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Cloth grocery bags are becoming popular in more environmentally aware countries and states. How long will it be before we, as a people, realize we need to actively take part in this decision?
Several years ago I visited our discount store in town and discovered canvas bags for fifty cents a piece. They were sewn by the mentally handicapped people in the larger city next to us, so I gladly bought them and began to use them for my groceries. They had insignias for businesses I had never heard of, but I didn't care. Fifty cents is cheap, and good canvas bags are hard to come by.
I used these bags for my trips to the grocery store that has you bag your own groceries. You can buy a bag there, but I used my own. You are only saving if you don't buy the bags!
For several years, these bags were my library book bags and my grocery bags at that certain store. My mom gave me her bag, which was a nice canvas one with long straps and could hold a lot!
Meanwhile, we read about plastic bags. How they would snag on trees and hover for a long time.
But they were still better than paper bags. Paper bags use more resources than plastic bags. Paper bags use up trees, more space in trucks (therefore more gasoline) than plastic bags.
But we are still kidding ourselves that plastic bags are the "better" alternative. They are not.
The only place I know that takes plastic bags to recycle is Wal-Mart. Need I say more?
I can take the plastic bags that end up in my possession to the discount bread store or the community center for re-use, but it doesn't mean that they won't end up in a landfill.
While I can understand that plastic bags are better than paper, you cannot tell me they are better than resuable cloth bags.
I found my perfect resusable bags at my grocery store for $2. They were larger than the ones Walmart offered, ditto for my other grocery store. Over time I purchased four to complement my canvas collection, plus one for my grandma. I put her Christmas present in the bag, knowing she would love it even before she coveted my green bags on a shopping trip.
I use these bags at the store I bought them from, and each time the cashier or bagger comments on how spacious they are. And they are. When I lived in New Jersey, back in the mid 90s, you got a penny back for every bag you reused. Michigan is slowly catching up to that standard, though you have to remind the cashier at the time. Frequently, they seem annoyed. You have interrupted their mindless tossing of items into the carousel of bags. I cannot apologize. Our planet needs our attention, and if represent six bags less in the trash per week, then so be it.
My preferred big box grocery store along with the big W in our area is now offering reusable bags. Maybe I am prejudiced, but I don't find them as wide and spacious as my bags. You have to tell them that you don't believe your cleaning supplies are going to leak out onto other things, or you will find many things wrapped in plastic bags and tossed into your canvas bag!
I know many people think they won't remember to take their bags in to the store. I think with proper incentives (cash back, complete lack of in-store bagging) they will remember. After I unpack my groceries, I make one last trip to take my bags back out, so I don't forget.
Even Home Depot has resuable bags now, and theirs clip onto the carts. One might wonder how this is helpful, but for Aldi's shoppers, I like to imagine just fastening this bag onto the cart and letting the cashier toss what I bought into it. Then I can merely pick it up and carry it out rather than repacking it into my bags!
Sometimes you just have to say no. Do you really need a bag for your milk? Or for one item? Say no, and carry it out by hand, Don't let them wrap it up in a plastic bag if you don't have to!
Even if we admit that plastic bags are better than paper, it doesn't make their disposal or degrading any better. Reusable cloth bags are a much better option, and they are not that expensive.
It is estimated that we use 100 BILLION plastic bags a year in the US. We cannot imagine how long it takes for them to break down, because we won't be alive then. But if it is estimated that it will take at LEAST 500 years to break down a disposable diaper, then we know plastic bags will take at least that, or add a few years.
Even if you are re-using the bag, it does not matter in the grand scheme of things.
Ideally, the whole U.S. would say, screw your convenience! You will bring your own bag to the grocery store! Wouldn't that be nice?
Ok, it would be nice for those of who care, and for those of us who have had to take a plastic bag out of a tree on our property.
But you know what? Bringing your own bags to a grocery store is not too much to ask. It really isn't.
You get used to it. You just do it, because that is what you need to do.
If you were charged a dime for every plastic bag you required at the store, would you remember to bring your bags? I think you would.
We have to come up with something, because there is just no excuse to keep spending valuable resources on bags that will be thrown away. Taking up room in landfills, not degrading.
We have to TRY and make things better. Somehow, someway. If it means that in the next five years, plastic grocery bags become a rarity instead of the norm, then bravo for us!
Until the government MAKES us do it, we can do it by choice. We can say, I am not going to pollute the Earth with my grocery bags this year, and get some resusable bags, keep them in the car, and just do it.
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