Do you really need that plastic bag? Just say no! How often has someone gone to put something in a small bag and you say, no thanks? Yesterday I was shopping and I consciously turned down over 8 plastic bags, the only one I accepted is a most useful large recycling bag! I wish more companies would follow the Warehouse model and charge for bags. I’m a fan and it just requires a change of thinking.
It’s so easy to keep in your car cloth bags. Yet still so many people load up their supermarket trolleys with bags of groceries in plastic bags – some supermarkets have a policy of only 6 items per bag so you can imagine the waste.
So here are 5 reason to help you get into the habit of saying no to plastic!~ Source
1. They are made using non-renewable resources, either petroleum or natural gas. They take huge amounts of energy to manufacture, transport across the country, and recycle. They don’t break down in landfill sites. They’re incredibly difficult to recycle, causing problems such as blocking the sorting equipment used by most recycling facilities.
2. On land, plastic bags are one of the most common types of litter worldwide. Build ups of plastic bags are notorious for causing blockages in local drainage systems in developing countries. The Bangladesh floods and Manila’s frequent flooding are examples of flooding due to litter blockages.
3. Swaths of birds have been found dead due to ingesting substantial amounts of plastic bag remnants. All the plastic found in the birds on Midway Atoll is brought to the island by albatross parents who fed them to their young. An estimated 4 tons of plastic accumulates on the island every day.
4. There’s a running joke in New York, where a billion plastic bags are used per year, that the New York City flower is actually a plastic bag caught in a tree.
5. According to the documentary Bag It, the paper bags now used by San Franciscans after a plastic bag ban was enforced there are recycled at least 10 times more than plastic bags were.
Be the change: use a recycling bag, encourage others to say no to plastic, keep saying No thanks, ( especially to the small bags like the one your sandwich or sushi came in), volunteer to do beach cleanups, buy a recycling bag for a friend’s gift instead of using wrapping paper. Nothing like getting someone to use one of these, Victoria Carter, cityhop co-founder suggests a nice new design of Trelise Cooper bags available at Countdown for only $5!