Giving up plastic grocery bags
 

I have been pretty much plastic bag free for four months. I get miffed with myself when I forget to bring my totes to the stores. I am not a raging environmentalist, but as a grocery shopper who hits multiple stores and farmers' markets a week (often more than two purveyors/day) I have long despised those flimsy plastic bags and have readily embraced the trend to reuse sturdy shopping totes. If nothing else, they are so much more practical.

This link might be of interest

I've been using BlueQ bags.

Yeah, we've been working on it, but I too tend to forget the tote when I'm running out the door to grab something.

I use a Chico bag because it fits in my pocket. http://store.chicobag.com/ So no matter where I go, I have a bag. I also have a basket for my bicycle and a backpack that I use to carry groceries quite a bit. When we do our big shopping trip, we have some canvas bags that we use.

When I was younger and carless, I had several canvas totes that I took grocery shopping. Not only were they much more sturdy for the walk home, but the grocery store gave a 10 cent discount for every bag saved (hey...I was poor and every penny counted).

I keep meaning to buy some new ones to replace the ones I used to have, but I always forget. I need to post a sticky note on my monitor to remind me.

then what will i use to line the bins?

I use them for far too many other things afterwards to give them up

Yeah, I probably need to get off my lazy butt and get some reusable shopping bags. It's just a matter of inertia.

fwiw, i've done a pretty decent job of recycling my used ones. plus i'll always need some on hand to pick up after the dog.

A lot of stores are carrying the reusable ones in the checkout isle. Smart of them.

However, they're always branded by the grocery store in question. Does anyone else feel funny bringing 'differently branded' bags?

I wouldn't want to give them up completely - I use them to line the cans in the bathroom and bedroom. However, I could probably use the canvas totes 3/4 of the time and have enough plastic ones left to use throughout the month. Since I throw a lot of them away (I can't find a store that recycles them in my area), it would be better for me to get canvas totes. But give them up completely? Not gonna happen.

Yeah, I've seen plenty of opportunities for buying reusable grocery bags. Like I said, it's just laziness on my part.

The trouble would definitely be using differently branded bags at various grocery stories. I tend to not go to just one grocery store, as I like the farmer's market for produce, but the walmart grocery store for other goods for the best price. I'd probably feel pretty weird for using different store brand grocery bags... maybe just buy one or two from each store and use them all in each trip no matter what store you're at? 'cause then at least you're using a bag from the store you're visiting.

We use the plastic grocery bags for cleaning the kitty litter boxes and recycle the rest. I don't see us giving them up.

If you're doing anything but walking to those stores twice a day, you're doing way more harm burning that much gas that could be avoided by better planning than you are doing good by not using bags.

Food for thought.

For the supermarket, I use reuseable totes. They hold more than store bags, asre sturdier, I get 2c off each one I bring and they have shoulder handles.
We do get plastic bags from other stores and those line the wastebasket in the bathroom and use as garbage bags in the car. I also use them at artshows to wrap what people purchase.
What bothers me about these bags is, drive along route 440 in Staten Island, where the Arthur Kill landfill is and the trees and bushes along the road look like they grow plastic bags for harvesting. Pretty sad.
I'd prefer paper bags if stores offered them but no one does anymore.

We have a bunch of canvas and nylon bags that we use at the grocery. Occasionally, we collect a few plastic bags when we forget our nylon/canvas bags. They come in handy when scooping dog poop.

Nope. We have ones from both major local supermarket chains and use them at either one, or the myriad selection of smaller shops we use.

I like the plastic bags. They're perfect for throwing some lunch in to take to work. I also like to use them for scraps. The dumpsters in my apartment complex are way the hell on the other side, so garbage gets taken out about once a week. I don't like to leave any food scraps in there because gnats show up overnight, so I toss any meat scraps in one of the plastic bags and freeze them until garbage day.

We bought some strong plastic bags from IKEA and use those. They hold a lot more than the plastic bags. As for garbage bags, we buy them.

I couldn't give them up for all the reasons already mentioned.

Move to a city with a Trader Joe's. Great food, great prices (on most things), and paper bags are the de facto standard.

When did paper bags get phased out though? Can't you still ask for it at most grocery stores?

Didn't we all switch to plastic to save the trees?

And we are switching to reusable to save the oil.

You can flip the bags inside out if you are concerned about the store advertisement of the outside.

