Sunday, April 08, 2007

Plastic Bags in the News

I was reading through the new issue of Time (April 16), and under the numbers section which is a list of interesting statistics there was a category about recyclables. It read,

"1,000 Estimated number of years a plastic grocery bag takes to decompose. About a 100 billion plastic bags are distributed annually worldwide. 95% Drop in Ikea plastic-bag use in Britain since the chain began charging for bags last spring. On March 15, Ikea introduced a 5 cent charge per bag in its U.S. stores."

The source was the Progressive Bag Alliance, their website www.progressivebagalliance.com was interesting to view.

1 comment:

Michelle said...

Amy,

Thanks for posting this information. I went to the Progressive Bag Alliance (PGA) site and did some investigating on my own. I was surprised to find out that PGA is comprised of several owners and CEOs of plastic-bag manufacturing companies.

At first blush, there seems to be a conflict of interest. Why would plastic-bag manufacturers want to raise awareness about the consumption of plastic bags? And why would they want to promote the 3 R's (i.e., reduce, reuse, and recycle) for plastic bags? From a business standpoint, wouldn't this view negatively affect their profits?

I must admit, I'm still puzzling over these questions.

On a related note, we're going to have a "Facts & Stats" poster session at BagFest, which will include some of the statistics you mentioned in your post.

:0) M