by Jeffrey Wright

Created on: September 20, 2009   Last Updated: September 21, 2009

You see them hanging in any grocery store these days, but perhaps you passed them by. They are helpful, strong and the best part, you can reuse them over and over again. What are we talking about? Reusable shopping bags!

Now many have not yet discovered the value of switching from unsustainable plastic bags that the grocery stores provide, to bags that they can bring with them and not have to worry about collecting plastic bags in their home. So what exactly are the benefits of these reusable bags?

Well for one thing plastic is one hundred percent not a renewable resource. Plastic as a whole is a petroleum product, in fact one that consumes eleven million barrels of oil each year to provide the US with this so called convenience. Worse yet, plastic are not a bio-degradable product. There is two ways things degrade. The first we know as bio degradation. In this things that were made from organic material break down into their base parts and become useable by the planet again. Not so with plastic bags. Instead of bio-degrading they photo-degrade. This means that they rely on sunlight and other things as well to break down. Unlike bio-degrading, however an item, such as plastic, will break down, but not back into the oil that they were made from. They simply break down into smaller pieces of plastic. The sad truth is, animals have mistaken these plastic bits for food and have died from consuming them, both land and sea faring creatures alike.

But yet, we still use them. Why? Again it all boils down to convenience and money. People find having to remember to bring their reusable bags with them to be an inconvenience. There are ways to remember such as hanging them by your front door or in your mud room if you have one. Keeping them in a highly noticeable place like hanging in your pantry, if you have one. Even better yet, keep them in your car, perhaps in your back seat where you will see them every time you look back there. Or if you tend to go by yourself, keep them in your front seat next to you and just grab them as you go.

The other thing that people can't get past is the fact that reusable bags cost money. For instance Walmart sells reusable bags for anywhere between fifty cents to two dollars. They think that its inconvenient to them to buy bags when they can just get plastic bags for free. This is actually self defeating reasoning. In actuality they are already paying for plastic bags anytime they make a purchase. Plastic bags cost businesses a lot of money each year. In fact for Walmart, where I work, the regular plastic bags on the carousels cost three and a half cents apiece. The business is not going to lose their money to that so they factor in the price of their cost for plastic bags with anything and everything they sell. And the interesting thing is, if you use reusable bags you lessen how many bags that the business has to order each year and you will actually help lower the prices at the checkout!

So as you can see you have every reason to make the switch. Help the environment, help the prices and stop using plastic bags and use highly reusables.

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