Amitabh Bachan, one of India’s most popular movie stars, hosts KBC (Kaun Banega Crorepati), and it is watched by an audience of many millions. Yesterday evening I was thrilled to hear him start the show by asking folks to think about what happens to all the plastic bags they throw away. As a people we are notoriously unconcerned about civic issues (look how clean everyone’s homes are on the inside and see how they carelessly throw garbage right outside their own doors). But what the Big B says...

The Indian state of Jharkhand announced a ban on the use of plastic bags within a two km radius of religious and tourist place. "Plastic bags are harming animals and are a problem at religious places. They have been banned under the Environment Law 1986," says the notification. Isn't that happening everywhere, not just at religious and tourist places? Why not ban them everywhere? But it’s a good move anyway. I admire our country for the number of good and progressive laws we have on our statute ...

Back in the 70s there used to be a joke based on some songs by Bob Dylan and other such topical balladeers. The punch line was the moment the US government discovered that marijuana caused cancer they’d legalize it. Governments and all large systems, including corporate systems, behave in completely irrational ways much of the time. The recent experience in Mumbai established beyond any doubt that plastic bags are huge burden for urban systems to cope with. California’s city government calculate...

These words have been bandied about so much that recyclable, ecofriendly, biodegradable and other such reassuring terms have lost meaning. I earlier wrote a blog about one of the worst instances of this obfuscation. http://badlani.com/blog/weblog.php?id=30 The Indian Express, a hugely influential newspaper with a massive circulation published a story that actually said ““NO NEED to kick this plastic habit”They were talking about a technique developed at ATIRA to make plastic bags photodegrad...

Great! They learned something from the recent flooding. It’s creditable to see a government in our country move this quickly. But the lobbying has started and follows the usual route. Short sighted reps of the plastics industry have started making noises that more than 1,00,000 workers will lose their jobs. Utter tripe of course, but our governments have a habit of rolling back many of their decisions when these kinds of pressures are brought to bear on them. Our overly moralistic politicians ha...

Contradicting the clichéd assumption that babes lack brains, Bollywood superstar Priety Zinta is clearly a thinking woman. ‘‘I want to urge people not to litter and turn our city into a big dump before we all die of diseases and toxic poisoning,’’ she fumes. The first thing on Zinta’s agenda is to ask the authorities to ban plastic bags in Maharashtra. ‘‘We have to stop using polythene bags. We must adopt brown bags. They have banned plastic in Shimla and it’s already looking good,’’ she reaso...

I just read an article by Cindy Carrera where she explains the basics of how organizations can use imprinted promotional articles to their advantage.She categorizes their uses into Advertising Specialties, Business Gifts, Premiums, and Recognition Awards.“The trick to a good promotion is to attach your company details to something useful. Now, there is "private useful" like the promotional toothbrush you use in the privacy of your own bathroom, and there is "public useful" that you use out th...

Shane Doyle from Ireland wrote in about my blog on Ireland’s plastic bags. Here’s what he said:"I'm from Ireland myself and the whole plastic bag tax has been a roaring success. You have to ask for a bag now if you want one, the days of automatically being handed a bag are long gone. And it really works, people can be seen going to the shops with their own "green bags", as they are called, or even just re-using the same plastic bag again and again. You rarely see a plastic bag being blown dow...

Helen Logan reports in the Evening Gazette that Ireland used 1.2 billion plastic bags before 2002, when a 15 cent tax was imposed on their usage. Did it hurt business? Was the Irish government overthrown by distraught shoppers?Not really. What actually happened was that plastic bag usage fell by more than a billion bags within 5 months, and earned £2.25m for the Dublin exchequer to be spent on environmental protection projects.“Many of us pick up and fill loads of plastic carriers when doing ...

Doug Gordan wrote about how he bought some gum and the store clerk put his tiny purchase into a paper bag and then put the paper bag into a plastic bag. As he left the store, he took the pack out of the bag and threw the bag out in a corner trash can, giving the bag a total out-of-store lifespan of about two minutes.Considering, he says, that so many New Yorkers are rarely without messenger bags, backpacks, or Louis Vuitton knock-offs, most have little use for plastic bags for the few items t...

The San Francisco Chronicle had a story today comparing wooden decks with composite decks made from recycled plastic waste. Bottom line, they say, go with wood, because composites also have a limited life span and are eventually not biodegradable. So finally they will contribute to the environmental burden our planet has to bear.But the fact that companies like Trex, TimberTech, Louisiana Pacific, Epoch and CorrectDeck are finding uses for plastic waste is wonderful. We’re also doing what we ...

The assumption that what is good for the environment is bad for economic growth has once again resulted in facile results on environmental issues at G8 2005. The fact remains that we have an environmental crisis on our hands, and concern for the issue looks like poor economics only as long as the costs of environmental degradation aren’t spelt out in dollars and pounds. Change is essential and pushing for it will actually help poorer economies. Because it is only the less affluent who can see...

What do you need to create a successful brand? A huge advertising budget?It helps, of course, to have oodles of money to back up your story, but I don’t think it’s the key ingredient at all. If you’ve got enough passion, advertising budgets don’t matter. If you’re in love with your consumer and your product, a kind of magic happens that allows you to achieve big things with small bucks. If this sounds like wishful thinking, here’s my own story.In 1980 I launched a brand of jeans called Flying...

This morning a nice young lady came by to discuss what she’d read on my blogs, to talk about how she and the organisation she works with – The Center for Environment Education – could get Ahmedabad conscious of the harm plastic bags are doing.I was thrilled. I’d given up on my own home town (shame on me!) and she reminded me that there’s no need to. That thinking and concerned folks do exist right here.I blame myself for not having thought of the people and resources that Ahmedabad has. The C...

Yesterday Mumbai city was inundated by floods. The megacity, India’s business hub was paralyzed. The cost: Billions of dollars and a miserable day for residents who couldn’t make it to hospitals, schools and places of work.Most flights were either cancelled or diverted to Ahmedabad, and trains were cancelled or ran hours late. Mumbai has an intense monsoon. You can expect incessant downpours at least 4 times every year. The downpours aren’t new. They’ve been coming to India’s west coast for h...