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Use a reusable shopping bag

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Use a reusable shopping bag for an environmentally friendly alternative to disposable bags. When brought along on shopping trips, these bags can easily replace the hundreds of disposable paper and plastic bags that the average person uses each year.

Find it! Reusable shopping bags

It's easy to find bags to use as reusable shopping bags. You may already have some bags in your closets at home, or you can pick some up second hand at garage sales and thrift shops. You can also ask your favorite stores to carry reusable bags. Talk to store owners, cashiers, people at the information desk, and other shoppers to see if they're interested in this environmentally friendly change. Leave a note about reusable cloth bags in a suggestion box or, if the store has a website, send an e-mail.

Using a reusable shopping bag helps you go green because…

  • The bags can be reused thousands of times. They are made of biodegradable, renewable resources like cotton and hemp.
  • Reusable bags aid in source reduction, or waste prevention, which is one of the best ways to protect the environment.
  • Eliminating plastic bag use reduces oil consumption, landfill waste, litter, and plastic particle contamination in the environment.
  • Plastic bags that end up in natural areas harm birds, whales, and sea turtles, which sometimes mistake plastic bags for food.
  • Eliminating paper bag use decreases deforestation, paper recycling costs, and environmental harm due to the recycling process.

Each year, 30 billion plastic and 10 billion paper shopping bags are used in the United States, requiring about 14 million trees and 12 million barrels of oil to produce.[1] Worldwide, the number of plastic bags used ranges from between 500 billion and 1 trillion, amounting to 1 to 2 million bags used per minute.[2] These bags take between 20 and 1,000 years to break down, often floating into wild spaces and oceans, creating choking hazards for sea creatures and mammals alike.

The plethora of shopping bags in circulation creates an enormous amount of waste and requires a large amount of natural resources. The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) reported that in 2000, 3.3 million tons of polyethylene (plastic) bags, sacks, and wraps were discarded in the US.[3] Paper bags are even worse: Not only do they cause 70 percent more air pollution and 50 percent more water pollution than plastic bags, but one paper bag generates 72 percent more landfill waste than two plastic ones.[4] Most paper bags are made from virgin pulp, which contributes to deforestation and loss of biodiversity. In 1999 alone, an estimated 14 million trees were cut down to produce 10 billion paper shopping bags in the United States.[5] One 15- to 20-year-old tree makes only 700 bags.[6]

Though considered free, disposable bags actually cost retailers $4 billion annually in the US, and the cost of disposal of both plastic and paper bags is passed down to the municipality and consumer/taxpayer.[2] After disposal, plastic and paper bags have large environmental costs. Plastic bags are among the top 10 most found items during the International Coastal Clean-up.[7]

Using a reusable shopping bag significantly cuts the use of disposable plastic and paper bags. After the initial cost of a well-made reusable bag, it has the potential to eliminate the use of thousands of plastic or paper bags over the course of its lifetime.

Glossary

  • polyethylene: Also called polymerized ethylene, polyethylene is composed of long chains of the hydrocarbon compound ethylene. The polymerized ethylene used in the production of plastic shopping bags is typically HDPE (high density polyethylene), LDPE (low density polyethylene), or LLDPE (linear low density polyethylene).

External links

Footnotes

  1. Natural Resources Defense Council - San Francisco Bag Ordinance Offers Consumers Way Out of False Choice
  2. Reusablebags.com - Facts and figures regarding the true cost of plastic bags
  3. Environmental Health Perspectives - Plastic Bags: Prolific Problems - Recycling
  4. Institute for Lifecycle Environmental Assessment - Paper vs. Plastic
  5. Reusablebags.com - Paper Bags Are Better Than Plastic, Right?
  6. Keep Northern Illinois Beautiful - The Great Debate: Paper or Plastic
  7. Ocean Conservancy International Coastal Cleanup Report 2005

Comments

Maryruth
09/19/2008
6:08pm
Maryruth

I've got a whole load of reusable bags that I take to the grocery store on a regular basis. They're so much better than flimsy plastic bags that break easily and hurt your hands under heavy loads. I used to forget them, but now I've got a system: As soon as I empty the bags at home, I bundle them together and hang them on the back door. The next time I'm on my way out, I take them with me and put them in the trunk of my car.

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