Email us!
Lowell Area Bloggers/Forums
- adventures of the mohards
- Art is the Handmaid of Human Good
- Blog from the Office of the City Manager, Lowell MA
- Choosing a Soundtrack
- Corey Sciuto
- Downtown Lowell Blog
- Dracut Forum
- Dracut Musings
- Dracut Politics
- gerrynutter'slowell
- JackieDoherty.org
- Lowell Deeds
- Lowell Police Dept WebNews
- Lowell Public Schools Blog
- Middlesex Community College Blog
- Mr. Mill City
- MV Homlessness Blog
- RichardHowe.com
- Right-Side-of-Lowell
- Tewksbury Issues
- The New Englander
Lowell Politics
Mass Bloggers
- - Leftyblogs MA Blogroll - Almost all of my favorite lefty blogs in Massachusetts can be found here. Linking here keeps my own blogroll short but still up to date! Below are some other MA blogs which are not listed at LB.
- H2Otown (Watertown, MA)
- MargeBLOG (Williamstown)
- Michael Forbes Wilcox (Western MA)
- The Gazebo (Worcester area)
Media in Lowell
- Chelmsford Mass News
- Community Connections The online archive of many of WUML's radio shows.
- LTC :: Our community cable access channel (8 & 10). Excellent people, I've worked with them before.
- Open Source :: Chris Lydon's new show, broadcast on WUML and WGBH locally.
- The Lowell Sun :: Love it or hate it, it's the big newspaper in town.
- WCAP radio :: Talk radio in Lowell - still locally owned, and in transition.
- WUML :: The student- and community-run radio station of UMass-Lowell. Lynne hosts a radio show, Thinking Out Loud, 10am on Fridays.
Media in MA
Other Daily Reads
Politics Online
- City Council Agenda Past City Council agendas, posted in a mostly timely manner
- Lowellma.gov Official city website
Progressive Local Orgs
Snark and politics
The Arts in Lowell
- 119 Gallery - Art gallery with exhibitions of many local artists, interesting events, and living, breathing culture.
- Arts League of Lowell (ALL) - Artist community group, a recent but welcome addition to the arts scene in Lowell.
- Brush Art Gallery - Come and meet working artists in their natural habitats!
- Cultural Organization of Lowell (COOL) - Great local calendar of events.
- Lowell Opera Company - Community opera.
- Lowell Philharmonic Orchestra - Local community orchestra.
- Lowell Poetry Network
- Lowell Rocks - List of live music events
- Merrimack Repertory Theatre - A local theatre "presenting an exciting mix of contemporary and new plays in historic downtown Lowell."
- OUtlET - Paper and online 'zine making a splash locally with events in art, poetry, music, and everything in between!
- Revolving Museum Contemporary, local, public art space with a plethora of children's programs and art by and for the community.
- The Fine Print - Socially aware, themed, arts and issues periodic publication available throughout Lowell.
- The Image Theater - Theatre company which puts on all original works by local playwrights.
- Whistler House Museum - A great collection of contemporaries of Whistler at his historic birthplace.
January 23rd, 2009 at 5:00 pm
Lynne, my wife was going to school in Galway when they made this change. She said it worked great, and continued to bring bags to the store once she came back. Its a great idea, I am shocked to see common sense being used. Thanks for bringing this up.
January 24th, 2009 at 2:46 am
the paper bags is a great idea. I would *love* to see that bill pass.
January 26th, 2009 at 9:55 am
Plastic bag surcharges?? I really wish the tree-huggers would make up their minds. I recall that when plastic bags first made the scene, it was billed as a move to “save the environment” by lessening the number of trees killed to make paper bags.
January 26th, 2009 at 10:09 pm
Sour grapes much?
In case you hadn’t noticed, plastic bags are made from oil.
January 27th, 2009 at 9:46 am
I’m just against needless and ineffective legislation put in place as a knee-jerk reaction or as a placebo to make certain constituents feel good.
So plastic bags are made of oil. Tell me, what percentage of total plastic production do plastic bags comprise? And what percentage of total oil produced does plastic bag production consume? How many plastic bags are used in a given year? Now what amount of paper needs to be consumed in order to replace all those plastic bags? If we go back to paper-only, I guarantee you the tree-huggers will make a stink.
Now, about this proposed surcharge. How exactly are the logistics of this supposed to work? Lets use the grocery store as an example. My weekly grocery store run usually nets 18-30 bags of groceries. When does the surcharge get added? Does the bagger count the number of bags used after loading up my grocery carts? The number of bags used isn’t really under my control, it all depends on how many items a pimple-faced grocery clerk packs into a given bag. Sometimes I have bags with 1 or 2 items. Sometimes they’re jam packed to tearing. If a bag tears and requires double-bagging or re-bagging, who pays for the extra bag? I didn’t rip it. What about those of us who reuse our plastic bags? Mine become liners for small trash cans, pet waste pick-up bags, dirty diaper wrappers, lunch bags, etc. And is there a refund, like plastic bottles? Can I get my nickel back? And why single out grocery stores? I’m just as likely to walk out of Sears, Target, Walmart, or Macys with a dozen plastic bags.
