01/04/09  - **ACTION** --DISCUSSION -  Pass that Bottle Bill Already! Contact your legislators! This opinion published in the Buffalo News yesterday about the crucial need to pass the new bottle bill could not be said better by these New York environmental officials.  Passage of the Bigger Better Bottle Bill has been delayed for years without a good reason.  And now at the last possible hour for our economy and environment, this short essay by the head of the New York State Commissioner of the Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC), the agriculture commissioner, and the commissioner of the New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation is spot on. Updating ‘Bottle Bill’ is a no-brainer for Albany : Opinion : The Buffalo News By Pete Grannis, Patrick Hooker and Carol Ash  "As Gov. David A. Paterson has made clear, New York is facing a staggering budget deficit — by far the largest in state history. And many hard budget choices must be made. But updating New York’s 25- year-old bottle deposit law isn’t one of them: Expanding the law to cover noncarbonated beverage containers, including water, fruit juice and sports drinks, is long overdue." (Jan 3, 09) The Buffalo News

12/28/08 - RENewsletter is moving to a new, weekly format after January 1, 2009 - The RENewsletter is renewing (after a short hiatus) as a much leaner weekly edition. Trying to get out monthly coverage of all NewsLinks, events, actions, updates, ‘Site of the month”, etc. proved to be too much. So I’ve decided on a format that will allow me to send out a newsletter each week quickly and easily, instead of a newspaper like-format each month. This new format is designed to be skimmed quickly and load quickly—as it has no images. Hyperlinks work by CTRL + click to follow link. You can unsubscribe, of course, at any time by clicking on the message at the bottom of each notice, but I hope you’ll stay on. We are in an extraordinary time where the environment, the media, and the economy are undergoing a monumental change—world-wide and at the local level. RENewsletter attempts to zero in on a single locality—Rochester, NY—to keep you updated on all environmental changes here and connect the dots. With everything else going on that grabs our attention, it’s often difficult to stay focuses on what I believe is the most important issue of—the state of our environment. Our environment is not an issue, a passion, a political football, an interest (though it tends to be all of these). Our environment is Where We Live: If our environment is not sustainable, then “anything else we want to do is not going to happen.” (Carl Sagan).