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Eco umbrellas
From TipThePlanet
- Many people have adopted the belief that buying several cheap umbrellas is less costly than buying one umbrella of good quality that will last a few years. Instead, they simply plan to replace broken umbrellas whenever they need to. With this philosophy, they don't have to worry about losing an umbrella or having it break in the wind.
- The problem with this disposable approach is the number of umbrellas abandoned on the streets or tossed into garage cans and taken to the landfill. In addition, typical umbrellas made from metal and nylon are not made from recycled or renewable resources and they do not decompose.
- With winter finally beginning to loosen its icy grip and snowy storms being replaced by spring showers, the forecast calls for umbrellas. Between the ones that are lost, never reclaimed, broken, and bought on the cheap when you're caught in the rain from street vendors and convenience stores, the numbers are mind boggling: 33 million purchased annually within the U.S. alone. Most are made from some variation of nylon, wood, metal, fiberglass, and steel and take hundreds of years - if ever - to biodegrade.