This is a really exciting time to be involved in projects bringing sustainable, reusable bags to Thailand. There are news stories almost every day about Thailand's single-use plastic use and efforts to reduce it. Based on recent news out of Australia, it seems like the biggest and easiest power to impact change comes from the stores themselves, which in Thailand includes the ubiquitous 7-11 stores on every corner.
One can imagine that if 7-11 were to start charging for plastic bags, not only would plastic bag use decrease, but people may be more likely to start carrying a reusable bag, which would magnify the impact immediately beyond 7-11. While it's not my place as an American to tell Thailand how to solve their plastic bag problem, I'm excited to be helping to turn t-shirts into reusable bags while creating an income source for women in Thailand. It may be a baby step, but it's a step in the right direction that may end up being part of a growing movement to support reusable bags in Thailand. "What Thailand Needs to Do to Kick its Plastic Bag Addiction" by Danny Marks (who, it's worth noting, is writing from Hong Kong and not Thailand) has some interesting facts and good ideas. While I think all his points, including changing the waste management system and increasing education about plastic waste, are valuable, I also think that 7-11 alone has the power to make a huge impact in a way that will take little training and can actually increase revenue for the chain. If we create economic incentives for people to change their behavior, they change their behavior, even if those incentives are VERY small. There are lots of online petitions to encourage 7-11 in Thailand to eliminate plastic bags, but I can't find any that have a significant number of signatures (it could be because I'm not searching in Thai - if you can find any, please let me know!). So in 2019 we are going to work on a video campaign with our Thai partners to share on 7-11 Thailand's social media and encourage them to eliminate plastic bags, with the hope that social media sharing can help us to influence 7-11 Thailand toward lowering it's use of plastic bags. Stay tuned!
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Australia is a big place. 3 months is basically no time. And eighty percent is a LOT. (Okay, these are all things you know, but seriously, this statistic is crazy.)
Did it take some massive government effort? A huge amount of funding? A revolution? Nope. It took two grocery store chains charging 15 cents for a bag. Do you find it amazing that 15 cents is enough to make so many people change their behavior so drastically? Years of pictures of endangered animals, news stories on giant plastic regions in the ocean, and endless pleas from all of us who love our reusable bags made a tiny dent. Asking for 15 cents pretty much solved the problem. The solution is easy. And giant grocery stores, who can easily impact the change in a HUGE way, don't even have to care about others to do it, because it comes with increased profits. Come on, America, it's time to embrace this same big step. Read the full story here. It seems like we started expanding our reusable bag project in Chiang Mai at just the right time. Sharing the message at the City Life Fair!
I just heard from Teen Travel Writers that my essay was chosen as the 2018 winner in their International Travel Essay contest. This essay helped remind me what motivates me to keep working on Bags for the Ocean and my other projects, so I wanted to share it here. Whatever keeps you motivated, keep doing it!
When I was a freshman in high school, I found my place on campus through our environmental club, also known as Global Student Embassies. I met students from other grades and made all kinds of new friends as we managed our organic school garden. The most important piece of the club for me however was the volunteer trips we took to Latin America to teach other high schoolers about sustainable agriculture while building school gardens and doing reforestation work in the awe-inspiring jungles outside of the towns where we worked. My freshman year we traveled to the Mawmoní jungle in Panama to learn about deforestation and the effects of slashing and burning on the environment. After my freshman year with the club, I thought I was a pro: I had seen it all, done it all, knew the biointensive farming methods by heart, and was not afraid to get my hands dirty. But when we landed in Cuenca, Ecuador my sophomore year, things went a little differently than expected. Even after spending an extra day getting acclimated to the altitude before we could start working, the air felt extremely thin. The teachers and trip leaders were different, none of my friends from the last year had come, and I had a hard time understanding Spanish in the rural Ecuadorian accent. It was harder and less rewarding work: we spent days digging trenches in the rain and mud for irrigation and didn’t even really do a good job of it, needing to stay late to re-do work that we didn’t get right the first time. All in all, I was tired and homesick, and although I loved the work that we were doing and the cause we championed, I simply wanted to go home. On the last day of the trip, just before we headed out on the seven-hour bus ride back to the airport, we had a vacation day to sightsee around Ecuador. As the trip was coming to a close, I was ready to go and continue my work for the environment from the comfort of my California suburb. We woke up early, packed all of our things into our little bus, and fell back asleep, praying that the rickety old thing would make it up the narrow dirt roads. When I woke up and looked out the window, I saw the most spectacular mountain views imaginable. The bus was climbing up the side of a mountain pass heading to Cajas National Park in the Andes. I pulled out my camera and shot some shakey video of the landscape from out my dirty window. I looked around to the other people