Reusable shopping bag::Reusable grocery bag::Grocery shopping bag::The shopping bag

If you want to save the environment one of the easiest ways is to purchase the canvas grocery bags so that you can eschew the deplorable plastic ones at the grocery or superstore check-out line. Once there was a choice to be made, paper or plastic, until the cost of the Kraft paper bags was so much more than the plastic ones. Now in nearly all retail establishments there is only one choice, the plastic bag that takes years to disintegrate into the earth.

To be a green shopper, at least in the regard of the type of bag you use, you must secure a stock of reusable tote or grocery bags to hand to the cashier when your purchases are ready to be stashed. The cashier is so programmed to stuff the plastic that you may have to get their attention to save the earth!

Leave it to the West Coast to be on the cutting edge of a new trend. I heard about the aggressive campaign on national Public Radio a few months ago. Since that time San Francisco and Malibu have imposed bans on plastic bags. Your choice is reusable shopping bags or a dime fee for recyclable paper bags. Of course there is a posse of folks who do not like the state imposing any restriction on their life, but according to retailers the overall response is positive.

According to the Los Angeles Times web site for March 10, 2011, Santa Monica has joined the movement. This locale has allowed a six month grace period for compliance, but after this period there will be a possible $75 dollar fine imposed per infraction. Think of the potential for a weekly grocer shopper to place the grocer in the red with a large order. Criminal prosecution is threatened to repeat offenders.

I pity the poor young grocery assistant managers who don’t pay attention to the rules and wind up taking the wrath of the store owner when these fines begin to accumulate. It would be prudent for stores to put the waiting period out of their mind and make the change as soon as viable.

If you look to the side of the road as you drive around your locale you will see at least one if not multiple plastic bags that the wind is playing “tumbleweed” with. These scourges of our shopping experience are so easily caught even by a soft breeze and propelled across yards, roads, parks and into wooded areas. In these places unsuspecting animals can find them to be at the least nuisances and at worst life threatening.

Also, to return to an earlier thought the bags are not biodegradable in an acceptable amount of time. Plastic in and of itself is a long lasting creation of man. This is a big reason behind the push for plastic recycling. If not recycled this growing mountain of non-biodegradable items threatens to overwhelm our landfills and trash processing centers.

Where I live there is no ban on plastic and outside most of the stores there are containers where you can bring your collection of plastic bags for recycling. I don’t see a large proportion of people using this, but then you wouldn’t bring a bag of bags each time you shop, so I am not a very reliable commentator on the practice. I do know the vast majority of people do not use the canvas bags yet, probably because we are not living in a locale with a government mandate to do so.

For the stores there is a positive hook to this situation. An option for them is to print their logo or slogan on the bag and it offers them visual exposure as you make your way to and from the store. If you carry the bags with you to other retail locations than their store there is an even greater potential for exposure. Any business man will tell you that free advertising cannot be beat.

Conversely, seeing the logo of your store on the plastic bags mired in a creek bank or wrapped around the base of a tree or bushes gives you a negative feeling toward that establishment even though they are not actually to blame. People have to make the right choice on how to deal with their plastic bags. Recyclable plastic bags are the answer for some, but they must make the effort to make the program worthwhile.

More and more of these retail stores are including displays with their signature bags near the register so you can purchase them to avoid a surcharge if it exists on any other bag choice. Of course you are not prohibited from using a competitor’s bag in a store, but they want you to advertise for them, not the other guy. Some people however, will refuse to be a walking billboard, choosing instead to secure a bag without any type of printing or company logo. For these souls Amazon offers a plethora of choices and sizes to meet any shopper’s need.

I have two children, a 16 year old boy and 13 year old girl. Over their lifetime and school experience I have been dedicated to keeping the papers and programs I think may be keepsakes or important to them at some time late in their life. We have camp pictures, recital programs, report cards, and letters of accomplishment and so on that each of them has received. When we were cleaning out my son’s and daughter’s rooms to replace their flooring my wife snatched two of our bags from her trunk and placed their collections in them before placing them in their respective closets.

The canvas bags offered a sturdy and reliable safe haven for these documents, and a way to keep them separated so each child had their own documents in their own place. We have also got one of the bags stuffed with beach towels, which we only use four to five months out of the year. It is so much more durable than those thin plastic bags too!

We also employ these as a type of tote bag when we visit a swimming pool, wave pool or the beach. The bags can be washed to deal with any mess that accompanies their use and you don't have to worry about the bag tearing or stretching when wet clothes are collected following your activity. In short the bag is dependable in many differing uses.

Government action is always has a potentially controversial effect on the average citizen as we do not like to be instructed to do anything. We especially could think forcing us to use canvas rather than the plastic bags would be overkill. I imagine some slick lawyer will try to see if the legislation required mandating this can hold up to legal scrutiny.

If we were open to the concept of lessening our environmental impact voluntarily this might not be necessary. I mean it really would not be that hard to make a habit of retrieving the canvas bags from our trunk before we enter a store. My wife and I are trying to teach ourselves this habit even now. I would love to not have to struggle with the bag of bags that hangs on the knob of our kitchen door. It would be one less mess to deal with.

Ultimately it will require a shift in thinking so that the convenience is less important than the change to the environment. I am sure each person thinks one or two bags cannot make that much difference. Multiply that by 300 million plus Americans and the impact is actually quite severe. Do your part and go green with reusable shopping bags.