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ReusableBags.com in the News
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An Inconvenient Truth, 7.13.06
We're very proud of our recent endorsement in the appendix of Al Gore's blockbuster book addressing global warming, An Inconvenient Truth. It states, "To purchase reusable bags, learn more bag facts, and find actions you can take, visit www.reusablebags.com" (pg. 316). The appendix offers a handful of practical tips with the overarching philosophy of "Consume less, conserve more."
Using our key statistics, facts and sound bites, Gore develops a succinct pitch to raise awareness to the many problems associated with use-and-toss shopping bags:
"...an estimated 500 billion to one trillion plastic bags are consumed world-wide every year. In the U.S. alone, an estimated 12,000,000 barrels of oil are required to produce the 100 billion consumed annually... furthermore, paper bags are no better than plastic." Paper bag production delivers a global warming double-whammy -- forests (major absorbers of greenhouse gases) have to be cut down, and then the subsequent manufacturing of bags produces greenhouse gases. In short, carry a reusable bag and when asked paper or plastic, say neither... (pgs. 315-316).
Gore then touches on a parallel cause we have been passionately committed to for several years, carrying your own refillable bottle, for water or other beverages as a smart alternative to use-and-toss disposables. Gore urges, "Instead of buying single-use plastic bottles that require significant energy and resources to produce, buy a reusable container and fill it up yourself. In addition to the emissions created by producing the bottles themselves, imported water is especially energy inefficient because it has to be transported over long distances..." (pg. 316).
NY Times, 3.12.06
REACHING into their nylon lunch bags at school, Casey and Cameron Lilley pull sandwiches made of organic ingredients out of wax paper wrappers, and sip water from coated aluminum containers from Switzerland. Their mother, Shawn Lilley, had carefully chosen the packaging.
At a recent gathering of kindergarten mothers in Seattle, Ms. Lilley told the women that chemicals could leach from plastic bags and other plastic containers into food. Since then, a few more kindergartners have shown up with sandwiches in wax paper.
"Shawn researches these kinds of things, and it's not that much more expensive, so we switched," said Linda Walker, who packs lunch daily for her three children.
Whether the information on chemical hazards comes from magazines, the Web or the playground, many parents are changing their buying habits to try to protect children from what they see as dangers. Information on what exactly is toxic, however, is scant and sometimes conflicting...
...Parents' buying patterns can lead to industry changes. While phthalates can be used in some children's toys in the United States, parental pressure led the Consumer Product Safety Commission in 1998 to ask manufacturers to take them out of teething rings and pacifiers, according to Dr. Welshons. "The science was there for some time before, but until parents exerted pressure, such as by not buying the toys, they didn't change the formulation," he said.
The same grapevine that encourages parents to stop buying some products can help sales of others. Since August, the Center for Environmental Health, a nonprofit group in Oakland, Calif., has sued 24 lunchbox makers and retailers, after their vinyl lunchboxes were found by two independent labs to contain lead. E-mail messages flew from parent to parent.
Cool Tote, a company in Sparks, Nev., that makes lead-free nylon and cloth lunchboxes, found an immediate increase in sales on its Web site. "We started getting a lot more interesting to people," said Bruce Clancy, the chief executive. Another site, Reusablebags.com also started to offer the product line and now sells about 100 Cool Tote lunch bags a week....
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/12/business/yourmoney/12organic.ht
New York Times, 4.1.07
Taking Aim At All Those Plastic Bags
By a 10-1 Board of Supervisors’ vote, San Francisco became the first major American city to ban the use of non-biodegradable plastic bags by supermarkets, drug stores and other large retailers.
Yet another alternative is to sell consumers reusable bags.
“The paper versus plastics question takes us off the issue, which is consumption,” says Vincent Cobb, who offers reusable bags and containers on the Internet. “Getting into the habit of bringing your own shopping bag,” he says, “can slash this problem across the board.”
New York Times
MSNBC.com, 3.8.07
...As a country, the United States throws away approximately 100 billion polyethylene plastic bags a year—less than 1 percent are recycled, the Worldwatch Institute reports. Despite the fact that just about any plastic bag brought home from the supermarket is reusable (and can take 1,000 years to degrade, according to the Environmental Protection Agency), the average family accumulates 60 of them in just four trips to the grocery store, according to reusablebags.com. (IKEA’s 59-cent Big Blue Bag is made of plastic, but “it would take 1,000 uses for it to be unusable,” according to their spokesperson.)
The Nickel-Bag Offense
KCRA.com, 5.8.06
SACRAMENTO, Calif. -- The Center for Environmental Health in Oakland announced last year that it was suing the makers of some soft vinyl lunchboxes for exposing children to harmful levels of lead, and now the center is celebrating a groundbreaking agreement.
But there still may be risk to children.
Marie Versteeg of Lodi said she was surprised to learn last fall that her son Jackson's lunchbox contained the substance commonly known as lead.
"It's just something that you wouldn't think about in your child's lunchbox," Versteeg said...
http://www.kcra.com/news/9179906/detail.html
Eagle Tribune, MA, 4.19.06
Perhaps you don't have time to attend an Earth Day celebration on Saturday. Perhaps your daily schedule doesn't allow time for stopping global warming, cleaning up the world's polluted lakes and streams, and protecting endangered species...
An estimated 380 billion plastic bags are consumed in the United States each year. About 100 billion of those are plastic grocery bags, according to the statistics compilers at ReusableBags.com. Plastic grocery bags end up in the bellies of sea turtles and whales, and retailers spend an estimated $4 billion a year on bags.
Paper bags are no better. They require four times as much energy as plastic bags to manufacture and, in one year alone, 14 million trees were chopped down to supply the nation with 10 billion paper grocery bags.
The solution is to reuse bags.
http://www.ecnnews.com/cgi-bin/15/etstory.pl?-sec-Lifestyle+fn-fn
ShanghaiDaily.com, 6.12.06
BUY lunch and a magazine at any Japanese convenience store, and you're likely to get your drink in one plastic bag, hot lunch box in another, and your magazine in yet a third.
The mega-packaging keeps your food hot, your drink cool and your newspaper clean, but environmentalists say it also creates a mountain of plastic waste that fouls the air, pollutes the oceans and contributes to global warming.
The world uses between 500 billion and 1 trillion plastic bags a year, according to the advocacy Website, reusablebags.com. Wrapping-happy Japan is a major player, consuming some 30 billion - about 300 for each adult...
http://www.shanghaidaily.com/art/2006/06/12/282816/Wrapping_happy
KUTV, UT, 4.18.06
... According to statistics found on ReUsableBags.com, over 14 million trees were cut down in 1994 to produce ten billion grocery bags Americans used in that year...
http://kutv.com/seenon/local_story_107170107.html
Charlotte Observer (care of ReusableBags.com), 1.22.06
... Did you know that all those "free" bags ultimately cost both consumers and the environment plenty? Plastic bags were introduced just over 25 years ago...
[NOTE: the reason we posted this is to set the record straight. This article blatantly plagarized much of the content on our site without our consent. Hundreds of reporters over the years have used our site as a resource (often without citing) and while we welcome anyone to use our site for research, please give credit where credit is due.]
http://www.charlotte.com/mld/observer/news/local/states/north_car
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