on the trip to see if they were in awe as I was, but most of them were still asleep as we reached the crest of the first mountain and got our first real view over the landscape. We were all told to dress warm, and were glad of the advice as the frosty mist rolled over the hills below us. We drove past alpacas quietly munching on grass, and the higher we climbed, the more mountains we could see across the horizon. I watched in rapture out my window for the rest of the trip as we climbed past mountain upon mountain. When the bus rolled to a stop at Mirador Tres Cruces for our first hike of the day, I was the first person out of the bus. I shivered a little in the frosty air as gentle raindrops dripped down my back. The hike was a straight shot up hundreds of worn-down steps to the lookout at the top. As we hiked, the temperature dropped and the rain grew harder. The steps were built into the side of the muddy mountain and the makeshift railing had broken away for long stretches of trail. The top of the hill was the lookout, and only a precarious guardrail at the peak kept us safe from the drop off of the rocky cliff side. I can’t describe how breathtaking the view was. With the thick cloud layer masking the sky, all of the mountains seemed to pop out of the background like a movie set There were more than I could ever count, each with their own unique shade of dark green. Studded with rocks and aquamarine blue lakes in between, they looked like they had each been individually designed by a skilled painter. Tendrils of stark white fog and cloud flowed in between the valleys, accenting the depth of color of each. Very few things in life have ever truly left me breathless, but the view from that perilously tall peak did. The altitude may have helped. While the park looks fairly barren, without a tree or animal in sight, it’s one of the most biodiverse places in Ecuador. We looked closely to the ground at all of the intricate species of moss and flowers, adapted to survive the perpetually frosty and cold climate, and we hiked through high grasslands full of endemic plants and the high mountain forest full of endangered trees and the quickly disappearing cloud forest, marveling at each along the way. This day in the mountains gave me a taste of the power of travel. I fell in love with the landscape and the plants and made a promise to myself to return. The view and the experience reminded me why I dedicate my time to working in our school garden and educating others about the importance of composting and recycling. Why I travel to build organic gardens and volunteer teaching kids about the importance of bees and other pollinators. That day put the entire trip, and a lot of the things I do, into perspective. I want to dedicate my life to protecting gorgeous places like these, and preserving their biodiversity for the next person to see and the cloud forests for others to discover. Plastic grocery bags are routinely discarded after a single use. Instead of tossing them out with the trash, you can try to repurpose used bags into plarn!
Plastic yarn, otherwise known as “plarn”, is made by cutting a plastic bag into strips and then stitching the strips together as with regular yarn. After stitching them together and forming one continuous piece, the plarn can easily be knitted into reusable shopping bags, welcome mats, coasters and more. Why use plarn? Apart from the creativity and durability of using strung together pieces of plastic, plarn also helps to reduce plastic waste consumption by repurposing something that likely would have found its way to slowly deteriorating in a landfill or polluting the ocean. Instead of discarding something that takes between 10 and 1000 years to decompose, why not transform them into a sturdy reusable tote bag? In order to make plarn, follow these simple step-by-step instructions from Leisure Arts YouTube video, How to Make Plarn. Step 1: Gather several grocery bags. The amount will vary depending on the desired size of the bag, but anywhere around 50 bags should do the trick. Step 2: Lay the bags out on a flat surface, smoothing out any creases and folds. Step 3: Fold the bag in half lengthwise three times, then cut off the top handles as well as the bottom seam. Step 4: Cut the bag into 1 inch strips. Step 5: Open each strip and lay them out on a flat surface. Using two pieces at a time, create a slip knot to string the individual pieces together. Continue doing this until one continuous strand is formed. Once all the pieces have been joined together to form a single strand, begin making a reusable shopping bag following these instructions from Etsy. To begin making a reusable grocery bag, start by first making the base of the bag. Decide on the size and chain about 20 stitches (add more for a wider base), then turn and begin crocheting as normal. Once the desired width is reached, use a single, double, or half double stitch (depending upon preference) and begin working around the base (instead of back and forth). After the desired depth of the bag is reached, begin working on the handles. This can be done by crocheting the handles separately and then sewing them on with more plarn or by crocheting it on the bag itself. I have to disclose that I’ve been a total failure at making plarn, mostly because I seem to lack the patience to see it through to a final finished product, but also because I may have done too good a job getting my family to eliminate plastic bags - I couldn’t find enough to make anything! But I’m committed to using the bags that come our way toward a successful plarn project sometime in the coming months, if for no other reason than to relieve the stress of applying to college. Have you made a plarn project? Share a picture with us, and we’ll share it here! You all know that I have been a little obsessed with the huge amount of single-use plastic bags used in Thailand every day since I got involved with a reusable bag project there this summer.
