Saying no to plastic bags means…
taking a huge step for the environment! You wouldn’t expect it from such a trivial act, but we’ll explain why.
A plastic bag takes just one second to manufacture, but then 200 to 500 years to degrade into nature! Every year, 1 trillion plastic bags are produced worldwide, and 89% of them will be used just once, for an average of 20 minutes each. 1
Of course, there are some alternatives such as biodegradable plastic bags, but are they really an ideal solution? Well, given that chemical additives have to be added to make this plastic biodegradable, that the degradation may take between a few months and 3 years and that micro-plastic residues may remain, the answer seems obvious.
Swiss politicians have been working tirelessly for years to reach an agreement, at the cantonal or federal level, to ban single-use plastic bags. In Switzerland, nearly 5,000 tonnes of plastic are released into the environment every year and pollution is much higher on and in the soil than in the water. Only a “tiny” portion of plastic bags are processed (12% incinerated, 9% recycled); the rest ends up in landfills or in the environment. 2
The simplest and most reasonable solution is to return to the use of sustainable and reusable containers: organic cotton bags, glass bottles or jars, FSC paper bags, etc. This new habit is pretty easy to get to grips with, so make the right choice and simply say no to the plastic bags you are offered at the supermarket. Just think about it – one person on a mission to refuse a plastic bag regularly doesn’t sound like much, but if 50,000 individuals are on this same mission and refuse a plastic bag every day for 1 month, we would save 1,500,000 plastic bags! In terms of resources, this represents 17,322 KWH of electricity and 540 litres of oil that will not be used to produce the bags. 3
In the industry setting, poly bags are an essential link in the delivery of products, from their manufacturing site to the end customer. However, this little plastic bag surrounding each item is actually a major environmental problem. At Inovacomm, we have abolished the use of poly bags for packaging items manufactured on our production lines since 2019.
We make an effort every day to find new solutions that are more environmentally friendly and generate less waste. Removing plastic, optimising packaging for our orders, offering renewable, sustainably sourced and recyclable materials for the protection and/or packaging of your products... these are all measures that we have put in place to offer you an ever-higher quality service while focusing on responsible production.
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