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The Story of the Earth Bin®

by Pati Robinson

I, like so many other people, started using alternative bags along with other “going green” efforts when global warming issues came to the forefront.  A couple days before Earth Day in 2007, Oprah did a show about becoming more environmentally aware.

While I was watching the show, they displayed a huge pile of plastic bags and said that it was an example of the number of bags an average family of four uses every year - over 1500 plastic bags a year per family of four, and 99% of them end up in our landfills or worse. That’s when my daily life changed. I just couldn’t get the picture of the huge pile of plastic bags out of my head. 

That evening, I talked to my husband about what I had seen and how shocked I was.  We were talking about the alternatives and getting people to use them, and it was, at that moment, an idea came into my head.  I picked up a pair of scissors, a piece of paper and some tape and as I cut, I said “I don’t know why someone hasn’t invented something like this”.

I held the first little prototype of what would become the heart of a new environmental movement for the future.  My husband loved the idea from the moment he saw the prototype but, we both knew from past experience with trying to get people to make a change that it would take more than just a new receptacle to change shopper’s habits.  After talking for hours, we decided we had come up with the way to get people to change and the Cleaner Earth Project was conceived.

In the months that followed, we filed for and received a patent pending on our new receptacle as well as a trademark on the name Earth Bin®.  At the same time, we researched possible materials for the Earth Bin® and companies that could make the end product. 

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Earth Bin® sets come in a handy, shoulder-strap tote bag to make carrying it to the grocery store convenient and easy.