The many challenges environmental groups must face in brining about a greater  change in our societies everyday life styles is illustrated in the fact that while shoppers may know and understand the need to change the ways in which they do their everyday onsumption habits, they also are at the control of what I call RL (real life) situations which dictate the ways they must act even if it is going against their logic and desire to reduce, reuse, recycle, rethink and replant!

 The many challenges environmental groups must face in brining about a greater  change in our societies everyday life styles is illustrated in the fact that while shoppers may know and understand the need to change the ways in which they do their everyday onsumption habits, they also are at the control of what I call RL (real life) situations which dictate the ways they must act even if it is going against their logic and desire to reduce, reuse, recycle, rethink and replant!

Plastic

 According to L.A. statistics, we who live in in L.A county use more than 6 billion one-time use plastic bags a year, with only a very small amount (5% ) being recycled or reused. The 95% quickly becomes a problem for our landfill and in addition to the landfill, these bags can be found almost every where one looks from public spaces, roadways, parks, schoolyards, sidewalks, ballparks and not to mention the environemtal damges  plastic is doing by invading every living  thing that depends on the ocean. 

Did mention that plastic takes any where from 100 to 500 years to return to its orginal state and that in the mean time it becomes host to algae and the plastic absorbs toxins like DDT ad that the sealife thinks it is just algae and eats its and dies? Recently a dead whale was found off the coast of California and it was autopsyed it was founf full of toxin batch of plastic and chemicals? 

Disposable bags pose different economic problems to different cities, countires. In San Francisco, the cost of collecting and disposing the bags was figured at 17 cents a bag. In the U.S alone it is  estimated that we consume about 100 billion bags a year, that translates to $17,000,000,000 per year it is costing our economy just in cleaning it up, this is not counting the damages it does to the enviroment and to humans and animals.

Paper

Paper Please? 

They're made from farmed (soon be be bioengenered) trees and they will compost well so  they don't enter our litter stream as well as plastic does, but they are still not recycled in the large enough numbers to make a difference, and they have a negative impact on our use of fossil fuels and water to produce and distribute. Plastic manufacturing centers are also polluting and damaging our environment.

While biodegradable plastic bags made of soy and corn byproducts are more environmentally friendly, they cost retailers more than plastic bags, and although they can be composted, most of us dont make compost (I used to but living in a condo has made a dent in that). Did you know that the corn based products don't break down in the ocean because it lacks the necessary heat and bacteria to decompose it? So these are not the solution either. I would like to see corn based plastics made with a limited time built into it and after time it decomposes back into corn?

Whats the Answer?

Reusing the bags won't solve the problem either simply because not enough of us do it, and a lot of plastic still ends up in the oceans or rivers or inside some poor creature. If 100% of the plastic shopping bags where reused, we would still have a very large amount of plastics ending up in our trash centers, landfills, rivers, oceans, etc. Why?

We need to also address the industry as a whole and  force them to stop making containers from plastic based and to start making them from a more compostable, recyclable methods such as corn. We need to educate the public in the many ways they are polluting and help them to curb the tons of plastics that are being blown out cars, trains, and boats as well as educate them on how to properly dispose of these materials.

Show us your Tote Bag!

 Having your own reusable bags made from natural materials like organic cotton, or organic hemp, is simply the best environmental safe green alternative, given that each heavy-duty bag can replace 10,000 plastic bags or more over its lifetime. 

Therefore it makes only good green environmental sense that cities should start programs that encourages the consumer to use their own shopping bags instead of paper or plastic.

On Dec. 20, LA is calling it "A Day Without a Plastic or Paper Bags" in Los Angeles. 

Next Thursday, shoppers are urged to make a gift to the environment by forsaking paper or plastic bags in favor of reusable bags. The city and county will be supplying free reusable bags at many shopping centers (see http://www.healthebay.org/nobagday for details).