Dec 3rd 2019 Meeting 10am Ely Senior Center

Hi Folks

Our next meeting will be Tuesday December 3rd 2019 at 10 am at the Ely Senior Center. The topic will be “recycling”. For your information Tuesday Group for that day is Tyler Fish “Crossing Greenland”.

We now have a Climate Blog for our group. You can find it here: https://elyminnesota.com/elyclimate/  You should find other items of interest at elyminnesota.com  Many thanks to Richard Watson who runs the site for setting this up and teaching me to use it. I will continue to send out monthly emails about a week before each meeting, but I’ll also put that info on the web site. Eventually maybe we can just be web based? Send me your thoughts on what would be useful to post. So far we have a book list, a climate change talk, and some history of our past meetings.

What happens to the stuff we put in the recycle bins? What can we do about single use plastics? What is the big picture? Are there bright spots in other parts of the globe? China used to import recycled materials from us, but does so no more. Here is a summary:

https://slate.com/technology/2018/06/why-china-import-half-world-used-plastic.html

This reference is for the nerds who need graphs and numbers on the China story:

https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/4/6/eaat0131

This link compares recycling in the US to other countries

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/jul/02/us-plastic-waste-recycling

But some good news, Minneapolis has a “bring your own bag” ordinance starting Jan 1^st. After this date bring your own bag or pay 5c for a store bag (paper or plastic). Duluth is to follow in April 2020. How about Ely? Research shows that even a 5c charge has an effect https://ocean.si.edu/conservation/pollution/plastic-bag-bans-work

Plastics are hard to reuse, but paper, glass and aluminum can be processed into new products many times. Here is what happens to paper: https://earth911.com/business-policy/business/paper-recycling-details-basics/

On another topic, the UN’s World Meteorological Office (WMO) has just released a report summarizing greenhouse gas data for 2018. This has made the regular news channels, it is not good news. Next year, 2020, is particularly important to assess the effectiveness of commitments made in Paris and to update them. There is a lot of work to do.

https://public.wmo.int/en/media/press-release/greenhouse-gas-concentrations-atmosphere-reach-yet-another-high

Thank you, Happy Thanksgiving

Barb Jones

b2jonesmn@gmail.com

Ely Senior Center is at 27 S 1st Ave next to Ace Hardware