Why We Don't Use Plastic Bags

Sometimes it's good to be reminded why we don't use plastic bags. At least that was my thought when I received an email from my friend David today. He sent everyone a pdf regarding the environmental hazards of using plastic bags. I think this document provides a brief, yet thorough overview of this issue. If you have a couple of minutes, I encourage you to take a look at it.

He also wrote about his and his wife's change to using reusable bags:

Annette and I have recently finally gotten in the habit of bringing our own bags to the grocery store. It took a while to get in this habit; not only did we need to i) acquire a sufficient number of cloth and sturdy re-usable bags, we needed to ii)  keep them in the car, and of course then iii) remember to bring them into the store. However, now that we're fully into the routine, we remember our bags all the time and perhaps we are now in the category of people that use 12 less bags/week = 48 bags/month = 576 bags/year.

That's so awesome! I must also thank Dave and Annette for giving me their composting bin a year ago. Thanks to them, I no longer throw my food waste into the garbage. This has resulted in a dramatic reduction in the frequency and amount of trash that I generate at home. No more stinky trash! And I would say that I use 2 trash bags a month to handle my waste. That's down about 50%. Sweet!