ecobites.com

Making your life greener - one bite at a time.

Our family uses compact shopping bags from reusablebags.com. We like this bag because it folds into its own little pouch and you can carry two or three in your purse or briefcase and pull one out if you happen to be in a store. The same company has larger shopping bags designed for groceries, but the small ones work well.

TORONTO (Reuters) - The Canadian plastic industry is lashing out at growing movement to eliminate plastic shopping bags, saying that an outright ban could cause more environmental harm than good.

"I think, generally speaking, there was always a kind of anti-plastic sentiment out there, Serge Lavoie, president and CEO of the Canadian Plastics Industry Association, said on Wednesday. "We're a high-profile target."

Earlier this week, the Liquor Control Board of Ontario -- the provincially owned chain of 598 stores -- announced it would phase out plastic bags as part of ongoing efforts to become more environmentally friendly, offering paper or reusable fabric bags instead.

The LCBO joins a growing list of retailers and municipalities across Canada -- as in other countries -- that are looking to cut down on or phase out plastic bags.

But the CPIA contends banning plastic bags will fail to change consumers' behavior and may actually lead to more waste plastic as people switch to alternatives.
After Ireland imposed a tax on plastic shopping bags in 2002, consumers switched to heavy-duty kitchen catchers bought off the shelf. The amount of plastic shopping bags handed out fell by 90 percent, but the net result was a 21 percent increase in plastic used, according to the Packaging and Industrial Films Association.
http://www.reuters.com/article/environmentNews/idUSN2928883020080529?

That so few people can use so much plastic says a lot about our wasteful habits.

A person's use of a plastic check-out bag can be counted in minutes - however long it takes to get groceries from the shops to their homes. These bags, however, can last for hundreds of years.

Combine the growing number of plastic bags used every year with the time it takes for them to break down and you have a major environmental problem.

Whether it's inadvertent or deliberate, plastic bag litter creates many problems. Bags get caught in fences and median strips. They end up blocking drains and trapping birds. When eaten they kill livestock.

At Bathurst's Mt Panorama race track, they even disable racing cars.

In the marine environment, plastic bag litter is lethal, killing thousands of whales, turtles and other sea life every year.

Planet Ark aims to show councils, retailers, communities and individuals how to reduce their use of plastic check-out bags.

Doing away with plastic bags is easier than you think. Planet Ark has worked with communities like Coles Bay, Kangaroo Valley, Huskisson, Oyster Bay and others to ban plastic check-out bags in all of their retail outlets. If these towns can live without plastic bags, then maybe yours can too.

Please join our campaign. This site will show you how.http://www.planetark.com/campaignspage.cfm/newsid/7/story.htm

See the dog poop bags that were introduced into Brisbane by the council - THE biggest green blooper for the city - were found not to be biodegradable. Oops! the company that has supplied them are off to court.

Of course all biters would have invested in reusable grocery bags by now. Why not invest in the same for dog poo bags ? and bring it home and get a dog poo composter.Feeding your dog a nice raw diet, you do get nice stools.

I was reading an interest tip on us Aussies. Australians are still going thorugh four billion plastic bags a year.
The petroleum used to make one bag can drive a car for 11 metres. If we ditched bags, it would be like taking 3,000 cars off the roads each year. Remember we survived without bags prior to the seventies, like everything it is just a habit.

How many barrels of oil does it take to make a ton of plastic bags? If you just reached for your calculator, you might have fallen for one of the biggest misconceptions to ever sweep across the green blogosphere.

The fact is that most plastic bags are not made from oil.

So, What Are Plastic Bags Made From Then?

Plastic bags are made from ethylene, a byproduct of natural gas. Chemists string together long chains of ethylene to form polyethylene. Depending on the process used to create the chains different densities of polyethylene can be produced.

The bags you are given at retail and grocery stores checkouts are High Density Polyethylene or HDPE. They are fairly sturdy, able to hold quite a bit of weight without breaking, optically cloudy, and can be dyed any color.

Low Density Polyethylene or LDPE are optically clear bags, very light, and often described as wispy. These bags are likely to be found in the produce market or covering your clothing at a dry cleaner.

Where Does Natural Gas Come From?

Unlike oil, which the United States currently imports an estimated 70% of, we produce 82% of our own natural gas. The remaining 18% is imported from Canada and Mexico. http://thegreenroutine.net/plastic-bags-not-made-from-oil/