25 Resources to Help You Reduce, Recycle, and Reuse Plastic Bags

re: 25 Resources to Help You Reduce, Recycle, and Reuse Plastic Bags

Kairosgirl — Tue, 13 May 2008 12:04:00 GMT

I walk my dog every day and use the plastic bags to pick up after him.

I also reuse the small produce bags for lining a small office and bathroom trash can or keeping produce from Farmer's market.

re: 25 Resources to Help You Reduce, Recycle, and Reuse Plastic Bags

Mariehelm — Tue, 13 May 2008 06:17:33 GMT

St. VIncent DePaul takes Plastic bags to re-use.

re: 25 Resources to Help You Reduce, Recycle, and Reuse Plastic Bags

Rose My Rose — Sat, 23 Feb 2008 22:14:08 GMT

ALDI stores charge 5 cents for a paperbag, 10 or 15 cents for a plastic/plus tax. This is the ONLY store I have ever been to that customers continually bring in their own bags. Recently the larger groceries in town have been selling reuseable bags for 99 cents, I have yet to see a customer bring one in to be reused.

The baggers just LOVE to see me coming with my 3 kids hanging off the sides of the cart and canvas bags to fill! (Just joking, they seem to think that I'm a pain in the neck!)

re: 25 Resources to Help You Reduce, Recycle, and Reuse Plastic Bags

megsned — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 05:33:13 GMT

I didn't realize that there was such a bad problem. I am reformed. Pictures of these plastic islands should be posted in our grocery stores with verse to explain the problem. I am sure that many like me need to understand the problem and then do our best to reuse our carrying bags and use some very strong substitutes. They can be made to look fashionable, too. Some could be made from washable materials to go into the washers and dryers. Be inventive! Actually it could become a good business oportunity for someone.

Marion

re: 25 Resources to Help You Reduce, Recycle, and Reuse Plastic Bags

imafine1 — Sat, 16 Feb 2008 20:24:01 GMT

I use a plastic liner in the kitchen trash can then add a grocery store paper bag to put the trash in. I compost vegetable scraps and put meat scraps and other gooey/stinky stuff in a used food bag in the freezer. I just throw the frozen stuff in the trash when it's taken out on trash day. The plastic liner lasts for months since it hardly gets dirty. I use the smaller paper bags from the bakery section at the grocery store to use for vegetables instead of the plastic ones they provide, then reuse them in the bathrooms around the house. I usually bring cloth bags to the grocery store except when I need to resupply my paper garbage can bags. So, there's still some plastic usage, but it's a lot less than before.

re: 25 Resources to Help You Reduce, Recycle, and Reuse Plastic Bags

Wanderer_203 — Sat, 16 Feb 2008 03:13:54 GMT

Shame on me, I use my grocery bags for my garbage bags. Any alternative suggestions?

re: 25 Resources to Help You Reduce, Recycle, and Reuse Plastic Bags

Gramma E — Sun, 06 Jan 2008 20:07:19 GMT

In addition to following the aforementioned methods, I mail my used sytrofoam containers of all sizes from restaurants (with the recycling symbol #6) to:

Diversifoam Products

9091 County Road 50

Rockford, MN 55373

On the mailing label, I add "MATERIAL FOR RECYCLING" -- it's pretty cheap to mail as it weighs nothing; the box weighs more than the contents.

Tell EVERYONE about the mercury in the new fluorescent bulbs! They must not be put in the garbage! The incandescents are safer -- no mercury. It costs around $2,000 to have the hazardous waste mess cleaned up if you break one mercury bulb in your home.

Gramma Elaine

re: 25 Resources to Help You Reduce, Recycle, and Reuse Plastic Bags

CathE — Sun, 18 Nov 2007 21:55:48 GMT

Dear Readers,

I just wanted to bring to your attention....that there is a supermarket chain in England, that sell you a grocery bags (12c each)...

