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Ride your bamboo bike on the way to recycle your cell phone.

by Jane Bogner

July 9, 2006

            If the movie The Graduate was made today, Dustin Hoffman would have been advised to invest in bamboo, not plastic.

            Bamboo is used for more and more consumer products. In January, I wrote about my new bamboo T-shirt and Target stores that sell towels and sheets made from bamboo and cotton. Last week, I read about bicycles made from Bamboo.

            Begun as a publicity stunt in 1996, Craig Calfee's bamboo errand bike evolved into a well-tested model for the general public. His first dozen bamboo bikes were built for relatives and friends. The feedback on the bike’s smooth ride was too good to ignore, so they decided to go into production.

            Their web site (www.calfeedesign.com ) states that their “Real Bamboo bike is for racing or commuting. The vibration damping is a performance advantage on longer rides. Each frame is built to order and every frame is a unique work of art. Tubes are selected for the weight of the rider.”

            Black Bamboo has a natural oil that simply gets rubbed with a cloth to obtain a beautiful, semi-gloss finish. Clearcoats and paints won't stick to it. This high performance bamboo frame weighs about 4 pounds and is a lot of tougher than most people realize allowing Calfee to rate the bike as crash tolerant.

            Craig Calfee started designing and building carbonframe bikes in 1987 after a head-on collision in Boston. He was determined to make a bicycle frame as tough as possible and began experimenting with materials he had used at a job making composite rowing shells.

            Today, Calfee Design is located in the Santa Cruz area and continues to raise the bar with their carbonfiber tandem bike, a recumbent bike and the two-pound Dragonfly bike.

New E-Waste Recycling Laws effective July 1

            Starting July 1st, two new electronic waste recycling laws, AB 1125 and AB

 2091, went go into effect requiring retailers to take back rechargeable batteries and cell phones for recycling. These two new laws represent the first time that California retailers will be required to share in the responsibility for collection and recycling of a product they sell.

 PLASTIC NEWS

            Do you remember when McDonalds, Burger King and other fast food restaurants used Styrofoam clam shells for their burgers. There was a national public campaign against this packaging which resulted in these companies switching to coated paper boxes.

            Last week, the Oakland City Council voted to ban the use of Styrofoam containers by restaurants and other food vendors in the city by 2007. The ordinance would require restaurants to use biodegradable or compostable products which could go into the yard waste and food waste recycling programs. This ban is important if Oakland is to achieve its waste reduction goals of having only 25 percent of their trash go to landfills by 2010.

 PENDING LEGISLATION

            Assembly Bill 2202 (Saldana) tracks the provisions of the European Union’s RoHS Directive (Restriction of the use of Certain Hazardous Substances) that requires manufacturers to phase out the use of toxic materials from consumer electronics. Manufacturers in many countries are racing to achieve compliance in order to remain competitive in the global marketplace. AB 2202 will effectively expand California’s current RoHS provisions to all electronic devices and will prohibit any non-compliant devices from being sold in California.

            AB 3056 (Hancock) would use surplus recycling funds to increase CRV (California Refund Value) to a nickel for beverage containers (a dime for larger containers) and to fund other recycling opportunities.

            AB 2449 (Levine) would require retailers to take back and recycle plastic grocery bags, while providing consumers with a reusable bag opportunity.

            AB 2206 (Montanez) would establish a multifamily dwelling recycling program.

            For more information about recycling legislation, log onto www.cawrecycles.org

             VALCORE Recycling President Jane Bogner's "A Sorted Affair" is published every other week in the Times-Herald. For recycling information call VALCORE Recycling at 645-8258 or visit www.VALCORErecycling.org .

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