Saying "Don't Mess With Texas" isn't enough.


• Batteries - $5 for car batteries, $2 for power tool batteries, 25¢ for D, C, B, A, AA, and AAA ones, 15¢ for watch batteries and the like. Even ones that aren't recyclable need to be disposed of properly.


• Fluorescent lights - $2 for big tubes, $1 for small tubes, and 50¢ for CFLs.


• Fast food containers - 50¢?

Those amounts are just suggestions. It would make sense to let the operator of the collection facility get some of the money to pay for the overhead of collection. Maybe you'd pay 7¢ per paper bag, and collect 5¢ when you recycle it.

I don't think we need deposit systems for food cans, as people generally use them only at home, making curbside recycling sufficient. Ditto for shampoo bottles, yogurt tubs, etc. Computers could use it, but there are too many different kinds of parts for a standardized system.

I expect the more suitable items are those that are often consumed outside the home (and thus frequently littered, like cigarette butts), ones that are especially hazardous (batteries), or are impractical for curbside recycling (plastic bags blow away). They'd also have to be items that have a sufficient impact to justify a widespread retail collection campaign; obscure niche items need some other system. Perhaps I am being too limited in my thinking.

What other common items that could use a deposit system? Used motor oil? Leftover paint? Bullet and shell casings (this IS Texas)? Leftover cooking oil?