INHABITAT ECO-TOTE BAG!
Plastic bags account for 90 percent of grocery bags in the United States.
99% of these bags are not recycled and end up landfill, harming wildlife and leaching toxins like dioxin and other carcinogens into the soil. It takes about 430,000 gallons of oil to produce 100 million plastic bags, and the US goes through 380 billion of them a year.That means that more than 1.6 billion gallons of oil are used each year to create one-time use plastic bags!
At this point, you have been probably gotten tired of being nagged about this and hearing how important it is to carry reusable cloth bags to the grocery store. But it is such a small, easy step that really makes a huge difference in terms of your environmental impact.
(Via Inhabitat)
Ikea has some great inexpensive bags for this purpose. My grocery store gives back 10 cents on every bag provided, and Trader Joe’s enters bag-toting customers in a weekly drawing for free groceries. Win-win…
In Germany you have to buy the Plastic bags, so nearly everybody is bringing their own reusable bags. I think a very good idea…
This sort of thing is fascinating. Both because it seems so trivial to be reminded of what seems like the low-hanging fruit among the broad range of personal actions we can take, and also because it is so hard to fathom the crushing cumulative impact of these small acts.
Whenever I read things like this I am reminded of my friend Chris Jordan’s incredible photography. Do you know it? (www.chrisjordan.com) Amazing. Chris attempts to convey the impact of what he calls our ‘great collective act of taking,’ transforming incomprehensible statistics into mind-blowing images with devastating emotional power. His goal is to help us understand the reality of what we are doing in a way that is unequivocally and deeply felt.