  1 Paper or plastic? Neither! Using durable cloth bags to save the planet One of the pillars of the environmental movement is reducing consumption, so it’s fitting that you can reduce consumption of something that helps bring home your consumables. We’re talking bags – reusable cloth bags, as opposed to the paper or plastic bags you’ll find at practically every store, from the supermarket to the mall. Putting your purchases in a cloth bag instead of paper or plastic cuts down on the oil used in plastic bag production, trees cut down for paper bags and the huge volume of trash they both create when thrown away. And let’s be honest: using cloth bags helps you avoid stuffing the countless plastic bags you can’t bear to throw away into every empty cupboard nook and closet cranny. Sure, it can be a hassle to remember your cloth bags every time you go shopping, but the alternative is contributing to the estimated 100 billion plastic bags used in the United States each year, which require an estimated 12 million barrels of oil to produce. Only about one to three percent of those bags are recycled; the rest end up elsewhere — in landfills, tangled in trees and fences or floating out on the open ocean. Research suggests those plastic bags take 1,000 years to biodegrade, presenting a choking hazard to animals and making environments into eyesores. Think paper is better? Think again. It takes up to four times as much energy to produce a paper bag as a plastic bag and almost 100 times as much energy to recycle. It also includes the use of millions of gallons of toxic chemicals and as many as 14 million trees each year to produce enough paper bags for the United States. Considering all of that, why not grab a handful of durable cloth bags and let the stores keep their paper and plastic? –Patrick Yeagle |
