News Tips from Our Friends at ReusableBags.com

The Whole Foods Market chain announced that it would stop offering plastic grocery bags, giving customers a choice between recycled paper or reusable bags. It will take effect by April 22, Earth Day.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown of the United Kingdom signaled that he will use the law to stop supermarkets giving away free plastic bags within the next 12 months. He has praised Marks & Spencer, which announced that it would impose a 5p charge on bags. Reminded of the scale of the problem every week when he saw the number of bags his family's shopping generated, the prime minister said that he was now willing to use compulsion to ensure that others stores followed the M&S lead.

After five years of the plastic bag tax, Ireland has changed the image of cloth bags. Vincent Cobb, president of ReusableBags.com said: "Using cloth bags has been seen as an extreme act of a crazed environmentalist. We want it to be seen as something a smart, progressive person would carry." In 2001, Ireland consumed 1.2 billion plastic bags, or 316 per person. 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.

We use 60,000 plastic bags in US every 5 seconds and 2 million plastic beverage bottles in the US every five minutes. Want to see what that looks like? http://reusablebags.typepad.com/newsroom/2007/09/running-the-num.html

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

The real cost of “free” plastic retail bags: http://reusablebags.com/facts.php?id=2