Bags of Disappointment

The following 'clipping' is from the UK newspaper, The Times, yesterday (11th November), written by Ben Webster (environment editor):

Supermarkets have abandoned their commitment to halve the number of plastic bags they issue after a backlash from some shoppers.

Retailers are instead proposing merely to continue measuring the number of bags they give away and to reduve it over time, without setting any targets.

Shoppers used more than six billion single-use bags last year, an average of 100 for every member of the population. The bags take up to 1,000 years to decompose and millions litter parks and pollute rivers.

Seven of the biggest supermarket chains, Tesco, Sainsbury, Asda, the Co-operative Group, Marks & Spencer and Waitrose, clsimed last year that they had "narrowly missed" their voluntary target to reduce the number of bags by 50 per cent between 2006 and spring last year.

Over the financial year, from April 2009 to March this year, bag use fell by 43 per cent compared with 2006. But there are signs that usage is rising, with 23 million more bags handed out in May than during the same month last year, a 5 per cent increase.

Bob Gordon, head of environment at the British Retail Consortium, said: "The 50 per cent target is history. We are seeking contiunul improvement, with no specific target."

Some supermarkets had dropped their commitment to remove single-use bags from view at checkouts, he said. "It was too much of a flashpoint at the till and customers were causing too much of a scene about it."

My thoughts
It's a pretty sad state of affairs, really. I can understand that a small percentage of customers might rant about the removal of bags from view, but has it really caused huge scenes in the supermarket? The number of complaints can't surely be more than one in ten customers, if that (i.e. 10 per cent).

The progress that has been made since the initial pledge by retailers may not be as great as I would like, but it is progress none-the-less, and it's terrible to throw that away. Does it mean that customers have stopped thinking about plastic bags? Was it just a fad? I'm genuinely surprised, especially since WHSmiths started charging for bag usage.

I feel some letter writing coming on. In one of the letters I recieved from Defra (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs), regarding the voluntary commitment made, David Hands says: "As this is a voluntary agreement it is up to each company to decide on their own strategy for the aims to be achieved. Whilst this is a voluntary agreement, the Government has reserved the right to take steps if the terms of the agreement are not met, though this will be subject to the Review."

So, are the goverment going to take steps seeing as the terms of the agreement have not been met - and seeing as the agreement has now been abandoned?

Use Less Plastic

Use Less Plastic from TakePart on Vimeo.

A Christmas Resolution

How did it get to be November? Christmas is just around the corner again. I try not to think about it too early, but it’s hard when we’ve been planning the Christmas retail season at work since August. And now most shops on the high street are launching their Christmas campaigns, mine included, so it’s getting hard to ignore.

Chicken
So, I’ve been thinking about Christmas. And I’ve been thinking about how worthless my Christmas was last year, how I essentially chickened out on my plastic challenge, and attached a whole raft of excuses as to why it worked out the way it did. And watching bits of yesterday’s TEDx Great Pacific Garbage Patch event has put me to shame. There’s no doubt in my mind that I use less plastic than I used to, but the truth of the matter is that I do still use quite a lot. That coffee that my manager treated me to the other day, the DVD I was craving, the pre-packaged sandwich I bought because I was too tired and hungry to be bothered with finding an alternative. I pledged to cut plastic from my lifestyle, but I fail continuously. I am a chicken.

Vote with your wallet
The speakers at the TEDx event were passionate and dedicated, and this has changed their lives. It’s truly inspiring, and it makes me want to be better, to be more serious. It is feasible cut out plastic; they do it every day. They “vote with their dollars,” as Andy Keller put it. And so, this Christmas I am determined to vote with my dollars – or, rather, my British pounds.

Hence my Christmas resolution: to buy gifts with no plastic. That’s no plastic packaging and not made of plastic. No DVDs or Xbox games, no calendars with their shrink-wrap. But what I really want to do is extend this resolution to my family and friends: any of you who happen to be reading this blog, can you avoid plastic in your purchases too? Or, at least, in any purchases you may choose to make for me?

Plastic Symposium Today!

America's TEDx today hosts a day-long plastic extravaganza, including speakers such as Captain Moore, Fabian Cousteau, David De Rothschild, and Fake Plastic Fish's Beth Terry. I really wish I could be there. Luckily, though, it's going to streamed live through the TED website.

