Tuesday, October 17, 2006

Environment friendly practices

This is a space where we can share our ideas about practices that can have a positive impact on our environment.

Plastic shopping bags
When we go shopping we can carry our own shopping bags made of long lasting environment friendly material instead of using the single use plastic bags that are usually available in the shops. Secondly, if we have to shop for our requirements in more than one shop, we can refuse the bags offered by every shop and instead carry all our purchases in one bag. The results of such a practice can be many. If we use less bags, we will manufacture less bags and throw away less bags. One might argue that when we dispose used shopping bags, they are sent for recycling through the garbage handling process. But not all countries have efficient garbage handling processes, and even in those countries that do, the recycling process also consumes energy. So less recycling means consuming less energy.

According to the Worldwatch Institute, factories around the world churned out a whopping 4 - 5 trillion plastic bags in 2002. (For more information you may visit their website through this link: http://www.worldwatch.org/node/1499) And we can bet that unless we do something about it ourselves, this number is going to go up.

Using less plastic bags will naturally lead to use of less plastic which is a material obtained by processing scarce petroleum in one form or the other. To do a very rough calculation, assuming that we still use only 5 trillion plastic bags a year and each weighs 5 grams (average), if we are able to reduce the number of bags used by half, we would be producing and either dumping or recycling 12.5 million tonnes less plastic each year. Surely one preventive action is more powerful than many corrective actions.

http://www.worldwatch.org/node/1499

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