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Forum Name: Green Living
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Plastic Bags 
Laney
posted Jun 25, 2008 9:53:40 PMTo All
I'm living in a big city and don't have a car anymore so I use an old milk crate when I have a big shop. I can fill it with a lot of stuff, don't have to worry about the bottom falling out and can strap it onto the back of my bicycle after I am done. Although I'd recommend getting a net to put over the top of the crate so that your stuff doesn't go flying out anytime you hit a bump.
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Plastic Bags 
Joy Jackson, Life & Wellness Coach
posted Jan 1, 2009 4:05:12 PMTo All
In addition to toting large recycled tote bags (that I purchased from a local supermarket here in town) to carry our groceries home, we also started going to the store only once per week. We just make sure that we keep plenty of canvas and large reusable tote bags in the car at all times. The minute we unload the groceries I place all of our bags right in front of our door so we can't miss taking them back out to the car on our next venture out.
In addition, we stopped using produce plastic bags all together. The few plastic bags we do acquire from packing at the store, like pita bread bags, bulk item bags, I rewash and reuse. Once they've gotten too out of shape to reuse we recycle them.
We also have started buying less packaged goods and buying more in bulk.

Plastic is a problem because...
A. We recycle about only 10% of the plastic produced (in packaging, bottles, shopping bags, cleaning product containers, take out containers, etc).
B. It is not manufactured from a renewable resource.
C. They take forever (putting it mildly) to biodegrade. Most consider them non-biodegradable because of how long they take to break down.  They will be around for generations to see, and kill animals.

A word about "Paper"....
Paper is manufactured from a renewable resource (trees), recycled at much higher percentage than plastic and it does biodegrade (yet, it does take a long time to break down in landfills do to the lack of moisture, sun and air). However new paper production is extremely devastating to the environment, and not enough people purchase recycled paper products. We also still use way too much paper over all.

I would also like to include the same about aluminum. It's highly recyclable, but the new production of aluminum is very harmful to the environment, and we still don't recycle and reuse enough of it.

The bottom line.... reusable bags that we recycle at the end of their life span are the only true green way to go. In addition to reusable bags, we also need to greatly reduce the amount of new packaging we consume, and increase the number of recycled and bulk products we buy.

Edited by: Joy Jackson, Life & Wellness Coach on Jan 1, 2009 4:12:28 PM

Joy Jackson, Fitness and Lifestyle Coach
piceanjoy@gmail.com
www.joyjackson.net
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Plastic Bags 
Melissa
posted Jan 6, 2009 2:35:28 PMTo All
Switching to Reusable Shopping Bags is definitely on my top ten New Year's Resolution. I've heard that countries like Africa, Australia and China have already banned plastic bagsin many areas. You can purchase organic and eco friendly reusable shopping bags from ReusableBags.com.

For more Green New Year's Resolution, check out: PeopleJam
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