Stop Using Plastic Bags

I have been living in the US for almost 7 years and am still amazed, among other things, at the number of plastic bags people use at grocery stores.

In France, stores have been encouraging people to switch to re-usable canvas bags by restricting the number of plastic bags they can take with them. Some have even not made plastic bags available anymore at all – a little extreme, but it works.

How pleasantly surprised was I when I noticed that my local Shaw’s was selling canvas bags for a buck a few weeks ago. I jumped on them. I bought 3 the first trip and 3 more the following weeks and we have not used any plastic bags from our grocery store ever since.

The bags are made of 100% non woven polypropylene, which is biodegradable. I would have liked to see something else than “Made in China”, but I guess you can’t have it all!

Edit: I asked the question “Is polypropylene biodegradable?” on Yahoo! Answer.
I received the following answers:
- “Yes, but it takes tens of thousands of years. And, because the material is pretty inert, the biodegradation will need to be assisted by erosion.”
- “Polypropylene IS itself a plastic.
No, it does not biodegrade. Yes, it does disintegrate under sun’s UV if directly exposed.”
- “no it is not biodegrable. it is photodegradable meaning it breaks down into smaller pieces by the suns uv rays but other than that no.”
This has the merit of being clear. If you do buy reusable bags, you might want to go for 100% cotton bags.

I could list 100 reasons why you should not use plastic bags, but I won’t because I’m sure you have heard or read them all.

All I will do is keep this post short by asking you to do the same, and stop using plastic bags.

If your local grocery store doesn’t offer these bags, you can find them online. A site called reusablebags.com sells, well, just that: reusable bags, in many different size, textures and colors.
The Planet Bag sells cloth grocery bags through Amazon.com. Please check it out and make a difference.

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