SunCorp

Today we have bigger houses and smaller families

More conveniences, but less time.

We have more degrees, but less common sense

More knowledge, but less judgment.

We have more experts, but more problems

More medicine, but less wellness.

We spend too recklessly, Laugh too little.

Drive too fast, Get to angry too quickly.

Stay up too late, Read too little.

Watch TV too much, and pray too seldom.

We multiplied our possessions, but reduced our values

We talk too much, love too little and lie too often.

We’ve learned how to make living, but not a life

We’ve added years to life, not life to years.

We have taller buildings, but shorter tempers

Wider freeways, but narrower viewpoints

We spend more, but have less

We buy more, enjoy it less.

We’ve been all the way to the moon and back

But have trouble crossing the street to meet our neighbors.

We’ve conquered outer space, but not inner space

We’ve split the atom, but not our prejudice.

We write more, learn less, ---------------------- plan more, but accomplish less

 We’ve learn to rush, but not to wait, we have higher incomes, but lower morals.

We build more computers to hold more information, to produce more copies

But have less communications.

We are long on quantity,

But less in quality.

These are the times of fast food and slow digestion and

Tall men and short character.

More leisure and less fun ,,,,,more kinds of foods ,,,,, but less nutrition

Two incomes ,,,,,but more divorce. Fancier houses ,,,, but broken homes

That’s why I think , that as of today , do not keep anything for a special occasion , because every day you live is a special occasion.

Search for knowledge , read more , sit on your front porch and admire the view without paying attention to your needs.

Spend more time with your family and friends , eat your favorite foods, and visit the places you love .

Life is a chain of moment of enjoyment, not only about survival.

Use your crystal goblets, do not save your best perfume, and use it every time you feel you want it.

Remove from vocabulary phrases like “one of these days “and “someday”

Let’s write that letter we thought of writing “one of these days “

Let’s tell our families and friends how much we love them.

Do not delay anything that adds laughter and joy to your life.

Every day, every hour, and every minute is special.

And you don’t know if it will be your last.

The Real Cost of "Free"

Well over a billion single-use plastic bags are given out for free each day. But as the old adage says, nothing comes for free. Here are some facts to illustrate the actual costs paid by our environment and society for the fleeting convenience of unlimited, free, single-use plastic bags. To see the real costs, we must look at the "cradle to grave" multiple impacts and the effects of each phase of a bag's life.

Phase 1: Production Costs

Phase 2: Consumption Costs

• Annual cost to retailers alone is estimated at $4 billion.
• When retailers give away free bags, their costs are passed on to consumers in the form of higher prices.

Phase 3: Disposal and Litter Costs

• Hundreds of thousands of sea turtles, whales and other marine mammals die every year from eating discarded plastic bags mistaken for food. Turtles think the bags are jellyfish, their primary food source. Once swallowed, plastic bags choke animals or block their intestines, leading to an agonizing death.
• On land, many cows, goats and other animals suffer a similar fate to marine life when they accidentally ingest plastic bags while foraging for food.
• In a landfill, plastic bags take up to 1,000 years to degrade. As litter, they breakdown into tiny bits, contaminating our soil and water.
• When plastic bags breakdown, small plastic particles can pose threats to marine life and contaminate the food web. A 2001 paper by Japanese researchers reported that plastic debris acts like a sponge for toxic chemicals, soaking up a million fold greater concentration of such deadly compounds as PCBs and DDE (a breakdown product of the notorious insecticide DDT), than the surrounding seawater. These turn into toxic gut bombs for marine animals which frequently mistake these bits for food.
• Collection, hauling and disposal of plastic bag waste create an additional environmental impact. An estimated 8 billion pounds of plastic bags, wraps and sacks enter the waste stream every year in the US alone, putting an unnecessary burden on our diminishing landfill space and causing air pollution if incinerated.
• Recycling requires energy for the collection, processing, etc. and doesn't address the above issues.
  

The Numbers…Believe It or Not

Introduced just over 25 years ago, the ugly truth about our plastic bag addiction is that society’s consumption rate is now estimated at well over 500,000,000,000 (that’s 500 billion) plastic bags annually, or almost 1 million per minute.

Single-use bags made of high-density polyethylene (HDPE) are the main culprit. Once brought into existence to tote your purchases, they’ll accumulate and persist on our planet for up to 1,000 years.

Australians alone consume about 6.9 billion plastic bags each year, that’s 326 per person. According to Australia’s Department of Environment, an estimated 49,600,000 annually end up as litter.

In 2001, Ireland used 1.2 billion disposable plastic bags, or 316 per person. An extremely successful plastic bag tax, or PlasTax, introduced in 2002 reduced consumption by 90%.

According to The Wall Street Journal, the U.S. goes through 100 billion plastic shopping bags annually. An estimated 12 million barrels of oil is required to make that many plastic bags.

Four out of five grocery bags in the US are now plastic.

Plastic bags cause over 100,000 sea turtle and other marine animal deaths every year when animals mistake them for food.

In a dramatic move to stem a tide of 60,000 metric tons of plastic bag and plastic utensil waste per year, Taiwan banned both last year.

According to the BBC, only 1 in 200 plastic bags in the UK are recycled.

According to the WSJ Target, the second-largest retailer in the U.S., purchases 1.8 billion bags a year.

As part of Clean Up Australia Day, in one day nearly 500,000 plastic bags were collected. Unfortunately, each year in Australia an estimated 50,000,000 plastic bags end up as litter.

The average family accumulates 60 plastic bags in only four trips to the grocery store.

