NO PLASTIC DAY, June 8th*** help spread the word!

No Plastic Day is June 8th... Thanks to Liane who let me know about this!

No Plastic Day is a world wide event intended to bring awareness of the over consumption of disposable plastic goods such as plastic bags and bottles. It is well known that there are floating islands of trash in most of the world's oceans. The huge amounts of plastic trash we all discard daily doesn't decompose, doesn't break down, and most of it is toxic to the animals that accidentally consume it. The current rate of plastic consumption is not sustainable and is starting to create a huge problem for marine life particularly. Fish eat toxic plastic bits. We catch the fish and eat the fish. Its only a matter of time before we've polluted our own food supplies with plastic trash.

What you can do on No Plastic Day - June 8, 2010

• No plastic bags - If you buy something from a store on No Plastic Day, bring your own bags. If you don't have any cloth or paper bags, just reuse the plastic bags you already have. They'll never biodegrade so you might as well reuse them if you already have them.
• No plastic bottles - Drink water from the tap or buy drinks in aluminum cans or glass bottles if you must.
• Limit your garbage - Almost everything you throw away is made of plastic. By limiting the garbage you create, you will reduce your plastic waste as well.
• Be creative - Everyone's situation is different and you will need to customize your own situation for No Plastic Day. Be creative. Reuse, recycle, and reduce your waste. Consider it a personal experiment to find ways you can create less garbage and try to use no disposable plastics.

(excerpt taken from No Plastic Day page)

So...to celebrate this lovely event we want to have a little eco-giveaway open to everyone who gets involved. The prize pack includes an original "no plastic day" texta drawing(seen at the top of this page), DP products, eco reading and maybe some more?! photos of this will be posted tomorrow.

Spread the good news, add your name to a comment or email us at:

yumi@dearplastic.com/ taka@dearplastic.com

...and we will get our computer to randomly choose the winner... woohoo!

Happy no-plastic-ing!

p.s. I know this is late notice, so we will keep this comp open for 1 week from June 8th

dp online store opens today!!!

our little shop in process is now open! thanks to taka and his nifty fingers, he was able to get our store up and running...yay!

you can purchase our zine online by clicking on the word "shop" under our dear plastic sign.

happy days!

xxx

p.s. well, the weather has turned out to be gloriously sunny...fingers crossed for the same next sat!

garage sale is postponed to next sat 12th june!

It's raining and pouring...so we are having our "hello tokyo, dear paris" garage sale next wk-end...12th June 2010!

I hope thats ok with everyone?

xxx

the zine fair and cloud cookies

cloud 1

cloud 2

cloud 3

the zine fair is over... too much fun for one little day!

thank you for all my visits, and thank you emma for the lovely cloud cookies...they have kept me very happy!(+inspired these texta clouds!)

we are proud zine-sters(me, ebony and rhys)

my little zine

p.s. my zine will be on my web shop very soon~!

Photos by MCA and Rhys Turner...thank you!

thoughts for the wk-end

7 day cards designed by Yayoi Fujiwara

rabbit mask from "parties for everyone"

dot paintng by yumi takahashi

news news news!

some exciting news...

May 23rd MCA zine fair. I almost missed out, when lovely Ebony over at Hello Sandwich came to the rescue and has cleared a little spot on her table for me...ありがとう！

July 8th-22nd is my very first solo exhibition over at the lovely kaleidoscope gallery in Paddington on William St.

It would be lovely to see you!

xxx

textile waste

Dear Plastic, started as an oath against disposable plastics. As we researched and matured with our own understanding of our surrounding environment, we decided also to purchase only organic and locally produced foods, to eat in most nights and to stick to a vegetarian diet(except for the once a month chicken soup or taka's treat of bacon and eggs!).

Tonight we popped along to the monthly "green ups" event May fashion with passion, which looked at sustainability of the Fashion and Textile industry. I knew a little about how bad this industry was for the environment but Paula Rogers from Fair Trade, who spoke tonight, opened our eyes to some horrifying truths...the COTTON industry. One of the worst, over 50% of the world's pesticides are accounted to cotton production, most being classified as "Highly hazardous" by the WHO. The quantities of water needed for irrigation eg. 29,000 litres of water used per kg of cotton in Sudan and the oil for machinery and fuel for aerial spraying. Not only is this a huge environmental impact, but the farmers exposed to this and then the people who wear the garment etc etc.

It made me think of all the effort a garment takes...from the design process, manufacturing, weaving of the fabric, spinning of the yarn, the production of yarn and all the transportation from each process.

Then to think how disposable our minds are set with our own agenda of our needs and wants.

I am a victim caught in a cycle of textile waste!

We heard about the incident with H&M in New York early this year. You can read it here.

To summarise, a University student walked past bags of discarded clothes found in the trash outside of H&M. As she went through them she noticed all items were purposely damaged, so they could not be used again. After contacting H&M headquarters, she got no response.

She "tweeted" about this and after thousands of responses and facebook msgs, H&M responded.

It makes me realise how we can create change...now i am just working out how I will stop my cycle of textile waste.

(Maybe we need to think smart like Marge Simpson from the episode where she created lots of different looks/ pieces from that one Chanel suit?! (season7 ep14!)