My family are avid shoppers at Whole Foods and Trader Joes in the Minnesota Twin Cities. There is a culture of organic food shopping and environmental consciousness that pervades the psyche of the average middle class twin city dweller. Prius owners and professional bike riders navigate the streets. My parents have joined the ranks, by the foods they choose to eat and where they shop. Every time I come home I open the closet in our kitchen to find a new collection of reusable bags. Cheerful Trader Joes bags greet me on the floor of the closet. Stoic whole foods hang from the hooks. However, behind these beautiful bags sit containers full of white plastic shopping bags, collected since the time I left home. Behind those bags and on the top shelf of the closet lay stacks of paper bags; so what are the reusable bags for I often ask myself when I get home.
Personally when I go to a store providing those cheap reusable bags I know I can’t really afford them, so thinking I am environmentally savvy, I opt for the paper bag. Little did I know that it really did not make any difference. At reusablebags.com they showed a comparison between paper and plastic bags. In the article they exclaimed that Paper bags have just as much or more of a negative impact on the environment as plastic bags. They presented the idea that paper bags from cutting down trees and that the plants that make them let off a lot of toxic gas. It also takes a lot more energy to make them. In another article they discussed that if we could turn away from the using plastic bags we would then be able to lessen our dependence on foreign oil. This is because plastic bags are made up of polyethylene which is a thermoplastic made from oil. I am sure that there is a lot that goes into the production of a canvas bag but if I can use one or two reusable bags instead of many plastic or paper bags at various stores, I think I can lesson my personal carbon footprint on this planet.
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