It's Easy Bein' Green

I’m currently tabling for Grassroots (environmental club) in Wilson Commons at my university, and we are selling cute bags for shopping or whatever made out of our unsold event t-shirts from past years.  We’re also selling paper crane earrings and Saranac soda for really cheap! Business has been slow, so I figured this was a great time to write about the benefits of saying NO to plastic and paper bags at the store!

This is our future if we don't make a change

Those ugly plastic bags at stores were first used about 25 years ago, and already 500 billion bags are used each year on this planet.  They take about 1,000 years to decompose!! In addition to the problem of trash, it takes a toll on the earth to produce them, too: 12 million barrels of oil are required to produce the plastic bags that ONLY AMERICA uses!

Plastic bags are so unnecessary.  Reusable bags can be bought anywhere for about $1 or less, but the majority of people chooses the easiest option instead of the better one.  Some shoppers think that paper bags are better, so they choose to use those instead where available, but paper bags are harmful as well! (I will have to come back to the downsides of paper bags another time).  It is more and more common that a store will charge a few cents for the plastic bags used, but this does not make much difference.  If more stores charged for plastic bags and the charge was higher there might be more results.  This was the case in Ireland, where a bag tax has been implemented that reduced plastic bag use by 90%! Taiwan took a more dramatic step and banned plastic bags and utensils because of the amount of waste. Many stores in the U.S. now have plastic bag recycling bins near the door to the store, but not many people do this.  Recycling would certainly reduce the amount of plastic slowly decomposing in landfills, but a great amount of energy is needed to actually recycle them!

I have always noticed that baggers at Wal-Mart, Target, and grocery stores use an insane amount of bags for only a few items. I once bought 3 items and was given 4 bags!  This isn’t a problem for self-check or self-bag, but it is appalling that these companies at least try to reduce the bags they hand out! Taking a reusable bag makes a big impact: the average reusable bag saves about 1,000 plastic shopping bags in a lifetime!! The buck or two you spend on the bag will pay for the bag fee some stores charge, too.

C'mon, don't let this happen to other animals!

Plastic bags not only take a lot of unnecessary energy to produce and pile up in landfills, they also harm people who don’t use them and animals in nature! Africa has accumulated so much plastic bag waste that a business has been made out of weaving these bags into hats and purses!! And don’t forget about the wildlife that either attempts to eat or gets trapped in these bags.  Since it is SOOOO easy to stop or at least reduce your use of plastic shopping bags, it is just silly to not get a reusable shopping bag!!  You have to be only a little bit less lazy, so make the change for yourself, other people, animals, and the earth!!