Each high quality reusable bag you use has the potential to eliminate an average of 1,000 plastic bags over its lifetime. The bag will pay for itself if your grocery store offers a $.05 or $.10 credit per bag for bringing your own bags.

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.

Recycling Can Fix This, Right?

Recycling Can Fix This, Right? Wrong.

First of all, recycling rates for plastic bags are extremely low. Only 1 to 3% of plastic bags end up getting recycled.
Secondly the economics of recycling plastic bags are not appealing. From the process of sorting, to the contamination of inks and the overall low quality of the plastic used in plastics bags, recyclers would much rather focus on recycling the vast quantities of more viable materials such as soda and milk bottles that can be recycled far more efficiently. If the economics don't work, recylcing efforts don't work.
Furthermore many bags collected for recycling never get recycled. A growing trend is to ship them to Third world countries like India and China which are rapidly becoming the dumping grounds for the Western world’s glut of recyclables. Rather than being recycled they are cheaply incinerated under more lax environmental laws.
Even if recycling rates of plastic bags increased dramatically, it would not solve other significant problems, such as the use of non-renewable resources and toxic chemicals in their original production, or the inevitable glut of bags that end up littering our environment where they eventually breakdown into tiny toxic bits.
While recycling has it place, it falls far short of solving this issue.

What to do? Choose to reuse! Want to know more about our reusable bags, please do write to us info@suncorp.in or browse through our pdf catalogue.SUNCORP_Bags_E_Catalogue.pdf

1. Start using reusable shopping bags. Find the right styles and designs to suit your taste and lifestyle. Take a look at our ecatalogue for ideas. SUNCORP_Bags_E_Catalogue.pdf

2. Refuse a bag. Cashiers are programmed to keep the line moving and don’t always stop to think or bother to ask if you need a bag. If you don’t need one, don’t take a one.

3. Reuse plastic bags you have accumulated as garbage liners

4.Get stores to offer cash credits if you bring in your own bags.

5. Open your eyes to how many bags you consume: keep count. For instance, if you have a giant plastic bag holding plastic bags in your closet, take 5 minutes and count how many you have. (Ours had 323 and drove us to start this company!) OR, count how many plastic and paper bags you go through in a week.

6. Cut down on plastic produce bags by bringing your own reusablebags.  

Plastic bags are being consumed at a phenomenal rate, and if this is not controlled, one can only imagine the impact it will have on the environment.

Top Facts - Consumption

 ·  Each year, an estimated 500 billion to 1 trillion plastic bags are consumed worldwide. That comes out to over one million per minute. Billions end up as litter each year.

·  According to the EPA, over 380 billion plastic bags, sacks and wraps are consumed in the U.S. each year.

·  According to The Wall Street Journal, the U.S. goes through 100 billion plastic shopping bags annually. (Estimated cost to retailers is $4 billion)

·  According to the American Forest and Paper Association, in 1999 the U.S. alone used 10 billion paper grocery bags, requiring 14 million trees to be cut down.

·  According to the industry publication Modern Plastics, Taiwan consumes 20 billion bags a year—900 per person.

·  According to Australia’s Department of Environment, Australians consume 6.9 billion plastic bags each year—326 per person. An estimated .7% or 49,600,000 end up as litter each year.

Top Facts - Environmental Impact

·  Hundreds of thousands of sea turtles, whales and other marine mammals die every year from eating discarded plastic bags 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.

Top Facts - Solutions

·  In 2001, Ireland consumed 1.2 billion plastic bags, or 316 per person. An extremely successful plastic bag consumption tax, or Plas Tax, 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.

In March of 2002, Republic of Ireland became the first country to introduce a plastic bag tax, or PlasTax.

Designed to rein in their rampant consumption of 1.2 billion plastic shopping bags per year, the tax resulted in a 90% drop in consumption, and approximately 1 billion fewer bags consumed annually.

To complete the win-win scenario, approximately $9.6 million was raised from the tax in the first year, which is earmarked for a green fund established to benefit the environment.

Several other countries and cities around the world are now considering implementing a similar tax, including UK, Australia and New York City.
How does it work?

First of all, the purpose is to change consumer behavior, not to generate revenue�moving habits from mindless consumption, to reducing and reusing.

In a nutshell, its a simple market-based solution in the form of a consumption taxï individuals pay a tax of $.15 per plastic bag consumed at check out. Retailers save money since they only have to stock a smaller quantity of bags (in Ireland, on average they were spending $50 million a year on single-use plastic bags before the tax). Many retailers are also now benefiting from selling reusable bags.

Administration is straightforward retailers keep simple records on purchasing and receipts, while the government monitors retailer compliance and collects revenue.

What is exempt?
In Ireland, exemptions from the tax include heavier weight reusable plastic bags; bags used for meat, fish, or poultry; bags for unpackaged produce, ice, or other foods without packaging.

What are the results?
Consumption has dropped approximately 90%, from 1.2 billion to 230 million per year.

Litter has been dramatically reduced.

Approximately 18,000,000 liters of oil have been saved due to reduced production of bags.

  Reusable shopping bags, rather than paper, are taking the place of plastic disposables.

Weaker plastic bag companies went out of business, while others have benefited by seizing the opportunity to make reusable shopping bags.
Summary
The PlasTax is a major success. Consumers have widely adopted using reusable shopping bags and retailers no longer incur the costs associated with giving away free bags.We wish this strategy is implemented all around the world so that the world becomes a cleaner and greener place to live in.

We at SUNCORP have always stood for promoting reusable bags, if you want to know more abou our reusable bags in cotton or other eco freindly fabrics, please click on the link below or write to us at info@suncorp.in

SUNCORP_Bags_E_Catalogue.pdf