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bellaonline.com, 9.17.05
TEN WAYS TO RECYCLE PLASTIC BAGS
1) Re-Use as a grocery bag. Simply place a few in your purse or pocket before shopping.
2) Re-Use as packing material. Wad the bags up and pack around the materials to be packed.
3) Re-Use them as trash bags. They are perfect to line small household waste baskets. You can use the handles to tie them shut when they full.
4) Cut into strips to make into a washable placemat or rug. (See pattern below)
5) Storage bags. Simply store and hang items you need to put away.
6) Make Into rope by Finger Crocheting. You can use this rope for a clothes line, or a child's jump rope.
7) Hanging Planter. There are expensive plastic bags on the market which are just plastic with some holes speared in them. You can hang the plant anywhere. Just use two or three plastic bags together for strength and then fill with dirt and plants. Water regularly.
8) Emergency Rain hats. Tie one over your coif for rain protection.
9) Emergency Diaper (nappy) cover. In a pinch a plastic grocery or bread bag makes a nice emergency disposable cover!
10) Washable Shelf Liners. Cut and tack for a nice washable shelf liner.
http://www.bellaonline.com/articles/art35668.asp
Modesto Bee - Modesto,CA,USA, 9.7.05
Marcia Boer ("Plastic bags a pain for shoppers, farmers, environment," Opinions, Aug. 3) bemoaned the fact that her grocery store would not let her bring back plastic bags. She is right that plastic bags live forever and do untold damage to wildlife and to humans. We should do all we can to stamp them out.
While most stores give you a choice of paper, that's not so good either because it uses up trees. The great forests of the U.S. in many places are gone forever.
The answer, of course, is to bring your own canvas bags. They are very sturdy and reusable. You automatically empty and put them back in the car before you forget to do it.
http://www.modbee.com/opinion/letters/story/11187735p-11940311c.h
Martha Stewart Living Magazine, 8.13.05
All that trash piled into your recycling bin might be treasure.
The hastily discarded laundry-detergent bottle, for instance. Cut off the top and it makes a fine watering jug.
You may remember bleach-bottle piggy banks from elementary school, or perhaps you've seen the plastic bottles fishermen convert into bailers and keep tied to the sides of their boats.
Every month most people empty all types of containers, ones used for water, fabric softener, bleach, ammonia and more. With ingenuity, there are several ways to turn these into implements for everyday tasks.
Once you've selected and cleaned a bottle, mark it with a grease pencil, cut according to the marked lines, and sand the edges smooth.
It's nearly as simple as taking out the trash...
http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/home/articles/0813living
San Francisco Chronicle, 1.27.05
All right, already. People are passionate about their shopping bags. Or should I say the environment, government and taxes…
…I've gotten more than 70 e-mails responding to my Tuesday column about the San Francisco Commission on the Environment's resolution urging the Board of Supervisors to force supermarkets in the city to charge shoppers 17 cents apiece for bags…
…Today, I'll share some of these comments...
The European scene: More than a dozen e-mails came from people who live or have lived in Germany, Switzerland, Ireland, Norway or South Africa, where charging for shopping bags is common. Virtually all of them said it's a minor expense or inconvenience, but well worth it.
"My native Germany charges a fee for these bags, and people respond in the best way for the environment -- they bring their own tote bags! When I came to the U.S. seven years ago, I was astonished (and disgusted) by the practice of using new bags on each trip. And while I have to admit that I easily fell into this behavior myself, the proposed legislation reminded me that bringing my own tote bag is an easy way to be a good citizen of our one and only planet Earth," says Franziska Marks.
"I am an Irish citizen living in S.F. I remember the same excuses being trotted out when this was first introduced in Ireland (in 2002). The key difference is that the retailers embraced this change as a way to tout their 'green' credentials by offering a free, sturdy shopping tote to each club member for a limited time to carry their groceries (enabling free advertising). It really has dramatically reduced the level of plastic bag waste all over the country," writes Ray Walsh…
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive
The Quincy Herald-Whig, 1.26.05
Who doesn't have about 50 of those plastic shopping bags underneath their sink or stuffed in the corner of a closet...
