No plasticbags!
Strömpilen wants to contribute to a change and has since the beginning of October 2008 stopped using plastic bags in all of its shops.
We have stopped using plastic bags made of polythene, which is harmful to the environment - and it worked!
March 25th, 2009
According to our customers it is a matter of course to stop using plastic bags, so do we at Strömpilen. Therefore, Strömpilen shopping mall will continue the project of no plastic bags. We have felt the resolute appreciation among our customers and it has also been confirmed through independent surveys. Numerous students at the University of Umeå have written essays in which they have examined all the aspects of the conversion from plastic bags to no plastic bags. The conclusion they all arrived at, is that everyone is a winner. Shortly we will post more information about result regarding environmental savings, surveys and other analyses for you who want to know more. Umeå wants more!
March 11th, 2009
The conversion "No plastic bags" gave Strömpilen and our customers the honourable award "Stora Handelspriset" "Årets medvetna butik" (an award for environmental awareness) at the Swedish Retail Awards.
February 11th, 2009
It has now been four months since we began our campaign "No Plastic Bags" and we can establish that the need for plastic bags has decreased by 74 % compared to last year! Maybe it has decreased even more, since Stömpilen has had more visitors this year than last. The number of customers who bring their own bags also increases constantly. For many of our customers it has become a routine to bring along a bag when going shopping, just like they bring their keys. That is ability to take action.
December 11th, 2008
After two months of no plastic bags in the shops we can report a result. Everyone knows that the people of Umeå are conscious and engaged, but that this change would be welcomed so positively and work so well from the beginning was more than we could ever have imagined. There has been nothing but praise and joy to be an active part of an improvement of the environment. The environment has benefited greatly from this change. In two months the number of plastic bags has decreased by 200 000, and the remaining bags used in our shops have been ecologically certified paper bags. This means that the environment has been spared 33.7 tons of carbon dioxide.
October 11th, 2008
Millions of plastic bags are carried away from Strömpilen every year. We stopped using plastic bags in our shops because we felt that we wanted to do something to improve the environment. We hope that more shops will follow our lead.
Plastic bags are all around us. After a shopping trip you might go home with four or five bags. In every store you are given a new bag, small and big, colourful and white. Globally, the plastic bag is nothing but a cause of terrible pollution that affects nature and animals since it takes several hundred years for nature to decompose a plastic bag.
We estimate that 450 000 plastic bags leave the mall every year, but now that is history. Strömpilen wants to encourage colleagues all over Sweden to follow its lead. Several malls and city centres have shown interest in ending the usage of plastic bags. We want to encourage our customers to use reusable bags when they shop, but as a compliment, environmentally certified paper bags will be for sale. This project will be tested during a six-month period and all of the shops, the grocery store excluded, will participate. The inspiration to run this project came from Modbury in England where they carried through with the exact same project a year ago. For more information go to www.plasticbagfree.com. Other participants in this project are Umeå University with interdisciplinary research and Umeå Municipality where the environmental strategist is engaged in the project.
Facts about plastic bags:
- It takes nature approximately 400 years to demolish a traditional plastic bag.
- It takes nature 10-20 years to demolish a decomposable plastic bag.
- It takes nature 10-40 days to demolish a completely decomposable bag.
- 80 % of all trash in the sea comes from land. 90 % of this trash is plastic.
- Plastic garbage kills at least 100 000 birds, seals and other marine animals per year. 800 kilo of plastic was found in a dead whale.
- There exist six times more plastic particles in the Pacific Ocean than there is plankton.
- Every adult in Sweden uses approximately 300 plastic bags per year.
- Every plastic bag is used 12 minutes on average.
- One in 200 plastic bags is reused once.
- 70 % of the people in Sweden want to ban plastic bags.
- If all households in Sweden would use decomposable bags for their domestic waste, the emission of carbon dioxide would decrease with 24 500 tons per year.
The counter on the home page comes from www.reusablebags.com