Do you suffer from Bagnesia?

By now everyone has accumulated a stash of reusable shopping bags. Yet so often when it's time to check out there you are again, kicking yourself for leaving your bags at home. What is a forgetful environmentalist to do? The enterprising folks at bagnesia.com have created some clever accessories to compliment their reusable bags. "" Grab your bag" door hangers, steering wheel wraps and key chains to help you remember your reusable bags. Or if you are looking for a more economical approach ( also one that does not encourage consumption!) take a cue from one very dedicated Toco Shop volunteer. After a little education on the consequences of plastic bag usage, Nicci Barty vowed to eliminate plastic bags from her life. Unfortunately she suffered from bagnesia. On her first trip to the grocery after making the choice to no longer accept plastic bags, there she was at the checkout with a cart full of groceries and no reusable bags. What to do? Let it slide this one time? Opt for the equally environmentally taxing paper option? She chose neither. That's right, no bags at all. The cashier was dumbfounded. Nicci was slightly inconvenienced since she had to load each item individually into her car and then again in to the house. The minor inconvenience was a small price to pay for the pride she felt for sticking to her convictions. So from that point on she decided that every time her reusable bags were left at home, she would elect to go home bagless. You would be amazed how quickly bagnesia can be cured. If you know that once you get to the store you will have no way to carry your purchases out but your bare hands, suddenly your reusable bags will become as important as your wallet, shopping list and car keys!

Why reuse when you can refuse!?!

It's become very trendy to bring your resuable shopping bags with you to the market. And everyone is capitalizing on it. These bags are available everywhere. But plastic shopping bags are still leaving stores in droves. Reusablebags.com estimates that worldwide 500 billion plastic bags are used annually, 100 billion of which are attributed to the U.S. It's ok to use plastic bags as long as you recycle or reuse them right? What if you learned that most of the bags that are collected in store for recycling never actually get recycled? Would that change your plastic bag consumption?

Here's Green Dailys case for skipping the plastic shopping bags and committing to BYOB ( Bring Your Own Bag) on your next shopping trip.

**Less than 1% of plastic bags are recycled each year and it costs more to recycle a plastic bag than to make a new one.

**According to San Francisco's Department on the Environment, it costs $4,000 to process and recycle one ton of plastic bags, which can then be sold for $32.

**Plastic bags account for more than 10% of debris washed up on the U.S. coastline, according to the National Marine Debris Monitoring Programming.









PLASTIC PLANET: THE CURSE OF THE CARRIER BAG

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