Plastic bags, (gasp/eek/scream) I think not!  Cities such as San Francisco and Los Angeles (July 2010) have already or will be banning plastic bags with many other cities to follow suit.  In countries like Taiwan, you have to pay for a plastic bag.  If you don’t see for yourself, you don’t really know the plague of plastic bags in our landfills.  Way Basics visited Waste Management at their MURF facility (which is basically a transfer station for materials to be recycled or sent to the landfill) here in Irvine.  Check out these photos…

See all the plastic bags?!  This is too much!  All of this waste is being sent to the landfill.  According to the EPA, the average American produces 4.62 lbs of trash daily!  Compare that to the average 2.91 lbs generated by a European Union country. 

Our creative designers have a fun, simple, solution—just like us!  Coming soon, the Way Basics Recycler 360!  The first of its kind— it shows recycling at its finest.  With the Recycler 360, the Way Basics design has been simplified even further— No more peel, stick, done.  Just open the box and slide the interlocking zBoards together—done! Why is it called the Recycler 360 you may ask?  It’s sustainably made from zBoards, which is used paper, so there is no added impact on the environment.

If you forget your reusable bag from home when you go grocery shopping (sometimes we do too), ask for a paper bag instead of plastic so you can use it for your Recycler 360.  We do, and we’re sure many of you also use paper grocery bags as a container for trash, newspaper, kitchen waste, you name it.  Isn’t it just plain and ugly though!?  Coupled with the Recycler 360, these paper grocery bags are the ideal liner for your recyclables (so instead of brown baggin’ it, we’re baggin’ the brown bag).

The Recycler 360 is ideal at home or in the office, where the recycling process begins with you—throw your recycled material in the Recycler 360 and when the bag is full, simply fold up the bag and toss it into your larger municipal recycling container where it will soon find its way to the recycling facility.

Watch your recyclables come full circle—all scrap paper that gets wrapped up and recycled has the potential to be used again and created into zBoards.  You can put other recyclables in it too for a  complete recycling center.

*Recycling tip:  When you recycle paper shreds or scrap paper, make sure to put it in a paper bag and fold the opening over onto itself a couple of times.  This tells the person at the recycling facility that there is recycling material inside (just a little something we picked up when we made our visit to the MURF).

It’s a perfect collection center for your plastic containers, many of which are recyclable.  It’s the perfect size for recycling in the bathroom too, where shampoo bottles, contact lens bottles, aerosol cans, empty laundry detergent bottles and even used deodorant can be recycled.  And since the recycling bin is almost always in the kitchen, these items are usually never recycled.  We can change that!

It starts with you…Consumer demand for recycled products drives the supply chain, and unless you (the consumer) demand more from your manufacturers, the products you seek will never come.  Do your part today to help.  Use the Recycler 360 and help garner the support we need to demand more from our manufacturers for recycled products.  Make sure to sign up for our Email Exclusives to find out when it will become available!  Also, make sure you’re a fan on Facebook to vote for your favorite colors and offer feedback!