With the start to New Year now fading to a distant memory, you may feel that your New Year’s resolutions are heading the same way. According to a recent survey by Sky Real Lives, green issues feature highly in people’s resolutions but 70% of those, expected failure on their part.

So why does this failure happen and why do people expect it? "People look at New Year’s resolutions as the chance to do something they keep meaning to do or something that they see as being beneficial to them. The problem arises when people try to take on too much at any one time and realise they can’t juggle all of their commitments. Those that they feel to be of less importance go out the window", says Kate, Founder of Only Fair.

With this in mind, Kate says "I recommend not calling or thinking of them as resolutions – it guarantees failure in my books and those of many people I know! Instead, make a small change here and there and it’ll soon become second nature."

For 2008, Only Fair is urging everyone to reduce their plastic bag usage.

Searching the Internet with the words "plastic bags", will inundate you with pages of facts and figures. In the UK alone, shoppers are issued with over 13 billion bags every year – that’s 220 per person. With only 1 in every 200 plastic bags being recycled, the majority end up in landfill sites, taking hundreds of years to break down. (*)

With people being more eco conscious, now is the time to become fairtrade conscious too. Only Fair have a range of fairtrade cotton bags which fold down perfectly to fit into your handbag so you never need to get caught short for those unplanned purchases. Alternatively, they have jute bags, which are ideal for the weekly food shop. Either way, there’s no excuse to be caught short and accepting a plastic bag again! Consumers can rest assured that not only are they reducing their impact on the environment but the producers that make the bags receive a fair price and safe working conditions.

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EDITOR’S NOTES

1.  Date 14th January 2007 - for immediate release.