Reusable Shopping Bags are Making a Big Impact - As we move into a new decade consumers can give the gift of sustainability to our planet using reusable shopping bags. Plastic disposable bags are wasteful on the environment and require excessive amounts of fossil fuels to create.
BYOB stands for bring your own shopping bag! As we kick off the new
year of 2010, it is crazy how much shopping we historically do here in
America and world-wide and the trends are increasing. Whether it be
frequent trips to the grocery store as we keep our kitchen's stocked
for wonderful meals and tasty treats or those sometimes dreaded, yet
skillful "6 bags on each arm" walks through the packed local mall, it
all adds up to so much unnecessary waste. One of the most blatant
examples of this waste is disposable shopping bags.
An estimated
100 billion plastic shopping bags are consumed each year in the USA,
according to the Wall-Street Journal. Most plastic bags end up in
landfills and the rest often end up in rivers, ponds, lakes, streams or
in the sea, where animals can ingest or become entangled in them.
Household waste, shopping bags included, increases by more than 25% on
average in November and December. Considering how many shopping bags
are consumed and wasted at this time of year, the time is now to spread
the word about the positive benefits of eco-friendly reusable shopping
bags to influence our families, friends and communities.
Adopting
a BYOB strategy in our individual shopping habits is a simple way to do
just that. If we can raise awareness at this time, the positive impact
for the environment is incalculable for 2010 and well into the future.
Several cities have already made gradual but significant progress in
promoting the use of eco-friendly non woven reusable grocery bags in
recent years. Motivating consumers with plastic and paper bag bans,
discounts at the register for reusable bag usage and tax motivations
are a few to speak of.
Right here in America, the San Jose City
Council recently passed one of the nation’s strictest bans on plastic
and paper shopping bags. This is a big victory for the Bay Area, which
has one million plastic bags per year accumulating in and along the San
Francisco Bay. San Jose becomes the latest bay area city to enact some
type of ban on disposable shopping bags; others include San Francisco
and Palo Alto. Tracy Seipel of the San Jose Mercury News reported that
it was actually ONE man who really jump-started the ban, another great
example of the power of one person. Here’s a an excerpt:
While
visiting his sister-in-law in Taipei, Kansen Chu, elected to San Jose
city council in 2007, went grocery shopping and was surprised to get
charged for plastic grocery bags. The next day, he brought his own
cloth bags back to the store. "I guess the question," said Chu, "was,
Why not San Jose?" He began a conversation with the city's
environmental services staff, which later moved to council committee
discussions.
Save the Bay’s 4th annual report on the most
garbage-strewn sites in the region further demonstrates the need for
bringing your own shopping bags. The 50-year-old environmental
advocacy group focused on 10 specific bay-area sites where almost
15,000 plastic bags were retrieved in one day last year in their
report. Here’s an excerpt of an article in the San Francisco
Chronicle by Kelly Zito.
According to (Save the Bay's) research,
Californians use about 19 billion plastic bags each year, 3.8 million
in the Bay Area. The average use time for the bags - made using about
12 million barrels of oil each year in the United States - is about 12
minutes. In addition to the hundreds of years it can take for a plastic
bag to decompose in a landfill, the bags also force downtime when fed
into traditional recycling equipment. Typically, the bags get wound
into conveyor belts or gears and must be cut out by hand.
Ten US
cities have banned plastic bags so far, five within the past year. Even
Mexico City enacted a ban on plastic shopping bags, which went into
effect in August. The city of 20 million now faces the realities of
effective enforcement, which is not easy when the Mexico City Chamber
of Commerce estimates there are 35,000 vendors in Mexico City’s
downtown area alone.
Bans on plastic bags aren't the only
effective way to reduce harmful waste caused by disposable bags.
PlasTaxes, which tax consumers at the register for using plastic bags
when shopping, were first introduced by the Irish. John Roach of
National Geographic reported last year on the worldwide momentum that’s
been building since Ireland instituted a PlasTax in 2003. The Irish
showed they could reduce plastic bag consumption by 90% or more.
Momentum is growing across the world, particularly in America. From
Washington, DC to Edmonds, WA to North Pole, AK, communities and
governments are spurring an international trend to reduce the harmful
environmental effects of disposable shopping bags. Even major retail
stores like Target and CVS are taking action by enacting discounts at
the register for customers who choose to BYOB or just carry-out their
items without a bag.
For the naysayers, it’s convenient to
ignore recent momentum in reducing disposable bag waste. But to some,
the wide-spread adoption of eco-friendly reusable bags is inevitable.
Look at the way smoking is becoming taboo in America. Indoor smoking
bans have caught on like wild fire. In the same way, who is to say the
use of disposable bags won’t become taboo at some point in the near
future? The use of eco friendly reusable grocery bags is definitely
gaining steam. Our individual choices to bring our reusable bags when
shopping can go a lot farther than we think. That's what BYOB is all
about, setting a proactive example for others to set a trend that will
help our planet, it's valuable finite resources and secure its animals'
habitats.
Of course, plastic and paper bags should be recycled
and it's important to remember most large retailers including
Albertsons and Wal-Mart will recycle plastic bags for you. That being
said, a BYOB shopping strategy can make your life so much easier
because there is no longer a need to accumulate that cupboard full of
plastic bags or figure out what and when to do something about it.
Keeping a few reusable shopping bags in your car or backpack is a good
way to ensure you have them when needed. So give back to our planet by
remembering to BYOB! Whether it be at a convenience store, the mall,
or while grocery shopping, we can make a difference for the environment
and help raise awareness one transaction at a time. Through the fight
to eliminate disposable shopping bag waste, we are giving a gift to our
Planet, the finest gift of all, sustainability and reusage.
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