Finally real attempts to deal with the GPGP!

Project Kaisei will sail to out of San Francisco to attempt to remove 40 tons of plastic waste from the 4 million tons believed to be clumped together in the patch. While others have traveled to the north Pacific gyre to raise awareness about plastics before, Project Kaisei is the first to attempt to bring back and recycle the waste on a large scale.

As owner of Bag The Planet I applaud these efforts as we sell reusable bags to diminish the rate of plastic bag winding up in the Gyre. Bagtheplanet.com is committed to supporting environmental education through its Blog and links page and donating a portion of it's profits through the sale of reusable and environmental product in the near future.

For more information on visit the link below Project Kaisei:

http://planetsave.com/blog/2009/05/05/activists-attempt-clean-pacific-garbage-patch/

For more information on bagtheplanet.com, and reusable bags, bagtheplanet.com, and reusable bags and creating a sustainable community please visit:

http://bagtheplanet.com

Bag The Planet's Eco Update iTV

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch: "Out of Sight, Out of Mind"

Deep Sea News' Kevin Zilnio points us to a great piece in The Independent describing what has become known as the "Great Pacific Garbage Patch," or "trash vortex" - essentially a floating expanse of waste and debris in the Pacific Ocean now covering an area twice the size of the continental U.S. Believed to hold almost 100m tons of flotsam, this vast "plastic soup" stretches 500 nautical miles off the Californian coast, past Hawaii and almost as far as Japan:

"The "soup" is actually two linked areas, either side of the islands of Hawaii, known as the Western and Eastern Pacific Garbage Patches. About one-fifth of the junk – which includes everything from footballs and kayaks to Lego blocks and carrier bags – is thrown off ships or oil platforms. The rest comes from land."

David Karl, an oceanographer at the University of Hawaii, believes the "plastic soup" may actually represent a new habitat; he plans on organizing a research expedition later this year to examine its size and nature. Plastic waste is one of the most significant sources of marine pollution: According to UNEP, plastic accounts for 90% of all debris floating in the oceans - with every square mile containing close to 46,000 pieces.

The pernicious effects of this "trash vortex" aren't just limited to the marine ecosystem either. Every year, hundreds of millions of nurdles, tiny pieces of plastic, are dumped into or lost at sea, where they eventually make their way into the food chain by acting as sponges for a variety of anthropogenic chemicals (e.g. hydrocarbons and DDT).

Marcus Eriksen, research director of the Algalita Marine Research Foundation, put is thusly: "What goes into the ocean goes into these animals and onto your dinner plate. It's that simple."

Court stops Manhattan Beach, Calif., from implementing bag ban

Good day Bloggers!

I have to stand up and sound off on this recent development! News articles like this are alarming and are of great concern to Bag The Planet!

For environmentally concerned consumers here in the South Bay the battle is not over yet, and the article below just shows us how strong the Plastics Industry is in our country, and the level of commitment they have to continue to profit by polluting our oceans and landfills with plastic products that do not degrade for 400 years on average. They continue to contribute to the average shopper consuming over 600 hundred of these deadly bags per year approximately, many of them winding up in the Great Eastern Garbage Patch (The swirling vortex of plastic in the Pacific Ocean). Until consumers stop being contributors to the problem by opting to request the non-biodegradable plastic bags; because it is either just convenient or they have not adopted to make a difference by using reusable bags as a part of their green lifestyle. Using reusable bags from Bag The Planet.com, and companies like ours, will send a message just based on supply and demand, will build awareness and brand identity in the community, this community, your community! They know they are losing the battle and are just refusing to not go down without a fight... However, with the support of the food chains, food manufacturers, and the public to support reusable bags, and promote products that meet or exceed the requirements for being environmentally friendly we can begin to effect change and shift the paradigm toward green consciousness, and help California finally become the model for environmental commitment in action! Reuse it or lose it! Save the world, Bag The Planet!

Michael Von Hulsebus
BTP- NEWS

See article below... by Mike Verespej, staffer with Plastic News

"A California court has granted a preliminary injunction to prevent Manhattan Beach, Calif., from implementing its ban on plastic carryout bags that was scheduled to go into effect Feb. 14.

