Billion Bag Blog

Less than two weeks ago, I wrote to announce that we'd reached the 25,000 mark in our challenge. Time flies and 12 days later, here we are at 30,000 items kept out of landfills - not bad! Not bad at all! Especially when you consider that this is the effort of only 239 people, about 15 of whom have joined us since milestone 25K. That works out to about 2 items saved from landfills per person per day. It doesn't seem like a lot - but as we've seen - it adds up fast!

So encourage your friends, your co-workers and your families to participate. Everytime another person joins this challenge a little consciousness is raised. And a little can go a long, long way.

Jennifer

Anne, a friend of mine here in town, is really taking the lead on banishing plastic bags through her program "Pollution Solutions", which has just received an Environmental Excellence Award. (www.resourcesforhealth.org)

Anne's motto is "Families taking action to care for their communities, the environment, and animals through service-learning projects." In a recent post regarding the use of plastic bags - reusable and otherwise - Anne writes:

"The education component that we and other nonprofits do is absolutely essential. When a store like Whole Foods hands out a reusable PPL bag, customers may use it, but do they still take a bunch of plastic bags for their produce? What I hear when we do our presentations is that people - kids and adults - are thinking about the other implications, such as what should I use to bag my garbage, pick up my pet's poop, isn't almost every product in the grocery store packaged in plastic, etc. Buying local (less packaging), gardening, and composting are the topics of conversation that almost automatically follow!"

Kudos to Anne for taking “the plastic discussion” to the next level. We all need to learn to live a smaller-carbon-footprint life. Buying local products from places like farmer’s markets and growing your own fruits and veggies cuts out a LOT of packaging. I even use reusable cotton bags for my produce and bulk item purchases. Encouraging folks to compost their food scraps and other waste materials (yes, if your compost is consistently hot enough, you can compost pet poop, etc) keeps untold tons of highly useful materials out of landfills. You may not get rid of plastic garbage bags quite yet but you'll certainly cut down on the number you use!

Jennifer – Your Guide to Green Blogger

According to the Northumberland Gazette (UK):

"Newcastle residents are the most environmentally friendly in Britain after saving more than eight million plastic bags in less than two years, according to supermarket bosses.
Tesco said 8.1 million bags have been saved in its Kingston Park Extra outlet."

How'd they do it? The plan is pretty simple:

--Shoppers were encouraged to reduce the amount of plastic bags they would normally use by a third on each shopping trip.

--Customers are rewarded for not using plastic bags by getting 'green' points on their Clubcard loyalty cards which can be redeemed for food or other goods. Checkout staff asks shoppers how many bags they are reusing and agreeing the number of points to be awarded - now that's co-operation!

Jennifer

Whole Foods Market Inc. announced that it will gradually phase out the use of plastic grocery bags in its 270 stores with the goal of no longer using them by April 22, which is Earth Day.

The Austin, Texas-based grocery chain said it will encourage shoppers to bring their own reusable bags and will offer 100 percent recycled paper grocery bags when needed.

"More and more cities and countries are beginning to place serious restrictions on single-use plastic shopping bags since they don't break down in our landfills, can harm nature by clogging waterways and endangering wildlife, and litter our roadsides," A.C. Gallo, co-president and chief operating officer for Whole Foods Market, said in a statement.

(from:http://www.bizjournals.com/baltimore/stories/2008/01/21/daily10.html)

This is great start to ridding the planet of plastic bags. I hope it gets a LOT of notice and that other grocery chains follow their lead as customers gain more awareness.

I don't know if anyone here has ever seen a mass accumulation of hundreds of thousands of these bags in the environment, but I sure have. Back in the early 80s, I lived in Taiwan. When the harvest moon festival came around, friends and I climbed to the peak of a mountain in the pre-dawn with several thousand Taiwanese to see the sun rise above the cloud level. This was a beautiful and inspiring sight - the sun slowly tingeing the clouds farthest away with the faintest gold, then a rushing of more intense golds and reds as it rose ever higher in the sky. We lingered to bask in glory. But as the day warmed, the cloud cover burned off, revealing a scene that broke my heart - thousands upon untold thousands of plastic bags had built up in the valley below. They clogged a small river, hung from the valley sides and caught in the trees. The view was eerie and dead looking. No birds welcomed the morning.

I live for the day when we no longer treat our environment like a giant waste recepticle. And I am inspired by the folks at Whole Foods and everyone on this challenge for committing to a greener world.

Jennifer - Your Guide to Green Blogger

Bottled water impacts

These figures for 2006 highlight the problems many associate with the production of plastic bottles of water in the United States.

