apple of my eye

As if we actually needed one more reason to love Apple and it's amazing product line (school yard diss of the day: "Apples rock, PC's suck!"), not only are they going green with their notebooks and packaging, but now it's NO more plastic bags! Yes!

"In its latest effort to positively impact the environment, Apple's retail stores have initiated a new "no plastic bags" policy to cut back on the amount of unnecessary packaging it dumps in the hands of shoppers.

Apple store visitors who make more than handful of purchases in the store are offered assistance to their car or the option of leaving their items at the store while they continue shopping, in the case of retail outlets located in a mall.

The move reflects the company's efforts to push the envelope in going green, a central feature of both its advertising and product design. The company was among the first to reduce the size of its software packaging and has developed some of the slimmest boxes of any consumer electronics maker. It has also shunned plastic optical media in favor of electronic distribution from iTunes sales to web-based video distribution in iLife and MobileMe.

Getting rid of plastic bags is the next step. The city and county of San Francisco banned plastic shopping bags in grocery stores a year ago, and a variety of US cities have expressed interest in following suit including Austin, Texas; Boston, Massachusetts; Portland, Oregon; and Phoenix, Arizona.

San Francisco now has 5 million fewer of the difficult to recycle plastic bags per month hitting its landfills. Internationally, Paris and London have since enacted similar bans. In Ireland and Germany, shoppers pay a recycling fee for plastic bags, prompting many shoppers to bring their own baskets or carts."
- Appleinsider.com

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Too cool! Papa so needs a new iPod! And ugh, everytime I read this line (in so many environmental articles focusing on plastic bags) "...a variety of US cities have expressed interest in following suit...(in banning plastic bags)" WHAT is the hold up? I swear, get on with it already! I mean, it just grates on my nerves when it takes mankind so long to just do something. Plastic bags = bad = ban = done! Move on, next item. Grr. Rant over.