Captain Ban-Plastic Writes:
Supplying an ecologically sound and viable alternative to the unnecessary and wasteful plastic bags given away by retailers is a passion for us all at The Clever Baggers. It is therefore devastating to see in the media that despite many retailers offering good value ‘bag for life’ alternatives, the use of plastic shopping bags is again on the increase.
Governments have promised action and delivered little. In Eire, there is a tax on plastic bags that makes them 16 pence to buy. The Clever Baggers’ best selling long-handled cotton bag is 78p. Even the most numerically challenged mathematician can work out that in five trips our bag would have paid for itself, and still have thousands of trips left in it. This is the beauty of our cotton products – they are not only sustainable, totally and quickly bio-degradable, and lovely to carry, they also make good economic sense.
Add to this the fact that you can personalize your chosen bag with designs, text, artwork of your choice and you have a bag for all seasons. A strong bag that will not split and send your shopping rolling across the car-park at your local supermarket, a beautiful bag that you can take pride in, but this is not a marketing message, this is an ecological plea.
It makes sense for today, and even more sense for tomorrow, for our government to take action on this issue; to begin to turn the ship, to take hold of the tiller and plot a fair course. Naturally, we want people to take a look at our product ranges and what we can offer. But bigger than this is our drive to ban the plastic carrier bag.
I am often bombastic but today I am making a plea to anybody interested in the values that we at The Clever Baggers hold dear. The values of sustainability, of a world view, of the ethos that we should leave only footprints behind. The word is here to be spread and there are wonderful alternatives to the plastic carrier bag.
We implore our government to stop spouting hot air and to take action, and to take it now. We are so used to politicians saying what they think we want to hear whilst small business gets on with the reality of taking steps to make the world a better place. It is simply not acceptable for our government to continue to say to retailers ‘do something about the way you hand out free plastic bags, or we will have to take legislative action’.
They’ve been saying this for at least five years and it’s not working!
Just a few little facts to cogitate on:
• Wales starts charging 5p for plastic bags on 01 October 2011. Excellent news!
• The Clever Baggers have supplied 150,000 cotton bags to the Glastonbury Festival for the past four years. If every bag was used only 20 times instead of a plastic bag, this will have saved 12 million plastic bags
• The Clever Baggers sells over 2m cotton shopping bags a year as well as large quantities of other types of 100% biodegradable bags used as packaging (cotton drawstring bags). Again applying the same 20 times usage, this saves 40m plastic shopping bags per year
Our mission remains not only to ban the plastic bag, but to provide meaningful and creative alternatives to the greater benefit of our country and our wider environment. This is a big mission, but we are prepared for it!
“They call me Captain Banplastic, say me fantastic, touch me in me back
she say I'm banning that plastic”. Thank you Shaggy…
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