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...

Reusable cotton shopping bags are to be distributed free to shoppers on a trial basis to encourage people to reduce the number of plastic bags they use, under the the 'Fantastic it's not plastic!' initiative. Cotton shopping bags will be handed out at the shopping precinct on North Deeside Road during the promotion and local children at Culter school are also being encouraged to participate in the initiative. Amy Gray, Aberdeen City Council's Business Waste Minimisation Officer says, "Aberdee...

That’s how I got into the business of reusable cloth bags. My daughter Kaajal came home from school one day and banished them from our home. Little girls know they have that magic. They can make wonders happen. They can banish things. And it works.This not-so-little girl-now helps me build and maintain this website and market reusable bags all over the world. She still has the passion and the conviction!To effectively rid your community of this ghastly substance, engage the kids in your comm...

Here’s a wonderful story from www.smh.com.au/ A class of 11- and 12-year-olds in Australia is leading a push to make the Royal National Park towns free of plastic bags, the first time a school has instigated such a ban. The Bundeena Public School year 6 campaign - "No plastic packing for Port Hacking" - started with an environmental education project. The snorkelling students were disgusted at the number of plastic bags they found floating in the waterway.The 28 students followed this with ...

Our laws are some of the most progressive in the world, but enforcement is zilch.We have strict laws against production, storage, use, sale and distribution of polythene bags. Himachal Pradesh, a state that earns much of its revenues because of its scenic beauty, was the first to implement it. In theory.In theory you can be fined upto a lakh of Rupees (US$ 2000) or be sent to jail for upto 7 years.In practice, no one has ever paid that fine leave alone spend time in the cooler. Most Indian ci...

The Australians are leading the world in a voluntary switch away from plastic bags, but the results are clearly not enough.According to figures from this year's Clean Up Australia campaign, retail sectors other than supermarkets have only reduced their plastic bag use by between 10 and 15 per cent over the past couple of years, and the number of plastic bags in the litter stream is rising rather than falling. Figures showed that while major supermarkets had achieved a near 27 per cent reducti...

Clean Up Australia says men are the weaker sex when it comes to saying "no" to plastic bags.A national Newspoll conducted by the environmental organisation shows 50 per cent of women are likely to refuse a plastic bag, but just one-in-three men say 'no'. A third of men surveyed say they prefer to use plastic bags over reusable bags, compared to just one-in-five women.Everyone’s been telling me this for years. That we’re the dumber sex. But could it be that we are just more insecure? No woman’...

http://www.mbdc.com has a totally inspiring concept on their website. This is what it says.“MBDC is articulating and putting into practice a new design paradigm; what Time calls "a unified philosophy that—in demonstrable and practical ways—is changing the design of the world."Instead of designing cradle-to-grave products, dumped in landfills at the end of their 'life,' MBDC transforms industry by creating products for cradle-to-cradle cycles, whose materials are perpetually circulated in c...

Used plastic bags can do immense harm if allowed to choke landfill or left free to be eaten by innocent animals and marine life.But they can be used for good if used as a raw material. That’s what we decided to do. I spoke to my designer friends Prakash Vani and Himadri Ghosh and that is what we’ve been trying to do. This little picture shows you the junk we started with, the very basic looms we worked with and some of the beautiful bags and textures we could create.Feels really good to be ab...

A story in today’s Indian Express talks about how 95 per cent of urban India’s stray cattle are suffering from various ailments due to hazardous materials inside their abdomen. 90 per cent of that was plastic bags. This, while a website about Hinduism says “The cow has almost become a symbol of Hinduism…in India, the cow is believed to be a symbol of the earth - because it gives so much yet asks nothing in return. Because of its great economic importance, it makes good sense to protect the co...

Sponsorship from Landmark Narromine, a real estate company is helping the Narromine Shire Council rid their community of plastic bags.Narromine Shire Council is encouraging all residents to take advantage of the current 'Plastic Bag Swap Op' where calico bags are given free to residents when they bring in 20 plastic bags to the Narromine Council Chambers, Tomingley BP or the Trangie Library."There have been more than 16,000 bags bought in since the swap program started, which is a great resul...

Barbara Wallraff tells us in the The Atlantic Monthly that this is what the Irish call fugitive plastic bags that fly around and snag everywhere. Completely fitting. Lee Buenaventura, of Wellesley, Massachusetts, felt nearly the same way, but she suggested giving the term a "tweak" to Americanize it: witches' britches. Other interesting American terms: Urban Tumbleweed, Shoppers' Kites; Sheilah Zimpel, of Raleigh, North Carolina, wrote, "Here in the South we call that white trash." A whole ne...

The Green Students Council in Hong Kong conducted a survey outside 25 supermarkets and found that 90% of the respondents supported a tax on plastic bags. Hong Kong consumers use 6.7 billion plastic bags a year, or 1,294 plastic bags per person. Taiwan and Ireland have sharply reduced the use plastic bags by imposing levies three years ago. The Taiwanese, who used to use 909 bags per head, have reduced consumption by 80%.Ireland's consumers used one billion plastic bags annually, or 256 plasti...