Say goodbye to the plastic shopping bag. It's on its way out. Good riddance. It's high time.

But the plastic bag is only one of several environmental issues involving packaging affecting the retail industry.

The bag's imminent demise must not obscure the fact that there's still lots of work to be done in the greening of retail. And consumers, too, will have to undergo an attitude shift to make the changes work..........

Click here for the rest of the story
http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/news/business/story.html?id=25bf3881-cd7a-40f6-b5a7-f0fc2c677be1

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CNN Report on March 28, 2007

San Francisco to ban plastic grocery bags

SAN FRANCISCO, California (Reuters) -- San Francisco's Board of Supervisors voted Tuesday to become the first U.S. city to ban plastic bags from large supermarkets to help promote recycling. Under the legislation, beginning in six months large supermarkets and drugstores will not be allowed to offer plastic bags made from petroleum products.

For more... go to: http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/03/27/environment.baggs.reut/index.html


Irish bag tax hailed success (Tuesday, 20 August, 2002, 14:36 GMT 15:36 UK)

A tax on plastic shopping bags in the Republic of Ireland has cut their use by more than 90% and raised millions of euros in revenue, the government says. The tax of 15 cents per bag was introduced five months ago in an attempt to curb litter, and the improvement had been immediate and "plain to see", said Environment Minister Martin Cullen.

He said that the 3.5 million euros in extra revenue raised so far would be spent on environmental projects. The "plastax" is being closely watched by other countries, particularly neighbouring Britain. Bangladesh has banned polythene bags altogether while Taiwan and Singapore are taking steps to discourage their use. "The levy has been an outstanding success in achieving what it set out to do," said Mr Cullen. "Over one billion plastic bags will be removed from circulation while raising funding for future environmentally friendly initiatives." He added: "It is clear that the levy has not only changed consumer behaviour in relation to disposable plastic bags, it has also raised national consciousness about the role each one of us can, and must play if we are to tackle collectively the problems of litter and waste management."

Windblown litter The environment ministry estimated that about 1.2 billion free plastic bags were being handed out every year in the republic, leaving windblown bags littering Irish streets and the countryside. In the three months after the tax was introduced, shops handed out just over 23 million plastic bags - about 277 million fewer than normal, the government said.
 
Shoppers are being encouraged to use tougher, reusable bags. The ministry said that if the current trend continued, the tax would bring in 10 million euros in a full year. Other countries around the world are also taking action to curb plastic bag litter. In March, Bangladesh banned polythene bags after it was found that they were blocking drainage systems and had been a major culprit during the 1988 and 1998 floods that submerged two-thirds of the country. Taiwan and Singapore are also moving to ban free plastic bags and in South Africa they have been dubbed the "national flower" because so many can be seen flapping from fences and caught in bushes. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/2205419.stm

All things considered, August 26, 2002 · Jacki speaks with Tony Lowes, director of Friends of the Irish Environment, about a tax on plastic bags that was imposed five months ago by the Irish government. Since then, it has raised $3.4 million for the government and cut bag use by 90 percent. Follow the link below to listen to the interview.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1148998

Waste Reduction At School

Young people are learning more and more about the importance of protecting our natural environment and resources. Many of them are working with teachers and administrative staff to implement environmental programs in their schools.

Students gain knowledge about environmental issues, acquire organizational skills and discover they can make a difference by implementing the 3 R's (reduce, reuse and recycle) in school. www.ci.fort-collins.co.us/recycling/reduction.php

Boulder County School Recycling and Environmental Education Program

Since 1987, Eco-Cycle, Inc. has coordinated the Boulder/Broomfield County School Recycling and Environmental Education Program, currently funded by Boulder County, Boulder Valley School District, Broomfield County, the City of Boulder, the Town of Superior, Eco-Cycle, and various grant sources. The program provides for the collection of recyclables from all 53,000 students and staff in the 80 Boulder County public schools (two districts). It also provides monthly feedback to individual schools on program progress. Our educational presentations are given to over 30,000 kindergarten through 12th grade students in approximately 1,000 Boulder and Broomfield County classrooms annually. This unique environmental education effort received the Colorado Alliance for Environmental Education Nonprofit Partnership Excellence Award in 1996, the Outstanding School Program Award from the National Recycling Coalition in 1996 and the Outstanding Local Program Award from the North American Association of Environmental Education in 1998. It is the interworking of the three facets (collection, education and feedback) that makes the program both unique and effective. The actual collection of recyclables from classrooms allows students to put the knowledge and concern they have gained from the education component into positive action. The education component provides the information and motivation needed for students to follow through on recycling and other waste reduction activities. Regular feedback to the schools keeps recycling in the forefront and makes it a more integral part of daily school life. All three aspects are key to the program's overwhelming success, making it a national model for others wanting to start similar projects. COLLECTION OF RECYCLABLES: Over six hundred tons of office/classroom paper, cardboard, newspaper, aluminum, tin, plastic and glass are now recycled from the schools annually. This compares to 14.7 tons recycled in 1988 - a 4000% increase. As the collections have expanded, many schools have been able to cut their trash service by one third to one half, providing substantial savings to both districts. www.ecocycle.org/atschool/school_info.cfm


