The TakePart Top 10 Weekly Roundup is a compilation of the week’s most notable stories from our entertainment-meets-social-action blogging network. Check out some of our most popular stories of the week, as well as a few TakePart blogger favorites!

TakePart Gang:

Everything I Know About Climate Change, I Learned in the Fifth Grade by Martin Musatov

When Torture Is Condoned, Is FISA That Shocking? by Wendy Cohen

* * *

Nicole Hughes:

Baltimore Woman Turns Tragedy Into Art

Why Don’t We Do More to Stop Global Warming?

* * *

Andy Kondrat:

Foods You Should and Shouldn’t Buy Organic

Paper or Plastic? The Environmental Impact

* * *

Jon Popham:

The Energy Independence Bill: A Filibuster Odyssey

“Bruno” Fools Mossad Agent

* * *

Gina Telaroli:

While Iran Tests Missiles, Test These 5 Iranian Films

Mao’s Out, Time to Capitalize On the Olympics

Every time you go to the grocery store, and the guy at checkout asks, “Paper or plastic,” do you freeze in a moment of panic trying to figure out what the right answer is? Now, if you freeze in panic because you really want to get the answer right because you need approval, then I’m not sure we can help you. However, if you freeze because you’re trying to figure out which answer is better for the environment, then you’ve come to the right place.

Today, treehugger.com posted an in-depth comparison of paper bags versus plastic bags, including where each type comes from, how each type is produced, and how each type is recycled. For example, for a plastic bag,

plastic bags are typically made from oil, a non-renewable resource. Plastics are a by-product of the oil-refining process, accounting for about four percent of oil production around the globe. The biggest energy input is from the plastic bag creation process is electricity, which, in this country, comes from coal-burning power plants at least half of the time.

But, for example, simply to recycle a paper bag

Read the rest of this entry »

The National Toxicology Program, part of the National Institutes of Health, announced that a controversial, estrogen-like chemical in plastic could be harming the development of children’s brains and reproductive organs.

An ingredient of polycarbonate plastic, BPA is one of the most widely used synthetic chemicals in industry today. It can seep from hard plastic beverage containers such as baby bottles, as well as from liners in cans containing food and infant formula.

The federal institute is the first government agency in the U.S. to conclude that low levels of BPA could be harming humans. Its findings will be used to help regulators at federal and state environmental agencies to develop policies governing its use.[LA Times]

and stay informed by visiting the National Toxicology Program website at http://ntp.niehs.nih.gov/ for more on public health issues and the latest issues in toxicology.

The TakePart Top 10 Weekly Roundup is a compilation of the week’s most notable stories from our entertainment-meets-social-action blogging network. Check out our most popular articles of the week on a variety of subjects, as well as a few TakePart blogger favorites.

Katie:

Helen Keller & Anne Sullivan Surfaces 120 Years Later

Hallelujah For American Idol, Jeff Buckley and Leonard Cohen

* * *
Nicole:

Google Gives Free Voicemail to San Francisco Homeless

Gabriel Garcia Marquez Turnes 80

* * *
Giulia:

Patrick Swayze’s Cancer Battle

Koby Bryant’s PSA for ASR

* * *
Gina:

Reese’s Empowering Bracelet

“Chop Shop” - Dreams In a Place of Despair

* * *
Kerry:

Bamboo Laptop: Will Apple Be Green with Envy?

The Explosive Truth About Twinkies

Steve Jobs recently proclaimed a new commitment to greener product design, but a Taiwan-based company called Asus has topped Apple’s new Air laptop in the sustainble sweepstakes with its Eco Book. Yeah, it’s cool that the Air is clad in recyclable aluminum, but the Eco Book’s laminated with strips of sustainably harvested bamboo, according to the Guardian.

Asus designed the Eco Book in response to the growing demand for alternatives to plastics. Jellent Sun, a senior director at Asus, told the Guardian “Bamboo is the most sustainable raw material there is.” The Eco Book was unveiled yesterday at the computer fair CeBIT, in Hanover, Germany, but it won’t go into production till June.

