Is it just me, or does anyone else notice that whenever you buy something in a shop here in the UK it's bundled into a plastic bag almost by default? Without so much as a ""Would you like a bag sir?" Unless you're in one of those less-than-convenient convenience stores that charges for bags, that it... But do you really need a bag? The answer to that is "probably not". But even if you do, can't you put your purchases from subsequent shops in the same bag you were given in the first store? The answer to that is "yes", by the way...
If you buy things in ten shops on a trip into town, you don't need ten bags, I promise you. One will do. And when you get home and have unpacked your offerings to the gods of consumerism, you don't need to throw the bag in the bin. Why not tuck it away somewhere and use it again next time you go shopping? And if you can't bring yourself to do that, have you ever noticed that plastic carrier bags make excellent (and free) bin liners? At least that way you're still putting them to some good purpose.
We produce, use and discard plastic bags and other packaging materials in vast and ludicrous quantities. UK shoppers alone get through 8 thousand million bags per year - to make it clear just how big a number that actually is, it's 8,000,000,000 bags a year, or 134 per person, just in the UK! In case you still don't understand just what a phenomenal number that is, if you were to count one year's bags at a rate of one bag per second, it would take you over 250 years of non-stop counting to get through a year's consumption of bags. By which time you'd have a back-log of 249 years' worth of bags to count...
And what happens to all those bags? The vast majority are used once, then go in the bin (and not as a bin liner either). Bury a plastic carrier bag in a landfill site and, chances are, it will still be there in 100 years. Makes you think doesn't it.... there has to be a better way. There used to be (and might still be, for all I know) a campaign called SNUB - Say No to Unwanted Bags - there's no good reason for getting through so much pointless packaging. You can choose to make a difference... like everything else, "reduce, re-use, recycle" applies to plastic bags too.
If you buy things in ten shops on a trip into town, you don't need ten bags, I promise you. One will do. And when you get home and have unpacked your offerings to the gods of consumerism, you don't need to throw the bag in the bin. Why not tuck it away somewhere and use it again next time you go shopping? And if you can't bring yourself to do that, have you ever noticed that plastic carrier bags make excellent (and free) bin liners? At least that way you're still putting them to some good purpose.
We produce, use and discard plastic bags and other packaging materials in vast and ludicrous quantities. UK shoppers alone get through 8 thousand million bags per year - to make it clear just how big a number that actually is, it's 8,000,000,000 bags a year, or 134 per person, just in the UK! In case you still don't understand just what a phenomenal number that is, if you were to count one year's bags at a rate of one bag per second, it would take you over 250 years of non-stop counting to get through a year's consumption of bags. By which time you'd have a back-log of 249 years' worth of bags to count...
And what happens to all those bags? The vast majority are used once, then go in the bin (and not as a bin liner either). Bury a plastic carrier bag in a landfill site and, chances are, it will still be there in 100 years. Makes you think doesn't it.... there has to be a better way. There used to be (and might still be, for all I know) a campaign called SNUB - Say No to Unwanted Bags - there's no good reason for getting through so much pointless packaging. You can choose to make a difference... like everything else, "reduce, re-use, recycle" applies to plastic bags too.
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