Plastic Grocery Bags: Everyone has some!

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I know that the proper green phase is “reduce, reuse, recycle” and that they are in the order of importance. So the best thing would be to use less plastic grocery bags. And we do - a lot less. However, I do not think I will ever get my husband to take a cloth bag to the store, ever. Heck, if he is grocery shopping, I am just so glad he is grocery shopping, I am not going to complain about the bags he chooses to use. He knows about the other ones, they are always in the car, and he is a big boy. He can use them or not, but his not using them is not MY problem.

To that end, I am all about re-using the ones we do have. I do save them. I take some back to the store to be recycled, but I do use some again at home. The most obvious use is as garbage can inserts in bathrooms and other small garbage can places. I do that.

By far, the best use I have found yet is to use it as a garbage bag in my car. I have a Sirius Satellite receiver that we no longer use, but it is very tightly in the car, so there it stays. (And yes, I hate it and it drives me nuts. Again, DH knows this and he can remove it whenever he feels the need!)The bag handle fits over that nicely so there is always an open garbage bag in the car. Being as small as it is, it fills up before it gets too stinky and it keeps the car from smelling too gross. With three young boys in it, it will likely never smell great, at least until they are grown, but at least it smells better now than it did before! When I am between bags, it drives me crazy! I used to nag them to take their garbage into the house, a lot, and now I almost never have to say that. I just point at their garbage and ask them if that is a good idea. They almost always get the hint. I have given up on them using it without being told, but just having it there makes everything so much easier!

Original post written for Green and Clean Mom by Kristen Brink. Read more from Kristen at Kirsten Interrupted and Kristen is Organized!</a> and is a frequent contributor to Mom Spark

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October 29th, 2008 - Comments:
Filed Under: Green Budget, Green Solutions and Tips, Guest Posts

Green & Clean Mom is a mother of two young children, wife, educator, green entrepreneur, humanitarian, enthusiastic social media fanatic, internet marketer, social media and marketing consultant.
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4 Responses to “Plastic Grocery Bags: Everyone has some!”

1 Carla Says:
October 29th, 2008 at 10:49 am
Many of the stores we frequent doesn’t offer plastic bags and they are banned in San Francisco (right across the bay) altogether. My weakness is the plastic bags for produce at the stores and farmers markets. I haven’t found a good solution to that yet…

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2 Andrea Says:
October 30th, 2008 at 10:10 am
I like to crochet cut up oplastic grocery bags and crochet tote bags from them. It is very easy and the instruction can easilt be found by searching the internet. I use the tote bags for groceries.
3 Carol Says:
October 30th, 2008 at 2:06 pm
Carla here is a great site for cloth produce bags with a drawstring! ecobags.com, very reasonably priced too. Kirsten sorry your hubby is not on board yet, have faith, my husband never used to remember to take the bags into the store, now it’s a new habit.
4 Maggie Says:
October 30th, 2008 at 6:32 pm
Wow - what a fabulous post. Same thing about my husband — if he is out shopping that is a miracle in himself. I’m not going to insist he take in cloth bags to make the miracle turn into Christ ascending into Heaven.

That said, any plastic bags in our house come from him or from the few times I’ve left my cloth bags at home. We use plastic bags in a trash can at the top of the stairs we I throw dirty diapers from both the girls. This is a great alternative to actually buying a Diaper Genie or similar. My first Diaper Genie smelled horrible quite quickly, was a pain to change and required those $6 inserts. What a waste. And it’s just cheap plastic anyway - another thing I don’t want in my home.

So I just use the old-fashioned method - a trash can with a plastic bag.