tip_of_month
Tip of the Month - June 2008
As published in the Lafayette Today newspaper.
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It may seem like a trivial thing, but those "free" plastic bags we get at the grocers, department stores and restaurants are actually contributing to a world wide pandemic of plastics waste. Less than 5% of the 19 billion plastic grocery and merchandise bags used annually in the State of California are recycled. That means that nearly 600 bags per second, or over 50 million per day, are discarded in California. All of these are destined either for the landfill or our marine environment and they don’t break down. Virtually every bit of plastic ever produced on earth still exists today. Plastic bags cause so many environmental problems that they have been banned in China starting this month.

plastic-bag-bin
One solution is to recycle your plastic bags. A new California law AB 2449, which went into effect in 2007, requires all California grocery stores to take back and recycle plastic grocery bags. The bill also requires retailers to provide consumers with a bag reuse opportunity, to implement a public education program, and to label plastic bags 'Please Return to a Participating Store for Recycling.' You can help by returning clean, dry, empty plastic bags to recycling drop off centers or retailers that provide designated plastic bag recycling bins. Most plastic bags are recycled into composite lumber but can also be reprocessed into small pellets, or post consumer resin, which can be utilized for new bags, pallets, containers, crates, and pipe.

A much better solution is to stop using disposable bags altogether and instead use reusable bags. Every single serious environmental impact review ever commissioned on bags has shown that reusable bags are, by far, the greenest solution. Consider this:
  • Whereas the average reusable bag consumer uses only 4 bags per year, the average disposable bag user consumes over 700 bags a year.
  • One reusable bag only requires only a bit more energy to produce than one disposable bag.
  • If littered, reusable bags are too heavy to become marine litter pollution.

Reusable bags are inexpensive and offered at many retailers around Lamorinda. Learn more about what you can do to help stop one of the most pressing litter threats our ecosystems face.
http://www.cawrecycles.org/issues/plastic_campaign/plastic_bags

To read success stories about how residents in Lafayette are reducing waste and shrinking their environmental impact, please visit the Sustainable Lafayette web site (www.sustainablelafayette.net).




pdflink to PDF of Lafayette Today that included article on page xx