Eco-Friendly Products

Using reusable grocery bags is an extremely simple way that each individual can do their part to help preserve our environment, reduce waste and the consumption of dwindling fossil fuels. The unfortunate fact is that it's a strategy that way too few of us are using. So here we will list 10 top reasons for using reusable bags, and hope that maybe you will rethink your choices the next time you go shopping or to the grocery store.

Although there are no completely reliable numbers, an estimated 500 billion to 1 trillion plastic bags are consumed each year. 380 billion of those are consumed in the US alone. While some of these bags are reused or recycled, the vast majority are not, and become part of our waste and landfills, or find their way to our streams, rivers and oceans.

Thousands of sea turtles, whales, birds and other wildlife die each year from ingesting plastic bags. They mistake them for food, ingest the bags, the bags become lodged in their intestines, preventing the animals from digesting other food, and causing slow and agonizing death. Plastic bags take years to break down in the environment, and so can go on leaching toxins into the soil and water, potentially killing wildlife many times over.

Reusable bags help to decrease the number of plastic and disposable bags consumed, and so help to decrease the number that are disposed of as waste, or end up as litter or harmful components of our soil, waterways or food chain.

So, here are 10 top reasons for using reusable shopping bags, rather than paper or plastic:

1.    Plastic bags take up to 1000 years to decompose
2.    Plastic bags are not-biodegradable. They photodegrade, releasing toxins into the environment.
3.    While plastic bags are reused, only 1% of plastic bags are recycled worldwide, largely due to the cost involved in the process.
4.    More than 46,000 pieces of plastic are contaminating each square mile of the world's oceans
5.    It takes 12 million barrels of oil to produce the number of plastic bags used in the United States each year.
6.    Each year the United States consumes 10 billion paper grocery bags, requiring the harvest of 14 million trees.
7.    The pulp and paper industry is the 2nd largest industrial user of energy in the U.S.
8.    Plastic bags make up 10% of coastal debris along US shores.
9.    Over 100,000 sea turtles and 1 million birds die each year from ingesting plastic bags.
10.    For the lifetime of each high quality reusable bag you use, 1,000 plastic bags can potentially be eliminated.

(Sources: United States Environmental Protection Agency, Organic Trade Association, Australian Government, Department of the Environment and Heritage)

If you've never considered using reusable bags, it's time to reconsider. If you've never really thought about doing it, there's no time like the present to start. Using reusable bags is not hard, it's not inconvenient, it just takes a little forethought. But the potential benefits of your decision to our environment will be long-lasting and sure.