It's the only planet we have folks!

Clearly they are a more evolved society than most others. Elsewhere, governments are facing opposition from retailers when they propose a tax on plastic bags, but not in Japan.

Here, the Japan Chain Stores Association have themselves called for a law to enable stores to charge customers for plastic shopping bags.

The industry body said retailers have incurred growing costs for recycling plastic trays and other recyclable containers. It said if those costs continue to increase, some retailers might become unable to shoulder the burden and Japan's "recycling system might collapse."

What an admirable perspective. Smart guys, the Japanese. Look at how clean Japan is.




Bring in a tax on plastic bags and usage does drop. It fell 95% in Ireland.

Getting used to carrying reusable cloth bags is obviously something humans can adapt to fairly quickly.

For those who forget to carry it or want the luxury of not needing to carry it, a small tax makes sense. Before plastic bags started getting distributed free after the 70s, we managed didn’t we?

Reusable cloth bags are attractive and affordable as you can see at http://www.badlani.com/bags

The Green Students Council in Hong Kong conducted a survey outside 25 supermarkets and found that 90% of the respondents supported a tax on plastic bags.



Hong Kong consumers use 6.7 billion plastic bags a year, or 1,294 plastic bags per person.

Taiwan and Ireland have sharply reduced the use plastic bags by imposing levies three years ago. The Taiwanese, who used to use 909 bags per head, have reduced consumption by 80%.

Ireland's consumers used one billion plastic bags annually, or 256 plastic bags a person, before a similar levy was introduced in March 2002. Since then Irish retailers have reported a 90 percent drop in the number of plastic bags used while the government raised 9.6 million euros (HK$94.57 million) in the first year of the levy.

Despite this, Secretary for Environment, Transport and Works Sarah Liao said charging people HK$1 for each plastic bag is very complex and alternative proposals should be considered.

Sounds like the Indian government. Things that are simple for others become complex for us. But I’m surprised to hear this from Hong Kong.

Governments! 90% of the people say tax plastic bags and the government thinks it’s too complex. I ask you!

I just read an article by Jeremy Watson in the Scotland News that the Scots will soon be charging a 10 cent tax on disposable plastic bags.

Scotland uses about a billion bags a year totaling up to 6,500 tons of waste.

Most are buried in landfill sites, where they can take hundreds of years to degrade, but many litter urban areas, the countryside and the sea, where they can become a major hazard for wildlife. The stomachs of whales and seabirds washed up on Scottish shores have been found to be filled with plastic bag fragments, which may have contributed to their deaths.



The sums raised will be collected from shops by local council officers and the profits spent on environmental projects. In Ireland, where a similar bill has reduced plastic bag usage by 95% since being introduced in 2002, the levy has already raised £23m, says Jeremy.

Liberal Democrat MSP Mike Pringle, who introduced the bill, says that the Irish levy had been "a huge success", adding: "As well as reducing the number of plastic bags being thrown away, it has really increased awareness of recycling in general”

Councils in Scotland are backing a levy as it would save them millions of pounds in landfill charges, as well as providing cash for new environmental programmes.

Predictably, the British Plastics Federation, is carping about it, but Mike Pringle has the answer “Free plastic bags only became common in the 1970s. Before that our forebears managed very well without them."

Reusable cloth bags are an attractive and affordable alternative, as can be seen at http://www.badlani.com/bags

The guys who oppose the taxation bill should read some of the stories on this weblog, including the one which tells you how plastic chemicals leaching into your food from packaging and doing a gender bender on newborn babies.

The culprit is an ingredient in plastic goods called phthalates says a story in The Guardian.

They seep into your food from plastic packaging and get into your bloodstream.

Result: ‘Women with higher levels of four different phthalates were more likely to have baby boys with a range of conditions, from smaller penises and undescended testicles to a shorter perineum, the distance between the genitals and the anus,’ said the report.

"Every aspect of male identity is altered when you see this in male animals," the article quoted Fred vom Saal, professor of reproductive biology at the University of Missouri-Columbia, as saying. Levels of aggression, parenting behaviour and even learning speeds were affected, he said.

The differences indicate a feminisation of the boys similar to that seen in animals exposed to the chemicals.

Ouch!

Switching to buying unpackaged food and carrying it home in our natural cotton bags seems like a smart thing to do, doesn’t it?

Reusable cotton bags are attractive and affordable, as you can see at http://www.badlani.com/bags

Used plastic bags can do immense harm if allowed to choke landfill or left free to be eaten by innocent animals and marine life.

But they can be used for good if used as a raw material. That’s what we decided to do. I spoke to my designer friends Prakash Vani and Himadri Ghosh and that is what we’ve been trying to do.



This little picture shows you the junk we started with, the very basic looms we worked with and some of the beautiful bags and textures we could create.

Feels really good to be able to take something awful and turn it into something so delightful.

Read the whole story at http://www.badlani.com/recycle

I realize that this is a modest achievement, but it is meaningful to us and I imagine even more so to the folks who can benefit from it. But I also see that it has immense potential for good.

I'd love your input on how we can take this forward from here. Please take a moment to share your thoughts with me. Ideally, I'd like to identify people and agencies who can assist in the process of bringing to market the products that emerge from this exercise.

All thoughts will be more than welcome. And if there is anything you can bring to the table, we'd love to work with you.

Write to me at rajiv @ badlani.com

Fitzroy Falls sets a fine example of how this can easily be done.

Some cities in Australia did this by having their local government invest in cloth bags and hand them out free to every citizen.