Boulder, Colorado USA

Of course, no one thought ahead about how we would dispose of all this new waste. Only an estimated 0.6 percent of grocery bags are recycled. Recyclers who collect at curbside don't want them because they clog up their machinery. Grocery stores began offering recycling bins for plastic bags in the early 1990s, but much of what's collected ends up in the garbage dump anyway. A little piece of Saran Wrap, or a tiny bit of moisture from a head of lettuce, can ruin a whole batch and send it to the landfill, explains Linda Smith, a spokeswoman for the Boulder, Colorado-based recycler Eco-cycle.

Sierra Club  USA

Reusing a bag meant for just one use has a big impact.

A sturdy, reusable bag needs only be used 11 times to have a lower environmental impact than using 11 disposable plastic bags.

In New York City alone, one less grocery bag per person per year would reduce waste by 5 million lbs. and save $250,000 in disposal costs.

Plastic bags carry 90% of the nation's groceries, up from 5% in 1982.
 
When 1 ton of paper bags is reused or recycled, 3 cubic meters of landfill space is saved and 13 - 17 trees are spared!

In 1997, 955,000 tons of paper bags were used in the United States.

When 1 ton of plastic bags is reused or recycled, the energy equivalent of 11 barrels of oil are saved. Sierra Club

Paper or Plastic? Neither. Both are bad.       

However, strange as it might seem, plastic wins the number crunching to beat paper, two to one, in Life Cycle Analysis (LCA). But ask that tall guy pictured to the left, if plastic is good. We think he might say No. Over 100,000 birds and marine life die each year, due to an encounter with plastic debris, much of it plastic bags. In Australia, alone, 80 million plastic bags litter beaches and public spaces. Thats out of nearly 7 billion check-out bags used annually. And because plastic lasts about, oh, say 500 years, when the bird it killed decomposes, the bag is freed to injure another. But don't go thinking that paper is much better. Oh no.

Its been estimated that the US was responsible for the felling of 14 million trees to produce the 10 billion paper grocery bags used back in 1999. Not a figure that is likely to got any less in the meantime. So no, neither bag is greener. But there is another, that is. And it doesn't require some nerd in a white lab coat to calculate what it might be. Indeed whole towns in Australia figured it out and declared themselves plastic bag free zones. All retailers are refusing to offer single use plastic bags. Their secret to success - its the reusable bag. One you use more than once. Simple, really.

Australian Retailers Association (ARA), retailers currently have an agreement with the Federal Government to have reduced their consumption of lightweight single use plastic check-out bags by 25%, as of December just gone. By the end of 2005, it must be a 50% reduction. One of their initiatives on this front has been to encourage reusable bags. See one of the major chains offerings here. Even some IKEA Australia stores have gone the route of banning single use bags. A couple of years before, they began charging 10 cents per bag. Bag usage dropped by 87%.

In March 2002 it became big news, when Ireland introduced their PlasTax to reduce the cancerous growth of plastic shopping bags. In just the first 3 months of becoming law, the tax raised $3.45M USD and cut use of bags by 90%. But ten years before all that, a friend of mine, working for a retail chain, introduced a program called "Don't Bag the Environment". For every bag the customer did NOT take, the company took 20 cents out of the till, in front of the customer and donated it into a clear money box, to a environmental. This was a remarkable Win-Win-Win-Win. 1) the customer felt great because they'd done something for the environment, 2) marine life had less bags to trouble them, 3) a different environmental group received a much needed injection of cash every 3-6 months and 4) the retailer made money - well, saved money, same thing - because, of the four sizes of bags they used, three cost more than 20 cents to buy! And these were mostly unbleached, recycled paper bags too. (Its been estimated that the supply of free plastic bags to Australian shoppers actually adds $173M AUD to the national grocery bill.)

In short , Elias, (and I for being long winded) encourage your customers to bring their own bag, box, day pack or whatever, to your store. Even to reuse their old single use bags. They'll save money, your store will save money and the environment makes a huge saving too. www..co


Some more links from around the world:-