www.greenisthenewpink.org: Getting More Bag for your Buck

Being eco-chic involves getting creative about how to re-use everyday items. This week, we’re talking about re-using kitchen bags—easy and effective, but also easily overlooked.

For instance: We all know that plastic baggies aren’t the best for the environment, but that doesn’t mean that we can live without them. Feel good and make a difference by RE-USING your plastic baggies. Okay, we know it might sound gross, and look, if you had something disgusting or moldy in the baggie, by all means THROW IT OUT…but otherwise, after you finish your carrot sticks, take one second, rinse out the bag in the sink and set it to dry. Then it’s ready for the parmesan rind you are saving for your soups (or for your weed...kidding).

Another idea: What happens every time you go to the grocery store? They ask you whether you want paper or plastic. If you’re like us, you’re always a little unsure of which is worse for the environment. For the record, even though you CAN recycle plastic bags, the paper bags are way better. Okay, after you’ve chosen the paper bags, you come home, unload your groceries and then wonder what to do with the bags…Again, if you’re like us, you feel bad throwing away all these perfectly good bags, so you stick them under your sink where your bag collection grows and grows until it’s taken over your entire kitchen and then, overwhelmed and on a cleaning frenzy, you eventually toss all of them anyway. We know we’re not alone with this.

So…next time, after you unload your groceries, put the paper bags back IN YOUR TRUNK right away. Otherwise you’ll forget. Next time you are at the store you can bring them in to be re-loaded. Lydia always forgets them until she gets to the check out line and then runs to her car to bring them into be loaded (BTW, they will wait for you). Plus, that way everyone in the check out line at Trader Joes can see you being green chic and fabulous! If every household in the U.S. reused one paper bag for one shopping trip, about 60,000 trees would be saved[1].

What exactly does saving 60,000 trees mean? You can either trust us that it’s really important and start re-using your paper bags right now, or you can keep on reading below:

Trees clean the air[2]: Trees take in carbon dioxide and produce oxygen. Tree foliage are a natural air filter of pollutants such as ozone, nitrogen oxides, ammonia and sulfur dioxides. Along with the cooling effect of trees, these processes have a HUGE impact on reducing smog and overall air pollution.

Trees improve water quality[3]: Tree canopies and root systems slow down and reduce storm water runoff, flooding and erosion. Trees also help filter water runoff reducing water pollution in our rivers.

Trees save energy[4]: Trees cool the air naturally in two ways--through water evaporating from the leaves and direct shade. Homes shaded by trees need less energy for cooling which means lower monthly utility bills.

And if you’re one pf those types who like numbers and stats, we got some of those for you, too…here are the cold hard facts of what YOU are actually doing by reusing your paper bags:

40 trees remove 80 pounds of air pollutants annually[5]. (So according to our fact that reusing 1 bag per U.S. Household for just 1 shopping trip saves 60,000 trees, if we all simply reused one grocery bag, we’d save 120,000 POUNDS of AIR POLLUTANTS!)
400 trees capture 140,000 gallons of rainwater annually[6].
One acre of forest absorbs six tons of carbon dioxide and puts out four tons of oxygen. This is enough to meet the annual needs of 18 people.[7]
A tree can grow to manufacture five pounds of pure oxygen per day, consume carbon dioxide to fight the "greenhouse effect" that threatens our survival, and provide the cooling equivalent of ten room-size air conditioning units[8].

And some more fun facts you can pull out when you talk to people who claim that saving the environment costs too much money (we all know one of them):

Four million trees can save $20 million in air pollution clean up[9].
Four million trees save $14 million dollars in annual storm water runoff costs[10].
One million trees save $10 million a year in energy costs[11].
A tree, over a 50-year period, will generate $31,250 worth of oxygen, provide $62,000 worth of air pollution control, and recycle $37,500 worth of water[12].

So take the extra 10 seconds to put your bags in your trunk. Or better yet…ditch out on the paper bags all together, buy some canvas totes and keep them in your trunk for grocery store, Rite Aid and the ever-essential Target shopping trips.