•More than 25.5 billion plastic water bottles are sold each year in the US.•

•More than 17 million barrels of oil (not including fuel for transportation) were used in plastic bottle production.

•Bottling water produced more than 2.5 million tons of carbon dioxide.

•It takes approximately 3 liters of water to produce 1 liter of bottled water.

•The total amount of energy used to produce, transport, refrigerate, and dispose of a plastic bottle of water may be as high as the equivalent of filling a 1 liter bottle one-quarter full of oil.

Source: Waste Management World, The Pacific Institute

Well we've reached a milestone here at the BBB challenge - over 25,000 bags, bottles and bulbs kept out of landfills! Give yourselves a big round of applause - you deserve it!

I also want to acknowledge all of your efforts to bring this challenge to other "one use" items in your lives such as plastic utensils, straws, cup lids and the like. Thank you for bringing this level of commitment to your lives and your communities.

Some of us here in Phoenix are approaching our favorite restaurants with requests to reduce "one use" items and encourage people to bring their own carryout or leftovers containers. I know this is common in other parts of the country, but it is a paradigm shift here in the Wild West. Stay tuned to see how we progress and feel free to add your own comments here on what you do when you go out to eat!

Jennifer
Your Guide to Green staffer

As the concerns about the polycarbonate bottles mount we have been looking at what we as a company will do. Articles like the one below have fired concerns about what is really happening to our health as we consume liquids from all plastic bottles. I personally believe in what one of my professors in grad school taught - Prudent Avoidance. If there is some question about the safety of something like a plastic bottle...don't use it. There are plenty of solutions in the stainless steel realm and you can also reuse a glass bottle.

"Worries about hormone-mimicking BPA used in sports bottles led a major Canadian retailer to remove Nalgene and other polycarbonate plastic containers from store shelves in early December. BPA—or bisphenol A—mimics the effects of estrogen in cells and some researchers and environmentalists revealed it can be toxic and cause several types of cancer (breast and prostate) as well as developmental, neural, behavioral, and reproductive harm (miscarriages and other reproductive failures), and obesity and hyperactivity in animals. Fred vom Saal, professor of biology at the University of Missouri and one of the study’s chief authors said the panel reviewed 700 published articles on BPA, practically all published in the last 10 years, yet US health and environmental regulators “are pretending they’re still in the dark.”" Read more>>>

What's up with that. I just received an email from Tony on a topic that has baffled me. Your thoughts???

Tony,

I hear you on this one. I took the Republic for a few weeks earlier this year and cancelled it because of that. I ran into the same story. Let your local paper know that you don't want you newspaper is a plastic bag - especially in Phoenix where we get over 320 days per year of sunshine.

Greg

Greg, Thanks for your article in the Republic about plastic bags, etc. Are you aware of the irony that the newspaper carrying your article--the AZ Republic--was delivered in an unnecessary plastic bag? I've written to the Republic a number of times to complain. Their reply is "recycle them at your local grocery store." This is an evasion of responsibility on their part. Anyway, my local grocery stores no longer accept plastic bags for recycling.

Thanks for your concern. Tony Chambers

Hey all,

We are starting to get some traction for our Billion Bag, Bottle and bulb Challenge. The Wilders jumped on board and posted our invitation to play. Woohoo.

Greg

Greg,

I love the idea of the challenge but what about folks who don't use plastic bags, cups, and what not unless we have no choices that are practical? We already use CFL's, reusable bags, travel mugs etc. How shall we continue reducing one time plastic use. Ideas that we can use and share would be great! Thank you for your help.

Pepper

Pepper,

Great Job. You have eliminated the use of some of the more commonly used items. When I created the challenge I had not yet eliminating these items. And now we have to dig a little deeper. Here are some ideas:

1. I have started taking to go containers to the restaurants with me. I use the plastic (aargh) reusable tubs for this.

2. I have started selecting the restaurants where I eat based on the types of utensils, plates and cups they offer. If they are using disposable items in Styrofoam or plastic, they are pretty much a no go these days. If they use real plates, cups and utensils I have more of a tendency to eat there.

3. I have stocked up on these great produce bags we have on our site that are made of cloth. I take them to the store with me and load them with bulk items and produce. This serves two purposes - first it eliminates the use of a plastic produce bag and secondly I am purchasing fresh and many times more locally produced food.

So how about that for a start...and I need more ideas too. What are you doing? Where else can we look? How else can we change our use patterns to eliminate more plastic one use items?

Greg