Sounds crazy, but if forces you to remember to bring your carrier bags, made of more favorable non chemical......this would be one way of making people ......think

re: 25 Resources to Help You Reduce, Recycle, and Reuse Plastic Bags

webwitch6 — Sun, 18 Nov 2007 06:50:57 GMT

I always get paper bags at the grocery store here in Maine. I anger the clerks every time I ask for them. Last week, I tried to be friendly about my choice, (small rural community, so everyone knows everyone else; I have been here a year and I am still stared at like I have I just landed from Mars,) so I told the clerk I wanted to cut down on the use of plastic bags. She proceeded to place two items in each paper bag, so I ended up with 17 paper bags instead of 9 plastic! I went to the car, repacked my groceries into 8 bags and brought the excess back to the store. You should have seen the looks!! LOL!

re: 25 Resources to Help You Reduce, Recycle, and Reuse Plastic Bags

Almamater — Wed, 14 Nov 2007 01:54:45 GMT

I no longer get any groceries (or anything) bagged at the store. I simply ask the cashier to put them back in the cart after she scans them. Then when I get to my car, I load them into cardboard boxes. I probably have saved at least 1,000 plastic bags from being used, and it's really very little trouble to do this. Such a small step to decrease dependence on foreign oil and make the earth a little less polluted for future generations.

re: 25 Resources to Help You Reduce, Recycle, and Reuse Plastic Bags

dempoolguy — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 23:17:50 GMT

I've been wanting to compost, to use paper bags for my food scraps and peelings, then throwing bag and all into a compost pile, but never got around to it. I use reusable bags for weekly shopping, and usually if I run to the store for one or two items I will take them out of the bag they are automatically thrown in, even after stating I don't need a bag. Checkstand baggers are on autopilot a lot of the time. It is they who need a bit of education, but I don't want to stand and preach, especially at the ten-items-or-less express. We just keep setting the examples...

As far as produce, I've looked for reusable produce bags, they are expensive!! I wind up with at least a dozen little plastic produce bags. I'd like to take them back to the store and refill them with peppers or avocados, but alas, that's not allowed. Or not sterile enough for the plasticized grocery clerks.

re: 25 Resources to Help You Reduce, Recycle, and Reuse Plastic Bags

nogmoplease — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 21:01:07 GMT

http://www.reusablebags.com/

This site has alot of different reusable bags to chose from.

re: 25 Resources to Help You Reduce, Recycle, and Reuse Plastic Bags

catuskan60 — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 19:44:58 GMT

Plastic is one of the worst elements to happen to this planet! Whoever invented it should have thought of the consequences of the future.The Bible has some good advice, "count the cost before you do anything". I recycle my paper bags at the grocery store and take my own bags when going to other stores, even flea markets and garage sales. Clerks look at me like I'm odd, but I guess that's ignorance. There is a city, can't think of the name, that has banned plastic bags, another city charges you 5 cents for every plastic bag you use. We,the people need to do something, plastic is unhealthy, destroying our environment and hurting animals and marine life that get caught in them or choke on the bags.It's definitely a big problem. If we wait for the government or big corporations to do something, it'll be too late. As long as it's profitable, nothing will be done. Greed sure is ugly.

re: 25 Resources to Help You Reduce, Recycle, and Reuse Plastic Bags

Dr Rik — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 17:53:19 GMT

While working in Alaska, I would sometimes end up on islands so isolated that I was reporting to the Alaska Fish and Game, species that they didn't know had migrated to certain locales. These "isolated" beaches were so thick in flotsam and jetsam on the beach; the rain made it almost impossible to start a fire in brutal cold conditions, but the plastic would burn just fine. Then it was easy to make a shelter with all the wood and metal pieces laying around. Trash knee deep with not a human facility in sight!

While I was living in Oregon they pretty well mopped up the last of the old growth. Your paper bags are from 10-20 year class tree farms that grow like big lawns.

re: 25 Resources to Help You Reduce, Recycle, and Reuse Plastic Bags

joefraser6 — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 17:18:55 GMT

I wonder why someone somewhere doesn't invent a carry-all bag that is compostable! Quick way to become a Millionaire. ALSO, plastic bags should be made illegal now that all the evidence is in!