Let’s all work towards a Plastic bagless World!!

As we blindly contribute to plastic pollution of our world at an astronomic rate of 500 billion to 1 trillion plastic bags annually worldwide STOP for two minutes and just see how easy it can be to change this.

We favour convenience over the simple measures we could take to eliminate this wholesale disregard of our world and wildlife – and eventually our own existence – as plastic now enters our food chain.

This Blog is dedicated to identifying alternatives to the Plastic Bag and to the many ways it can be recycled. If you have any ideas or links to plastic bag recycling please add them as a comment and we will incorporate them into future posts.

Never be without a bag..

Another great invention to negate the need to use plastic – The Onya keyring bag. A very lightweight, durable bag that folds up into a tiny pouch on your keyring.

What’s more they come in a complete range of colours so you can match to your outfit and be super trendy as well!

OK – onya bike and get over to their web page to order yours!!

Coping with no free plastics at the Super..

OK, here’s an admission – after all my preaching here about abolishing plastic bags, I originally still found myself in the supermarket without my re-usable Canvas bag – and added more plastic waste to the world!! However, now many supermarkets are not stocking bags we need to get ourselves organised. I personally have probably over 50 re-usable bags (ranging from Ikea to Carrefour to my faithful Canvas bag).

First big help is once you have emptied the shopping at home – immediately refold the bags and return to the car – ready for the next shopping trip.

Again I would arrive at the supermarket and wander in to the shop on autopilot – leaving the bags in the car. So when I reached the cashier – I’m needing to buy MORE re-usable bags. WRONG.. Now I just load all the shopping back into my trolley, wheel it to the car and sort all my shopping into my re-usables at the car. All very organised for freezer, pantry, fridge etc and no extra cost in bags – SORTED.

What happens if you only buy enough for a small basket which you can’t take to the car? Go shopping less often and buy for a month – using a trolley!!

Couldn’t be easier!!

A Green Victory – or Big Business seeing big savings?

After setting up this blog and promoting the damage and ongoing havoc created by widespread dumping of plastic bags for flora; fauna and the animal world – I am obviously ecstatic to see the sudden avalanche of large retail outlet chains throughout world removing their free supply of plastic and promoting re-usable (canvas!!) bags.

However, I don’t think myself or any of you are naive enough to really believe this is being done for the good of the planet. The savings for these large supermarket chains will be significant I am sure. One massice Supermarket chain (Carrefour) here in Spain and France is running extensive TV campaigns asking their clients to help them in their quest to rid the world of the Plastic Bag – impressive!!

But whatever the motive – the plastic bag is in demise and we should be happy. See my next post on how to cope with a trolley full of groceries and no free bags (without creating a stock pile of re-usable bags at home!!)

Re-useable, washable cloth means you can stop buying disposable paper towels

You can save and go green with ShamWow. It is Machine washable and bleachable. Never buy sponges, scouring pads or paper towels again. They’re like a towel, chamois and sponge all in one. The PopulaMechanic Mag. Had Full Test against Competition and this one is the winner. Think how many trees would be saved if every household had a few of these!!

A Paperless alternative to Postal System

More than 15 billion pieces of paper mail are sent in the United States each month, at considerable cost both to senders and to the environment. Zumbox hopes to change all that with a new, paperless alternative to the U.S. Mail.

California-based Zumbox has created an online mailbox for every street address in the US, including residences and businesses alike. So, anyone in the country can begin using Zumbox immediately on the web to send and receive all-digital mail for free. Senders simply upload an electronic document—Word and PDF are both supported, as are interactive formats like HTML, Flash, audio and video—and specify the recipient’s street address. That mail then gets sent to the recipient’s Zumbox electronically. At the other end, recipients see an image of an envelope and click on it to open it. They’re then shown what looks like a duplicate version of what they’d normally find in their traditional mailbox.

Any content that can be printed can also be sent via Zumbox, including bills, statements, purchase orders, and other accounting documents, and senders can even incorporate a “Pay Now” button that links to the payment system of their choice. Zumbox has also implemented bank-level security, and is compliant with the security standards of the financial, healthcare, and banking industries. Analytics are available to help marketers track mailings and campaigns. Perhaps best of all, Zumbox relieves organizations interested in reducing their paper usage from the near-impossible task of gaining and updating recipients’ email addresses. Receiving mail via Zumbox is free for everyone. Advertisers and marketers must pay USD 0.05 per street address to send mail through the service, as must individuals who want to send mail to more than 50 addresses per month.

Zumbox launched into limited public beta last month, and it will clearly take time before significant numbers of users sign on. One also has to wonder what would stop consumers from using Zumbox just as a catch-all for the mail they don’t actually want to receive, keeping all those marketing offers and other “junk mail” out of their traditional mailboxes. Still, the paperless potential makes Zumbox an intriguing new contender. One to watch, try out, or get in on early…? (Related: Snail mail app for Facebook users — Send an email to post a letter — Free snail mail, sponsored by advertisers.)

