Mr. Mayor, I want to congratulate you for all the green steps you have undertaken already for the City of Los Angeles. I remember your pledge of planting thousands of trees in the City when Vice-President Al Gore visited our city in 2006 to show "An Inconvenient Truth". I was there and was very thrilled by your commitment. I also want to commend you for your "Green LA" Initiative (
http://www.lacity.org/lacity130.htm) which is intended to make Los Angeles a leader in fighting Global Warming.
The City of Los Angeles recently started a program of plastic bags recycling at every major stores (Ralphs, Longs, etc...). Some major stores (like Whole Foods) already had this policy. I feel this is insufficient. It is very difficult to recycle bottles and cans in Los Angeles. In order to get them recycled, you have to drive several miles (therefore adding Global Warming pollution) to the nearest Recycling facility. Also, a lot of them only fonction a few hours a day and make it difficult for people to get to them when they have to go to work.
I would like to propose that the City of Los Angeles also requires recycling bins for bottles and cans at every major stores just like it's been done for plastic bags.
It is currently a great initiative to see plastic bags filling up these bins and doing the same with bottles and cans would seriously help people recycle even more.
Mr. Mayor, I want to thank you for taking our request & petition into consideration. Please keep up the good work of greening Los Angeles.
1/26/08: UPDATE - We still don't have recycle bins in stores. But, Fresh & Easy has opened across the street from my place (on Hollywood blvd) and they have plastic bags, bottles & cans recycling inside the store! By the way, they are British! (owned by Tesco). Maybe, American companies should jump on the bandwagon as well.
