green week: earth day

Apr 22

Posted by: Rachel in: blog

Want to make a simple yet major change in your daily life that could have a huge impact on the environment? So no to paper or plastic. Instead, bring your own bags. Think about how many plastic bags you end up with in your home. I do very little shopping other than groceries, and within six months of collecting plastic bags to recycle, I had a construction sized black trash bag FULL of them! Like the same sized bag that they use for the plastic bag recycle bin in front of the grocery store. I had enough bags to fill that thing on my own. I wanted to make some bags of my own, but alas, my sewing skills are nonexistent. Just at the right moment, a Walmart brochure floated my way, entirely dedicated to Walmart’s Earth Friendly products. Reusable shopping bags…for a dollar! To me, this is hard to refuse. I tried one, then stocked up on them. If you fold them in half with the straps on top, stack them and place them in one unfolded bag, they fit perfectly, and are easy for the bag boys, or you, to grab as needed. I use them for everything now. Any store where I might end up with a plastic bag, I take them in. I have found that they fit significantly more groceries per bag, so you end up with less bags to tote when all is said and done.

Need more convincing? Look at the numbers:

500 Billion to 1 Trillion: the estimated number of bags consumed in the world during one year. This comes out to over one million bags per minute. The US accounts for approximately one to three billion of that consumption.

1460: The number of bags consumed by an average family of four per year.

12 Million: The barrels of oil used to make the plastic bags consumed by the US in a year.

1000 Years: How long it can take each bag to decompose.

Less than 1%: the percentage of bags that are recycled

$4 Billion: The annual cost to US retailers alone.

Several countries have now banned plastic bags, and Ireland enacted a highly successful PlasTax in 2002, taxing $0.20 per plastic bag. Their plastic bag consumption rate, estimated to be 1.2 billion in 2001, dropped 90%, eliminating about one billion bags.

“Please don’t use plastic or I’ll just cry!”

I had this adorable picture envisioned of this smiling treehugging kid, alas, it didn’t work out. Pictured next to him is a Walmart bag that I talked about above. Looking for a way to save gas? Just read his shirt for a tip… “Save Gas: Toot in a jar!” Made from transitional cotton (harvested from a field already using organic practices but not yet certified organic). They only had big kid sizes, but we had to have it! Sitting on his heavy duty hauler wooden truck. This did NOT come from Walmart. They haven’t come that far. My grandchildren will be playing with that truck one day.

Facts on the Walmart bag:

-100% recyclable
-is made from 85% recycled matierials
-is made from approximately 4 plastic soda bottles
-can replace 50 plastic shopping bags
-can carry the same weight as 2-3 plastic shopping bags