There’s hope for Ahmedabad yet!

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!

The rise and fall of a brand

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?”

Bags or decks, natural products are best

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 world is going crazy, but there’s hope…

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.

This isn’t my opinion, look at the results

Helen Logan reports in the Evening Gazette that Ireland used 1.2 billion plastic bags before 2002, when a 15 cent tax was imposed on their usage. Did it hurt business? Was the Irish government overthrown by distraught shoppers? Not really. What actually happened was that plastic bag usage fell by more than a billion bags within 5 months, and earned £2.25m for the Dublin exchequer to be spent on environmental protection projects. “Many of us pick up and fill loads of plastic carriers when doing the weekly supermarket shop, without a second thought” says Helen, “imposing such a tax seems an easy way of cutting down on this type of consumption. People can either bring their own bags or at least be encouraged to re-use the plastic ones if they have had to pay for them”. Common sense isn’t it? The harm that these innocuous looking little plastic bags do cannot easily be visualized by everyone. If a 15 cent tax can bring the issue home, I’m all for it!

Plastax is a brilliant idea says Shane from Ireland

Shane Doyle from Ireland wrote in about my blog on Ireland’s plastic bags. Here’s what he said: "I'm from Ireland myself and the whole plastic bag tax has been a roaring success. You have to ask for a bag now if you want one, the days of automatically being handed a bag are long gone. And it really works, people can be seen going to the shops with their own "green bags", as they are called, or even just re-using the same plastic bag again and again. You rarely see a plastic bag being blown down the street in the wind anymore! I must say, it was a brilliant idea!" Thanks, Shane, for sharing that. I agree that it is a very bright idea. If you’re sick of seeing plastic bags destroy your environment, ask your elected representative to read this blog.

Promotions? Bags make the most sense

I just read an article by Cindy Carrera where she explains the basics of how organizations can use imprinted promotional articles to their advantage. She categorizes their uses into Advertising Specialties, Business Gifts, Premiums, and Recognition Awards. “The trick to a good promotion is to attach your company details to something useful. Now, there is "private useful" like the promotional toothbrush you use in the privacy of your own bathroom, and there is "public useful" that you use out there where everyone sees you inadvertently parading the promotion. This is where promotional bags come in. Few of us can get people to wear sandwich boards for us without paying them, but easily collocated promotional bags act in much the same way” she says. “Imagine” she adds “the happy recipient of your promotional gift arriving at a jazz concert in the park toting your promotional bag. There it sits on the blanket, sophisticated, serene and discreetly advertising your sophisticated and serene company. What a pleasure.” Indeed. We’ve found that our bags get reused more than 300 times. Choose a relevant bag, she suggests. She’s right. There’s a huge variety to choose from, and most are more affordable than you might think. See the variety at http://www.badlani.com/bags I'm sure we have something suited for your next promotion. And if we don't, we'll design a special solution for you.

What possible harm can one little plastic bag do?

Not much, you’d think, right? Until you realise that the world's plastic bag consumption rate is estimated to be well over 500 billion plastic bags annually, or almost 1 million per minute. One million plastic bags minute being added to the burden that our Earth must bear. One million plastic bags a minute being added to a horde that will not biodegrade for the next 3000 years. That’s a lot of harm. If this doesn’t depress you enough, read the full article from the Sun Star Pampanga in the Philippines. The saddest thing is we do have a choice. A simple and elegant choice: calico bags. See how affordable and practical they are at www.badlani.com/bags

Got any ideas?

