12 December 2006

Eco-Trashy Fashion: A Rant About Plastic Bags

Triumph International Japan has done it again - over the past ten years they have created several eco-themed bras made from recycled polyester fiber (the fibers come from plastic bottles). The latest is by far my favorite - a padded bra that transforms into a shopping bag:

Step 1: don a slutty look on your face
Step 2: remove your bra
Step 3: remove the padding (it becomes the body of the shopping bag)
Step 4: assemble bag
Step 5: replace slutty look on face with the self-satisfied smug of someone who is helping the environment.

Although Triumph has decided not to sell the bras, they are advertising them to raise awareness for the Containers and Packaging Recycling Law that was revised this June in Japan. In a nutshell, plastic shopping bags suck and unnecessarily so. 15 billion bags take one tanker of oil to produce and at least 30% of those are thrown away without reuse. Unless suffocating babies with them and feeding them to the hundreds of thousands of sea turtles, whales, and other marine animals who die each year from ingesting them counts as reuse. The EPA estimates about 500 billion to 1 trillion bags are used each year - the U.S. uses about 380 billion so we suck the most. U.S.A! U.S.A!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

is it bad that i put the bra back on after taking my trash out in it?

or that i'm a boy and wear a bra?

that's a bag?