Plastic Bags
Did you know that the average consumer uses about 500 disposable plastic bags per year? I remember not so long ago justifying taking the plastic bags from the stores because they were so useful for household garbage. Well I am not letting myself use that excuse any longer. If I am shopping and I have forgotten my cloth reusable bag, I use a cardboard box for my groceries or I carry it out by hand and akwardly throw it all into the car. I consider this as my punishment for being such a putz about not remembering my reusable bags!
Back to the number – 500 bags per year, staggering. I recently went to premier (in Vancouver) for The Clean Bin Project (cleanbinmovie.com) and met a women who made a dress out of 500 shopping bags. I can tell you it was a lot of bags and she made quite the rustle when she walked around. The visual of 500 bags is actually quite sobering and a wake up call for me.
The poll question for the month of July will be: Do you remember your reusable shopping bags?
My answer is “most of the time”.
Dress made of 500 shopping bags! Wow.
Apathy on personal waste reduction
I am feeling a little out of sorts these days. I am feeling that more people need to take a good hard look at their personal consumption habits and think hard about going on a diet. I don’t mean food, I mean the junk you buy and the junk you through way every day. We as a society in the western and industrialized world need to take a serious look at what we consume in lifetime vs others that grow up in a non industrialized setting. Actually it is staggering! Did you know that the average industrialized nation baby (is that even a phrase?) consumes more resources in the first six months of life then a child growing up in a non industrialized country. That is insanity.
It starts with the disposable coffee cup or drink container you buy. When you think about it, you are buying a product that will be used and consumed in less than 15 minutes (on average) and then thrown out. A product that has use for only 15 minutes and then done – crazy. As a consumer we need to make a serious commitment to not purchasing products that have virtually no life span. We need to purchase products that can be used and re used and reused for a lifetime. A refillable coffee container or a refillable water thermos are a great start and they need to be part of your zero waste kit or bag that you take with you everywhere you go.
Kids certainly pose a great challenge to any family wanting to get serious about their watse. My kids want to buy stuffies or plastic toys that I know will be disposed of in no time at all. It is so frustrating but no amounts of explaining have managed to make much of an impact on my 8 and 6 year old. Their vision of what is necessary and what is wasteful is not very clear yet – and unfortunately their sense of reason has not kicked in. I am look ing forward to the day, where they might see the merits of reducing their consumption and not just fulfilling their retail therapy urges!
We need to get serious about it now. Boy is it hard making some see the merits of the changes!
The Film “Clean Bin Project”
I took my 8 year old daughter with me to go see the Vancouver premier for The Clean Bin Project. This is the 2nd time I have seen the film in less than 3 days, and I am happy to report I enjoyed it as much the 2nd time as the first.
Grant and Jen who are in the documentary (Grant is the producer) bring a wonderful amount of energy and enthusiasm to their commitment to zero waste for one year. The project set out on a very simple quest: 1. to produce no (or virtually) no garbage for one year and 2. other then food, buy nothing for one year and 3 (more importantly) Grant and Jen were competing with each other to see who could create the least amount of waste. I won’t give it away who won, but I can tell you it is amazing and admirable how little garbage they created or needed to create when they put their minds to it.
It certainly would take a considerable effort to get my family to no waste. With four kids under 8, the consumption habits are prohibitive and to reason with a child that no new toys should be acquired would be tough, for sure. My 8 year old was asked what she thought about the movie? Her response was very sweet and painfully honest “I enjoyed it a lot, but thankfully mummy is not making us live zero waste!” She got it, zero waste means no stuff, for her.
One of the painfully realistic things about zero waste, you do have to consume less in order to try and achieve “it”. A tough change for our society. One that I am trying to make.
I am not sure if I can achieve zero waste right now, but I am going to try and get it to 90% at home and at work. Stand by for results!
RCBC Conference 2010 at Whistler
Many positive thoughts on the RCBC conference @ Whistler Westin Hotel. By the way, if you decide you don’t need your room tied or cleaned, the Westin will donate $5 to www.carbonneutral.com, seems like a reasonable gift in lieu of making my bed and replacing 1 day old practically unused towels.
In any event, the most postive experience yet (other then Urban Impact winning the Private Sector award – yeah!) was meeting Grant Baldwin and Jenny Rustemeyer a couple who lived waste free for 1 year. Can you believe it? Amazing and inspirational. The premier of the film is tomorrow at the RCBC Conference and the Vancouver Premier is on Saturday May 29 @ Granville 7 Cinema.
The movie trailer: http://www.vimeo.com/3301133
Their website: http://cleanbinproject.com/
I admire and applaud what they have done!
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