It's the only planet we have folks!

Doug Gordan wrote about how he bought some gum and the store clerk put his tiny purchase into a paper bag and then put the paper bag into a plastic bag. As he left the store, he took the pack out of the bag and threw the bag out in a corner trash can, giving the bag a total out-of-store lifespan of about two minutes.

Considering, he says, that so many New Yorkers are rarely without messenger bags, backpacks, or Louis Vuitton knock-offs, most have little use for plastic bags for the few items they might purchase during our daily routines.

If you want to rock the world of just about any convenience store employee, tell them that you don't need a bag to hold your purchase. Doug often pre-emptively does this. In return, he says, he’s greeted with looks that most people reserve for the insane and/or Tom Cruise.

Its become a habit, over-packaging everything. It’s a habit that is costing the world dearly.

Plastic bags don’t biodegrade and will stick around and blight our world for centuries to come. And as they fly around they will be eaten by innocent animals and marine life who will die painful deaths because their digestive systems get choked.

Reusable bags are the answer. Preferably cotton or jute bags. Completely biodegradable and far more stylish and amazingly affordable (see how affordable at http://www.badlani.com/bags)

What’s fascinating about Doug’s article is the number of comments its generated. I’m going to write a blog about those comments soon. The really good news is that they all support a pastic bag tax.

The San Francisco Chronicle had a story today comparing wooden decks with composite decks made from recycled plastic waste.

Bottom line, they say, go with wood, because composites also have a limited life span and are eventually not biodegradable. So finally they will contribute to the environmental burden our planet has to bear.

But the fact that companies like Trex, TimberTech, Louisiana Pacific, Epoch and CorrectDeck are finding uses for plastic waste is wonderful. We’re also doing what we can as you can see at http://www.badlani.com/recycle

If you, like many thinking people nowadays, are concerned about the environmental impact of your actions, please stick to using cotton bags.

We offer polypropylene and polyester options also, as they are reusable, not used-once-and-thrown-away like plastic bags, but our cotton and jute bags are best, because they will go, as nature intended, from dust-to-dust. See the options at http://www.badlani.com/bags

The assumption that what is good for the environment is bad for economic growth has once again resulted in facile results on environmental issues at G8 2005.

The fact remains that we have an environmental crisis on our hands, and concern for the issue looks like poor economics only as long as the costs of environmental degradation aren’t spelt out in dollars and pounds.

Change is essential and pushing for it will actually help poorer economies. Because it is only the less affluent who can see how much waste is being generated. Most Americans see their lifestyles as being “normal”. The excessive use of packaging and fossil fuels isn’t even visible to most of them.
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What do you need to create a successful brand? A huge advertising budget?

It helps, of course, to have oodles of money to back up your story, but I don’t think it’s the key ingredient at all.

If you’ve got enough passion, advertising budgets don’t matter. If you’re in love with your consumer and your product, a kind of magic happens that allows you to achieve big things with small bucks.

If this sounds like wishful thinking, here’s my own story.

In 1980 I launched a brand of jeans called Flying Machine literally on a shoestring budget. Its initial launch was done by kids who fell in love with the jeans and sold them to one another. They created such a rush on them that we couldn’t keep up with the demand!

Then, to enter the Mumbai market, I released one ad in the Times of India (yes, just one) and used one major billboard (which I negotiated at a bargain rate over a drink with the owner one evening because it was the monsoon season).

O&M made such a phenomenal ad for me that it was talked about for years after that. The credit goes to Ranjan Kapur and Elsie Nanji. It had a sassy headline “Who needs phoren?”
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This morning a nice young lady came by to discuss what she’d read on my blogs, to talk about how she and the organisation she works with – The Center for Environment Education – could get Ahmedabad conscious of the harm plastic bags are doing.

I was thrilled. I’d given up on my own home town (shame on me!) and she reminded me that there’s no need to. That thinking and concerned folks do exist right here.

I blame myself for not having thought of the people and resources that Ahmedabad has. The CEE in itself represents an immediate and potent force for change.



Thank you, Vinutha, for stopping by.

I enjoyed discussing the issue with her and I’m sure we can put some of the fun stuff we discussed into action soon.

She’s asked me to put together an article on how ecological action can become relevant to businesses here and I’m going to have a blog up on that in a couple of days.

Watch, as they say, this space!

Yesterday Mumbai city was inundated by floods. The megacity, India’s business hub was paralyzed.



The cost: Billions of dollars and a miserable day for residents who couldn’t make it to hospitals, schools and places of work.

Most flights were either cancelled or diverted to Ahmedabad, and trains were cancelled or ran hours late.

Mumbai has an intense monsoon. You can expect incessant downpours at least 4 times every year.

