Green Tip Tuesday - Shopping Bags

Reusable shopping bags are everywhere!  Look near the checkout counter of almost any store and there will be a shopping bag for sale.  It used to be that I would get paper bags and bring them with me to the grocery store.  I would usually get about a year's worth of use out of a paper bag before it was too thin to be reliably used again.  Now, the options for reusuable bags are endless.  Here are some of my favorites:

My great-grandmother carried a string bag with her when she walked to the neighborhood market to buy Lorna Doone cookies.  I remember walking with her, though I couldn't have been more than 4 years old, because it was the first time I had ever walked to the grocery store and because she let me choose the cookies.  String bags are nice because they can be stuffed in your coat pocket, purse, or another bag and they don't take up much room.  Warning: small items like lipsticks can sometimes slip out of string bags (I learned this the hard way after losing my brand new $4.99 Burt's Bees Lip Shimmer).

This bag from target is a classic.  Easily found at every Target checkout, inexpensive, sturdy, and you get to go to Target to pick it up -- what could be better?  (Mmmmm, Target...)

A good example of the very stylish bags you can find nowadays.  Reusable bags don't have to have store logos, be plastic, or even be big.  Any bag is a good candidate, as long as it has sturdy handles, strong seams, and you'll remember to carry it.  I like these bags because they are so cute to carry that you don't feel like it's a chore being environmentally responsible.

This is the bag I carry in my purse.  I am great at remembering to bring my bags to the grocery store, but I was always forgetting to bring bags to every other store so I was forever growing my collection of plastic bags.  Once I found this canvas bag that zips up into a small carrying case ($10 Whole Foods Market), I slipped it in my purse and now I always have a reusable bag with me.  Bonus: the $10 cost is donated to feeding children in need.

I don't always have a reusable bag with me.  I try.  I succeed about 90% of the time.  I find it is actually easier for me to find things quickly because my bags are different and I can think "oh I remember putting that in my flowered bag" as opposed to sifting through a mountain of plastic-look-alikes.  I like the sturdiness of my bags.  I like reducing my dependance on petroleum whilst reducing waste.  Look around the house, chances are good you have all the reusable shopping bags you need without spending a penny.  Tuck one in your purse or in the pocket in your car door.

Breathe easy, you're part of the solution, not the problem.