Campaign under way to curb plastic bag use

[JUNewsBot]

JUNewsBot Has Just Posted the Following:

The group calls itself the "Plastic Shopping Bags Reduction Team" and its goal is to reduce use of plastic shopping bags across Okinawa.Sponsored by the Okinawa Prefecture Women's Union, and supported by supermarkets, the group is running a six-month campaign to education consumers on using their own shopping bags instead of the environmentally unfriendly plastic bags.

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[thistle]

Well this is the best bit of news I've seen for ages!

And not before time!

I get so tired to telling those people at the check out desks not to give me so many plastic bags, yes, just put them all together, and no I don't need a special little plastic bag for the bananas or the toothbrush.
I do try to take my own bag as often as I can, but I don't always have it.
Those times are stressful times for me at the check-out, wondering how many plastic bags they are going to give me this time.
Plastic bags that I have no use for except to use for dog droppings.

[Asshat]

I prefer destroying trees. Seriously, in this ocean, one will find plastic bags routinely more than ten miles out.

On the remote Mai-jima (islands 12 miles out towards the Keramas) the beach is strewn with non-bio degradable flotsam. Little of it is plastic bags.

The majority is plastic or rubber products used in various manufacturing processing in China or Taiwan. For example, I have seen huge sheets of layered rubber with the cut-outs of zorries in them. (flip flops) Also, plastic bottles by the thousands.

Plastic bags are the least of our problems. Is there a way to construct a hibrid type of bag? One that has plastic properties, but will decompose more readily?

[socalheart]

At one point, I had five lawn size trash bags of little plastic shopping bags. We don't reuse all of them, because we live off base and are required to use special bags. The new collection is accumlating again. I can usually talk the stores out of giving me six bags for five things. heh.

I don't think we should have to pay for plastic bags though. I've never seen a recycling bin for plastic bags here. Stateside, I would drop off my unused plastic bags in the recycling bin. They need to make recycling them easy by offering a recycling bin at grocery and convenience stores.

[dk]

They need to make recycling them easy by offering a recycling bin at grocery and convenience stores.
It shouldn't be that hard. They already have them for milk cartons. Hopefully the idea will come into play.

[thistle]

Not sure what they actually do with them in Okinawa, if anyone can enlighten me that would be great.
What bothers me is more the amount of plastic bags, large and small that they give out here, unnecessarily.
I think asking people to pay for the bags is a great idea, it is the only way to get through to people about unnecessary waste.

[DoctorP]

Japan has always been "bag" happy! It took about a year for the ladies at my local store to stop giving me so many bags. I guess after a year of me taking stuff out of bags and combining things and giving the empties back to them, they finally caught on! Now they will ask me before bagging things seperately.

But, when the commissary or something gives me a lot of them, I just save them for when I need them.

[roxy_skyy]

I use plastic bags to clean out my car, just because I can keep them in my console and pull them out when I have pieces of garge around, other than that there is no real use for them.

In Germany, out in town they don't use plastic bags, it's custom to bring your own bag to put your stuff in and when you forget you have to pay a euro for a plastic bag. We always kept bags in the cars and made sure to have them readily available. I prefer paper bags because I always put my recyclables in them they're like little trash cans and then I just can carry them downstairs and voila, paper and cans. :)