Used plastic bags can do immense harm if allowed to choke landfill or left free to be eaten by innocent animals and marine life. But they can be used for good if used as a raw material. That’s what we decided to do. I spoke to my designer friends Prakash Vani and Himadri Ghosh and that is what we’ve been trying to do. <img src="http://norquest.blogspirit.com/ima
A story in today’s Indian Express talks about how 95 per cent of urban India’s stray cattle are suffering from various ailments due to hazardous materials inside their abdomen. 90 per cent of that was plastic bags. <img src="http://norquest.blogspirit.com/images/medium_how_sacred_are_indian_cows.jpg" border="0" alt="image" name="image" width="165" height="198"
Sponsorship from Landmark Narromine, a real estate company is helping the Narromine Shire Council rid their community of plastic bags. Narromine Shire Council is encouraging all residents to take advantage of the current 'Plastic Bag Swap Op' where calico bags are given free to residents when they bring in 20 plastic bags to the Narromine Council Chambers, Tomingle
Barbara Wallraff tells us in the The Atlantic Monthly that this is what the Irish call fugitive plastic bags that fly around and snag everywhere. Completely fitting. Lee Buenaventura, of Wellesley, Massachusetts, felt nearl
The Green Students Council in Hong Kong conducted a survey outside 25 supermarkets and found that 90% of the respondents supported a tax on plastic bags. Hong Kong consumers use 6.7 billion pla
Clearly they are a more evolved society than most others. Elsewhere, governments are facing opposition from retailers when they propose a tax on plastic bags, but not in Japan. Here, the Japan Chain Stores Association have themselves called for a law to enable stores to charge customers for plastic shopping bags. The industry body said retailers have incurred gr
I just read an article by Jeremy Watson in the Scotland News that the Scots will soon be charging a 10 cent tax on disposable plastic bags. Scotland uses about a billion bags a year totaling up to 6,500 tons of waste. Most are buried in landfill sites, where they can take hundreds of years to degrade, but many litter urban areas, the countryside and the sea, whe
The culprit is an ingredient in plastic goods called phthalates says a story in The Guardian. They seep into your food from plastic packaging and get into your bloodstream. Result: ‘Women with higher levels o
Fitzroy Falls sets a fine example of how this can easily be done. Some cities in Australia did this by having their local government invest in cloth bags and hand them out free to every citizen.
What a great idea! R Vasudevan, Head of the Department of Chemistry, Thiagarajar College of Engineering, Madurai has pioneered a way to use a mix of shredded plastic waste in making roads. It’s mixed in with the “metal” used to make the road and assists in binding it better, making it capable of withstanding heavy rains, reducing the amount to bitumen required.
Sure is a great looking bag, isn’t it? We call it the Jute #B06. Attractive, economical and capable of saving the world from the waste of as many as 1000 plastic bags, this bag is a hero! Packing and
The Daily Yomiuri today reported that Japan’s Environment Ministry has decided to forbid retailers to hand out free bags. The ministry hopes to submit a bill to revise the law in the ordinary Diet session next year. Wise. The Japanese throw away 30 billion plastic bags annually. As one of the cleanest, most well-kept societies in the world, the Japanese have
This morning I was appalled to read an article in the Indian Express that said “NO NEED to kick this plastic habit” Seems some ATIRA scientist has found a way for plastic bags to become brittle and turn into a fine powder when exposed to sunlight. And the Indian Express article implied that plastic bags were now “safe!” <img src="http://www.20six.co.uk/pub/norq
I believe our Minister of State for Environment and Forest Namo Naryan Meena said in parliament that ''it is not possible to ban their use''. Worse, I’m told he actually said that plastic bags were ''not harmful to life <img src="http://norquest.blogspirit.com/images/medium_banning_of_plastic_bags_is_not_possible_says_indian_environment_minister.jpg" border="0"
Online Greek publication ekathimerini.com today published this shocking fact. “There will have to be a change in the law forcing supermarkets to charge for shopping bags so that their excessive use, which is detrimental to the environment, can stop,” said Apostolos Alexakis, president of the Association of Greek Supermarkets. An average store serves about 800 cu
Plastic bags are affecting the environment in India more than in most countries because of our complete lack of discipline and enforcement. People throw plastic bags everywhere. Though we have legislation in place banning the manufacture and use of thin-gauge plastic bags, these laws exist only on paper, are flouted every day, and plastic bags continue to be throw
2005 looks even better, suggests an ASIC survey. ASIC stands for the Advertising Specialty Institute. “Companies are looking for new, more effective ways to spend their marketing budgets, as many are discovering that advertising on satellite radio, TiVo television or the Internet is not as effective as it once was” says Greg Muzzillo, founder and Co-CEO of Proform
Too many discussions on branding focus on projecting a brand to external audiences. To the extent that branding gets considered as being synonymous with advertising. I disagree. I think the place a branding exercise starts from is within the organisation. It is only when an organisation is in total internal agreement on the subject of “who we are and how we behave
Winning a customer’s trust is what makes it happen for us. Clearly, the folks who run the Bahrain Exhibition Center were happy with the bags we’ve been doing for them so when they had a
This isn’t some ad man’s wild pipe dream. Read this amazing true story at http://www.poconorecord.com/lifestyl/alh97889.htm Columnist Martin Sloane contributed a story encouraging people to switch to reusable cloth bags, and here is what reader Louise Fail wrote in: Dear Martin: At our
I just read an article in The Decatur Daily which is published in Alabama, where Vickie Brooks, front-end manager for a store called Kroger says that stores in Washington, DC are charging customers 31 cents per plastic bag. This came as news to me. Searching for this only led back to this one story. I hope this is true. Reusable cloth bags will begin to look truly
B. Joseph Pine II and James H. Gilmore discussed the power of transforming ordinary transactions into experiential events in their book, “The Experience Economy.” “It’s not about entertaining customers, it’s about engaging them,” they wrote. Kevin Roberts, CEO at Saatchi & Saatchi, recently built on Pine and Gilmore’s theory of customer engagement in “Lovemarks, T
Martin Sloane of The Birmingham News got a tremendous response to his article on switching to reusable bags. So great, that he’s decided to kick off a contest. To enter you have to decorate a reusable bag (no paper or plastic, folks) and send clear picture of it to Martin at the Birmingham News or email it to him at site4savin
When you’re headed for your next trade show or conference or event, consider reusable fabric bags as your giveaway. Visitors love receiving them because it facilitates carrying all the literature they collect. The fact that folks will carry them around the show displaying your logo and plugging your presence is only the immediate benefit. Much after the show is ov
Alex Steffan, who writes a brilliant blog at http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/002465.html noticed my blog and wrote “I love obsessive geekery for a good cause, and I believe I have stumble upon the Ur-site, the Platonic example of the form: the Badlani blog which focuses, essential
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