Plastic bag shaming
This month a market in Vancouver started selling plastic bags branded with "The Colon Care Co-op" and "Adult Video Shop"; the embarrassment is a reminder to their customers to bring their own bags. It was great marketing, but banning plastic bags may not be the great environmental panacea, according to NPR's Planet Money.
People in the cities with single-use-plastic-bag bans used fewer plastic bags, which led to about 18 million fewer kilos of plastic rubbish per year. But people who used to reuse their shopping bags for picking up dog poo or lining rubbish bins still needed bags, so sales of bin liner bags skyrocketed — and those bin bags are thick and use more plastic than typical shopping bags.
Replacing plastic with paper was also problematic because paper bag production increases carbon emissions. And what about those cotton tote bags? "The Danish government recently did a study that took into account environmental impacts beyond simply greenhouse gas emissions, including water use, damage to ecosystems and air pollution," Planet Money reported.
"These factors make cloth bags even worse. They estimate you would have to use an organic cotton bag 20,000 times more than a plastic grocery bag to make using it better for the environment."
Strange coincidences
1. "In the early 70s two suitors asked my mother to go see the band Free with them. She chose my father. Thirty or so years later Queen toured with Paul Rodgers (from Free) and my parents went. Sitting directly in front of them? The other suitor ... My dad beat him up (not really)."
2. "I turned up for my 12-week scan to mass confusion because apparently I wasn't pregnant and records showed I never had been. Turned out my hospital records got confused with a woman with the same full name, DOB and postcode as me. What are the chances?"
3. "When I was a teenager my mate and I were out shopping and she withdrew a tenner from a cashpoint. Written on it in biro was her own phone number."
4. "My mum decided to pay me an unannounced visit in a town I'd just moved to, 200 miles (320km) from home. No address, no phone number, no mobile to call. She got off a train and headed into town, and bumped into me on my way to the shop. She sees this as proof that her plan wasn't insane." (Via @MooseAllain)