Quite a lot I reckon. Today comes news that UK retailer Marks and Spencer is introducing a 5p charge for plastic bags. That’s a good move – and the company already offers quite snazzy reusable bags at the check out. CEO Stuart Rose is the real thing – driving greenness into the brand by driving greenness into the company, rather than with some surface greenwash. He should be a knight already for saving the country’s favourite underwear shop, but now its got to be a shoe-in.
The BBC completely rips off yesterday’s Daily Mail with its facts on bags: “Campaigners say plastic bags damage the environment. Some 13bn are given free to UK shoppers every year, and they take an estimated 1,000 years to decay.”
Me as a defender of the Daily Mail??? Green is sure going to throw up some strange bedfellows… But back to M&S.
The bag thing is excellent, but I noticed something in my branch the other day that totally blew me away. If you take your old M&S clothes to Oxfam they will give you a 5 pound voucher to spend in M&S. Think about it. M&S evidently has. Reduce waste with very clear economic incentives. Cradle to Grave.
While major IT suppliers have introduced recycling schemes for their old kit, I haven’t seen them offer substantial rebates for doing do. Its about time they did. If you recycle you get a discount. That’s Goodness.
Check out M&S Plan A here.
The picture is Lily Cole, fair use I hope. Take some old clothes to Oxfam – buy one of those purple dresses. Surprised it goes so well with red hair, actually.
I second that Maren. I love the satchel bag pictured above. I just wish it was available in metallic.