A Shopping Revolution Reusable Green Bags

A Shopping Revolution Reusable Green Bags

by

Sam78

Next time your grocery store asks you whether you prefer “paper or plastic” for your purchase, give them a truly eco-friendly response by saying, “Neither”.

Plastic bags end up fouling our landscape and kill thousands of marine life every year that mistake the floating plastic for food. Plastics buried underground may take thousand years to break down and in the process they separate into many smaller toxic pieces that contaminate soil and water. Also, the production of plastic consumes millions of gallons of oil that could be used for fuel.

Paper Better Than Plastic

Many think that paper bags are better option to plastic bags. But paper bags carry their own set of environmental problems. For example, according to the American Forest and Paper Association, in 1999 the U.S. alone used 10 billion paper grocery bags, which adds up to a lot of trees.

Reusable Bags

Now the question arises, then how would you take your groceries home? The answer is high-quality reusable shopping bags made of materials that don’t harm the environment during production and they don’t need to thrown out after a single use.

Experts estimate that 500 billion to 1 trillion plastic bags are consumed and discarded annually worldwide more than a million per minute.

Here are a few facts to evaluate the use of reusable bags to plastic bags.

Plastic bags aren t biodegradable – They break up into smaller toxic particles that contaminate both soil and water and end up entering the food chain when animals consume them.

According to the Environmental Protection Agency, more than 380 billion plastic bags are used in the United States every year. Of those, approximately 100 billion are plastic shopping bags, which cost retailers about $4 billion annually.

A geographical statistics – Taiwan consumes 20 billion plastic bags annually, Japan consumes 300 billion plastic bags and Australia consumes 6.9 billion plastic bags annually.

Thousands of whales and other sea animals die every year after consuming plastic bags they mistake for food.

Government Actions

In 2001, Ireland as using 1.2 billion bags annually. In 2002, the Irish government imposed a plastic bag consumption tax (called a PlasTax), which has reduced consumption by 90 percent. The tax of $.15 per bag is paid by consumers when they check out at the store.

More recently, Japan passed a law that empowers the government to issue warnings to merchants that overuse plastic bags and don t do enough to reduce, reuse or recycle.

In Hong Kong, you would find “No Plastic Bag Day” and in Singapore’s “Bring Your Own Bag Day,” which resulted in drastic drops in the consumption of one-time bag and plastic bag use.

So considering the above facts and figures, it would be easy for you to discard the use of plastic and paper bags and welcome the use of reusable shopping bags.

Happy “Green” Shopping!

Sam D’Costa is well known professional in Online Marketing and web promotions.

Reusable Grocery Bags

Article Source:

ArticleRich.com