Because of that, I was SO EXCITED to see that the first 7-11 in Thailand has eliminated plastic shopping bags. You can read the story here. Now, Google tells me there are over 8,000 7-11 stores in Thailand, so one store is just a drop in the bucket. But it shows that opinions are changing, and I hope that when the store sees that it has one less thing to buy, but sales remain the same, this might become commonplace in 7-11s across Thailand. Sometimes just a little win can make you feel so good - woo hoo! By Emily Tamkin, founder of Bags for the Ocean
Last year, over 300,000 American students traveled abroad to participate in international study, volunteer, or immersion experiences, according to GoAbroad.com. Inevitably, these students finish their program with a deeper appreciation for the piece of the world that they’ve gotten to experience and a desire to invest in and help the area in which they’re working. Many such programs, especially those in developing countries, ask students for tee-shirt or clothing donations to provide for the community that they’re in. While these donations undoubtedly have a positive impact upon those receiving them, it’s becoming increasingly important to consider whether or not these donations truly have a positive effect on the economy of the region. These large volume donations to regions are a small example of the process of “dumping” in economics. Economic dumping is the export of a substantial volume of goods at a lower price than they cost in their home country; in this case, the export (donation) of a large quantity of tee shirts that would be priced around 15 dollars in their home country that are given away for free in the country receiving them second-hand. This importation of goods in said substantial volume endangers the manufacturers and producers of those goods in the importing nation. The availability and low cost of these goods can drive domestic producers out of business and cause a higher rate of unemployment. While these organizations mean well in their donations, saturating the community’s market with America’s hand-me-downs poses significant economic risk to the region. If citizens can get free or extremely cheap US merchandise, why would they spend the extra time and money buying from local artisans and manufacturers? A perfect example of this effect is in Kenya, as according to Oxfam, more than 70% of the world’s donated clothing ends up in Africa. The downturn in Kenya’s textile industry began in the 1980s when the economy opened to accept donated clothing. As locals turned to shops selling second-hand clothing, local textile manufacturing took a steep decline. According to Business Daily Africa, while the industry used to employ around 500,000 Kenyans, that number was down to just 20,000 in the year 2010. The Kenyan government has numerous times considered legislature that would ban the importation of used clothing into the country as a final effort to save their collapsing textile industry. This doesn’t mean that your clothing donation doesn’t do individual good. If you’ve ever donated clothing, toiletries, shoes, or other items at the end of your trip, it’s very likely that the person or people who received them were grateful. There are countless examples of donating clothes or shoes to someone in need where that person’s daily life is undoubtedly improved. However, on a systemic level, donating old clothing and shoes may create dependence on others and instability in local economies. So, what to do? To protect the economies of underprivileged areas, visitors abroad need to step back from donated items and find ways to have a more meaningful impact on the communities that they are trying to benefit. This summer, Bags for the Ocean had the chance to try a new way of managing in-kind donations. Partnering with the study abroad organization Loop Abroad, we funded an initiative to collect donated tee shirts and use them to make a positive impact on not only individual lives but also the local economy and the environment. This year at their service programs in Chiang Mai, Thailand, Loop Abroad collected donation clothing from their students at the end of their programs. By the end of the summer, they had hundreds of tee shirts. Instead of simply donating them to the Chiang Mai community, they worked with Bags for the Ocean to turn the shirts into reusable bags and create work in the community. Loop spent approximately $200 to hire women in the local community to cut the tee shirts and sew them into reusable bags. The jobs were simple, and cost very little to finance. Students that participated in the program then got together to distribute the bags at grocery stores and farmers markets, encouraging consumers to use their reusable bags when shopping. Now, it’s true that in this case, the project required outside funding. But one can easily imagine that someone could have undertaken the sewing for