Reduce the Harm:
Switch to Reusable Shopping Bags
 Switching from carrying your groceries home in plastic to reusable cloth bags is an easy way to make a big reduction on your ecological footprint. Consider the following:
- An average American discards 9 shopping bags per week or 468 per year.
- It took about 1.3 pounds of CO2 release to manufacture the bags for 1 week or 68 pounds per year.
- Using ONE reusable shopping bag reduces your plastic bag consumption by 2 per week or 104 per year.
Other benefits to consider:
- Plastics are not biodegradable. They kill over 100,000 large animals yearly. "For every seven pounds of matter skimmed and consumed by humpback and gray whales, six pounds are actually plastics, styrofoam, and other non-edible, man-made debris." Berkeley Energy Office
- Plastic bags are manufactured by using petroleum which is a nonrenewable resource.
- Using paper bags is environmentally more damaging than using plastics because of the energy used and toxic pollution released during their manufacturing. Paper is not the answer!
- About 11,600 "free" plastic bags are given out in the United States per second and more than 95% of them will end up being discarded into landfills or "blow away."
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