A load of old plastic bags…

lots of plastic bags

Fig 1:Detail from “Plastic Bags” © Chris Jordan, 2007

Plastic bags are a bit of a hot topic at the moment. One minute it’s Sainsbury’s and their Anya Hindmarch bags selling on eBay for £200, the next minute it’s a town in Devon banning them all together.My own personal attempts at cutting down my own use of plastic bags are constantly being foiled by my inability to remember to pick up one of two “bag for life” bags that I have.

Friends of the Earth recommend keeping a reuseable bag or a stash of plastic bags by the front door so that you remember to take a couple when you pop out.

They also say:

Keep a couple in your handbag*, for those spontaneous retail moments!

Anyway, after a bit of research, it seems that most people recommend the use of a “funky re-useable or cotton bag” for your shopping trips and saying ‘no thanks’ to plastic carrier bags.

Lots more information can be found on the Friends of the Earth website and also on campaign websites like Abolish Plastic Bags.

Say No to Plastic Bags

This bag says it all! “Say No To Plastic Bags” is a Shared Earth product – a fair trading company who believe it is possible to trade fairly and ethically whilst benefiting artisans and craftsmen.

How Ethical! says that the problem with a jute bag is that it’s only really useful for carrying quests, which is only one out of the 25 second uses that you have for a plastic bag.

Anyway, the bag measures 39 x 36 x 13cm which is big enough for all manner of goods and chattels. Get one from Ethicalsuperstore.com.

At the end of the day, it’s true, plastic bags only make up a very small percentage of the waste that goes into landfill, but initiatives like this get people thinking about litter and how it’s disposed of. I’ve seen countless plastic bags floating along the river here in Newcastle. Admittedly, it’s not as bad as it gets on the the river Citarum, near the Indonesian capital of Jakarta, but it all ends up somewhere.

*Personally, I think this is a bit sexist as this insinuates that only handbag carriers have spontaneous retail moments. It should say “keep a couple in your handbag/manbag, really.

Ben

Ben is our resident marketing monkey, and spends an unhealthy amount of time obsessing about keywords, ranking and other marketing voodoo.

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