Paper or Plastic? Choose Neither.

April 22, 2008 – Vol.13 No.5

PAPER OR PLASTIC? CHOOSE NEITHER.

Sure, bringing your own bags to the supermarket doesn’t sound like something that will save the planet. The effort by itself it won’t. Still it’s an important gesture that would become a habit that could resonate into other ways to cut waste and pollution like driving less and turning out the lights when you leave a room.

We’re all subjects of our own bad habits that are often hard to break, like accepting plastic or paper bags at the check-out counter. When the clerk says, “Paper or Plastic?” we should say “Neither. Use my bags.”

Though they do save energy because they’re easy to ship in large quantities, plastic shopping bags last forever in the environment and are killers of unsuspecting wildlife. According to Load My Groceries roughly 100,000 members of the wildlife community suffocate, are strangled or are poisoned by plastic bags each year. Plastic bags are recyclable of course, (and can be made into fuel), when there is a recycling program available. But how many actually get recycled? Something like one percent a year.

Paper bags are recyclable, as well, and are biodegradable. But it’s incredible that we actually cut down carbon-storing oxygen-giving trees to make something that is for the most part tossed away. Globally 14 million trees are cut down each year to make paper bags. Considering the problems related to the fossil energy consumed to make paper bags, we are trashing the planet to make more trash.

The only way to dramatically cut down the waste and pollution associated with plastic and paper bags to is not bring them home from the store. Break the habit, as it were.

There’s a movement afoot by some retailers to encourage people to refuse shopping bags at check out and use their own. Stores of all kinds are selling fabric bags that can be used forever. Occasionally stores are having cloth bag giveaways or offering coupons for discounted bags.

Load My Groceries has more ideas to make using reusable bags a new habit. Keep lots of them around in conspicuous places – like in your car, by your front door, in the garage. Make them colorful so you can easily spot them. And, get your children involved in using them. Good habits once learned at an early age are not forgotten.

As a way to get school aged children involved, Load My Groceries has developed a fundraising program geared for elementary schools. The company is offering its retail packages of 10 colorful, tough, washable, stitched polypropylene bags at a 25 percent discount to registered schools. School children can sell each pack of bags at full retail price ($38) and keep $10 from each sale. Load My Groceries provides promotional and instructional material to help the school’s program.

It wasn’t too many decades ago when there were NO plastic bags on the planet. Now in the US alone nearly 88 billion are used every year. Globally all the bags used each year tied end to end would wrap around the earth 760 times, according to the company.

Most can’t afford to run out an buy a hybrid car or build a solar house, but all of us can learn to consume and waste a little less. Bad habits can be broken with a little perseverance. Bring your own bag to the store.

Links:

Load My Groceries (tm)
http://www.loadmygroceries.com