Containers

Los Angeles County supervisors backed off a threat Tuesday to ban plastic shopping and grocery bags that environmental experts call unsightly and destructive. Instead, officials chose the weakest of five alternatives recommended by county executives: a volunteer program that leaves it to supermarket and store owners to coax customers into packing their purchases in reusable containers.

Conservation-mindful Seattlites know their garbage. They pack compost bins, fill yard waste carts, separate glass bottles and jars into tubs, and pack paper, cans and plastic jugs into oversize recycling containers. A city ordinance prohibits putting recyclables in the garbage. Residents can be fined for tossing too much glass or paper in the trash. Low-cost city-issued rain barrels help homeowners reroute well-known Northwest drizzle.

It was business as usual last week at Huntington Park's Crown Poly Inc., where workers in the brightly lit factory scurried around large, loud machines churning out hundreds of thousands of clear plastic bags per hour. But all that could change if the Los Angeles City Council has its way. A day before I visited Crown Poly, the council had voted to ban plastic bags at supermarkets and stores citywide by 2010.

It was a welcome quandary: California's bottle and can recycling program had a giant pile of unspent cash. Consumers failed to reclaim their deposits on billions of bottles and cans in recent years, leaving $180 million in a state account that could be used only for recycling. So the Department of Conservation decided last year to return much of the cash to consumers -- and create a new incentive to recycle -- by paying an extra penny or two on every can or bottle redeemed.

New parents across America are taking a second look at a playpen staple of the 1950s: glass baby bottles. Replaced long ago in most U.S. households by unbreakable plastic, glass bottles are making a comeback prompted by worries about a chemical used in making the plastic. When Amber Rickert of Los Angeles first heard that a chemical might be leaching from plastic baby bottles, she felt sick -- and immediately bought glass bottles. "For me, it was like a total no-brainer.

There's paper. There's plastic. Then there's the $960 reusable Hermes shopping bag. Originally designed for discerning Europeans, it hits America this summer, and if it sounds like an exotic fluke, consider the new $843 grocery tote by Italian designer Consuelo Castiglioni of Marni. Or the $495 organic cotton canvas shopper, due out in June from Stella McCartney.

With earthshaking thuds, a stamping machine hammers a sheet of hot plastic into king-size drinking cups destined to quench thirsts for soda at the nation's convenience stores. The blank white cups aren't just flexible and resistant to splitting -- they're also made from less plastic than cups produced by Berry Plastics Corp.'s competitors through a manufacturing process the company guards so closely that it forbids photographs of those machines. As retailers such as Wal-Mart Stores Inc.

When it comes to sacrificing to help the environment, IKEA shoppers are like everybody else: conflicted. Even if what they're sacrificing is a nickel. The home products retailer charges 5 cents per plastic checkout bag, and customers are either happy that IKEA is doing something positive for the planet or irritated that they would have to fork over anything for a flimsy little sack or some combination of both.

Plastic water bottles have been getting such a bad rap that people have started paying attention, which means that corporate America has started cashing in. The company that makes Brita water filters teamed up Monday with Nalgene, a manufacturer of reusable beverage containers, to launch the FilterForGood campaign, aimed at weaning people off throwaway bottles.

ENVIRONMENTALISM is hot in the wine business. While winemakers have always had a green streak, it's increasingly common to hear them stress their commitment to sustainable agriculture and biodynamic vineyard practices. Many wineries and wine companies promote their environmental bona fides on their websites. Organic wines have begun to find a broader audience. This green commitment certainly extends to packaging.