I just read an article which says: “If you have an unusual use for plastic bags, the American Plastics Council would like to hear about it. We’ll consider publishing your idea on our website!” Got any ideas? If you do write to them, do please share your thoughts with me also. These guys have a vested interest in continuing the use of plastic bags, so their interest is of a different nature, but people like me, who are committed to convincing people to use reusable bags instead, also have to acknowledge that these evil things are so convenient and so cheap that people will continue to use them. We're doing our best to make it easier for the world to switch to reusable cotton bags (http://www.blogger.com/ ) but people will continue to use plastic bags. Less people, I hope, but I have to be realistic. The uses these guys have found are really face savers, and a terrible waste of energy and resources, but it is a lot better than letting these bags be swallowed up by poor unsuspecting animals and marine life. But one day when someone has a really good idea, I’d love to know. For example, we have so many fisherfolk in India for whom wooden boats become expensive because wood decomposes and plastic might make longer lasting boats. Then, so many people could use a longer lasting material to make huts from and roofs from. How can this happen? Are there easy, low cost, low energy consuming technologies? There is plenty of manpower in India and if we could find a way to recycle plastic bags into such uses, w'd be making a win-win happen. Meanwhile, ABC Online has a wonderful webpage on this subject at http://www.abc.net.au/science/features/bags/

What are we doing to our world?

I just read an article Rob Crilly and Emma Newlands wrote for The Herald in Scotland about a whale that was washed up on the Hebridean coast. Its stomach was filled with plastic bags. More evidence that plastic bags are playing havoc with life as we know and love it. A recent survey found scraps of plastic inside 96% of seabirds tested. Sad, when such easy solutions are available and affordable.See some at www.badlani.com/bags/

Plastic bags make up 50% of beach litter

More litter was left on Britain's beaches in 2003 than in any other year, according to a new survey by the Marine Conservation Society (MCS) says a BBC report. Plastic bags made up 50% of the litter found with 5,831 collected. The MCS want a big reduction in the amount of plastic packaging used on items and would like the government to bring in tax on plastic bags. The Australians are achieving a lot even without a tax like the Irish have done. On a voluntary basis they seem to be moving people towards using cloth bags instead. Sadly most of the world still thinks cloth bags are expensive. They aren't. See how affordable they are in my bags section www.badlani.com/bags/

Talk about dumb!

Plastic bags don’t have a very long history. What looked like a miracle of convenience from its conception in 1957 until the late 1990s, has now turned into a monster that threatens life on earth as we know it. Here’s the chronological story of this tragedy unfolding. Who could have imagined this? 1957: The first baggies and sandwich bags on a roll are introduced. 1958: Poly dry cleaning bags compete with traditional brown paper. 1966: Plastic bag use in bread packaging takes over 25 to 30 percent of the market. 1966: Plastic produce bags on a roll are introduced in grocery stores. 1969: The New York City Sanitation Department's "New York City Experiment" demonstrates that plastic refuse bag curbside pickup is cleaner, safer and quieter than metal trash can pick-up, beginning a shift to plastic can liners among consumers. 1974/75:Retailing giants such as Sears, J.C. Penney, Montgomery Ward, Jordan Marsh, Allied, Federated and Hills make the switch to plastic merchandise bags. 1973: The first commercial system for manufacturing plastic grocery bags becomes operational 1977: The plastic grocery bag is introduced to the supermarket industry as an alternative to paper sacks. 1982: Kroger and Safeway start to replace traditional craft sacks with polyethylene "t-shirt" bags. 1990: The first blue bag recycling program begins with curbside collection.1990: Consumer plastic bag recycling begins through a supermarket collection-site network. 1992: Nearly half of U.S. supermarkets have recycling available for plastic bags. This, as we all know now, is really just whitewash. No one is effectively recycling plastic even today. 1996: Four of five grocery bags used are plastic. 2002: Ireland wakes up to what is happening and puts a tax of 15c (9p) on them. 2003: Consumption in Ireland is down 90%. You'd imagine the world would learn, right? 2004: Nope. We're still dumping plastic bags at the rate of a million bags a minute! Talk about dumb!

Planet Earth's new nemesis?

