Is Fee for Shopping Bags a Sacky Decision?Mayor Bloomberg’s plan to charge six cents per plastic bag won’t really help change the environment and people’s habits. Will it?
ByChris Rovzar
photo op
We Love Obliviously Ironic Junk Mail
Have we mentioned before how much we love junk mail from the Bureau of Waste Prevention? Oh, yeah, we have. Well, it’s still true, and the latest installment made us smile for a moment last night, all the way until we threw it out.
Earlier:
Best Junk Mail Ever
Giving Our Junk Mail a Second Chance
intel
Giving Our Junk Mail a Second Chance
Like most journalists, we are fairly regularly inundated with PR materials for various products, services, and, especially, books. Like most journalists, we give these things a quick once-over, realize they have nothing to do with anything we ever write about, and promptly toss all the packing, and all of the press releases, and all of the accompanying background material, and the sturdy folder all that paper came in, into the trash — or, if we’re feeling responsible and industrious, into the recycling. Sometimes we hang on to the product itself, often we toss it on a free-stuff table, and occasionally we throw it out, too. Which we were about to do yesterday with a set of books that arrived unbidden and irrelevantly on our desk — until we noticed the titles: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, Composting, Water, and Energy. At which point we laughed a little bit, and then we threw them out.
intel
Best Junk Mail Ever
We were throwing out junk mail the other day when we noticed the return address on one of the postcards. It promptly became our favorite piece of junk mail ever.
Related: NYCWasteLe$$ [NYC.gov]
the morning line
We Ain’t No State Senator’s Son
• Joe Bruno’s lobbyist son emerges as the crucial link between the embattled State Senate GOP leader and pony-loving businessman Jared Abbruzzese. The Feds allege an unsummarizable roundelay of sweetheart deals, lobbying stints, and commission fees. [NYT]
• Three central New Jersey high schoolers are dead after a head-on collision between their car and a van less than a mile from campus. The van’s driver was also killed, and her unidentified teen passenger hospitalized with serious injuries. [AP via amNY]
• A Brooklyn principal barred a special-ed student from entering a district spelling bee, telling him, “You don’t have the brains to do it.” This after organizing a special schoolwide bee seemingly aimed at eliminating him. [NYDN]
• City firefighters are putting up flag decals on their lockers in defiance of Fire Department’s order to remove all personal adornments from department buildings. Expect an interesting debate on whether a locker is a private or a public space (and a staggering amount of porn in the trash bins behind firehouses). [IHT]
• And speaking of trash, New Yorkers generate a lot of it. Almost twice as much food waste, in fact, as any other city. Best recyclers? No surprise there: Park Slope. [NYP]
