By Michael Smith (Veshengro)
If you still get plastic bags every time you go to the grocery store then, I am sorry, you really don't care about people or the Planet.
While it may be that the plastic bags aren't really made from virgin oil – they are made from naphthalene, a byproduct of petroleum refining – they are still an environmental problem. They are a hazard, in fact, to marine life and they also do not look very nice festooning trees and hedgerows.
In some countries of Europe they have, now, finally, introduced what could be called a plastic bag tax in that you now are being charged a certain amount for each and every bag. This is done in an attempt for you, the consumer, to bring your own bags.
In the UK this has not – as yet – happened and only individual store chains, such as Lidl, make it a rule to charge for bags, and in some stores you have to watch that people don't bag it into plastic before you, as a responsible shopper, can even say “no bag, please.”
It also seems that some stores don't understand that you don't, actually, want one of their carriers and that you do, in fact, bring your own bags.
Our mothers and grandmothers, when they went to the stores, or when they sent one of us kids, didn't have the stuff put in plastic – those bags didn't exist then – but they took along – or had us take them if it was us kids who were sent off to fetch something from the stores - special shopping bags made from a variety of materials, from leather to American cloth and everything in between.
The reusable shopping bag never went away only people no longer used them and the same is true for the only string bag, the net. But they are back and better still sop are many different instructions of how to make your own reusable shopping bags.
Fair enough, you can go and buy one. There are enough different kinds on the markes, from Envirosax (the probably first one), over the Onya Bags, to Chico Bags, and others. However, morsbags.com offers you great instructions of how to make your own reusable shoppers from, say, waste curtain fabric or what have you. In addition to that there are many places that now give you, on trade fairs and such, reusable shoppers free, and often not just made from non-woven polypropylene but even from cotton or jute.
On the other hand, as said, there are many ways of making your own, and feed sacks and other materials, can be recycled very well into your own reusable shopping bags and totes. No need for plastic one way bags.
Do something for yourself and the environment; make and take your own reusable shopping bags.
© 2011
