Resuable Bags - A Start

I knew about the Pacific Garbage Patch. And we have been in the process of reviewing the way we use products, seriously, for a couple of years now. But I was sadly under informed about the scope of the problem of waste from single-use disposable plastic packaging until just recently. Did you know that we globally use around a trillion disposable plastic shopping bags every year? Or that in the US we use between three to four hundred billion? Neither did I. Or that we throw away almost thirty billion disposable plastic water bottles a year in the US alone? Most of this throw away plastic either sits in landfills, leeching toxins into our water and food chains, or winds up in our waterways and ultimately our oceans, where it does even more damage.

So what can I do? I only have direct control over my own choices, and once I am informed I do my best to make good ones. I decided that the best thing I could do was share what I had learned with my co-workers. I put a new, recycled, reusable shopping bag in the mail slot of all of my co-workers and sent them this email:

Hi,

I apologize for intruding on your day, but I have recently become aware of the serious problem created by single-use disposable plastics like grocery bags and water bottles and I am trying to raise awareness by providing you with a handy reusable shopping bag (you'll find this in your mail slot). Conservative estimates suggest that over 300 billion disposable bags are used in the US each year, and only a small fraction of these are ever recycled. Most end up in landfills or waterways and oceans. They leech toxins into the environment and contribute to the deaths of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of marine creatures and birds each year.

If you already use reusable shopping bags, kudos to you and just add this one to your supply. If not, please throw this one in your car and try to get in the habit of using it when you run in to pick a few things up. It's an easy habit to get into and I hope you'll find yourself buying and using more of them and refusing the disposable bags. The environment will thank you.

If you want more information on the growing problem of single-use disposable plastics, please let me know. Here are some links that will help you learn more.

http://www.plasticpollutioncoalition.org/

http://www.reusablebags.com/facts.php

http://storyofstuff.org/bottledwater

I got some good feedback, even from friends that recycle and were unaware of the scope of the problem as I was. It's a big problem, but I'm trying to do my part.

I'll leave you with a link that I hope will make you think about this...

http://www.chrisjordan.com/current_set2.php?id=11



Terry