Entry bubble Paper or Plastic? Cloth or Cardboard?

By: Joanne | March 25, 2008 | Category: Home and Family

paper grocery bags

The next time you’re at the grocery store stocking up on fruits and veggies, consider the question, paper or plastic? Shopping bags, especially the plastic ones are handed to us almost every time we buy something. We’re so used to it that we don’t even think about it any more, but we should.

A friend recently sent me a link to an eye-opening multimedia presentation on the topic of grocery bags. I’m not going to throw a mountain of data at you because when you take a moment to think about it, you already know that it takes a tremendous amount of resources to even produce that bag you take for granted at the store. We’re either cutting down trees or importing fossil fuels to make these things and that’s just the beginning. There’s a costly manufacturing and shipping process and the truth is, that most of them go from our hands directly into the landfill.

I’ve been making a gradual transition to using cloth bags. Every now and again I spend a couple of bucks on a reusable cotton bag. They’re easy to find – your grocery store probably sells them. If I’m not buying much, I ask for no bag at all (a request that has earned me many strange looks from cashiers!) or I keep my handy cotton bags in the car and bring them into the store. You also might want to use a cardboard box – they’re reusable, recyclable, and if your store doesn’t already offer the option, you probably only have to ask because they’ve got lots of them in the back of the store destined for the dumpster. So remember it’s really only a small change of habit to reduce, reuse or recycle that paper or plastic bag!

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Entry bubble America Recycles Day

By: Nancy | November 15, 2007 | Category: General

In honor of this being the 10th annual America Recycles Day, I wanted to dedicate this blog entry to my favorite recycler, Gov Gab's editor, Becky.

When most people start a job, their initial questions include "Where's the restroom?" and "What time is lunch?" Two years ago, Becky's first questions were along the lines of "Does this office recycle envelopes with windows in them?" and "Whom do I call about proper disposal of this burned out fluorescent light bulb?" Mmmmmm...I dunno. Let me find out. But in the meantime, the ladies room is down the hall on the left and lunch is at noon.

Though we appear to be kind of an Oscar and Felix pairing, the slightly sloppy Nancy and the fairly fastidious Becky have more in common than you'd think. In addition to a shared interest in public radio shows like This American Life and anything involving chocolate, we're both into recycling.

Becky may live a little more of an 'evolved' recycling lifestyle than I do. But I can still rinse a mayo jar and flatten out a cracker box with the best of them. And because my county has curbside, commingled recycling pick ups that allow me to put cardboard, paper, glass and certain plastics all in the same bin, there's no excuse for me not to recycle.

I've become a good kid about things that shouldn't be put in the trash or regular recycling bin, too.  Electronics, batteries and gunky liquids like used oil and paint require special handling. It's tempting to bury that stuff in the bottom of a bag of regular trash, but if we don't dispose of those things separately, their chemicals could end up in the water supply and I'd really rather not bathe in battery acid.

Reusing things like water bottles and shopping bags is another recycling habit that Becky and I share. It's kind of fun to tote a department store bag to the lunch table and then rattle coworkers by pulling out a soda bottle (or in Midwesterner Becky's case, a pop bottle), refilled with milk. We'll eventually recycle those bottles and bags that we're reusing. But giving things like plastic bottles another life before they hit the blue bin means that we're using fewer new containers, which saves us money and saves energy resources since fewer new bottles will have to be manufactured, filled and shipped to stores.

Get on the recycling bandwagon with us! If you're not sure how your area handles recycling, just type the name of your town or county into USA.gov's search box along with the word 'recycling,' and if your locality has a website, like Montgomery County, Maryland's entertaining blog, Talkin' Trash, you'll find it on USA.gov.

Happy America Recycles Day to you, and to Becky. Maybe I'll save this post and use it again this time next year…

 

| Comments [2] | envelope Email This Entry | Tags: maryland   nancy   plastic   recycling   water