Lets Do Our Planet a Favor and Remember Our Reusable Shopping Bags
It’s time for BYOB! Yes, bring your own shopping bag! As we continue our journey through a busy 2010, it’s crazy to think about the amount of purchasing we traditionally carry out here in America and world-wide. Whether it be frequent trips into the grocery store as we keep our kitchen’s stocked for superb meals and tasty treats or those sometimes dreaded (yet skillful) “6 bags on each arm” walks through the neighborhood mall, all of it adds up to a whole lot of unnecessary garbage. Probably the most blatant examples of this waste is disposable shopping bags.
An estimated 100 billion plastic shopping bags are consumed every year in the USA, according to the Wall-Street Journal. Most plastic bags end up in landfills furthermore the rest time and again end up in rivers, ponds, lakes, streams or in the ocean, where animals can swallow or become entangled in them. Considering the number of shopping bags that are consumed and wasted each year, the time is now to spread the word in regards to the positive benefits of eco-friendly reusable shopping bags. After all, most of us desire to give back to our families, friends and communities as often as possible.
Adopting a BYOB strategy in our individual shopping habits is a simple method to do exactly that. If we are able to boost awareness at this time, the positive outcome for the environment is incalculable for 2010 and well into the future. Several cities have already made gradual but momentous advancement in endorsing the use of eco friendly bags in recent years. Encouraging consumers with plastic and paper bag bans, savings at the register for reusable bag usage and tax motivations are a few to speak of.
Right now in America, the San Jose City Council recently approved one of the nation’s strictest bans on plastic and paper shopping bags. It is a gigantic victory for the Bay Area, that has 1 million plastic bags per year accumulating in and along the San Francisco Bay. San Jose becomes the most recent bay area city to endorse some kind of ban on disposable shopping bags; others comprise of San Francisco and Palo Alto. Tracy Seipel of the San Jose Mercury News reported that it was actually ONE man who truly 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 places in the district further demonstrates the need for BYOB. The 50-year-old environmental advocacy group focused on 10 particular bay-area sites where almost 15,000 plastic bags were retrieved in one day last year in their statement. 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 thus far, five throughout 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 simple while the Mexico City Chamber of Commerce estimates there are actually 35,000 vendors in Mexico City’s downtown area alone.
Bans on plastic bags aren’t really the only efficient means to scale back damaging waste attributable to disposable bags. PlasTaxes, which tax customers at the register for using plastic bags when shopping, were being first launched by the Irish. John Roach of National Geographic reported in 2008 on the worldwide momentum that’s been building because Ireland instilled a PlasTax in 2003. The Irish confirmed they could decrease plastic bag consumption by 90% or more. Momentum is on the rise internationally, particularly in America. From Washington, DC to Edmonds, WA to North Pole, AK, communities and governments are developing a global trend to cut back the unsafe environmental effects of disposable shopping bags. In the great state of Hawaii, the governing body is currently taking into account a bill to ban single-use plastic bags (SUP), or to ascertain a small fee to use SUP bags.
Even chief retail stores like Target and CVS are taking action by enacting savings at the register for customers who choose to BYOB or just carry-out their items without a bag. For the naysayers, it’s opportune to disregard recent momentum in reducing disposable bag waste. But to a few, the wide-spread adoption of eco friendly recycled bags is inevitable. Have a look at the way smoking is becoming taboo in America. Indoor smoking bans have caught on like wild-fire. In the same way, who’s to say using disposable bags won’t become taboo one day in the (hopefully near) future? The use of eco-friendly recycled grocery bags is certainly picking up steam. Our individual choices to bring our recycled shopping bags can go a lot farther than we think. That’s what BYOB is all about.
Naturally, plastic and paper bags should be recycled and it’s important to take into account a bunch of huge retailers including Albertsons and Wal-Mart will recycle plastic bags for you (just have to bring them your accumulated stash). That being said, a BYOB shopping plan can make your life a lot easier because there is no longer a need to accumulate that cupboard full of plastic bags or figure out what and when to handle it. Keeping a couple of eco bags in your car or backpack is a good way to make sure you have them when required. Thus give back this year by remembering to BYOB! No matter whether it be at a convenience store, the shopping mall, or while grocery shopping, we could make a difference for our environment and help raise awareness one transaction at a time. For the battle to eradicate disposable shopping bag waste, 2010 is our moment.