Research

I looked into winners of D&AD about plastic as I remembered a lot of work has been done on this topic. I found several completely different versions of how to tackle the issue of plastic and especially the single-use bag. One was to add it to fashion and create extra sleeves that zip off and make a bag. Another was so sensor all plastic in celebrity (YouTube) videos, which show the mass of single use plastic in a simple 5 min video.

My favourite finding is a Canadian convenient store that no longer sells conventional plastic bags. Instead they sell embarrassing bags with funny logos, such as “into the weird adult video” or “Colon Care.” This lead to 96% of all customers now bringing a reusable bag to the store. This shock of embarrassment did the job amazingly and had the American media going crazy for it with 200,000,000 plus digital impressions.

https://www.dandad.org/awards/professional/2020/232542/embarrassing-plastic-bags/

I also found facts on plastic bags and one that astounded me was the fact that a bag is used on average for 12 minutes (or 25 minutes from more official sources – https://zerowasteeurope.eu/products/plastic-bag-free-day/). This idea is that you engage with the bag at the store, putting the items inside, then you don’t engage with it in the trolley, as you don’t need bags in the trolly. Then you place the bags in the car engaging with them but you don’t need them in the car as the car is a reusable holding vessel much like the trolley. In current the world this is increasing as consumers realise that you have to pay for a bag so they are saving money but this stat still is shocking. 25 minutes usage with up to 500 years disintegrate (or 100 years plastic dependent). It is outrageous.