Other companies are introducing their own “ecolutions” at CeBIT, such as Fujitsu Siemens’ O-Watt monitor, which uses no electricity when in standby mode. This is exactly the kind of innovation we need to solve the “vampire energy” problem I blogged about yesterday.

Read the rest of this entry »

If the Great Pacific Garbage Patch gets any bigger, we may have to colonize it–that is, if it doesn’t invade us first. This swirling mass of plastic debris was a Texas-sized vortex when I first wrote about it in November. Now, this mass of roughly 100 million tons of garbage has overtaken an “area that is maybe twice the size” of the continental United States, as one researcher who’s studying the vortex told the Independent.

Oceanographer Curtis Ebbesmeyer, a ” flotsam” expert, has been trailing the trash vortex for fifteen years and describes it as “a big animal without a leash:”

When that animal comes close to land, as it does at the Hawaiian archipelago, the results are dramatic. “The garbage patch barfs, and you get a beach covered with this confetti of plastic.”

Read the rest of this entry »

Plastic bags are getting a bad rap globally; from Asia to Africa to Europe and North America, shoppers are being forced by bans to BYOB (bring your own bag.) But Ireland’s managed to convince consumers to switch to reusable bags without instigating a ban, as the New York Times reports today:

In 2002, Ireland passed a tax on plastic bags; customers who want them must now pay 33 cents per bag at the register. There was an advertising awareness campaign. And then something happened that was bigger than the sum of these parts.

Within weeks, plastic bag use dropped 94 percent. Within a year, nearly everyone had bought reusable cloth bags, keeping them in offices and in the backs of cars. Plastic bags were not outlawed, but carrying them became socially unacceptable ” on a par with wearing a fur coat or not cleaning up after one’s dog.

Plastic bag-buyers who find themselves subjected to scowls from more sustainably-minded citizens can console themselves with the knowledge that the 33 cent tax goes to the government to fund environmental enforcement and cleanup programs.

Learn more about the problems created by plastic shopping bags and find alternatives at reusablebags.com.

There are two big problems with plastic; it wastes a lot of non-renewable resources to make it, and then, when we throw it “away” , it doesn’t really go anywhere, “Ëœcause it takes, like, 10,000 years to degrade.

But a “green” chemist at the University of Prince Edward Island and his research team are working on a new kind of plastic, one that’s made from biodegradable, renewable agricutural by-products, as the Guardian reports. Looks like the land of Anne of Green Gables is getting even greener.

Learn more about how scientists are making plastic out of plants at smithsonianmag.com.

Japanese artist Miwa Koizumi creates extraordinary, ethereal sea creatures out of New York City’s discarded soda bottles. Koizumi, who came to NYC after graduating from the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris, was astonished by the amount of refuse we New Yorkers generate, and disturbed that Americans only recycle 23 percent of our plastic bottles. So she found a way to fashion soda bottles into stunning (but not stinging) jellyfish and anemones.

At a time when we’ve got a vortex of plastic trash the size of Texas swirling around in the Pacific Ocean and marine animals are routinely choking to death on our debris, it’s nice, for a change, to see some of our discarded plastic being turned into sea creatures instead of ending up in sea creatures.

To find out what you can do to fight the pollution of our oceans, go to Greenpeace.org.

By Kerry Trueman

With Christmas just a month away, parents are avoiding the Made in China label not only for the toys they’re buying their kids, but for the Christmas trees those gifts will be tucked under. North America’s small Christmas tree farmers are hoping for a big boost in sales thanks to a renewed interest in trees that aren’t manufactured from plastic half a world away.

China produces 85% of the world’s fake Christmas trees, most of which are made out of PVC, aka polyvinyl chloride. Some fake trees have been found to shed lead dust, too, according to the Maine Christmas Tree Association, which notes that the “average family uses an artificial, non-biodegradable tree for only six to nine years before throwing it away.”

I wonder, do those discarded trees ever find themselves reunited with some of the flimsy, schlocky stuff that once sat under them in happier days? Kind of a modern day version of Rudolph’s Island of Misfit Toys: The Landfill of Cast-Off Crap.