Making the Switch

We have officially made the switch to reusable grocery bags. That’s right. We purchased 15 reusable grocery bags on Amazon.com and used them for the first time today. Why did we make this switch? Consider these facts from Reusable Bags:

• Globally, over 500 billion plastic bags are consumed each year (~100 billion in the US alone), and about 4 billion of those end up as litter.
• Plastic bags are made from petroleum—it is estimated that 12 million barrels of oil is required to supply the annual US consumption of plastic bags.
• Only between 1% and 3% of plastic bags are recycled—the rest go to landfills or become litter.
• Plastic bags cause over 100,000 sea turtle and other marine animal deaths every year when animals mistake them for food.

In the end, it was a simple decision because this was a very simple way to help the environment (i.e., better manage God's good earth and its resources) at a very small cost to us.