…the downside of plastic bags is that they are made from oil and use toxic chemical ingredients during their manufacturing process.
The United States uses an estimated 100 billion plastic bags each year, consuming about 12 million barrels of oil. Don Lipsey, store manager at Wal-Mart, estimates the store uses more than 300,000 bags per week. Store officials at Hy-Vee, 36th and Broadway, say the grocery store uses about 50,000 bags every week…
...The bags cost consumers about $30 billion annually in the form of higher prices...
…The opportunity exists for someone to develop a magical plastic shopping bag that doesn't require natural resources to make and would disappear immediately without a trace. That doesn't sound likely any time soon.
In the meantime, BYOB — bring your own bag…
http://www.whig.com/282473658322592.php
Grist Magazine, 11.29.04
What's the best way to pick up where I leave off?
The simplest solution is to find friends with too many plastic bags and become the local bag reuse center. Doubtless you have pals or coworkers with stockpiles of plastic sacks who can start you on your collection. A ripe opportunity for bag-related education presents itself, in fact. While trolling for bag collectors, you can spread the anti-plastic sack doctrine by way of explaining your dilemma.
http://www.grist.org/advice/ask/2004/11/29/umbra-dog/index.html
Michael Jessen, 8.24.04
They're cheap, functional, lightweight, resource efficient, moisture resistant – and too popular! The seemingly innocuous plastic bag is under attack around the world as countries from Ireland to Australia seek to tax or ban them.
Relied on by consumers to do everything from carrying groceries to scooping up doggie do and disposing of garbage, plastic bag use has mushroomed in North America and Western Europe. Factories churned out an astounding four to five trillion of them in 2002, ranging from large trash bags to thick shopping totes to flimsy grocery sacks.
"Every time we use a new plastic bag they go and get more petroleum from the Middle East and bring it over in tankers," says Stephanie Barger, ERF's executive director. "We are extracting and destroying the Earth to use a plastic bag for 10 minutes."
http://www.nelsonbc.ca/pages/jessen/The_Bag_Beast.htm
Research and Markets, 8.1.04
Flexible films are defined as being planar forms of plastics, which may be thick enough to be self-supporting but thin enough to be flexed, folded and/or creased without cracking. Films comprise around 25% of all plastics used worldwide, around 40 million tons, and are thus a massive market sector. Commodity plastics dominate, with polyethylene and polypropylene together accounting for around 34 million tons. This is an expanding area with increased demand each year particularly in the developing regions of the world and with a move from rigid to flexible packaging…
…Europe and North America each account for about 30% of the total world consumption of plastic films…
http://www.researchandmarkets.com/reports/c12617/
National Geographic News, 9.2.03
Between 500 billion and a trillion plastic grocery bags are consumed worldwide each year, according to some estimates. Cheap, sturdy, lightweight, and easy-to-carry, the bags use a fraction of the resources to produce as their paper counterparts. But the disposable bags also litter oceans and landscapes, harming wildlife.
As a result, the totes are EVERYWHERE. They sit balled up and stuffed into the one that hangs from the pantry door. They flap from trees.
Story mentions ReusableBags.com
and that reusable shopping bags are a viable solution!
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/09/0902_030902_plast
OneWorld South Asia, 6.13.03
About 1,500 schoolchildren took part in an anti-pollution rally in Srinagar, India demanding stringent measures for curbing plastic bag usage. The children called for an effective ban on the use of polythene. The unfettered use of the non-biodegradable polythene has lowered the land's fertility, adversely affected the ecosystem (damaging aquatic life and killing cows) and caused flooding.
State environment minister Sofi Mohiuddin says, "We are committed to maintaining the ecological balance in the state and the eradication of the polythene menace is our main priority."
Sorry! Article no longer available online.
NRDC's Magazine, OnEarth, 6.1.03
It was the grooviest thing to come along since, oh, Tupperware, but after 25 years the plastic bag is proving that, indeed, breaking up is hard to do.