This just seems like another example of a proposal that wasn’t very well thought out.
PS. Oil is abiotic. It’s not dinosaur juice.
January 27th, 2009 at 11:57 am
More on Paper vs. Plastic
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2008/07/paper-bags-or-plastic-bags-everything-you-need-to-know.php
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2005/01/qa_retail_carry.php
http://truths.treehugger.com/video/no_more_plastic_bags.php
January 27th, 2009 at 1:19 pm
So based on the data in that first article, Plastic bags are actually better than paper, because they require less energy to produce and recycle. But then the article cops out at the end and says that both paper and plastic bags are evil and we should all use canvas bags instead. But the author fails to back that up with the same analysis given to production of paper and plastic. What is the energy and resources required to produce a canvas bag? And if the whole state/country/world suddenly demanded their own supply of canvas bags, where would the production come from? What would happen to the rest of the textile world when such a large percentage of cotton went into canvas production? To meet the new demands for cotton, what crop would get displaced? For an example, look at what happened to corn feed prices when a substantial portion of corn crops started going into ethanol production.
It’s just nonsense to legislate something so needless and ill-conceived.
January 27th, 2009 at 1:49 pm
Hey citizen x: who said anything about switching from plastic to paper? This is about getting rid of the need for either.
Nonsense? Tell that to the successful legislation in Ireland. It worked. The amount of energy Ireland now needs (ie its carbon footprint, or energy footprint really) went down because they stopped using disposable bags at all. They bring reusable bags, which take up a LOT less energy, to produce, ship, store, and dispose of.
I’m not sure what you’re arguing for here? Continuing to increase our energy needs? Not fixing sustainability? I hate to say this, but you’ll lose that argument every time. Not only is is better for the environment, but it’s better for business. Imagine how much money gets spent by retail shops every year to buy bags. Suddenly they stop having to. It’s a win-win for them, too.
January 27th, 2009 at 3:47 pm
Actually, according to the International Herald link provided above, the reason Ireland first proposed their PlasTax was to deal with litter. So rather than teaching people to properly dispose of their trash, they put in place an effort to do away with what’s being littered. So now that the bags are gone, what do they do about the other littered items? Ban cans? Wrappers? Gum? Newspapers?
Does it really take A LOT less energy to produce, ship, store a reusable bag?? A reusable canvas bag is heavier and bulkier than a plastic or paper bag. And the cotton to make canvas is a resource intensive crop. Reusable bags have to come from somewhere and be made of something. Please back up your statement with data.
What I’m generally opposed to is anything being done without being completely thought through. Things done or proposed without any logical or scientific backing. What is the goal of this bill? If it’s to discourage use of plastic bags, I doubt it will be effective. A nickel is not enough of a surcharge to discourage people. Aside from the logistical difficulties of enforcing and collecting the tax (how do you track how many bags a store gives out?? How do I control how many bags the clerk packs for me? Why single out grocery stores? What about small farmers markets, or mega department stores that also sell groceries?) Most people wouldn’t flinch at a nickel. Gas prices doubled in recent times and people kept on driving. And since most/all groceries offer the choice, some people would just pick the free paper bag instead. And if you ban them both, where are you going to suddenly come up with 200 million reusable canvas bags? Don’t try to paint this as “reducing energy needs”: the production of plastic bags is an infinitesimally small percentage of the world’s energy consumption.
Let’s call this what this is, an underhanded and unbalanced effort to raise funds for someone’s pet project.
If you’re serious about reducing energy consumption, you’d look at a list of the top consumers of energy and start at the top, where it makes a difference, not at the bottom where it’s just a nuisance.
January 27th, 2009 at 5:34 pm
I would think you can walk and chew gun at the same time, frankly, why do you have to choose between them?
Also, this is a hugely *visible*
And yes, it does take a lot less energy to produce, ship, store and dispose of a one-use plastic bag than a canvass one. Please.
You are making literally, NO sense here. Sorry, you haven’t convinced me.
January 27th, 2009 at 11:47 pm
Another politician. Yawn. The gutters of the roadways of Massachusetts are littered with the corpses of former legislators. Greedy, corrupt, small people.
January 28th, 2009 at 9:58 am
I prefer to use my canvas bags at the grocery store and anyplace else that I can.They are easier to handle and better distribute the groceries. However, I also use plastic bags that I get on other places for pet waste, food waste and other nasty things. Those I don’t use, I recyle at the grocery store. No one type of bag is the perfect answer to all purchases. Better recycling is the answer.