For years I’ve reused the plastic bags we bring our groceries home in. They line our office trashcans and we (most importantly) use them to collect kitty poop from the litter box. This is all fine and well, except, while I’ve always known it takes about a billion years for these handy bags to decompose, I figured it was OK because they were being used twice! Wow. Twice? I should get a frickin’ medal or something.
Ok, so what’s the alternative? Until recently, there wasn’t one. It always bothered me that I was sending these nasty bags out into the dumps after only two uses, but I couldn’t think of what else to do. Recently, AJB’s assistant told me of how she and her boyfriend went on a trash collecting trip in the LA River. She told me that the number one item they picked up was plastic bags and I was horrified. When I asked her what she used to collect cat poop, she told me about biodegradable bags. Hazzah! Duh. Why didn’t I think of that? I’ll admit, even the cleverest of eco-friendly solutions slips by me. I’m no Ed Begley Jr. after all and I figure it’s a journey. No one is born eco-friendly…well, not in this society anyway. Maybe indigenous peoples of forests or something. Then again, they have Coca Cola now. I digress, we have to un-learn what we have been learned and even the most dedicated eco-warriors occasionally miss one.
Over the last decade or so I’ve watched as more and more amazing green products become available on the consumer market. It’s only really been the last 2 years that the world is making a major shift and there is now such as thing as biodegradable plastic bags that decompose and don’t hurt the environment. Up until recently, they just weren’t readily available. Now they are and I couldn’t be happier.
So here it goes, we’re breaking our dependence completely on plastic bags. I will inform my husband as he’s really the only person who brings them home anymore. Alright, so sometimes I forget to take a bag to the store. It doesn’t happen often.
If you’re interested in seeing what I use to bring home my groceries in, check out this 2007 post. They’re awesome and built to last! You can buy biodegradable bags here. I bought 50, which ended up being 27 cents per bag. Now, where’s my medal?
