Making Peace with Plastic Grocery Bags
“Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It’s not.” — Dr. Seuss in The Lorax
I confess… I’m not the most frugal person. I even get fewer points for recycling. But it’s never too late to learn a tip or two about frugality and alternative uses for items clogging up the enviroment.
John Roach at National Geographic News writes, “Plastic bags are so cheap to produce, sturdy, plentiful, easy to carry and store that they have captured at least 80 percent of the grocery and convenience store market since they were introduced a quarter century ago.”
“As a result, the totes are everywhere. They sit balled up and stuffed into the one that hangs from the pantry door. They line bathroom trash bins. They carry clothes to the gym. They clutter landfills. They flap from trees. They float in the breeze. They clog roadside drains. They drift on the high seas. They fill sea turtle bellies.”
What are we supposed to do with all those bags? Bags that multiply quicker than coat hangers! Sure, plastic is better for the environment, but they’re hard to recycle. Yesterday on NPR, Jule Gardner came up with the answer. Click here for the podcast. He reports, “Typically the only place to drop off your bags is in those bins at the grocery store. The American Plastics Council is working on how to expand plastic-bag recycling. You can check that out at plasticbagrecycling.org.”
Gardner interviewed Ray Hampton at the Virginia-based Trex Company. Trex is one of a few companies giving plastic grocery bags new life. “Trex chops them up, mixes them with wood pulp, and then shapes them into boards. The boards are used for decks that never need to be treated or stained.”
Until there are more companies like Trex, what are your options? Reuse the bags.
Robert Krebs at the American Plastics Council says, “Uh, they’re a great mitt for things you don’t want to touch, like picking up after your dog. They’re umbrella holders so that you can put that wet umbrella inside of your purse or inside your briefcase so that it doesn’t flood it. There are shoe covers, you know when you come in from the mud and you don’t want to track it all over your house.” Oh my god, he sounds like Dawn!
He had one final ideal to keep bags organized: “Stuff them in an old sock, cut the toe off and pull them out one by one.” FrugalFinesse provides these instructions: “Open the sock at the toe seam. Sew top and bottom opening with elastic thread so that the openings will hold bags, but let you pull them out. Tack or screw to the inside of the cabinet door under sink. Stuff plastic grocery bags into top of sock and dispense from the bottom.” Or you can use a paper towel cardboard roll… no sewing required.
Rachel Keller gives 22 Creative Ways to Use Plastic Grocery Bags. I’m taking notes as I write.
Related:
Are you still using checks rather than credit cards at the Grocery Store?
We donate our plastic bags to a daycare- they use them to wrap up used diapers.
Other times we have given our stash away to our church’s clothing closet. They give away free clothes to the needy, but often don’t have bags.
Just as long as they aren’t used once & thrown away I feel we have done our share to help recycle.
There are craft websites that use these bags in place of yarn. The bags are cut into strips and are either knitted or crocheted into stronger bags or even beach sandals that protect one’s feet from hot sand!
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How about a paradigm shift? Try using reusable canvas bags instead. Don’t make more plastic by getting grocery bags in the first place.
I’m guilty of hoarding my plastic grocery bags, but I use them religiously as small trash can bags around the house. But I also ask for paper bags too since that’s what I use for my paper recycling bin. 🙂
We use plastic bags in our smaller garbage cans instead of buying more garbage bags. To store them we keep empty kleenex boxes and stuff them full of plastics bags. Then we can pull them out one at a time as we need them.
They make good stuffing material for craft projects, like cat toys or stuffed animals. My mom used to use old nylons but the bags are lighter and squishier and work better.
a health food store in my neighbourhood accepts donations of plastic bags, which they then reuse to bag their groceries. great because it saves them money and gives customers a chance to reuse bags again and again.
check out a post i wrote about it: http://subvertingoverconsumption.wordpress.com/2006/10/21/eat-healthy-foods/
I donate mine to a local thrift store that’s always screaming for bags–they offer a 10% discount for all bag donations. I was taking my paper bags to them when I was getting them (through military comissary shopping), but since the switch to plastic, now they get my plastic bags.
I also got new wastebaskets for the bathroom and office that are built specifically for using these bags as liners.
It’s kind of ironic that when the price of crude oil was skyrocketing, stores were going from paper to plastic–are they THAT much cheaper, even when oil was costing so darn much? Judging by seeing all the plastic bag excess in landfills, caught in chain link fences, and as general litter, it seems that we consumers are just throwing oil away in the form of plastic bags.
