Help You Help Earth

Traveling around Southeast Asia it has become abundantly clear that there are way too many plastic bags and bottles finding their way into the environment. For those of us who really do have access to clean drinking water and alternative methods, it should be easy to help with just a couple little habit changes.

Kick the platic bottle habit - now!!!! (from planetgreen.discovery.com)

If there's one fad that needs to be given the old heave-ho this year, make it our addiction to bottled water. We spend roughly $100 billion every year on bottled H2O, while 1.1 billion people around the globe languish without a secure drinking-water supply. Because most water bottles are made from polyethylene terephthalate, which is derived from crude oil, American demand for bottled water gobbles up 1. 5 million barrels of oil annually, enough to fuel some 100,000 U.S. cars for an entire year.

That's not even the worst of it: Despite our best efforts to recycle, an estimated 86 percent of plastic water bottles in the United States becomes trash. Meanwhile, almost half of the remaining 14 percent that is earmarked for recycling gets exported to distant climes such as China. Bottled water isn't even necessarily better for you than what's on tap, since about 40 percent of bottled water, including brands such as Aquafina and Dasani, begins as tap water. In fact, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) sets higher standards for the quality of tap water than the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) does for bottled water.

WHAT CAN YOU DO? It's Easy! Lend the environment a hand, and save yourself some extra coin in '08, by investing in a water filter for your faucet, as well as in a reusable aluminum or stainless-steel bottle from a company such as SIGG or Klean Kanteen, or even get yourself a Nalgene or similar bottle to reuse for years to come.

Kick the plastic bag habit - now! (from reusablebags.com)

Plastic bags are killing us, literally.

Between 500 billion to one trillion are consumed every year across the globe, over ONE MILLION PER MINUTE, and very few of these are recycled. These bags are a major factor in the over 100,000 sea animal deaths each year resulting from the accidental comsumption of bags and similar plastic items mistaken for food.

Plastic bags don’t biodegrade, they photodegrade—breaking down into smaller and smaller toxic bits contaminating soil and waterways and entering the food web when animals accidentally ingest.

As part of Clean Up Australia Day, in ONE DAY nearly 500,000 plastic bags were collected.

Windblown plastic bags are so prevalent in Africa that a cottage industry has sprung up harvesting bags and using them to weave hats, and even bags. According to the BBC, one group harvests 30,000 per month.

According to David Barnes, a marine scientist with the British Antarctic Survey, plastic bags have gone "from being rare in the late 80s and early 90s to being almost everywhere from Spitsbergen 78?North [latitude] to Falklands 51?South [latitude].

Plastic bags are among the 12 items of debris most often found in coastal cleanups, according to the nonprofit Center for Marine Conservation.

Solutions? There are some. Paper bags are not necessarily the answer, as they are more environmentally taxing to produce and cost more for the store, and thus the consumer. One solution that has worked well is the Plastax. In 2001, Ireland consumed 1.2 billion plastic bags, or 316 per person. An extremely successful plastic bag consumption tax, or PlasTax, introduced in 2002 reduced consumption by 90%. Approximately 18,000,000 liters of oil have been saved due to this reduced production. Governments around the world are considering implementing similar measures.

BUT WHAT CAN WE DO? It's Easy! Use resuable bags! Each reusable bag you use has the potential to elimnate hundreds and even thousands of plastic and paper bags in its lifetime. Strong and durable, you will no longer need a separate bags for your soda, soap, oranges and cookies. One bag can hold it all! Some people find their canvas bags lasting 15 years plus, which, when you consider that the average family collects over 60 plastic bags in four grocery trips, adds up to a huge imact for our environment with just a little $1 canvas bag investment.

To find more info on environmental issues one easy place to go is to http://www.patagonia.com/usa/patagonia.go?assetid=3857. Get easy info on some wildlife and environmental issues, what they are doing to help, what you can do to help, and learn how your vote CAN count.