Director of Photography: Spenser Gabin
Activist: Hannah Aubry
Video Creation Wizard: Rohan Thadani
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Who are we, and what are we all about?
Bring Your Bag Chicago is a campaign that is leading an important and necessary environmental movement in the beautiful city of Chicago. There are three key groups of people in our movement. One is a group of activists working hard on public outreach and education; several of whom you're being introduced to today on Indiegogo. Second is another group of activists working hard on the legislative/political front. Their mission is to pass a citywide ordinance, introduced by Alderman Joe Moreno (http://www.ward1.org) and signed by four co-sponsors, that will greatly reduce use of single-use plastic bags in Chicago and incentivize a cultural shift towards bringing reusable bags. The third, and most important part of the group, is all of YOU - people who engage, say NO to plastic bags and take action by using reusable bags themselves. All of you are a critical part of this wave of change happening in Chicago - and throughout the world - today. (A great resource for bag news throughout the world is http://www.bagmonster.com. Click on "Track the Movement" for a list of hundreds of cities that have already passed bag legislation.)
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Abby Goldberg, a 13-year-old from the Chicago area, created a Change.org petition (now up to 174,810 signatures) that convinced Governor Quinn to veto a statewide bill last summer initiated by Big Plastic. The bill would have taken away the rights of cities and towns to pass bag legislation throughout the state Illinois. Abby also testified with us at City Hall, along with her traveling Bag Monster.
The first hearing for Chicago's Plastic Bag Reduction Ordinance was a huge success at Chicago's City Hall on June 18th, 2013. (Watch our campaign video which was shown at City Hall here: https://vimeo.com/68606941. Note there is an updated statistic since the creation of this video: plastic bags cost Chicago consumers over $40 million a year as opposed to the original statistic of $27 million in the video.)
The second hearing is anticipated as early as September of this year, at which there will be a vote on this issue in the Committee for Health and Environmental Protection. Help us build this wave of momentum and make positive change happen all the way from City Hall to the grocery store in your neighborhood to Lake Michigan and the five oceans beyond.
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Stiv Wilson, Communications and Policy Director for The 5 Gyres Institute (http://5gyres.org), blows away the opposition at our hearing.
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Students from the Academy for Global Citizenship in Chicago who cheered us on at the hearing June 18th along with their fearless leader, Dan Schnitzer, Director of Sustainability at the school.
The four goals of this campaign are to:
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CREATE AWARENESS of the devastating effect plastic pollution is having on our world.
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EDUCATE about the importance of shifting away from disposable bags - both single-use, disposable plastic AND paper bags - towards REUSABLE BAGS. The educational component of this campaign will be ongoing. We are here to make sure THIS doesn't happen in Chicago: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d545PS_AkOw.
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SUPPORT LEGISLATION that incentivizes people to become more CONSCIOUS of the power of their choices and their affect on the environment.
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INSPIRE and EMPOWER people to embrace this small lifestyle shift that collectively makes an enormous POSITIVE IMPACT on the one and only place we all have to live: Earth.
![Bring Your Bag Chicago's Official Logo, Designed by Lisa Leone]()
Bring Your Bag Chicago's Official Logo, Designed by Lisa Leone
So...where is all the money going to go?
$8,000 will be used to support four specific campaign goals.
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An installation at Figment, an arts festival coming to Chicago the weekend of August 10th and 11th in Garfield Park, Chicago
- Launching a paid social media campaign
- Community outreach events
- “Seed” money to fund an initial small line of products we will sell online and/or at local stores in Chicago
Please read below for complete details about all four.
1. FIGMENT. Our first big event to engage and educate the public will be setting up an art installation at arts festival Figment. We will have a pop-up (a tent-like structure propped up by four posts) surrounded by a plastic bag canopy containing 2,568 bags - the amount of plastic bags used EVERY MINUTE of EVERY DAY in Chicago. That's insane, isn't it?
Strings of plastic bags will be threaded and tied together and secured to the ground by tent stakes. To show support, you can sign one of these 2,568 bags, and at our next hearing one of our activists (Rohan Thadani) will testify with this giant pile of plastic before City Council, creating a powerful visual testimony. We will also be giving away 800 reusable, 100% cotton, WASHABLE tote bags at the installation totally FREE. People will be able to screen print their own bags with our campaign logo, sign our Change.org petition, and sign a postcard we will hand-deliver to Rahm Emanuel. Lots of cool stuff going on. The funding we need for Figment is as follows:
- 800 cotton tote bags: $800
- Pop-up: $100
- Two tables and four chairs: $100
- Screen printing supplies: $150
- Twine and tent stakes: $50
- 1,000 postcards: $50
- Candy and fruit to seduce people into our installation: $50
TOTAL FUNDING NEEDED FOR FIGMENT: $1300
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The 11 founding principles behind Figment, an arts festival coming to Chicago on August 10th and 11th, in Garfield Park.
