Paper or Plastic?
Paper or Plastic?
It is a question most people hear once or twice a week depending on your shopping habits. Next time you hear that question, try this answer out. Neither thanks, I will use my canvas shopping tote instead. This is an idea I never thought about until I found The Carrot Bag.
The Carrot Bag is a canvas shopping bag that can be used over and over again. Each one can hold about three plastic shopping bags worth of food, that is about 40 pounds worth of food. They are machine washable and can be folded flat just like a traditional paper grocery bag for storage. You may be asking yourself why you would not just use the bags they give you for free at the store, well the reality is, those bags aren’t really free. They increase the cost of your groceries because the store has to pay to buy all those bags, but the real cost is the cost to the environment. Here are some facts you probably didn’t know.
Plastic bags start out as Natural Gas or other Petrochemical substances, which are finite, polluting and increasingly expensive resources
According to Worldwatch Institute, factories produce 4 to 5 Trillion plastic bags per year, and while most of these are recyclable, only about 0.6 percent are recycled
Many Plastic bags are simply littered, take a look next time you are out, I would be willing to wager that you see at least one plastic grocery bag blowing around in the wind. These can clog up sewers, waterways, become tangled up in vegetation or worse yet, get caught in the throats of animals.
It takes hundreds of years for a plastic bag to decompose and they leak toxins into the soil as they do so.
I used to think that paper bags were better then plastic and while paper bags are more likely to be recycled then plastic bags, the impact on the environment is even greater with paper bags. Here is the one stat about paper bags that jumped out at me.
In 1999 alone, 4 million trees were cut down to make 10 billion shopping bags.
I urge you to consider using a canvas shopping bag the next time you are at the store. If you are like me and like to be a little stylish in everything they do, check out The Carrot Bag, available in a pack of 5 for 99.99. Sounds like a high price, but since they hold so much food, you can keep one or two for yourself and give the rest away of gifts. Maybe you can even pass on your newfound knowledge of the impact paper and plastic grocery bags have on our environment.
Prices and more information : The Carrot Bag Set of 5