I use one to reduce the amount of the plastics ones I have in my home. I need a few to use for trash, but I don't need one at every store. The problem around here is that hardly anyone else uses them and the store workers are in the routine of using the plastic ones.

We have stiff hand baskets for produce, a cooler grocery bag that zips up but folds small and also purchased several bags from Targt that zip into their own pouch. I now have a few in the glove box as well as in a bag for grocery shopping. We also dropped plastic for storing at home and use the Ball and Mason canning jars for refrig storeage.

I have quite a few that I bought from Kroger...only 99 cents, and they're way sturdier than the plastic bags. Also, you get a discount...only five cents per bag, but still... that's kinda nice of them :)

I'd like to buy some of these, but they're $21.99.... guess I'll stick to the 99 centers.

oooh, I love those at cafepress, but yes they are expensive. I ordered some a few months ago like the ones they sell at the grocery store sans store logo and I love them! I get so upset when I forget them at home so I have started trying to leave them in the car, not the kitchen. When I do forget them, it is ok since we still use the others to clean up after the dogs.

I try avoiding a bag at all if I can. Two items, do I really need a bag for that? I really don't care for plastic bags, how items get all jumbled inside them, not to mention environmental factors. I always choose paper over plastic but have not gone so far as to bring my own faithfully to the store. Either way, I will at least reuse the bags that I end up taking home, trash liners, bags for placing my recycling in etc.

I need to buy more reusable bags and then actually keep them in the vehicle. I only have one, and the kids have decided it is a tote bag.

FYI, I work at a grocery store. The number of people bringing in their own bags grows every day. It's good to see. Some people have two with our logo, and several with competitors' logos. Nobody cares! Some of us do that ourselves, because our competitors have prettier bags. :D

I always used a backpack when living in NYC because I could ride my bike instead of lugging all of that heavy stuff on foot for 6 blocks. These days I have a really big sturdy bag from some French store called "ED" (a hand-me-down) and a normal paper-bag-sized Trader Joe's bag that I bought for a dollar. I fold them up neatly and they live where the excess of plastic used to come spilling out from. Then when I get a lot of groceries (maybe once a month or so) they put the overflow in some new bags for me to take home to use for recycling and lining the bathroom trashcan. That is usually plenty for one person to get by on. Plus, I've discovered that most stores give you some kind of little reward for bringing your own bags - a lot of them give a 5 cent discount or something on that order and TJ's gives you an entry into their weekly raffle for free groceries. Nobody ever cares or notices that the bags don't match the store I'm in.

As I'm finding with a lot of other things in life, the less I worry about what people might think or how I'll work out what I'm supposed to do when I change how I do things, the more things seem to work out on their own and the more desire I feel to go out and try new things. The self-confidence also builds up from the most unexpected things, like being able to go to a store with my own bag and helping the cashier bag the groceries. Somehow, that makes me feel really able and strips me of shyness and awkwardness I might otherwise feel standing there getting waited on the usual way, complete with disposable bags full of my food being piled into the cart.

As a person who's never found environmentalism to be doing any favors for the earth and the creatures that live on it, I have to say that this practice just makes sense. Actually, a lot of the things environmentalists say make sense, only it's hard to see it through all of that loud, obnoxious activist-speak. Why not do things like this because they are smart, efficient ways of doing things?

Something new I've adopted is reusing my ziplocks and other plastic bags that come as packaging. Other than the stuff that gets really messy or unsanitary (like for meat or sticky things), one little ziplock can go a long way - especially if you're the type to pack the same kind of lunch every day. I use the same two bags for the chips and berries I bring to work with me and usually they last 2-3 weeks before I get something messy on them or they tear. Sometimes they just fill with two many crumbs of different things and I toss them. Still, for one bag? That's pretty good. There are also all of those resealable or tie-able plastic bags you get for schredded cheese, loaves of bread, tortillas, etc. I hang onto those and use them as lunch bags instead of the grocery bags because they're more appropriately sized and I'm keeping them out of the landfill for another day. I imagine they'd be good for kitty litter and stuff like that, too. Lining the trash, though, I think is still a job for the plastic grocery bags. They're good at it. Plus, you don't have to feel so bad about that anymore anyway: some clever kid in Canada figured out how to make them degrade faster!


In any case, I like this reusable bag idea more for the effects of reducing demand for production. People make and keep too much stuff and it crowds out our lives.