Some cities that thrive on tourism had citizens take a pledge to each buy and use cloth bags.

But Fitzroy Falls has followed what appears to be simplest path. They utilized the local retail network and citizens bought cloth bags from the retailers they do business with.

The local council imported cloth bags at a lower cost because they could place a larger order than any individual could.

Then they sold them to local retailers who are allowed to mark them up so that they can make some money on them and order more.

Deputy Mayor Nick Campbell-Jones said the declaration of Fitzroy Falls as a plastic bag-free town was an example for the rest of the shire to follow.

"This is the first locally-branded, re-useable shopping bag in the area and it goes some way towards the creation of a sustainable community," he said.

Local students were encouraged to come up with a design for the re-useable bags which would express an environmentally responsible message and also promote the Fitzroy Falls region.

"Early on we realised that the best way to proceed with the campaign was by consulting with the local community. We spoke to local businesses to establish what their issues of concern were as well as getting the kids involved in creating the design," Ms Katz said.

"The launch today shows that even small communities can make a stand against plastic bags and offer viable alternatives."

Diane Garwood stressed the environmental damage plastic bags do to the environment.

"Plastic bags have an enormous impact on the marine environment and are responsible for the deaths of 100,000 birds, seals or wild turtles every year," she said.

Would you like your community to be plastic bag free? Write today to Rajiv@badlani.com and I’ll be happy to work out a specific plan for your community.

You can select from the vast variety we have at www.badlani.com/bags and we’ll be happy to print your community’s message on them for you.

What a great idea!

R Vasudevan, Head of the Department of Chemistry, Thiagarajar College of Engineering, Madurai has pioneered a way to use a mix of shredded plastic waste in making roads.

It’s mixed in with the “metal” used to make the road and assists in binding it better, making it capable of withstanding heavy rains, reducing the amount to bitumen required. The development team believes it also offers better road grip than rubberized roads.

Sounds seriously win-win to me.

Much better than the blind eye all the authorities in India have been turning to the huge plastic waste problem we have here.

Here’s a picture of these folks standing on their road. The lady’s the head of the college.



admire people who try to do something about the problems they see.

I’ve been working with my friends, Prakash Vani and Himadri Ghosh to see if we can also do our bit, and we’ve succeeded in making some viable looking products from plastic waste using handlooms and devices that do not require any more energy input and can be made at home by even the poorest of the poor.

I’ll have a story and a webpage about that effort up very shortly.

It’s a good looking bag, isn’t it? We call it the Jute #B06.



Attractive, economical and capable of saving the world from the waste of as many as 1000 plastic bags, this bag is a hero!

Packing and shipping costs are being worked out even as I write this, and we hope to have this lovely bag up on our website very soon.

The Daily Yomiuri today reported that Japan’s Environment Ministry has decided to forbid retailers to hand out free bags.

The ministry hopes to submit a bill to revise the law in the ordinary Diet session next year.

Wise. The Japanese throw away 30 billion plastic bags annually.

As one of the cleanest, most well-kept societies in the world, the Japanese have a deep stake in keeping their environment safe from the havoc that plastic bags wreak on the world.

The National Association of Super Markets expressed some sympathy for the idea saying in a statement, "We can reduce free handouts of plastic bags by charging the shoppers, which would cut the cost at supermarkets." However, it also expressed concern over receiving complaints from shoppers and expected a decline in sales.

The success of Australian communities in reducing plastic bags waste might assuage their worries. The Japanese are an aware society. Just a couple of activists can probably translate a rule into a personal mission for individuals.

Like Ben Kearney did in Coles Bay, Australia. Coles Bay saved their town from more than 300000 plastic bags by introducing an attractive and practical alternative. On our website, we call it the # B06.



It’s made from nonwoven polypropylene. Not in itself an ecological material, but reusable, and well designed.

At Norquest, we’ve now developed a version from laminated jute. Acting from the belief that most humans prefer the textures of nature. If you’re going to use a reusable shopping bag we might as well design one that looks and feels good to you. The jute version is an absolute delight. We'll have a picture up very soon.

We have lots and lots of attractive and economical options on show at http://www.badlani.com/bags and we hope we’ll get more Japanese folks looking at them now.

Well done, Japan! Way to go!

This morning I was appalled to read an article in the Indian Express that said “NO NEED to kick this plastic habit”

Seems some ATIRA scientist has found a way for plastic bags to become brittle and turn into a fine powder when exposed to sunlight. And the Indian Express article implied that plastic bags were now “safe!”

Until now, innocent animals and marine creatures, who couldn’t differentiate between plastic bags and food swallowed the stuff and died horrible deaths because plastic is indigestible, and full of poisonous toxins.

Now, all us humans can also kill ourselves the same way, because that fine plastic powder will mix with the soil we grow our food in and the water we drink.

Brilliant.

I’ve written to the editor of the Indian Express. Let’s see if he is responsible enough to correct the dangerous impression his readers must have got.

Then I phoned the scientist. He admitted that this fine powder would retain all its original chemical properties. But it didn’t seem to worry him.

I thought scientists could think.

ATIRA is the acronym for the Ahmedabad Textile Industry Research Association.

In a country where millions derive their livelihoods from growing and processing cotton and jute ATIRA ought to be finding ways to make re-usable cloth bags more attractive, rather than researching ways to make plastic even more dangerous than it presently is.

At http://www.badlani.com/bags we sell reusable cloth bags every day of the week to customers all over the world, but awareness of the harm that plastic bags do is abysmally low in India.