It is time for BYOB! Yes, bring your own shopping bag! As we continue our path throughout a eventful 2010, it’s crazy to think about how much shopping we traditionally carry out here in America and world-wide. Whether it be numerous visits into the grocery store as we keep our kitchen’s stocked for superb meals and tasty treats or those sometimes dreaded (yet skillful) "6 bags on each arm" walks through the local mall, it all adds up to so much preventable garbage. One of the most blatant examples of this waste is disposable shopping bags. An estimated 100 billion plastic shopping bags are consumed each year in the USA, according to the Wall-Street Journal. Most plastic bags wind up in landfills and the rest often end up in rivers, ponds, lakes, streams or in the sea, where animals can ingest or become tangled in them. Considering the number of shopping bags that are consumed and wasted each year, the time is now to spread the word about the positive benefits of eco-friendly reusable grocery bags. After all, the majority of us want to give back to our families, friends and communities as often as possible. Adopting a BYOB strategy in our individual shopping habits is a straightforward way to do exactly that. If we could elevate consciousness presently, the positive outcome for our environment is incalculable for 2010 and well into the future. Quite a few cities have already made gradual but momentous advancement in promoting the usage of eco friendly bags in recent years. Motivating consumers with plastic and paper bag bans, discounts at the register for reusable bag usage and tax motivations are a few to speak of. Right here in America, the San Jose City Council recently passed one of the nation’s strictest bans on plastic and paper shopping bags. It is a big victory for the Bay Area, that has 1 million plastic bags per year accumulating in and along the San Francisco Bay. San Jose becomes the newest bay area town to endorse some type of ban on disposable shopping bags; others comprise of San Francisco and Palo Alto. Tracy Seipel of the San Jose Mercury News reported that it was actually ONE man who truly jump-started the ban, another impressive example of the power of one person. Here’s a an excerpt: "While visiting his sister-in-law in Taipei, (Kansen) Chu (elected to San Jose city council in 2007) went grocery shopping and was surprised to get charged for plastic grocery bags. The next day, he brought his own cloth bags back to the store. "I guess the question," said Chu, "was, ‘Why not San Jose?’ " He began a conversation with the city’s environmental services staff, which later moved to council committee discussions. Save the Bay’s 4th yearly report on the most garbage-strewn places in the area further demonstrates the need for BYOB. The 50-year-old environmental advocacy group focused on 10 specific bay-area sites where approximately 15,000 plastic bags were recovered in a single day last year in their account. Here’s an excerpt of an article in the San Francisco Chronicle by Kelly Zito. According to (Save the Bay’s) research, Californians use about 19 billion plastic bags each year, 3.8 million in the Bay Area. The average use time for the bags - made using about 12 million barrels of oil each year in the United States - is about 12 minutes. In addition to the hundreds of years it can take for a plastic bag to decompose in a landfill, the bags also force downtime when fed into traditional recycling equipment. Typically, the bags get wound into conveyor belts or gears and must be cut out by hand. Ten US cities have banned plastic bags so far, five within the past year. Even Mexico City enacted a ban on plastic shopping bags, which went into effect in August. The city of 20 million currently faces the realities of effective enforcement, which is not easy when the Mexico City Chamber of Commerce estimates there are actually 35,000 vendors in Mexico City’s downtown area alone. Bans on plastic bags aren’t really the only valuable way to cut back harmful waste the result of disposable bags. PlasTaxes, which tax customers at the register for using plastic bags when shopping, had been first launched by the Irish. John Roach of National Geographic reported in 2008 about the worldwide momentum that’s been building from the time when Ireland instilled a PlasTax in 2003. The Irish confirmed they could cut down plastic bag utilization by 90% or more. Momentum is growing internationally, particularly in America. From Washington, DC to Edmonds, WA to North Pole, AK, communities and governments are spurring an international trend to reduce the damaging environmental effects of disposable shopping bags. In the great state of Hawaii, the governing body is at this time considering a bill to ban single-use plastic bags (SUP), or to establish a small fee make use of SUP bags. Even key retail stores like Target and CVS are taking action by enacting special discounts at the register for customers who decide to BYOB or just carry-out their stuff without a bag. For those naysayers, it’s opportune to discount recent momentum in reducing disposable bag waste. But to a few, the wide-spread adoption of eco-friendly recycled bags is inevitable. Examine the way smoking is becoming taboo in America. Indoor smoking bans have caught on like wild-fire. In the same way, who's to say the usage of disposable bags won’t become taboo at some point in the (hopefully near) future? The use of eco-friendly recycled grocery bags is certainly gaining steam. Our individual choices to carry our recycled shopping bags can go a great deal farther than we think. That’s what BYOB is all about. Obviously, plastic and paper bags ought to be recycled and it’s crucial to take into account most huge retailers including Albertsons and Wal-Mart will recycle plastic bags for you (just have to bring them your accumulated stash). That being said, a BYOB shopping strategy can make your life a lot easier because there isn't a need to accumulate that cabinet filled with plastic bags or figure out what and when to handle it. Keeping a few eco bags in your car or backpack is a good way to ensure you possess them when needed. So give back this year by remembering to BYOB! No matter whether it be in a convenience store, the shopping mall, or while grocery shopping, we can make a change for our environment and help elevate knowledge one transaction at a time. For the struggle to eradicate disposable shopping bag waste, 2010 is our moment.
Article Source: http://www.articlecontentprovider.com/articlesubmit
This current event news story covers recent trends and transition towards the use of reusable shopping bags. What major retailers and governments are doing to motivate people to go reusable and reward them for doing so.
Albert Jefferson has been an educated author going over environmental and sustainability concerns in addition to spreading the ideal to companies to use recycled grocery bags and reusable shopping bags to advertise both their mark and awareness for this environment.
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