“Paper or plastic?” is a common question asked in the checkout line as you prepare to leave the grocery shop. Whatever response you choose, you’ll almost certainly have your reasons. Maybe you’re going to recycle or reuse that grocery bags, or perhaps you’re going to use those plastic shopping bags to clean your house. Maybe you believe that your choice, whether paper or plastic, is more environmentally beneficial.
But, regardless of your intentions, whatever you choose between paper and plastic, you’re still picking “wrong” – since there’s a better choice out there: a reusable grocery bags. According to a rising movement throughout the country, consumers are increasingly purchasing and bringing their reusable bags to the store to use to take their purchases home.
While reusable bags are more expensive up front
They have numerous advantages, particularly when reducing plastic bag pollution and the negative consequences of plastic on the environment. Why are custom grocery bags so harmful to the environment? There are several causes for this. Plastic bags cause a slew of issues for the world’s well-being, from their manufacture to their lack of recyclability to their penchant for ending up in landfills — or, worse, out of them — and the long time it takes for them to degrade.
Because paper bags can be recycle and take less time to degrade if they don’t end up in a landfill, they avoid some of the drawbacks of plastic bags. Nonetheless, according to NASA, paper bags are create either from trees, which are vital to preserving or from recycled material, which requires a lot of energy to produce. These are some of the more general reasons to use reusable bags instead of paper or plastic bags, but let’s look at some of the more specific advantages of reusable bags, the harmful impact of plastic bag pollution, and a few additional reasons to bring your suitcase.
Reusable Bags: Why Should You Use Them?
1. Resources should be conserve:
Despite their small size and lightweight, plastic bags have a far higher environmental impact than you might think, starting with the energy necessary to manufacture them. According to Waste Management Northwest, 12 million barrels of oil are require to make the wholesale grocery bags used in other countries each year. On a smaller scale, SPREP.org estimates that for the same amount of gasoline that it takes to create 14 plastic bags, you could drive a car a mile.
2. Lower Pollution:
Plastic’s impact on the environment can be disastrous. packaging bags, for example, can take anywhere from 15 to 1,000 years to degrade, and that’s assuming they make it to a landfill rather than winding up in bodies of water like streams, rivers, or the ocean — or drifting around the neighborhood. Only around 1% of the 100 billion plastic shopping bags used in the United States are recycle, resulting in a significant amount of plastic bag pollution each year.
3. Preventing Recycling Issues:
According to a 2016 Business Insider story, even when people have good intentions and want to recycle their plastic shopping bags, a lot of recycling equipment isn’t up to the task. Bags snag on conveyor belts and wheels, obstructing machinery; they can be challenging to separate from other recycled items, or they drift to other parts of the recycling plant — or even outside the plant. The best way to recycle these bags is to take them to a plastic bag recycling center, which you can occasionally find at your local grocery store.
4. Wildlife Protection:
According to SPREP.org, marine animals. Confuse plastic shopping bags in the ocean for food. Resulting in the deaths of over 100,000 species each year. Plastic bags can also become entangled in trees, trapping small animals. Resulting in even more wildlife deaths in the ecosystem. 5. Conserve funds: In the United States, several establishments. Now charge customers for Kraft grocery bags. While a quarter or dime per bag may not seem like much. Consider how quickly it adds up for a shopper who uses five or ten bags per trip to the store. Not to mention that, according to the Natural Resources. Defense Council’s grocery shopping data. The average American family uses roughly 1,500 plastic shopping bags each year. If each bag costs a cent, you might save $75 a year on shopping bags!
6. Repurpose for a different purpose:
Reusable wholesale custom boxes. Are use for a variety of tasks besides to carrying groceries. A beautiful reusable bags is a structured tote bag that can be use for many of the same purposes as a tote bag. You can use them to carry refreshments on a road trip, transport books to and from the library, and so on.
You Can Because You Can:
If it’s hard to fathom life without plastic shopping bags. Consider this: according to Waste Management Northwest. Plastic supermarket bags first appeared in stores in 1977. Thousands of years ago, generations of people got by just fine carrying. Their purchases home in their bags and you can, too! The choice between plastic bags and reusable ones is obvious.
