It is time for BYOB! Yes, bring your own shopping bag! While we keep on our path through a eventful 2010, it’s outrageous to think about the amount of purchasing we traditionally carry out now in America and world-wide. Whether it be frequent trips to the grocery store as we keep our kitchen’s stocked for superb meals and tasty goodies or those sometimes dreaded (yet skillful) “6 bags on each arm” walks through the neighborhood mall, it all adds up to a great deal of preventable waste. One of the most blatant examples of this waste is disposable grocery bags.
An estimated 100 billion plastic shopping bags are consumed every year within the USA, according to the Wall-Street Journal. Most plastic bags wind up in landfills and the rest time and again end up in rivers, ponds, lakes, streams or in the sea, where animals can swallow or become tangled in them. Considering the amount 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, the majority of us want to give back to our families, friends and communities as often as possible.
Creating a BYOB approach in our individual shopping habits is a straightforward way to do just that. If we are able to boost awareness presently, the positive outcome for the environment is incalculable for 2010 and well into the future. Numerous cities have already made gradual but significant advancement in endorsing the use of eco bags in recent years. Motivating consumers with plastic and paper bag bans, discounts at the register for reusable bag usage and tax motivations are a few to speak of.
Right here in America, the San Jose City Council recently passed one of the nation’s strictest bans on plastic and paper shopping bags. It is a big 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 newest bay area town to enact some kind of ban on disposable shopping bags; some others include San Francisco and Palo Alto. Tracy Seipel of the San Jose Mercury News reported that it was actually ONE gentleman who really jump-started the ban, an additional impressive instance of the influence of one individual. 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 sites in the area further demonstrates the need for BYOB. The 50-year-old environmental advocacy group focused on 10 particular bay-area sites where nearly 15,000 plastic bags were recovered in one day last year in their report. 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 at the moment faces the realities of effective enforcement, which isn’t easy while the Mexico City Chamber of Commerce estimates there’s 35,000 vendors in Mexico City’s downtown area alone.
Bans on plastic bags aren’t really the only valuable approach to cut back detrimental waste attributable to disposable bags. PlasTaxes, which tax customers at the register for using plastic bags while shopping, had been first introduced by the Irish. John Roach of National Geographic reported in 2008 relating to the worldwide momentum that’s been building from the time when Ireland instilled a PlasTax in 2003. The Irish showed they could trim down plastic bag consumption by 90% or more. Momentum is growing the world over, predominantly in America. From Washington, DC to Edmonds, WA to North Pole, AK, communities and governments are developing a global trend to reduce the unsafe environmental effects of disposable shopping bags. In the great state of Hawaii, the legislature is at this time taking into account a bill to ban single-use plastic bags (SUP), or to ascertain a small fee to use SUP bags.
Even key retail stores like Target and CVS are taking action by enacting discounts at the register for customers who choose to BYOB or simply carry-out their items without a bag. For the naysayers, it’s convenient to pay no attention to recent momentum in reducing disposable bag waste. But to some, the wide-spread adoption of eco-friendly green shopping bags is inevitable. Examine the way smoking is becoming taboo in America. Indoor smoking bans have caught on like wild-fire. In a similar way, who is to say using disposable bags won’t turn out to be taboo one day within the (hopefully near) future? The use of eco-friendly recycled grocery bags is definitely picking up steam. Our personal choices to carry our recycled shopping bags can go a whole lot farther than we think. That’s what BYOB is all about.
Naturally, plastic and paper bags need to 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 isn’t a need to accumulate that cabinet filled with plastic bags or determine what and when to do something about it. Keeping a few eco bags in the car or backpack is a good way to ensure you have them when needed. Thus give back this year by remembering to BYOB! Whether it be in a convenience store, the mall, or while grocery shopping, we can make a change for the environment and help lift consciousness one transaction at a time. For the battle to eradicate disposable shopping bag waste, 2010 is our moment.
