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!!

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!!

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!!)

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

Website: www.terracycle.net

Contact: info@terracycle.net

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.

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%.