Watch the event or take a look at the day's agenda. For UK folks it runs from 3.30pm to 1.00 am (that's 8.30am to 6.00pm Pacific time).

Do I sacrifice the coursework that I'm supposed to be doing today to watch this? I really want to hear everything these people have to say, but I think I might have to cherry pick, as I'm not too keen on sitting in front of the computer until 1.00 am! Fingers crossed that the what I don't get to see today will still be there for me to watch another day.

Bron, meet Werner

Bron is a huge fan of weird German director Werner Herzog. He will watch anything and everything made by, involving, or about Herr Herzog.

But is this inspired short about the life of a plastic bag, voiced by Werner (directed by Ramin Bahrani) enough to inspire him?

Tragically, no. Whenever I suggest he stops using bottled shaving foam, shampoo, deodorant, or shower gel, he immediately turns into Mr. Negative. The transition is so fluid and immediate, it's kind of fascinating to witness. Well, it would be if it wasn't so darn frustrating. I've been using alternatives for over a year now, and I'm still here aren't I? Why is he so closed off to the idea of change?

I've tried the tack of, "Just try it to see, and if you don't like it, you don't have to use it again." He does occassionally, grudgingly, agree to this, but because he always starts off with the mindset that he won't like using the new product, the result is, of course, that he doesn't like it! He knows why I want him to try it, he knows and understands all the problems with plastic, but somehow, somewhere along the line, he fails to care about it. And if Werner can't make him care, I don't know what will.

Sail the high seas

One of the most exciting things about writing this blog is when people get in touch with me after reading it.

I started writing here simply because it was a requirement for my studies, but it quickly became something I could do for me - a way of putting thoughts into words and a handy tool for chronicling what has essentially become my plastic journey. But then people started reading it - and not just my mother, but people I don't know started reading it!

Play your part
This explains why I was very excited to recieve a lovely and encouraging email from Steve McPherson, whose artwork I mentioned a couple of posts ago (Making Lemonade). Even better: he told me how me, myself, and everyone else can contribute to plastic art and the plastic campaign.

Steve is creating a global depository of images of plastic items found washed up or discarded on the world's beaches. Next time I go to the beach I'll be taking along my camera so I can photograph what I find and help build up what will undoubtedly become a striking collection over the coming years. To take part, visit marineplastic.org and email him your pictures, along with the date the object was found and latitude/longitude location of where it was found.

Expand your knowledge
And for anyone who wants to learn more about what's going on in the high seas, the book Flotsametrics (Ebbesmeyer and Scigliano) looks at the history of ocean flotsam and the story of modern flotsam: floating garbage patches and the legacy of plastic waste.

Get involved
As part of my own need to feel like I am doing more for the coastline and the environment, I recently joined the Cornish based charity Surfers Against Sewage. They don't just campaign against sewage and not just for surfers, but for any changes that help mend the damage being done to the world's oceans, from marine waste to climate change. And it's not just about Cornwall either: they're making a big splash around the whole of the U.K.

There are lots of other plastic campaigns going on out there too, vying for supporters: the Marine Conservation Society and Plastic Pollution Coalition are just two of them.

Teamwork, baby!
I'm a little mouse who is generally happiest hiding out in her own home with a good book, or sitting here tapping at the keyboard and it's always seemed like the only way I can make a difference would be by becoming someone I'm not: outspoken and daring. I'm working on that (gently), but in the mean time, that doesn't mean I can't help others make a difference. Teamwork, baby!

It's Still Not Easy Being Green

There are three reasons why most people residing in the UK know the name Dick Strawbridge. He is:
1. The man with the best moustache on British T.V. (and possibly the world)
2. The man behind BBC hit ‘It’s Not Easy Being Green’.
3. The man who was recently robbed of the winner’s crown on Celebrity Masterchef.

His eco house (complete with compost toilets, solar panels, windmill, chickens, and more) is based fairly near to my own home in Cornwall, so a few weeks ago when he popped into the bookshop where I work, my lovely colleague, L, lynched him and his son James (or, as he is widely known amongst the ladies working in our store, ‘Handsome James’) into doing a signing with us. And into judging our staff ‘bake-off’. And I lynched him into talking to me about plastic.

“We just take it for granted, it’s everywhere,” he tells me. “2010 and plastic’s all over the place.