2. PAID SOCIAL MEDIA CAMPAIGN. To promote our first hearing which happened June 18th, our campaign experimented with a few Facebook advertisements and promoted posts to reach a wider audience. The cost of these promotions was small ($15-$25), and the amount of traffic and engagement generated on our site was huge. Marketing is a vital component to any successful campaign; it played a key role in the lead up to our successful hearing. We will use this advertising budget to promote Figment, promote our community events, promote our Change.org petition, promote our hearing, generate calls to aldermen preceding the hearing as well as advertise our cool campaign swag that people can purchase. We have budgeted $2000 for advertising and marketing so that we can get the word out about all the stuff we’re doing and get people engaged!
TOTAL FUNDING NEEDED FOR PAID SOCIAL MEDIA CAMPAIGN: $1500
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Facebook and Twitter are more than ways to waste your life away trolling newsfeeds. They can also be used to make the world a better place: being extremely effective at reaching people and cost efficient, social media is especially useful for social and environmental activism campaigns.
3. COMMUNITY OUTREACH EVENTS. Rahm needs to hear from the people of Chicago, and letter writing is a great way to let him know what we want. We will host at least FOUR letter-writing parties where people can create their own letters or sign our postcards. We will personally deliver these letters and post cards to Rahm’s office at City Hall. Two of these parties will be at bars (21+) we are partnering with in Chicago, and two of these parties will be at family-friendly establishments (exact locations are to be determined). We have budgeted $200 for each of these letter-writing parties, where everyone will get a reusable, screen printed cotton tote AND a drink, ice cream cone or other small token of our appreciation on us. We have also budgeted $200 for 4,000 postcards (a total of $1000 budgeted for letter-writing events).
We will also be giving away FREE REUSABLE BAGS in various locations throughout Chicago, particularly in neighborhoods where constituents may feel that they cannot afford to purchase a reusable bag. We will host as least FOUR reusable bag giveaways, where we will set up a table with information about our campaign. Everyone who signs our Change.org petition will receive a free reusable cotton tote printed with our campaign logo. We have budgeted $1600 for reusable cotton totes to give away at these events (this will buy us 1600 cotton tote bags).
TOTAL FUNDING NEEDED FOR COMMUNITY OUTREACH EVENTS: $2600
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Community outreach is a critical part of any campaign. People need to know about the issue and be inspired to do something about it. Above is a shot from the YouTube video, 'Plastic State of Mind.' http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=koETnR0NgLY
4. “SEED” MONEY FOR CAMPAIGN SWAG WE CAN SELL FOR A SMALL PROFIT. We expect a second successful hearing in Chicago, but after the legislation is passed the work of raising awareness, educating the public and helping to facilitate a smooth transition from disposables to reusables only ramps up. Legislation has to be accompanied by public education to work.
So we thought it would be a great idea if we could come up with a few products to sell that would advertise for us AND generate a small profit that could be rolled into more funding. This will assure that we will be able to provide more free bag giveaways and advertising going forward.
We are joining forces with ChicoBag, a reusable bag company, to provide our campaign with an initial 250 rip-stop nylon bags printed with our campaign logo. These bags fold up into a tiny sack that can be clipped right onto your keychain or bag and slipped into any purse or briefcase. We can get these bags for approximately five dollars each. We will be selling these online as well as taking them to a few local retailers to see if they would be interested in carrying our product (all the proceeds would go to our campaign). The other things that we will be selling are t-shirts, v-neck t-shirts, and tank tops with our campaign logo. The cost of 250 ChicoBags is approximately $1250, and we are budgeting $750 for our small line of clothing which includes the cost of prizes for donating to our campaign.
This $2000 that we are investing in campaign swag serves an important purpose. If we can self-sustain, we can provide THOUSANDS of free bags to people who need them, continue to grow our influence, and ensure Chicago becomes a leader in this worldwide movement!
TOTAL “SEED” MONEY FUNDING NEEDED: $2000
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Bring Your Bag Chicago is partnering with ChicoBag and other companies to produce a small line of products.
The grand total of our budget is $7400. If we do raise the full amount - $8,000 - that we are hoping to, our net fundraising total after site fees will be $7440. That will give us an extra $40 to buy unexpected things we may not have budgeted for...like, extra cherries, gummi sharks, and bug spray for our fabulous volunteers.
Bring Your Bag Chicago would like to extend a huge thank you and amazing karma to everyone who has helped to create this campaign for over a year and a half, and all of the supporters who helped it really get off the ground this spring. This is just the beginning of more exciting things for Chicago!
