Experiments from user: x

Plastic bag free

posted by x x on July 14, 2009, in postcode 2021

We consume and eventually discard anywhere between 500 billion and 1 trillion plastic bags every year—20 million every minute.

So starting tomorrow I'm going to go without for one week.

Why should we kick our bag habit?

Plastic bags are the most common form of litter in the ocean. Hundreds of thousands of whales, dolphins, sea turtles and other marine animals fatally mistake them for food.
Plastic bags in landfill can take more than a thousand years to degrade, eventually resulting in toxic chemicals entering food chains.
The bags are made from non-renewable petrochemicals derived from millions of gallons of oil.

This guy doesn't use plastic bags

Progress Report

I've found out this week that eschewing plastic bags takes some thought. Keeping some green bags at home doesn't allow for the times I buy food or groceries during the day or on my way home. Enter the collapsible reusable bag.

The GreenAid bag sits in your daybag (or clips onto it) and explodes into a neoprene shopping bag.

EcoSilk bags are made from recycled parachute nylon (they can be recycled as well).

Baggu bags fold up like a wallet.

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Lug My Mug

posted by x x on June 26, 2009, in postcode 2007

Every year in Australia we send four hundred million non-recyclable coffee cups to landfill. So I've started taking a mug to the café.

Disposable Coffee Cups

At the moment Australians are sending around four hundred million non-recyclable coffee cups to landfill a year. It takes around forty litres of water to manufacture a paper cup and a plastic lid—that's two thirds of a bathtub of water for each cup and lid.

So that means we use something like 16,000,000,000L of fresh water to make all those disposable coffee cups.

Lugging My Mug

I have a mug at work which I take with me to the café. My local café is very happy to fill up my mug for me. It saves them the expense of a take-away cup and I often pay a little extra to have it filled all the way to the top. Other cafés are also happy to fill up my mug. It’s easy to do and it saves almost a bathtub of fresh water. Think how many more delicious coffees that could make!