Comments on: Paper or Plastic? http://buildakinderearth.com/uncategorized/paper-or-plastic/ Saving the environment one page at a time Thu, 09 Sep 2010 08:33:32 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.7.1 hourly 1 By: julieann http://buildakinderearth.com/uncategorized/paper-or-plastic/comment-page-1/#comment-3 julieann Sat, 18 Apr 2009 20:28:07 +0000 http://buildakinderearth.com/?p=21#comment-3 I live south of San Francisco and the plastic bag controversy has spread to my community as well. There was a proposal before the city council to begin collecting $.25 per plastic bag paid by the consumer at the business where the purchase was made. While the idea might initially sound appealing, there are flaws within the design: additional man hours by the businesses involved to collect, report, and transfer these funds, the high cost to the consumer (a large number of whom are lower income anyway, as reusable bags are more likely to be purchased by people of greater means), and the fact that some people will still be careless with the bags they do purchase, leading to a continuation of the "blowing plastic bag" problem. The proposal has been shelved for now, but there are things we can do to work toward decreasing our plastic bag dependence: Do purchase about 8-10 launderable bags for grocery/retail shopping. My favorites are at www.africabags.org. Use these whenever you are shopping someplace where low quality plastic bags are used. These are the ones that are very thin and break easily; you can't reuse these for any other purpose, so they just go right into a landfill. When you are visiting a store that provides good quality bags (like Target), go ahead and accept them. You can use these bags for many other purposes---lining a catbox or trashcan, to pack a lunch, or even to clean up after your dog. We would buy other plastic bags to do these jobs (like trash can liners) but by reusing these high quality bags they are doing double duty and saving us some money in the process. The plastic liner that your newspaper arrives in is also great for packing sandwiches or cleaning up after your dog. It isn't just the grocery bags that need to be reused! If you do find yourself stuck with some of those torn, poor quality plastic bags, don't throw them away. Take them with you to the grocery store. Most groceries have a drop off bin for used plastic bags. I'm not certain if they recycle them, but it will keep them from blowing away in the breeze. Does anyone have any ideas that I haven't mentioned here? I'd love to hear them! I live south of San Francisco and the plastic bag controversy has spread to my community as well. There was a proposal before the city council to begin collecting $.25 per plastic bag paid by the consumer at the business where the purchase was made. While the idea might initially sound appealing, there are flaws within the design: additional man hours by the businesses involved to collect, report, and transfer these funds, the high cost to the consumer (a large number of whom are lower income anyway, as reusable bags are more likely to be purchased by people of greater means), and the fact that some people will still be careless with the bags they do purchase, leading to a continuation of the “blowing plastic bag” problem. The proposal has been shelved for now, but there are things we can do to work toward decreasing our plastic bag dependence:
Do purchase about 8-10 launderable bags for grocery/retail shopping. My favorites are at http://www.africabags.org. Use these whenever you are shopping someplace where low quality plastic bags are used. These are the ones that are very thin and break easily; you can’t reuse these for any other purpose, so they just go right into a landfill.
When you are visiting a store that provides good quality bags (like Target), go ahead and accept them. You can use these bags for many other purposes—lining a catbox or trashcan, to pack a lunch, or even to clean up after your dog. We would buy other plastic bags to do these jobs (like trash can liners) but by reusing these high quality bags they are doing double duty and saving us some money in the process.
The plastic liner that your newspaper arrives in is also great for packing sandwiches or cleaning up after your dog. It isn’t just the grocery bags that need to be reused!
If you do find yourself stuck with some of those torn, poor quality plastic bags, don’t throw them away. Take them with you to the grocery store. Most groceries have a drop off bin for used plastic bags. I’m not certain if they recycle them, but it will keep them from blowing away in the breeze.

Does anyone have any ideas that I haven’t mentioned here? I’d love to hear them!

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