If you know of a way to help save our planet, even just a small part of it put it here. Also if you want to ask how to help, or even if you want to promote your environmental organisation. All goes here.
Online petitions have come a long way since I first heard of them and it seems like an ideal place to get your voice heard. With this in mind I have just started one up to introduce a green tax. I am aware that it is an idealistic notion but if even met half way it could make a real difference.
Here is the statement -
Dear Prime Minister
We call for you to tax major retailers as about 80% of our waste could be reused or recycled. Most will agree that it is plastic packaging that makes up for the bulk of our household waste.
Ireland introduced a tax on carrier bags back in 2002 and it has reduced bag use by over 90%.
So why do we not introduce it here and take it further so that all retailers will have to pay a tax on packaging? It is about time that the major retailers are forced to make a real difference to what is unnecessarily produced and ultimately ends up in a landfill for centuries.
The tax should pay for environmental projects around the country and not into the chancellor's pocket.
The U.K. Could lead the way for much needed environmental reform.
The Tanzanian government recently announced that the manufacturing and importation of plastic bags was to be 'outlawed', in addition that anything that counts as 'green' or renewable would have no taxes levied, sounds like a step in the right direction. I guess thats a benefit of an emerging nation, they get to learn from all the mistakes made in the 'first world'.
Have sold up in the UK, now living on Mafia Island, in the middle of an old coconut plantation. We catch our fish, have chickens, grow fruit and veg. We are powered by solar and an ankur gasifier - no mains elec here!!
My blog is at www.travelblog.org/Bloggers/titch
This is from Time magazine.
The estimated number of years for a plastic bag to decompose is 1000. About 100 million plastic bags are used annually worldwide.
Robin
'You know you are a hard-core gardener if you deadhead flowers in other people's gardens.
To err is human. To blame someone else, is management potential.
Andy, brilliant idea and one that def could make a difference, but please take 9ball's advice and put it on the government's petition's site. If you get over 100 signatories on this site you are guaranteed a response from government and this site is averaging about 7million hits a day since its get continous coverage from the BBC both on the web and sometime on TV.
I would suggest that anyone who has a petition on another site also replicates it onto the government one.
It would help if the plastic that had to be used could all be recycled - our council can only take "1" and "2". A lot of packaging isn't even marked - that would help too.
Terri x
“I'd rather be a little weird than all boring.”
― Rebecca McKinsey
Just worries me that all shops will be tarred with the same brush. Small shops are struggling with all of the taxes and paperwork anyway.
We have a sign up in our shop asking people to recycle their plastic bags with us, so we can use them again but so far have had very little response. When I asked one guy if he minded having a recycled bag his response was ' I'm sick of all this recycling stuff and saving the planet, I'm going the other way and buying a V12 car'
