[Vision2020] Bag Monster coming to town

[Bill London]

Bag Monster Visits the Moscow Food Co-op 
  
The Bag Monster will prowl the Moscow Food Co-op from noon to 2 p.m. on Saturday, April 16, 23, and 30.  He will be seeking shoppers who do not have reusable bags and will give out reusable bags and info about why it is important to replace single-use plastic bags with reusable bags.  Bag Monster’s appearance is part of Bag It!, the  international effort to lessen the use of single-use plastic bags by consumers, according to Carol Spurling, Co-op outreach and ownership coordinator.  
  
Spurling explained why the Co-op is concerned about single-use plastic bags: 
§  Americans use 60,000 plastic bags every five minutes, and they are a business expense and solid waste disposal problem with costs that are inevitably passed on to the consumer. 
§  The average American uses about 500 plastic bags each year, for an average of 12 minutes before they are discarded. 
§  It is estimated that 100,000 marine mammals and seabirds die each year from becoming entangled in or ingesting plastic debris. 
§  Plastic bags are made of fossil fuels such as petroleum and natural gas, which are non-renewable resources. 
§  Plastics contain compounds that are toxic to humans and especially to babies and children. 
  
The Bag Monster costume, which is comprised of 500 plastic bags, is worn by Dane Mills, a Moscow High School sophomore and Co-op volunteer. 
  
As part of the Bag It! campaign, the Co-op has also eliminated plastic grocery bags from its checkout stands in April and is giving customers a raffle ticket for each non-disposable bag, coffee cup, and bulk food container that they use instead of disposable plastic products.  Raffle winners are drawn each week in April and the prize baskets are on display at the Co-op's front desk. In addition, a series of in-store events planned for the Co-op during April include demonstrations of products providing alternatives to the use of single-use plastics. 
  
The Bag It! campaign increases incentives to reduce and eliminate plastic bag usage and motivate people to use permanent, reusable shopping bags.  To reach that goal, the Co-op is partnering with University of Idaho Sustainability Center, the UI Vandal Store, the UI Graduate and Professional Students Association, Buy Local Moscow, and stores like the Storm Cellar, Paradise Creek Bicycles, and the Yarn Underground for activities and special events during April. The City of Moscow also unanimously passed a resolution in support of the Bag It! Campaign on April 4. 
  
For more information, please e-mail bagit at moscowfood.coop or visit www.bagmonster.com. 
  
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mailman.fsr.com/pipermail/vision2020/attachments/20110411/d7dd9a42/attachment.html