The downpours aren’t new. They’ve been coming to India’s west coast for hundreds of years.

But the intensity of flooding is new and getting worse every year.

One of the major culprits is the increasing number of plastic bags that are choking drainage systems.

India actually has laws banning the use of such plastic bags, but like most laws in India, they exist only on the books. No one knows about them, no one follows them, and no one appears to care.

Ironically, India is a major exporter of reusable cloth bags.

We ship reusable cloth bags http://www.badlani.com/bags every day of the week to other countries as they take effective steps to reduce plastic bag usage, but we don’t have any customers in India.

This weblog is being acknowledged by readers around the world as a good source of information on the problems caused by plastic bags and the solutions communities have found, but again, hardly anyone in India reads it.

Help!

All concerned, thinking people, please help get our people and governments more sensitive to this problem. Talk to me, we'll try and figure out ways to do this together.

Reusable cotton shopping bags are to be distributed free to shoppers on a trial basis to encourage people to reduce the number of plastic bags they use, under the the 'Fantastic it's not plastic!' initiative.



Cotton shopping bags will be handed out at the shopping precinct on North Deeside Road during the promotion and local children at Culter school are also being encouraged to participate in the initiative.

Amy Gray, Aberdeen City Council's Business Waste Minimisation Officer says, "Aberdeen City Council is encouraging residents to become more waste aware. Refusing plastic bags at checkouts is a simple step anyone can take to reduce the amount of waste they produce. Aberdeen City Council is also lobbying for the introduction of a tax on plastic bags in line with other forms of packaging."

The UK now produces and uses 20 times more plastic than it did 50 years ago.

Around 10 billion plastic bags are handed out by supermarkets and other retailers in the UK every year.

Scots alone take more than 18.5 million plastic bags home from shopping trips each week, according to research by the UK's largest home improvement retailer B&Q.

Every year Scotland uses approximately 1 billion plastic bags, this equates to 200 plastic bags for every man, woman and child in Scotland.

If national averages are applied to Aberdeen then local residents are sending some 1000 tonnes of plastic bags to landfill each year.

The average household is estimated to have 40 plastic bags stuffed in cupboards or drawers.

Ireland introduced a levy on plastic bags in March 2002 under the Waste Management Act 1996, reducing usage by 90%.

Plastic bags are a major cause of unsightly litter and they also harm wildlife.

The amount of petroleum used to make one plastic bag would drive a car about 115 metres.

Plastic bags that end up at sea are easily swallowed by marine life that mistake them for food. An estimated 100,000 whales, seals, turtles and other marine life die every year after swallowing plastic bags.

In many council areas, plastic bags are the single main contaminant of kerbside recycling.

In a report by Audit Scotland it is envisaged that waste is estimated to grow by 7% per annum, compared to a 3% predicted within the National Waste Strategy. The UK's appetite for free plastic bags shows no sign of diminishing despite many voluntary schemes such as bags for life, boxes or recycling of plastic bags.

That’s the bad news. The good news is that awareness of the problem is increasing by leaps and bounds and is opening up the market for ecologically responsible products.

An aggressive campaign positioning reusable bag users as being trendier and more glamorous and plastic bags users as being Neanderthals can achieve faster change.

There’s a huge branding opportunity inherent in this.

Patagonia and Body Shop are two very successful brands that have positioned themselves as being the smarter choice for their ecological concerns are a case in point.

If you’d like to give your brand that kind of panache, choose from the attractive and economical options at http://www.badlani.com/bags

Your logo on one of our reusable bags will position you as a responsible, forward thinking brand.

That’s how I got into the business of reusable cloth bags. My daughter Kaajal came home from school one day and banished them from our home.



Little girls know they have that magic. They can make wonders happen. They can banish things. And it works.

This not-so-little girl-now helps me build and maintain this website and market reusable bags all over the world. She still has the passion and the conviction!

To effectively rid your community of this ghastly substance, engage the kids in your community.

If they decide that plastic is harmful, they will have a bigger influence on their parents than any amount of sloganeering and advertising can do.

Would it be difficult to convince kids of this? No. Kids are more open-minded than grown ups are. Treat them with respect, give them the facts, and watch them achieve what governments and activists have not been able to achieve.

Read the stories on this weblog. There are enough facts and anecdotes to build a lesson plan from. If this isn’t enough, write to me and I will either find you what’s missing or do whatever you need to deliver the message.

Actually, encourage the kids in your class to read the blog themselves to extract what they consider relevant to their lives.

Then, encourage them to start their own weblog where they tell stories of how their efforts are working out in your community.

Tell your local media about the blog the kids are writing. I’m sure they will find it interesting.

You’ll be amazed at what this can achieve.