Website: beta.zumbox.com
Contact: bizdev@zumbox.com

Non- recyclable package collection points

TerraCycle and its ever-expanding list of eco-innovations have once again caught our eye. Not satisfied with simply making eco-fertilizer from organic waste and worm poop or turning old wrappers into eco-chic bags and accessories, the US-based company has now introduced a non-recyclable packaging collection system in several American big-box chain stores. The collection project first began in 2007, letting the public (most often civic groups or schools) set up collection points for packaging and other waste. TerraCycle donates USD 0.02–0.06 to the charity of the collector’s choice for each unit that enters the system. The benefit for TerraCycle: a warm, fuzzy planet-saving glow, and a source of raw material for the upcycled products it sells, including pencil cases, lunch boxes and corkboards. Now, two years later, the program is making its way into thousands of retail locations across America, thanks to partnerships with major chains like PETCO, OfficeMax, Home Depot and Best Buy. The ultimate plan is to establish permanent collection points in all of these chains’ stores nationwide, aiming for 10,000 retail locations by 2010. Consumers who live too far from one of the retail drop-offs can sign up to collect waste themselves. Although coupling with major chains might seem to conflict with TerraCycle’s grass-roots ethics, it’s a highly effective way of scaling up their operation. It’s not a bad deal for the retailers either, cutting a better profile where sustainability is concerned. A win-win for all concerned. Something to start up in other eco-minded regions?

Website: www.terracycle.net

Contact: info@terracycle.net

One Man’s Trash is Another Man’s Twitter – My Quest the Twenty-Five Dollar Victory Garden

Joe Gardener through his Blogs and Twitter camapaigns has just launched the 25 dollar Victory Garden challenge – to run a video log daily showing how he can create an organic garden on a 25 dollar budget – sufficient to feed his whole family through the summer. Creating his garden on a shoe string budget has seen some ingenious use of recyling to reduce costs using discarded items. Plastic bottles and cake covers for mini green houses; toilet roll inners for seed germinators and much more to come I am sure. Any ideas from our readers we can pass on to Joe? Please comment below..

The Numbers…Believe It or Not

Introduced just over 25 years ago, the ugly truth about our plastic bag addiction is that society’s consumption rate is now estimated at well over 500,000,000,000 (that’s 500 billion) plastic bags annually, or almost 1 million per minute.

 

·  Single-use bags made of high-density polyethylene (HDPE) are the main culprit. Once brought into existence to tote your purchases, they’ll accumulate and persist on our planet for up to 1,000 years.

·  Australians alone consume about 6.9 billion plastic bags each year, that’s 326 per person. According to Australia’s Department of Environment, an estimated 49,600,000 annually end up as litter.

·  In 2001, Ireland used 1.2 billion disposable plastic bags, or 316 per person. An extremely successful plastic bag tax, or PlasTax, introduced in 2002 reduced consumption by 90%.

·  According to The Wall Street Journal, the U.S. goes through 100 billion plastic shopping bags annually. An estimated 12 million barrels of oil is required to make that many plastic bags.

·  Four out of five grocery bags in the US are now plastic.

·  Plastic bags cause over 100,000 sea turtle and other marine animal deaths every year when animals mistake them for food.

·  In a dramatic move to stem a tide of 60,000 metric tons of plastic bag and plastic utensil waste per year, Taiwan banned both last year.

·  According to the BBC, only 1 in 200 plastic bags in the UK are recycled.

·  According to the WSJ Target, the second-largest retailer in the U.S., purchases 1.8 billion bags a year.

·  As part of Clean Up Australia Day, in one day nearly 500,000 plastic bags were collected. Unfortunately, each year in Australia an estimated 50,000,000 plastic bags end up as litter.

·  The average family accumulates 60 plastic bags in only four trips to the grocery store.

·  Each high quality reusable bag you use has the potential to eliminate an average of 1,000 plastic bags over its lifetime. The bag will pay for itself if your grocery store offers a $.05 or $.10 credit per bag for bringing your own bags.

·  Windblown plastic bags are so prevalent in Africa that a cottage industry has sprung up harvesting bags and using them to weave hats, and even bags. According to the BBC one group harvests 30,000 per month.

Supermarkets cut back on handing out carrier bags by half

UK Supermarkets to cut back on handing out carrier bags by half

Asda, Co-op, M&S, Sainsbury’s, Somerfield, Waitrose and Tesco will give out 5m fewer bags each year (Jessica Aldred • guardian.co.uk)

Seven major supermarkets today reached an agreement with the government to halve by spring 2009 the number of single-use carrier bags being handed out in stores around the UK. The deal will see 5m fewer bags being handed out each year — enough to fill 60 Olympic-sized swimming pools. Asda, the Co-op, Marks & Spencer, Sainsbury’s, Somerfield, Waitrose and Tesco stores in England, Wales and Northern Ireland signed up to the voluntary agreement that obliges them to halve the numbers of single use carrier bags compared with 2006 levels. They also committed to an “aspirational” target to eventually cut bag use by 70%.

Plastic Bagless Anthem

Tim Minchin’s Classic Anthem for the Unplastic Fantastic Canvas Bag