free and then sold the bags in order to make a profit. In fact, the women who were involved saw how cute and popular the bags were, and are already interested in collecting donated tee shirts in the future so that they can sew the bags and sell them for a profit. (While you might challenge that this donation undercuts the local fabric market, consider that reusable grocery bags weren’t something being sold in the market previously.) According to Thailand’s pollution control department, plastic waste in the country is increasing at the rate of 12% per year, which is about 2 million tons. The country is also considered to be one of the largest consumers of plastic bags; it is estimated that the average Bangkok resident uses about 8.7 plastic bags per day. In other words, they have a real plastic bag problem. The work done by Loop Abroad and Bags for the Ocean on this project not only benefits the economy of the region, but shows the tourist demand for more sustainable products. As tourism accounts for around 20% of Thailand’s GDP, showing that there is a demand for reusable materials demonstrates that there is an untapped market in sustainability, which will hopefully inspire local manufacturers to produce these environmentally friendly products. American trends in fashion are very influential in Thailand, and the fact that American tourists care about reusable bags may help to make them more popular locally. Single-use plastic bags have an overwhelmingly detrimental effect on the environment, from the fact that plastic never really biodegrades (it photodegrades, meaning that instead of eventually decomposing entirely, the plastic simply breaks down into smaller and smaller toxic particles), to the one million seabirds and 100,000 sea turtles killed by them a year, it is essential that all countries commit to reducing their plastic waste. One reusable bag can potentially eliminate anywhere from 700-1000 single use plastic bags in its career, and if 200 distributed on this project are used correctly, they have the opportunity to keep 140,000 plastic bags out of the landfill and ocean. This project is just a small example, but we’re proud to be a part of it. It shows an innovative way to take donations-in-kind (stuff) and turn them into donations that can help to drive an economy (money), all while reducing waste. Students and abroad programs alike both mean the best in their generous donations, but it’s important to consider the wide range of impacts that these donations have. I’d like to encourage other abroad programs to think about implementing a program with their donated tee shirts such as this one, and I believe it’s economically sustainable for international programs to implement. Instead of dumping clothing articles that could potentially endanger the region’s economy, investing some time and money into the project can sustainably benefit the environment and provide work for local people. My challenge to you: if you are traveling on an organized group program this summer, winter, or semester, reach out to them and ask if they might be willing to consider implementing a similar project with their donated shirts. Bags for the Ocean is happy to provide support and tips for what made our project successful and what’s helping it to become scalable. As customers, we can push the study abroad and travel organizations we join to do better! Thailand uses a lot of single plastic bags. A LOT.
Nation Multimedia says, "As noted by Thailand’s Pollution Control Department (PCD), plastic waste in the country continues to increase, and at the annual rate of 12 per cent, or around 2 million tonnes. Only 0.5 million tonnes of this waste can be reused, while the remaining 1.5 million tonnes, 80 per cent of which are single-use plastic bags, accumulate in official dumping sites or elsewhere." (Read the full article here.) So I was able to get the study abroad organization Loop Abroad to go along with an idea. What if we turned shirts that the students no longer wanted into reusable bags, and gave them away? Maybe we could get people thinking about reducing single-use plastics in a fun way. I think this might be a great model for other organizations abroad or at home, and I can't wait to share more about this project and the other great ways it contributed to the community. (Hint: this project actually paid local women to sew the bags, which was a great bonus and a way to involve the local community in a sustainable way!) For now, here are some photos of the first successful bag giveaway with Loop Abroad - we're looking forward to planning for hundreds more bags supplied over the next year. (This giveaway was approximately 200 bags).
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B4tOThis little project is growing! Thanks to everyone who's been involved so far. You can get involved too! Archives
December 2018
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