10 Reasons Why We Should All Use Reusable Shopping Bags
All reusable bags help to reduce waste in our environment, and limit the use of already depleted fossil fuel sources. Each individual person should be using reusable shopping bags to help do their part in protecting our environment. Below are some reasons that will hopefully help to persuade you to begin using reusable shopping bags.
Each year, over 1 trillion plastic bags are produced and used throughout the world. Only a small percentage of these bags are reused or recycled, bags that are not recycled end up in our rivers and oceans, and become part of our ever increasing landfills.
Numerous species of sea life, like turtles, ingest plastic bags by mistake. This leads to these animals being suffocated or strangled by the plastic bags resulting in a horrible slow death for these animals. Over 100,000 sea turtles have died from ingesting plastic bags, which is not only bad for their population numbers, but also has a carryover impact on the entire marine ecosystem. Plastic bags release toxins into the environment and are non bio-degradable. These toxins can be released into soil and water sources, poisoning birds and wildlife time and time again. Up to 1 millions birds die each year due to ingesting plastic bags.
So, with that in mind, below I’ve created a list of 10 reasons why we should choose something like organic cotton reusable bags over plastic:
1. It can take centuries for a plastic bag to decompose, up to 1000 years.
2. Plastic bags release dangerous toxins, and are not biodegradable
3. Less than 1% of plastic bags are recycled. A surprising number of plastic bags that are returned to be recycled never are due to economic reasons.
4. Plastic bags are contaminating our oceans. In each square mile of ocean there is up to 46000 plastic bags.
5. It requires over 12 million barrels of oil to produce the plastic bags that the US uses each year – think about China & India!
6. Paper bags are no better – they are responsible for the harvest of over 14 million trees annually.
7. The industry in the United States that is the second highest consumer of energy is the pulp and paper industry.
8. Along the coastal US, approximately 10% of coastal garbage is plastic bags.
9. As was mentioned above, thousands of sea turtles and birds die each year from eating plastic bags
10. 1,000 plastic bags can be eliminated for each reusable bag that we use.
The use of reusable bags should not be considered an inconvenience. It just takes some remembering on your behalf. Leave bags in your car, so that you just do not forget them when you go shopping. These bags can be used for many other items, not just groceries. You could pack some towels in them when you are taking a day trip to the beach, or pack toys in them when you are going for a picnic. For each reusable shopping bag or eco friendly dry cleaning bags that you use, up to 1000 plastic bags may be removed from our environment, making our environment a safer and cleaner one.
