- Reusable, washable, light mesh bags are great for produce, and are available at many home décor and kitchen stores. Ask your greengrocer to stock them, or reuse mesh bags from onions, carrots or other produce.
- And for those plastic bags that do wind up in our hands – use and reuse as many times as you can! After all, every time we re-use something, we effectively halve its footprint again.
- You may wish to re-use plastic bags to carry meat, or allocate a regularly washed reusable bag for use with meat and egg products.
- Hang washed bags to dry by using a hanger and clothespins. Quick and easy!
Plastic Bag Reduction Tips
Easy tricks to kick the plastic bag habit
- After unpacking your goods, put your reusable bags right back in your vehicle or bundle buggy; hang them on a coat rack, in a closet near your door, or how about right on the door knob?
- Carry a couple of those nifty fold-up style bags in your purse, briefcase, glove box or backpack.
- Ask your kids to help you remember!
Reduce!
Say “no thanks” to any bag if you can manage without it.- Have pets and can't imagine going for a walk without your plastic bags? Think again! For your pet's waste, consider using a homemade 'scooper', made from cutting a scoop shape from a plastic bottle. This gives the bottle a second life and eliminates the need for plastic bags. Collect the waste, then flush it away in your toilet. Our septic and sewer systems are meant to handle this kind of waste…our landfills are not. Backyard pet waste composters also provide a planet-friendlier option to plastic bags of poo in your garbage.
- What do I put my garbage in?
More and more people these days are realizing that you don't need to use any bags in your garbage pail, especially if you separate your garbage into dry and wet. This may require you to clean your garbage pail a little more often but this can work for most people. Otherwise, you can try lining your garbage pail and only replace the garbage liner every so often. No matter what you find that works for you, your best bet is to try to reduce the amount of garbage that you produce. That not only keeps plastic bags out of the landfill but wasted packaging and unnecessary garbage too.
Reuse!
Gillian Deacon's book, Green for Life
10 Shopping Tips
From Gillian Deacon, the author of Green For Life, here are 10 great shopping tips
Paper or Plastic...
Recycle?
This should always be Plan C (after reducing and reusing) but, in truth, this may not even be an option.
- The ability to recycle plastic bags varies across the country. In some cities, such as Edmonton, Montreal and Halifax, plastic bags can be recycled through the blue bin program. Calgary began recycling the city’s plastic bags in 2003 and, in one year alone, they collected 135 tonnes of plastic bags. That's equivalent to the weight of about 21 male African elephants! If you are unsure about whether you can recycle your plastic bags, check your local municipality's waste management website for more info.
- When plastic bags are recycled, they become a variety of other plastic products, such as plastic lumber, drainage pipe and, of course, new plastic bags. But there's good reason to reduce plastics overall. Read about their impact on our oceans.