I’m glad I now shop mostly with an old beat-up laundry basket as my main grocery containment, especially at farmer’s markets and organic stores. I either carry it with me or bungie-cord it to an old luggage carrier and make a “cart” out of it. My basket comes in real handy at warehouse stores–all my purchases can ride home in it without having to drag excess boxes into the house…then having to get rid of the excess boxes later. I just carry the basket with groceries into the house like a load of laundry, then carry the empty basket back out to the car when I leave for more shopping.
I’m determined to get my money’s worth out of this oil-in-plastic-form before I toss it for good.
I agree with the people that talk about not getting the bags in the first place. We use canvas bags and it’s not inconvienent at all.
In upstate NY, anyway, the plastic bags have become so weak they are barely able to survive the trip home. The handles tear, they have holes in them to start with (to purge air so they can fit more of them in the checkout aisle), and sometimes the bags burst and the groceries end up all over the driveway. Before Walmart switched from blue bags to white ones, you could clearly see that most of the bags on the side of the road were from Walmart. I’m not even sure that Walmart really recycles all of the bags people return, after hearing reports that the bags were dumped into a container with mixed garbage. How many stores are really recycling these bags? I saw a bird fly across my yard with a bag in its mouth, and the bag got stuck in my maple tree. I watch bags blow down the street on windy days. I pick bags out of my side of my neighbor’s hedge row and then I have to pay to dispose of them. Personally, I’d like to see a deposit on plastic bags so people are encouraged to pick them up and cash them in. It works for cans and bottles that require a deposit, so most of the cans and bottles that remain are those which do not require a deposit. Go figure.
Plastic bags used as trash bags do little more than increase the lifespan of your trash in the landfill (not that anything biodegrades in most landfills anyway).
Weaker plastic bags are possibly LDPE which many suppliers have moved to for its stretchability and cheapness. It is also lighter and therefore uses less fuel in the transportation process.
Recycling of plastic bags is hit or miss for many companies. I work for a natural grocer that is passionate about the environment, but even we have to toss many plastic bags often because of contamination of bins. It would be great if employees got paid to do nothing but pick through garbage, but that is simply not how the market works at this point. As a citizen, what are you going to do to protect the purity of your local recycling resources?
I take them to the local dog park for poop baggies. Ikea sells a plastic bag dispenser which works well to hold a lot of them.
I crochet the plastic bags and am looking for colored ones to add interest. I think people use them as beach bags and recycle bags for the store… know where I can get some colored ones??
It’s pathetic that we as Americans use over 1 billion plastic bags a year…Have we thought about the possible link between plastic and the recent epidemics with health problems such as cancer, food allergies, Alzheimer’s, Autism and other health disorders…it’s just a matter of time before we realize our mistakes much like the pesticides we used 20 years ago causing health problems.
Not to mention the fact that plastic doesn’t really disappear. Sure, it takes over 1,000 years to break down, but the properties actually leak into the soil, air and water. Plastic is just bad news period…
Try Google for some interesting info on these:
– BPA
– DEHA
– Dioxins (PCDD’s)
just to name a few of the fantastic things in plastic that are poisoning us as we speak.
SO long story short, finding cutesy little ways of “re-using” plastic doesn’t do anything. What we need to focus on is NOT using them at all. Next time you go out to shop, use canvas or a cute basket.
How about a knitted HDPE evening dress? Wedding gown? Until we stop using plastic shopping bags altogether in favor of reusable totes, let knit or crochet all those poly bags into something chic. The dresses will a comment on the excess while they’re being worn.
My grandmother, “Lizzie”, starting crocheting with plastics long-long ago. Ten children, a farm during the depression…she learned to use everything up. She made hundreds and hundreds of rugs. One long one still lines the floor of my father’s old aluminum fishing boat. She even made one in the shape of a flag and mailed it to President Kennedy. Old shower curtains, ANY plastic she could get her hands on was made into something usable.
It is noble to focus on NOT making plastic bags anymore, but more realistic if we do little things like using up what is here (can’t make them magically disappear from the environment) like making shopping totes from old plastic bags and USING them, we WILL be decreasing the production because the stores will not use as many…will not order as many…supply and demand runs this world. We can fight this battle in THEIR game.