British shoppers get though eight billion a year, but elsewhere the humble plastic bag has become a menace, with one country even banning them outright. Could the UK follow suit? Supermarket shopping in Ireland is much the same as anywhere in Europe, or indeed the rest of the world. But one element British shoppers would find distinctly foreign is the need to pay for plastic bags at the checkout. Since the beginning of March, supermarkets have been forced to charge shoppers a 15c (9p) tax on each new plastic bag. The idea was introduced as an attempt to curb the litter problem created by so many bags. And anecdotally, at least, it seems to be working. Within a couple of months, shoppers have switched to re-using carrier bags. Customers now routinely turn up "pre-armed" with a clutch of polythene and one of the biggest chains, Superquinn, says the number of bags it distributes has dropped by 97.5%. Now that sounds like something to learn from, right? But no one has. Not one country has followed through on introducing a similar tax. Not one. Britain talks about it every so often (This article appeared on the BBC site on 8th May, 2002!). Scotland discusses it too. India and Bangladesh claim to have banned plastic bags (but hello, I live here and see plastic litter everywhere I look). And the biggest consumer of plastic bags in the world – the USA – continues to pretend that there is no problem at all. Stupid. When there are elegant and affordable options. See http://www.badlani.com/bags/

Some towns in Alaska lead the US in banning plastic bags

Outside the Western Alaska village of Emmonak, white plastic shopping bags used to start appearing 15 miles from town. They blew out of the dump and rolled across the tundra like tumbleweeds. In Galena, they snagged in the trees and drifted into the Yukon River. Outside Kotlik, on the Yukon Delta, bags were found tangled around salmon and seals. No more. All three villages banned the bags. "It's working out good here," said Peter Captain Sr., chief of the tribal council in Galena, where the city banned stores from using plastic bags in 1998. "You used to find plastic bags all over the place, up in the trees. ... But you don't see that now." At least 30 communities statewide have banned plastic bags. They have joined a growing list of places around the world that decided the bags' nuisance outweighs their convenience. Ireland and Taiwan started taxing bags to curtail their use. South Africa banned them completely, as did Bangladesh after devastating floods were attributed to stray plastic bags blocking drains. Great going! Reusable bags are so much more intelligent and affordable. www.badlani.com/bags/

Trash costs Californians hundreds of millions in taxes every year

But strong lobbying from the Society of the Plastics Industry Inc has prevented Californians from being able to introduce a 2 cent tax on plastic bags. Much like the cigarette industry, these guys also obfuscate facts into making their products sound completely virtuous (its not the plastic bags at fault, it’s the way people use them is one of their favorite sayings). Yeesh! Get real. How about this: "Caltrans (the California Department of Transportation) spends $300 million a year on cleaning streets and installing catch basins along highways, while the city of Los Angeles will spend $400 million over the next decade on cleaning up the L.A. River," Murray said. "Trash has become a very expensive matter for our government agencies." They wanted just a 2 cent tax and these guys are helping kill that. A 15 cent tax in Ireland reduced plastic bag consumption by 90% in one year. The savings would be huge. That’s why I love the business I’m in. Every reusable cotton bags we sell www.badlani.com/bags/ helps avoid the use of as many as 500 plastic bags. U.S. consumers use 14 billion plastic bags annually, Murray said, which works out to 425 bags for every American.

I might save the world, but my own backyard is quickly going to hell!

I recently spent a weekend at a tiny beach called Kelva where my friends Rumy and Shernaz Shroff have a place on the beach. Delightful hosts. I love being invited. To get there you drive upto a place called Manor on the Mumbai-Ahmedabad highway and then turn off for Palghar. The road takes you through some ghats (beautiful but you get dizzy with the winding road if you’re not driving) and then takes you onwards to a little village called Kelva which is bang on what used to be a beautiful beach. It’s now littered with plastic bags. A little village, hardly known to anyone, miles from any large population center, but it caters to many local tourists. They come there on Sundays and holidays, busloads of them, and spend a few happy hours on that lovely beach. All of them bring along their own booze and food – in thousands of plastic bags. By Sunday evening the place is a disaster. Read on to see what some friends and I are doing about it.

What a delight to find a like minded soul

Its nice to know that there are like minded folks out there. I just read a weblog from a guy called Josh Dorfman who runs an online lifestyle company called Vivavi.com. He has concerns about the same things that bother me and I’m going to write to him hoping we can work together in some way soon. Be nice to actually syndicate with a whole bunch of like minded business folk. Read his blog. Its at http://vivavi.com/Vivavi_Daily.php

Know why Russians bring their own shopping bags?