“I’ve heard arguments where plastic can actually be described as being quite environmentally friendly. It doesn’t take a lot of resources to make something which is really quite capable – there’s not much plastic in a plastic bag, if you look at it as a single entity. Sum it up and we got a bit lazy.

“Nowadays,” Dick reminds me, “packaging is all. It’s the big P word; plastic and packaging come together. And it all comes together at a point where we’ve forgotten that is has an impact – and it’s got a detrimental impact, what we’re doing.”

In the Strawbridge household
The mission of Newhouse Farm, the Strawbridge smallholding, is ‘To live a 21st century lifestyle, but to produce little or no waste, and to remove our dependence upon fossil fuels’. With this in mind, I wondered how successfully he manages to avoid plastic creeping into the house.

“Do you know how it gets into our house?” he says. “The internet.” Yup, that sounds familiar.

“That’s a sort of stealth way of doing it. If I was in a shop and somebody tried to give me something, I’d say no; I just don’t even think about it. On the internet, you buy something, all of a sudden it turns up and you just wonder why the hell it came like that.”

I can definitely relate – I’m rapidly learning that, despite constant temptation, it is generally much safer packaging-wise to simply not buy from the internet – unless you contact the seller first and question their packaging policy, like I recently did with Natural Spa Supplies.

Curtailing the plastic mindset
“At the moment plastic is thought of as being cheap, when actually it’s a limited resource,” Dick comments.

Plastic manufacturers only pay for the resources that go into their product; they only consider this one cost of what they are making and sending out into the world, when the reality is that every given item costs the world – both people and the environment – a lot more than just the value of extraction, and manipulation, of resources. For instance, aside from the environmental costs of extraction, there are the costs for disposal of the product after its use: transportation, landfill or recycling, both in economic terms and environmental ones. Dick suggests that these costs be included in the original cost of the product.

“All the way through, these things have pennies and pennies and pennies added to them. Those costs, the person who doesn’t give a **** at the front end, the person who’s actually making it – charge them for the whole cost.

“There are alternatives, without a shadow of a doubt, to everything that we do, but at the moment it is the economics that are driving it. [Given current economic issues] can we afford to give businesses more limitations and make it more expensive?” he asks.

And: “I think actually we can,” he says.

This, essentially, is life cycle analysis. The producer should consider all the potential impacts of their product, and build the costs of those costs into the product. This may make everything a lot more expensive – but only because the monetary cost of what we’re consuming will more effectively reflect the real-world cost of that consumption. At the moment, what we pay for goods doesn’t reflect this. It makes so much sense the more I think about it. Perhaps by having to pay more for an item, it’ll make me question whether I really need it? More often than not, I don’t need it – I just want it, and that is something entirely different.

Innovation
There’s no doubt that Dick Strawbridge has got a big personality. Sitting cross-legged on the floor of our small staff room, tasting the various cakes and bread that have been offered up by the booksellers for his scrutiny, he makes jokes, tells anecdotes, and discusses ideas; his thoughts seem to travel a mile a minute. But when it comes to issues of sustainability and being green, he’s extremely earnest.

“We need innovation,” he tells me.

“In October I’ll be launching at St Austell Asda the first paper two litre milk bottle. It’s got some plastic in it, but it’s mainly compressed paper, from the Green Bottle Company. I’m getting involved because I reckon that in four or five years the plastic milk bottle and plastic bottles could actually be on their way out. Because if this functions the way it should do, if it does the job properly, how do you justify using plastic? Very exciting sort of move. We need something like that; we need innovation.”

And finally… the three R’s
“The old mantra, ‘reduce, reuse, recycle’, it’s not very sexy anymore.”

Do they still teach this in schools, I wonder, or has it fallen by the wayside? Innovation is important, extremely important, finding new ways of making things, but perhaps more important than new technology is to change our habits.

“Reducing what we use in the first place is much better than saying, ‘Ah, I’ve got this compostable bag’. We have to get into the frame of mind where people are actually using less. We don’t need to come up with another technical solution, just don’t use as much. That’s the way forward.”

Learn more!
Dick and James Strawbridge's newest book, Practical Self Sufficiency, is out now. And if you want to learn hands on about making your own home more sustainable, the Strawbridges are running a selection of courses from Newhouse Farm, or have dinner cooked for you!