The average American home takes home 1,500 plastic bags a year, of which only about 1% are recycled.
All too often, these single-use bags end up polluting the environment and being eaten by birds, sea turtles, and fish. It harms us too when the toxins from plastic make it into the food chain.
By committing to eliminating plastic bags from your lifestyle, you can make a difference. Here’s how to get started…
1. Opt to use reusable bags at the grocery store. If you forget and leave your bags in the car, don’t give in to plastic – put everything back in your cart and pack at your car instead.
2. Invest in mesh bags for your produce. My cousin also came up with the bright idea of using those linen or cotton bags that pillowcases or bedding are often packaged in.
3. Refuse bags everywhere you go and tell the sales assistant why. Maybe they’ll make the change too. Often people just haven’t thought about the implications for the environment.
4. Recycle the plastic bags you can’t avoid. Bags can’t go in your curbside collection so visit website plasticfilmrecycling.org for a drop-off directory of grocery stores that have recycling facilities. In the Greenville area, there are quite a few options including Harris Teeter, Publix, Target, Walmart, and Ingles.
5. Collect other types of bag and wrapping too. The beforementioned recycling facilities will also take an array of other plastic waste. You can drop-off product and case overwrap, the plastic bags that newspapers, bread, dry cleaning and produce come in, zip-top food storage bags, air pillows, furniture, and electronic wrap and plastic cereal box liners.
6. Get into the recycling habit. You know those large cloth bags Amazon gifts arrive in? Keep one hanging in your kitchen or pantry to collect your plastic bags in for recycling.
7. Tell businesses when you don’t like their plastic bag use. Write to head office, tweet, or speak to a manager. If enough people do this then corporations will start to make the change.
8. Spread the word and tell people the facts;
~ Nearly TWO MILLION single-use plastic bags are distributed worldwide every minute, choking our oceans, poisoning our food and water supply, jeopardizing our health, and killing wildlife.
~ 91% of plastic waste isn’t recycled. And since most plastics don’t biodegrade it is set to exist for hundreds or even thousands of years.
~ 9.1 billion US tons of plastic has been produced since plastic was introduced in the 1950s, millions of which winds up in our oceans each year. [Source: earthday.org]