British Recycled Products

British Recycled Plastic, in keeping with the aims of British Recycled Products, aims to help local authorities, schools, businesses, social enterprise and primary care trusts close the recycling loop by providing sustainable alternatives to traditional construction materials and maintenance-free outdoor furniture.

BRP is committed to sourcing and developing new products and markets for recycled materials, concentrating on transforming plastic into high quality, commercially viable recycled products, diverting it from landfill.

Sounds good to me. Though I must do some more research on issues surround recycling of plastic (energy consumption and carbon footprint compare with virgin plastic manufacture, contamination etc). Still I think my bottom line is always going to be that stopping plastic going into landfill is a good thing.

More on British Recycled Plastic can be found here.

Check out the planter bench

Eternal Lace

How amazing is this?

Textile designer Laura Anne Marsden has developed a technique of making lace from old plastic bags. Simply stunning.

She uses it in decorations as above and jewellery

and even on cushions



More info at http://www.lauramarsden.com

More jewellery

Forgive me for posting more jewellery but it's so beautiful.



These are made by the amzing Becky Crawford of myspacefruit.com from plastic bottles found washed up on the shores of Cornwall where she lives. She cuts them out by hand. Where does she find the time? Plenty more pieces to gawp at and buy here.

Ban Plastic Bags

Even when I'm not giving up plastic for Lent I try always to have a reusable cotton bag with me for my shopping. I'm green like that you see. But convincing people one by one to stop using plastic bags is never going to have the same effect as a blanket ban on them.

Italy's done it.

Mexico City's passed a law giving authorities the power to fine businesses that give free plastic bags to their customers. Though I wonder whether such a law will ever be rigorously enough enforced.

And a whole heap of other countries have either banned them outright, or banned the thinnest ones, including Eritrea, Rwanda, South Africa, Kenya and Tanzania. In Ireland plastic bag used dropped by 90% once charges were introduced. Other countries have been charging or making noises about banning or charging including France, Switzerland, Germany and Holland.

La Belle France

Well not so belle as far as plastic packaging goes it would appear.

Take a look at what one American expat finds in her local French supermarket.

At the risk of sounding like the greeniest treehugging treehugger anywhere, the planet really is too precious for plastic packaged single slices of ham, surely.