Small Changes - Reusable bags for Shopping
One of the easiest ways to make a huge impact is to switch to reusable shopping bags.
Shopping bags - both plastic and paper - are a bigger environmental offender than you realize. The United States uses about a hundred billion plastic bags in a year. Broken down to each U.S. household equates to 1,000 plastic bags each year! WOW! All those little stops into the grocery store, gas station, or shopping trip really do add up!
It takes 12 million barrels of oil to produce the plastic bags the United States uses each year. Fewer than 3 percent of the plastic bags are even recycled - which means they end up in landfills (which can take hundreds of years to degrade) or too often in our streams, oceans, and rivers (choking about 100,000 whales, birds, and turtles or doing major damage to existing ecosystems).
And then there are the paper bags which might seem harmless at first. Making 10 billion paper bags (the average number of grocery bags Americans use each year) requires 14 million trees to be cut down. Then, you get into the environmental cost of producing the paper bags - they use 4 times the amount of energy to produce than plastic bags and ALL those toxins and air pollutants. Americans only recycle 20% of paper bags and they take up 9 times more space in the landfills compared to the plastic ones.
Whew - both paper and plastic bags are a much bigger environmental impact than you think at first. I leave a few reusable totes in my car so I have them at all times. I bring them with me for all my shopping, not just at the grocery store! When I’m making a purchase, I let the salesperson know at the beginning I have my own bag so they don’t beat me to the punch and start swaddling my purchase in tissue paper and a pretty paper bag. I will tell you this - Expect Resistance! It does get easier with practice. Just stand your ground! And relax in knowing this small change for you is making a HUGE change for the environment!
One Comment
Denise Lawton
August 3rd, 2009
Thanks for some great info. Compass Realty FL stands out from the rest of the real estate firms - your knowledge about the industry combined with a dedication to social causes is wonderful.
1