The Home Of Mayhem-matic Articles
Posts tagged reusable bags
Switch To Reusable Shopping Bags For Earth Day
Aug 27th
It’s time for BYOB! Yes, bring your own shopping bag! As we keep on our path through an eventful 2010, it’s outrageous to think about how much shopping we traditionally carry out now in America and world-wide. Whether it’s everyday visits into the supermarket as we keep our kitchen’s stocked for magnificent meals and tasty treats or those sometimes dreaded (yet skillful) “6 bags on each arm” walks through the neighborhood mall, all of it adds up to so much unnecessary garbage. Probably the most blatant examples of this waste is disposable shopping bags.
An estimated 100 billion plastic shopping bags are consumed each year within the USA, according to the Wall-Street Journal. Most plastic bags end up in landfills furthermore the rest frequently end up in rivers, ponds, lakes, streams or in the sea, where animals can swallow or become entangled in them. Bearing in mind the number of shopping bags that are consumed and wasted each year, the time is now to spread the word about the positive benefits of eco friendly reusable bags. After all, most of us want to give back to our families, friends and communities as often as possible.
Adopting a BYOB approach in our individual shopping habits is a simple method to do just that. If we can elevate awareness presently, the positive impact for the environment is immeasurable for 2010 and well into the future. Numerous cities have already made gradual but momentous progress in promoting the use of eco friendly bags in recent years. Motivating consumers with plastic and paper bag bans, savings at the register for reusable bag usage and tax motivations are a few to speak of.
Right now in America, the San Jose City Council only just approved one of the nation’s strictest bans on plastic and paper shopping bags. This is a gigantic victory for the Bay Area, which has 1 million plastic bags per year accumulating in and along the San Francisco Bay. San Jose becomes the most recent bay area town to endorse some type of ban on disposable shopping bags; others include San Francisco and Palo Alto. Tracy Seipel of the San Jose Mercury News reported that it was actually ONE gentleman who truly jump-started the ban, another great example of the power of one individual. Here’s a an excerpt:
“While visiting his sister-in-law in Taipei, (Kansen) Chu (elected to San Jose city council in 2007) went grocery shopping and was surprised to get charged for plastic grocery bags. The next day, he brought his own cloth bags back to the store. “I guess the question,” said Chu, “was, ‘Why not San Jose?’ ” He began a conversation with the city’s environmental services staff, which later moved to council committee discussions.
Save the Bay’s 4th annual report on the most garbage-strewn sites in the area further demonstrates the need for BYOB. The 50-year-old environmental advocacy group focused on 10 particular bay-area sites where approximately 15,000 plastic bags were retrieved in a single day last year in their account. Here’s an extract of an article in the San Francisco Chronicle by Kelly Zito.
According to (Save the Bay’s) research, Californians use about 19 billion plastic bags each year, 3.8 million in the Bay Area. The average use time for the bags – made using about 12 million barrels of oil each year in the United States – is about 12 minutes. In addition to the hundreds of years it can take for a plastic bag to decompose in a landfill, the bags also force downtime when fed into traditional recycling equipment. Typically, the bags get wound into conveyor belts or gears and must be cut out by hand.
Ten US cities have banned plastic bags thus far, five throughout the past year. Even Mexico City enacted a ban on plastic shopping bags, which went into effect in August. The city of 20 million at the moment faces the realities of effective enforcement, which is not simple when the Mexico City Chamber of Commerce estimates there’s 35,000 vendors in Mexico City’s downtown area alone.
Bans on plastic bags aren’t the only effective way to scale back destructive waste the result of disposable bags. PlasTaxes, which tax consumers at the register for using plastic bags while shopping, were primarily launched by the Irish. John Roach of National Geographic reported in 2008 about the worldwide momentum that’s been building from the time when Ireland instilled a PlasTax in 2003. The Irish confirmed they could cut down plastic bag consumption by 90% or more. Momentum is on the rise internationally, predominantly in America. From Washington, DC to Edmonds, WA to North Pole, AK, communities and governments are developing a global trend to reduce the unsafe environmental effects of disposable shopping bags. In the great state of Hawaii, the government is currently taking into account a bill to ban single-use plastic bags (SUP), or to establish a small fee to utilize SUP bags.
Even chief retail stores like Target and CVS are taking action by enacting special discounts at the register for customers who choose to BYOB or just carry-out their items without a bag. For those naysayers, it’s opportune to discount recent momentum in reducing disposable bag waste. But to a few, the wide-spread adoption of recycled grocery bags is inevitable. Look at the way smoking is becoming taboo in America. Indoor smoking bans have caught on like wild-fire. In the same way, who is to say using disposable bags won’t become taboo one day in the (hopefully near) future? The use of eco-friendly recycled grocery bags is unquestionably gaining steam. Our individual choices to bring our recycled shopping bags can go much farther than we believe. That’s what BYOB is all about.
