More Nasty News than you may want to know.  

 

4. Cheap reusables flood the marketplace
  

Reusables went mainstream in 2009. While it's great to see the trend take hold among consumers, many eager manufacturers have jumped on the bandwagon and flooded the marketplace with mass-produced, low-price/low-quality reusables. Because of their short lifecycles (and questionable safety and production standards), cheap reusables essentially defeat their intended purpose - which is to reduce consumption!

Unless people wake up to the problems inherent to cheap reusables, the plague of poor-quality drinking bottles, flimsy polypropylene bags, etc. will become as problematic as the disposables they were designed to replace!

  The Great Pacific Garbage Patch!

    

How green are reusable bags? NPR


Debate over plastic bags heats up in Seattle. NPR


The Great Pacific Gargage Patch is being studied by scientists.



"World-wide ban on pointless thin plastic bags. . ."  Wow, want to hear more?


"Some of the litter, like thin film single use plastic bags which choke marine life, should be banned or phased-out rapidly everywhere-there is simply zero justification for manufacturing them anymore, anywhere. Other waste can be cut by boosting public awareness, and proposing an array of economic incentives and smart market mechanisms that tip the balance in favor of recycling, reducing or re-use rather than dumping into the sea,"

To read more check this out United Nations Environment Programme

 

Plastic Left Holding the Bag as Environmental Plague


The History of Plastic Bags

1957 - First plastic sandwich bag is made.

1966 - Between 25 and 30 percent of packaging for bread is plastic.

1969 - New York City begins collecting the garbage in  plastic bags.

1974 - Retail giants Sears and J.C. Penny switch to plastic shopping bags.

1977 - Supermarkets begin to say: "Paper or Plastic?"

1994 - Denmark creates first plastic bag tax.

1996 - Over 80% of all bags used are plastic.

2002 - Ireland introduces the worlds first consumer paid plastic bag tax.

The details and numbers vary but it doesn't take much time researching the issues associated with paper and plastic bags to understand the many impacts that our excessive usage has on our world.

Depending on the composition it takes between 50 and 1000 years for a plastic bag to decompose.  As if this alone isn't bad enough, what do they decompose into?  Some sources say they break down into tiny toxic particles that become part of the soil.

According to Vincent Coob, founder of reusablebags.com, about 500 billion to 1 trillion plastic bags are used worldwide every year and are cousing a global epidemic.  The enormous demand for plastic bags ties into the surging global demand for oil--plastic bags are made from ethylene, a petroleum byproduct.  In the United States alone, an estimated 12 million barrels of oil is used annually to make plastic bags that American's consume.

In the United States, Californians Against Waste estimates that Americans consume 84 billion plastic bags annually.

Paper bags have their own environmental cost.  According to Vincent Coob, 14 million trees were cut down in 1999 to produce 10 billion grocery bags for Americans.

Yikes, there are so many statements out there about this issue.  The more we read the more frustrated and frankly, confused we become.

Paper vs. Plastic is just the baginning.  There are positives and negatives for so many of the choices but for us it comes down to the fact that there is no substitute for using a reusable, renewable and recyclable product here in our own country that lasts for years.

I found this list of ways that we can make a difference, they are not all about bags but they are not so difficult and sure would make a difference.  They came from a something called "The Story of Stuff"  This is a very no nonsense approach to our current global crisis.

A list of 10 things that you can do.



 

So THINC like a human bean and B.Y.O.B!