Action man meets bag lady

I came across an article in The Independent about how to make money from recycling; another piece trying to encourage green behaviour by stressing the economic benefits. It was a good piece, full of useful ideas for ways to reduce, recycle or reuse (the recyclists' mantra) and save or make money while you're at it. I was busy with other things when I found the article, so skim read it, thought 'hey that's a good idea' several times and made a mental note to look into some of the ideas later.

But then my two boys came to find me, wanting to play, all dressed up in their Action Man costumes. "What can we do Dad?" they chorused, confronting me in combat suits emblazoned with a bright orange ACTION logo. "We've been saving the planet from Dr X and Gangrene but now he's dead."

I wondered for a moment what to do with two unemployed action men with a thirst for saving planets. Then it struck me; bag counting. According to the Independent quoting Recyle More, the average UK citizen uses 134 plastic bags each year. It's another small area where we could cut down; another one where we know we should and for some reason haven't. Don't get me wrong, we're not as evil as Gangrene - we don't collect them and throw them away, but we could do a lot more to reduce and reuse them rather than insulating the utility room and lining the kitchen bin.

As a first step I asked my action men to do a bag audit. "Boys, Dr Gangrene may be dead but he's littered our house with evil plastic bag creatures. I need your help. Your mission? To search high and low; locate them, collect them and count them. Then we will work out how to stop his evil work." It was a good mission. Achieved in just under an hour. Final count: 105 bags.

I guess that means we don't really need any more; we just need to reuse the ones we've got. I think I'll send my action men to tackle washingqueen over our household bag acquisition policy. Watch out for the next exciting installment and find out what happens when action man confronts the bag lady.