Vancouver Area Relocalisation Network

Over the weekend, I went to the EPIC Sustainable Living Fair in Vancouver (more on that later). I'm a bit torn about some initiatives to improve environmental conditions but consuming some other product, rather than lowering consumption to begin with. Eg. buy a bunch of new shirts, just buy them made of 'trendy' natural soy fibre, as opposed to reusing or patching up an old shirt.

BUT, there was one group that I had trouble resisting: BYOB Bring Your Own Bag based out of Vancouver - 'eco-chic reusable shopping bags' (ok well I don't know about the term eco-chic...but the bags are fun!)

some plastic stats from their website, www.bringyourownbag.ca:

Every year, an estimated 17½ billion plastic bags are given away by supermarkets. This is equivalent to over 290 bags for every person in the UK. 17½ billion seconds ago it was the year 1449.
Buy products that are refillable. For example, the Body Shop provides refills in its containers or takes them back for recycling. The recycled plastic is used to make items like nailbrushes and combs
Think of ways of reducing the need for packaging. Don't add extra packaging yourself - a melon, a grapefruit or a bunch of bananas already has natural packaging - does it need to go in a plastic bag as well as your shopping bag, and does that already efficiently packaged dairy product or piece of meat really need another wrapper?
We produce and use 20 times more plastic today than we did 50 years ago!
-Source http://www.wasteonline.org.uk

Plastic bags start as crude oil, natural gas, or other petrochemical derivatives, which are transformed into chains of hydrogen and carbon molecules known as polymers or polymer resin. After being heated, shaped, and cooled, the plastic is ready to be flattened, sealed, punched, or printed on. North America and Western Europe account for nearly 80 percent of plastic bag use-though the bags are increasingly common in developing countries as well. Each year, Americans throw away some 100 billion polyethylene plastic bags. (Only 0.6 percent of plastic bags are recycled.) In January 2002, the South African government required manufacturers to make plastic bags more durable and more expensive to discourage their disposal-prompting a 90-percent reduction in use. Ireland instituted a 15¢-per-bag tax in March 2002, which led to a 95-percent reduction in use. In the early 1990s, the Ladakh Women's Alliance and other citizens groups led a successful campaign to ban plastic bags in that Indian province, where the first of May is now celebrated as "Plastic Ban Day." Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the Philippines, Taiwan, and the United Kingdom also have plans to ban or tax plastic bags. Supermarkets around the world are voluntarily encouraging shoppers to forgo plastic bags-or to bring their own bags-by offering a small per-bag refund or charging extra for plastic. Challenge: Try to go at least one week without accumulating any new plastic bags. If every shopper took just one less bag each month, this could eliminate the waste of hundreds of millions of bags each year. Compared with paper bags, producing plastic ones uses less energy and water and generates less air pollution and solid waste. Plastic bags also take up less space in a landfill. But many of these bags never make it to landfills; instead, they go airborne after they are discarded-getting caught in fences, trees, even the throats of birds, and clogging gutters, sewers, and waterways. To avoid these impacts, the best alternative is to carry and re-use your own durable cloth bags.
-Source http://www.worldwatch.org/pubs/goodstuff/plasticbags/

When 1 ton of plastic bags is reused or recycled, the energy equivalent of 11 barrels of oil are saved. Paper or Plastic? The energy and other environmental impacts embodied in a plastic grocery bag is somewhat less than in a paper grocery bag. But paper is easier to recycle, being accepted in most recycling programs. The recycling rate for plastic bags is very low. So, which is better for the environment? Neither! The fact is that the difference between paper and plastic RECYCLING is small compared with the REUSING bags.
-Source http://www.sierraclub.org/bags/