There is a saying that every plus has a minus and this is a perfect example.   Metal thieves will take just about anything to make a few bucks at the nearest recycling company, from telephone and power wires to manhole covers and memorial plaques.

Those brazen acts have now gained the attention of the British Columbia government, which intends to stem rampant metal theft with new legislation this fall.

B.C. Solicitor General Shirley Bond said her government recognizes that the issue has a huge economic impact, but it’s public safety that is behind the planned new law.

“Any time we see 911 going down as a result of metal theft, we have to do something about it,” she said.

Shawn Hall, a spokesman with Telus, said there has been 200 incidents this year alone of copper cable stolen from the telephone company and in each incident the phone lines are down for up to 36 hours.

“Make no mistake about it, these thieves are putting our customers’ lives at risk. It’s only a matter of time before someone tried to dial 911 and can’t because someone’s cut our line.”

Read the full article here.

Green Automotive Company Corporation (OTC:GACR) yesterday released its Financial Statements and Statement of Operations for the Company’s 1^st Quarter ended March 31, 2011 together with its quarterly updated discussion of its operations.

According to information posted this morning on www.otcmarkets.com the Company reported a loss of $202,952 for the quarter ended March 31, 2011 compared to a loss last year of $883,831 for the quarter ended March 31, 2010, an improvement of $680,879 over 2010. The loss resulted in a reduction in the Company’s Stockholders’ Equity of $202,952 but the Company’s Total Assets increased by $225,468 to $1,523,354.

Read the entire news release here.

Robin Shreeves wrote a nice article on reusable bags so I thought I would post an excerpt here for our readers.

As we accumulate more reusable bags, many of them go unused. Reusable bags are creating their own environmental problems. What’s the answer?

Over the weekend, we took a minivan full of stuff to Goodwill. Included were several reusable cotton bags that we’d been given over the years from businesses and organizations – bags that I never used because we have so many reusable bags, and I’ve discovered which ones meet my needs the best. The rest just sit there.

This morning, I read an interesting piece on Philly.com about reusable bags. Although the reusable bag market has grown, there isn’t any hard evidence that suggests the plastic bag market has decreased. In fact, “indirect measures suggest that plastic bag production has remained relatively steady.”

Reusable bags are supposed to help us consume less, specifically fewer plastic and paper bags. The number of reusable bags being given away at Earth Day events, sporting events, town festivals, banks, grocery stores and more ends up in the millions each year, and not everyone who is given a bag uses it. (Target gave away a million reusable bags in April.)

Sometimes they go unused because they are of inferior quality. Sometimes they go unused because they end up in a pile of other free, unused reusable bags. Sometimes the person who accepted it never gets into the habit of using it.

With all of these bags going unused, a new environmental problem is developing – bags that end up getting thrown away without having been used. When the Chicago Bears gave away 40,000 bags at a 2009 game, many of them ended up in the stadium trash. I wonder about the bags that I took to Goodwill over the weekend. Is anyone ever going to use them?

Read the rest here.