Please leave me a world worth living in.

I just read this delightful story about 8 and 10 year olds making presentations to folks about earth friendly shopping in the North Salem Statesman Journal. That’s the way to go. Who can resist the sight of these cute kids saying, hey, please leave me a world worth living in. They're not asking for something difficult. Calico bags are elegant and affordable and we have all kinds of plans to fit them into almost any budget at all. See http://ourcity.badlani.com Here's the story: The first shopper was too good to be true. She rushed up to the Forest Ridge Elementary School students, eager to hear their talk about Earth-friendly shopping practices. OK, it was 8-year-old Bonnie Kerr’s grandmother, but she was good practice for the stream of other shoppers who got a lesson about recycling and reusing Friday. The Keizer students held informational signs as they offered recycling advice in front of the Keizer Roth’s store for National Youth Service Day. “When you use plastic or paper inside the store, they just get thrown away, and this is reusable, so you can use it every time you shop,” Garrett Medlock, 10, said as he held up a canvas shopping bag. “If you throw (plastic bags) away, it adds to our waste stream, and if you add to the waste stream, you are polluting and killing the Earth, basically.” The students are in Laurie Aguirre’s second-grade class and have been learning this school year about the eight R’s of conservation: reduce, reuse, recycle, repair, renew, rot, reject and react. The students know every angle of Earth-friendly shopping, including looking for recycling signs on labels and buying reusable items. They have a detailed slide-show presentation that they plan to give today at a booth at The Oregon Garden in Silverton. The class bought the canvas bags with a grant from The Mid-Valley Garbage and Recycling Association. Jolene Chandler donated a colorful logo embroidered on each bag. Shoppers who filled out a survey about Earth-friendly shopping were entered into a drawing for the bags. “Earth-friendly shopping is when you think about the Earth when you are shopping, like buy in bulk,” Bonnie Kerr started to say before being interrupted by her friend Alyssa Andretta. “Don’t buy items that are overpackaged,” Alyssa said. “Yeah, then you reduce trash,” Bonnie said. “Like chocolate Easter bunnies,” Alyssa offered as an example of excessive packaging. “They have paper, foil and plastic.”

No Bags, thanks!

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. 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/