Because stores in Russia don't give away free plastic shopping bags, that's why. That's why the Irish government imposed a tax on plastic shopping bags and reduced usage 90%. The folks who run our convoluted world can’t accept that there are simple solutions to seemingly complex problems. With one fell swoop we can stop our earth from being choked at the rate of one million plastic bags being thrown away every minute! What do we have to do? Do we need a heavy think tank to figure this one out? No. Just tax plastic bags, and viola! – we’ll have a nicer world

The propensity for plastic continues

They're cheap, easy and everywhere: As many as a trillion plastic bags are used worldwide a year. But would Americans kick their plastic addiction if they had to pay for them? Alaskans call them "tundra ghosts" and "landfill snowbirds." In China, they're "white pollution." South Africans have sarcastically dubbed them their "national flower." Snagged in treetops in Ireland, they become "witches' knickers." The bags are not just a blight, but are wasteful, kill wildlife, pollute oceans and may be insinuating toxins into the food chain. Purchases are bagged almost reflexively. "When I buy a birthday card, it goes into a plastic bag – I buy one item and it goes into a plastic bag," said Mark Murray, executive director of Californians Against Waste, an environmental group in Sacramento. A Japanese study found that beads of polyethylene plastic can concentrate toxins at up to 1 million times their strength in surrounding sea water. A British study found that ocean invertebrates such as barnacles and jellyfish can eat plastic fragments. That leads Murray to worry that "plastic particles are becoming vehicles for transferring toxins up the food chain." Plastic grocery bags were banned in Galena, Alaska, a village of 850. "Bags blew out of the landfill and into the Yukon River, and there was even some evidence the salmon were eating them," said Cindy Pilot, director of the environmental department of the Louden Tribal Council, Galena's governing body. With a grant from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the council handed out 2,000 free canvas bags and phased out plastics in the town's three stores. To date, nearly 40 other Alaskan villages have followed suit, said Bill Stokes of Palmer, Alaska, who helped formulate many of the bans with the state's Department of Environmental Conservation. Taxation works, as does demonstrating an elegant alternative like an attractive cotton bag. See what we have at www.badlani.com/bags/ - see how attractive and affordable they are too. What's your call on this? Tax 'em or not?

Americans are noticing the harm plastic bags are doing

Time was when we all worried about it, the Irish, the Scots, the South Africans, the Australians, us Indians… but the Americans didn’t. Everyone else’s worrying and all the clean-up action lost meaning because it’s the Americans who consume most of the stuff on earth, and use – and throw away the most plastic bags too. So, seeing this article in Newsday gave me great joy. That’s one thing I love about the Americans. Once they pick up a cause, they run with it with an energy and intensity that no one else on earth can match. If the Americans cotton on to this cause, we’re home free! “We are drowning in plastic bags around here. They obviously reproduce exponentially in the closet at night. Take a look at a typical day in our household. Monday: Pick up a few things at a local farm stand - scallions, lettuce, green beans. That's three plastic bags, but since I have a tote bag I don't need a fourth bag for the other three. "Vanity Fair" arrives in the mail in a plastic casing. My husband comes back from the post office with a ton of mail in a plastic bag. Buy chicken at the supermarket, think about asking for paper but contemplate the chicken juices leaking all over the car, and, whoops, said chicken is in a plastic bag before I get my change. And the morning paper arrived in a plastic bag. Total for the day: seven. Saved: one. And goes the week. Plasticbagitis is an epidemic sweeping the world, and it's happening right here in my home. This is not a good thing. Spend a few minutes on line and you discover that this plastic-bag epidemic is not only totally terrible for the environment, but completely out of control. Thousands of turtles, birds and other marine animals are killed every year because they swallow the darn things, mistaking them for squid and jellyfish.... Sad, when solutions exist. Economical and attractive solutions: See the reusable bags at www.badlani.com/bags/ What do you think? Am I being practical here? Or do you believe that there's another solution? Read the rest of the article here