But the pressure to ban or tax plastic bags continues elsewhere. New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, in his executive budget released Jan. 30, officially proposed a 5 cent tax on plastic grocery bags that he said would add $84 billion to the state coffers on an annual basis. In addition, a number of California cities, and the state of California are considering bag taxes that range from 5 cents to 25 cents. Virginia and Michigan have proposals to ban plastic carry-out bags.

“The Mayor’s proposal to add more costs to the grocery bills of New York’s working families could not come at a worse time [and] would not help the environment,” said Sharon Kneiss, vice president of the products divisions for the American Chemistry Council in Arlington, Va. New York City has had a mandatory large-store plastic bags recycling program since last July, creating a stream of materials that can be made into plastic decking products.

Manhattan Beach would have been the third California city, along with San Francisco and Malibu, to ban plastic bags.

The Superior Court of California in the County of Los Angeles granted the request by the Save The Plastic Bag Coalition, which had argued that the city did not conduct an environmental impact review as required by the California Environmental Quality Act.

Meanwhile, the city of Santa Monica, Calif., has delayed action on a ban proposal. Save The Bag Coalition’s lawyer, Stephen Joseph, sent a letter to Santa Monica officials saying the group would file a lawsuit if the ordinance was enacted without an environmental impact review.

Joseph sent a similar letters on Jan. 26 to city councils in the California towns of Morgan Hill and Mountain View, which also are considering plastic bag bans.

Last year Joseph succeeded in getting the city of Fairfax, Calif., to make its ban temporary. However Fairfax voters in November re-approved a ban, which now is scheduled to go into effect in June."

Message In A Bottle

Explorer David de Rothschild promotes ocean cleanup on a plastic-bottle raft

Given the choice, you probably wouldn't risk sailing 11,500 miles from San Francisco to Sydney in a boat handmade of 20,000 plastic water bottles. But David de Rothschild, the founder of the nonprofit educational organization Adventure Ecology, sees such a vessel as the perfect way to "beat waste" by promoting new uses for recycled plastic while dramatizing the problem of ocean debris. Next month, de Rothschild and a crew of scientists will sail the Plastiki, a 60-foot catamaran, to environmental hotspots including Bikini Atoll, the former atomic-bomb testing site, and Tuvalu, an island rapidly disappearing under rising seas. He will also swing by the northern reaches of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, the Canada-size, 100-million-ton accumulation of mostly plastic refuse trapped in a vortex of ocean currents in the middle of the Pacific. This toxic stew, made up of everything from decomposing Lego blocks to supermarket bags, kills more than a million seabirds and 100,000 mammals a year. We talked to de Rothschild about coming face-to-face with the refuse and his plan to help clean it up.

Journeying to the world’s largest dump on raft of plastic bottles

Right now there is a plastic soup of garbage floating in the Pacific Ocean that is nearly covers the same space as the continental United States; and it’s still growing. Charles Moore who discovered the Great Pacific Garbage Patch believes that it is a trash vortex containing about 100 million tonnes of flotsam. This massive water borne trash heap stretches about 500 nautical miles off the Californian coast, across the northern Pacific, past Hawaii and almost as far as Japan.

To draw attention to this floating disaster British millionaire David Rothschild will set out from San Francisco in April in an attempt to alert the world to the very real pollution threat this Pacific garbage patch brings. His journey will be on a raft that is built out of empty mineral water bottles and is called Plastiki in memory of the Kon-Tiki. the timber and hemp raft used by Norwegian explorer Thor Heyerdahl. As well the Plastiki launch date is April 28 which will be the 62nd anniversary of the launch of the Kon-Tiki expedition.

Bringing you the lastest news on the Plastic Vortex

This Blog is dedicated to your environment and the need to promote education about The Great Eastern Garbage Patch, a plastic vortex of death effecting marine life in the pacific ocean. We have created a Reusable Bag Company called Bag The Planet, http://www.bagtheplanet.com to provide reusable bags for sale to help eliminate the proliferation of plastic from our oceans and landfills. We will be bringing to your attention news worthy articles on the subject of The Patch: "A sea of trash five times the size of Britain, or twice the size of Texas, that sits just below the surface between California and Hawaii in a becalmed area of ocean known as the north Pacific gyre. There, plastic waste is deposited in a slowly twisting, soupy mass by the circular pattern of the world’s sea currents." Recyclable polypropylene bags from Bag The Planet is the first of many types environmentally safe materials our eco-friendly website will support.