Obviously, plastic and paper bags need to be recycled and it’s crucial to keep in mind most large retailers including Albertsons and Wal-Mart will recycle plastic bags for you (just have to bring them your accumulated stash). That being said, a BYOB shopping approach can make your life a whole lot less difficult because there isn’t a need to accumulate that cupboard full of plastic bags or figure out what and when to handle it. Keeping a few eco shopping bags in your car or backpack is a good way to ensure you possess them when needed. So give back this year by remembering to BYOB! No matter whether it be at a convenience store, the mall, or while grocery shopping, we could make a change for our environment and help increase awareness one transaction at a time. In the struggle to eliminate disposable shopping bag waste, 2010 is our moment.
Make A Difference For Mother Nature: BYOB Today
Jul 30th
Have you remembered to BYOB in 2010?This is a query everyone should ask themselves. We are midway through 2010 and there has by no means been a more critical era to bring your own reusable and/or recycled grocery bags. When you BYOB, rather than using single-use plastic or paper disposable bags, you instantaneously become a piece of the solution to the massive urban waste predicament associated with disposable shopping bag waste. As of July 1, 2010, it is estimated that over 240 billion plastic bags have been consumed in 2010 alone. What ís still even more alarming is the effect that plastic and paper disposable bags are continuing to have on the natural environment. The intent of this article is to examine the most up-to-date news regarding large-scale efforts to reduce the use of plastic and paper throw-away bags along with the associated waste, and talk about what choices are available to all of us individual consumers in order to know for sure we are a part of the resolution to this crisis.
The good news is that BYOB momentum is growing rapidly in this year. Provided you have not heard the news yet, the California legislature has proposed a bill; AB 1998 (to be voted on by the Senate in August), which would outlaw throw-away bags sold inside supermarkets, drugstores, convenience, and liquor stores and take complete effect by 2013. Even ìThe Governatorî, Arnold Schwarzenegger, said that he would sign the bill if it makes it to his desk. This certainly could be a gigantic victory for all friends of the environment to have the largest state, in the 3rd biggest nation on the planet, to put in place a ban on disposable plastic bags. Taking into consideration that China first c racked down on plastic bags in 2008 and Ireland lawmaking efforts to diminish plastic bag usage began in 2002, it is so terrific to be informed that California lawmakers have introduced this bill to the table.
In America, cities from San Francisco to Los Angeles to Washington DC have passed or enacted legislation that either tax consumers for the utilization of plastic bags or outlaw them altogether, but California would be the first American state to take action if this bill were to get through the senate. Believe it or not, even state representatives from the state of Texas have written possible legislation that would insert a 7-cent tax for every disposable bag used. It is so thrilling that there is a chance that both Texas and/or California may possibly soon have policies in place to combat the plastic bag pandemic. Hard work by individuals and governments to reduce large-scale use of single-use grocery bags is a good way to encourage people and spread the word concerning the overwhelmingly positive benefits of environmentally friendly reusable shopping bags.
Plastic grocery bags might take up to 1000 years to biodegrade completely, and before that it just decomposes down in to smaller and smaller toxic pieces that wind up in our food, water, and soil. Biodegradable eco friendly shopping bags, are a great alternative, once disposed in landfill sites, the exposure to sunlight, air, and heat will convert these bags into liquid, carbon dioxide, mineral salt and biomass. Similar to a fallen leaf, it will perish in time and leave Zero Dangerous Residue in the soil. Plastic grocery bags finish up in our landfills moreover often get tangled and trigger permanent problems in trash management machinery. Millions if not billions of additional bags end up as urban litter and usually find their way in to rivers, resevoirs, streams, as well as the ocean. Creatures, especially marine animals, get entwined in plastic bags, and/or swallow them and often asphyxiate or starve to death.
So the solution takes us back to BYOB, which is extremely simple. Just remember to use ecologically friendly reusable shopping bags or recycled grocery bags, or reuse an older bag, period. Be sure to keep spare reusable bags inside your vehicle or within your backpack, as you will want to be sure they are nearby as soon as you need them. Also remember to clean your bags following use, in particular after transporting raw foods and/or cleaning supplies. You should also give them to your friends and colleages as a reminder to BYOB. Of course, continuously remember to recycle whenever the occasion presents itself, recycling is always a victory for the natural environment. Instituting a BYOB habit in our personal lifestyles and businesses is really the finest way to ensure we are truly part of the solution rather than the problem. Right now is the time to go out and lead by example.