The War on Plastic

There's a war on plastic bags on green carpet!
There has always been this fight for "plastic bag free world", but yesterday I read this blog post from last year that in Canada there was imposed 0,05 $ fee for a plastic bag in shops as a green step. Well, the author and comment was suggesting that it's not gonna make the difference and it would never be enough to prevent people from buying these plastic bags! I totally agree..

First- the fee is to small and if applied only to grocery stores, it leaves out a huge consumerism part as clothes, shoes, toys, electronics and other stuff people buy very often.

Rising the fee for each plastic bag when you buy vegetables, new jacket, cell phone or a toy will not save the planet from plastic bag disaster. Because there will be many who will pay that fee and these plastic bags still go to landfills.

One suggestion there was to not have the bags at all, that would for sure make people remember to take their own bag to the store if they once should carry all the groceries in their hands instead of a bag. But I think it's a little too drastic for shops to agree..

My suggestion would be that, of course, people should pay in all stores and shops for any carrier bag they get. But there should be a law that this bag in every shop must be one of four:

• locally recyclable
• recycled paper bag
• canvas bag
• biodegradeable plastic bag

I believe that should do much more for not filling those landfills with plastic bags than just charging a tiny fee.

Even though we all use our own carrier bags, sometimes the plastic is not possible to avoid. Here on green carpet we go a little further with the plastic bags that still get in our home- we reuse them in various ways. One is for general waste that's not recycled where we are. Another is for packing stuff when travelling and moving home (which is slowly happening now).
But the most wonderful and characteristic for green carpet is to create new things from the plastic bags- bags, fruit trays, vase covers and other things.. The photo update will follow quite soon!

On green carpet there was a joke- if I give a second life to a plastic bag (home-done recycling 100%) which is already made of 50% recycled plastic, would that mean that the item I've created is made from 150% recycled material? :)