Paper or Plastic bags?
I know you think the right answer is paper, but it's not that easy, as explained in today's San Jose Mercury article. However, in my opinion these are some solutions:
- Ideal solution: buy reusable bags (even better if they are made of recycled materials), keep them in the trunk of your car, so you won't forget them. The fact you paid for them will motivate you to use them.
- If you must, take paper bags, but only if you use them several times and you put them into the paper recycle bin to dispose of them. Paper bags, even if biodegradable, often end up in landfills, where they do not break down.
- If you really forgot your reusable bags, and you don't recycle paper get plastic bags. But after you use them, don't throw them away. Bring them back to the supermarket where you got them so they can be recycled. If they don't offer a program like that, write a letter to complain.
Photo by antimonyazazello
7 comments:
This is one of my pet peeves. In Holland, you MUST pay for shopping bags if you do not bring your own. I've never seen a more simple nor more effective means of stopping the bag-waste-madness...as you can imagine, everyone brings their own bags!
I know! Same thing in Italy. Now Ikea is bringing this to the U.S. I hope everyone will follow its example.
thanks for writing this blog, Luca. this is very informative and interesting
although you should still write a blog about football :)
We have bags everywhere now. In the car. Near the door. By the fridge. They cannot ever not be reused. And I can't give in to my impulse to throw them out.
Now THAT is love.
:)
I have an interesting moral dilemma, because we do get plastic bags - because they are what we use to dispose of the near toxic stinky diapers of our two year old. That's a double issue because of the landfills created by these mountains of non-biodegradable diapers. We have seeked more eco-friendly alternatives, and only found leaky solutions. I wish we had a better option than that.
I am not an expert in diapers by any means but you might want to check the gDiapers http://www.gdiapers.com/
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