Today at Wegmans grocery store here in Rochester, New York; I noticed the promotion of reusable grocery bags. By being a Wegmans Shopper Club Member, the bags were offered for .99 cents a piece. Rumor has it that these plastic bags, that are so freely given away when you purchase groceries, are tallying numbers into the billions. This mass consumption of plastic bags is hurting our environment as a whole; from killing animals that believe it is food instead of waste and the vast amount of oil used to produce the bags.
The idea is to be apart of the solution. By purchasing these reusable bags your one step closer to a cleaner environment for our future generations. Let me add that these bags can hold a mass amount of weight and there is no need to have 25 bags to carry everything. I had $50 worth of groceries, which include jugs of water, cranberry juice, and soda, and carrying it was a breeze. It evens out the weight of the groceries without that ripping feeling you get with plastic.
Below are a few facts on how this is impacting our environment.

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photo by: bill bridges

  Information provided by: http://www.reusuablebags.com/

  • Each year, an estimated 500 billion to 1 trillion plastic bags are consumed worldwide. That comes out to over one million per minute. Billions end up as litter each year.
  • According to The Wall Street Journal, the U.S. goes through 100 billion plastic shopping bags annually. (Estimated cost to retailers is $4 billion)
  • In 2001, Ireland consumed 1.2 billion plastic bags, or 316 per person. An extremely successful plastic bag consumption tax, or PlasTax, introduced in 2002 reduced consumption by 90%. Approximately 18,000,000 liters of oil have been saved due to this reduced production. Governments around the world are considering implementing similar measures.