Our view: In early spring 2003, as part of our initial efforts to spread the word on this issue, we contacted a handful of envirnonmental organizations including the National Resoureces Defense Council one of our nation's most effective environmental action organizations with over 500,000 members. A few months later this great article came out showing once again this is a story who's time has come! This is great article that mirrors and expounds on much of the information we have pulled together for you at reusablebags.com
http://www.nrdc.org/onearth/03sum/bag.asp
OneWorld South Asia, 4.22.03
A non governmental organization based in the south Indian city of Hyderabad creates awareness on the environmental nuisance that plastic bags create. People, unmindful of their hazardous nature, are liberally accepting plastic bags and discarding them all around carelessly.
The NGO advocates the use of reusable shopping bags instead.
Sorry! Article no longer available online.
The Guardian, 10.17.02
The world has a big bag problem. Plastic bags are everywhere - billions and billions of them - and they are clogging up our land, our drains, our rivers, and our seas. When we are all dead and gone, they will still be out there, because they last, pretty much, forever. Could a new brand of degradable plastic finally absolve us of 'bag guilt'?
How big is the problem?...The term "white pollution" has been coined in China for the tumbleweed of polythene blowing on the streets where according to The Guardian, 2 billion are used each day. In South Africa there are so many bags in the trees that residents say it frequently looks if it is snowing.
Consumers are aware of all this on a vague, emotional level, which manifests itself in something one might call bag-guilt: the sick feeling one gets on opening a kitchen cupboard to an avalanche of polythene which hits us where, in environmental terms, it hurts most - aesthetically.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,3604,813187,00.html
“All Things Considered”, National Public Radio, 8.26.02
“A blight on the landscape and a menace from a modern age...”. Tony Lowes, director of Friends of the Irish Environment, is interviewed about a tax on plastic bags that was imposed five months ago by the Irish government. In the short time since then, it raised $3.4 million for the government and cut bag use by 90%. Click here to listen to the story.
http://discover.npr.org/features/feature.jhtml?wfId=1148998
BBC, 5.6.02
Countries around the world are beginning to make moves to curb society’s appetite for the ubiquitous single-use plastic bag. A relatively recent world-wide phenomenon, plastic bags are now consumed in staggering numbers and are responsible for massive disposal problems including unsightly litter, flooding, and the death of both land and sea animals that mistake them for food. Made of polyethylene, they are also hazardous to manufacture and take up to 1,000 years to decompose.
Now a revolt is occurring as many nations tackle mindless plastic bag over-consumption and resulting pollution. Since March 2002, Irish supermarkets have been charging a mandatory .15 cent tax on each new plastic bag. The tax was introduced to curb the major litter problem created by disposable plastic bags marring the landscape so treasured by the Irish and tourists alike. Shoppers have adjusted quickly and have welcomed the move, arriving at stores “pre-armed” with bags. Superquinn, one of the largest grocery chains, says the number of bags it distributes has dropped by 97.5%. The UK is now considering implementing a similar plan. Other countries already implementing or considering legislation to control plastic bag pollution include Bangladesh, India, Singapore, South Africa and Taiwan.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/1974750.stm
BBC, 1.1.02
The Bangladesh government began enforcement of a complete ban on the sale and use of polyethylene (polythene) bags in the capital, Dhaka, prompted by fears of an imminent environmental disaster. The millions of polyethylene bags disposed of every day are clogging Dhaka's drainage system, posing a serious flooding hazard. A recent study showed that in Dhaka an average household used about four polythene bags a day prior to the ban. Every day, nearly 10 million polythene bags were thrown away.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/1737593.stm
BBC, 1.1.02
The recent ban on plastic disposable bags is a boon for environmentally friendly jute bags. The anti-plastic bag campaign is promoting jute bags as an alternative to polyethylene and people have responded positively.
Before plastic shopping bags were introduced about twenty years ago, jute bags were the carriers of choice in Bangladesh. The stem of the jute plant can be turned into a fiber and woven into bags, which are as strong as plastic ones. Now, with improved technology, they can be produced as cheaply as plastic single-use bags to meet the renewed demand.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/1742716.stm
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