More Plastic Bags!!

So, hopefully you showed up at your grocery store this weekend with your cloth bags, or at least the intention of using paper bags. You get your non-salmonella tomatoes and realize, "Oh no, the only bags to put these in are plastic!" What do you do now? Well, again this is about reduction, so there are a few things you can try.

1) You can put things that won't bruise easily (like bananas, avocados, etc) in your basket loosely (i.e. no bag). This will help reduce the number of bags you use, after all everything is going into a larger bag anyways when you go through check out. Plus, some of your other items that are bunched together, like tomatoes, could also be carefully placed in your basket without a bag as well.

2) OK, again this is where I point you to an item you can purchase. There are produce bags that exist that are extremely lightweight to help you replace those little plastic produce bags. Google "cloth produce bags" to see a variety of bags available for sale. If you are crafty, you can make your own using a light-weight muslin and a cotton drawstring. If you don't know how to sew, making a bag is about the easiest way you could start. Typically these bags come in two sizes, one for leafy vegetables and one for smaller items. I would, however, like to point out that you may want to avoid washing these in hot water since they tend to shrink, and avoid bleach.

I hope this gives you one more step that you can take towards reducing your plastic bag use. There are other ways that I may point out here and there, but they tend to fall under other categories that I will touch on at a later time.

BTW, you can now sign up for email updates of this blog. Just fill in the email box at the top right corner of this page.