Plastic not fantastic

How cool is this? After my post about hanging a hook on the kitchen door for plastic bags (have you done it yet?!) I heard from the fabulously named Truffula Tuft who has a blog entirely dedicated to eliminating plastic bags called, appropropriately enough, No more plastic bags please (noplasticbags.blogspot.com). Check it out. Truffula manages to find at one news item related to plastic bags every day - amazing, and pretty salutary. Her blog says 'what's the simplest thing you can do to save a sea turtle, stop the need for oil wars, preserve a river, protect our childrens' future? Bring a reusable bag to the store!' Hear hear, Truffula.

Get hooked

I really don't know what's wrong with me. I mean, I care so much about the environment and I know damn well that plastic bags are a bad thing, and yet four out of five times, I'll get to wherever I'm shopping and realize I've left my cool string bags (purchased at a jumble sale), or the plastic ones I've assiduously been accumulating, at home. So I cram as much as I can into my handbag (and when I was still in NYC I was often to be seen crossing 6th ave with a pile of unbagged Citarella items balanced under my chin) or the basket of the baby stroller, but usually end up needing to take a bag or two.

So today I took a tip I found on eco-worrier and hung lots of bags on a hook by the front door. Surely even I won't manage to forget them if they're right there?

To be fair, the farm stand and health food store where I mostly shop up here offer recycled bags, and when I remember, I take along a big pile for them to reuse. But having just accumulated the following factoids, I don't think even the occasional slip is excusable. Check it out:

• it takes as much petroleum to produce 14 plastic bags as it does to drive a mile (and here's something I didn't know - paper bags take even more) - via Laurie David.
• plastic bags take 1000 years to decompose - via the EPA
• only 1% of plastic bags in the US are recycled - via the EPA
• when one ton of plastic bags is reused or recycled, the energy equivalent of 11 barrels of oil are saved - via the EPA
• in New York City alone, one less grocery bag per person per year would reduce waste by five million pounds and save $250,000 in disposal costs - via the EPA

Who knew that if we all stopped using placcy bags, we might stand a chance of bringing those troops home from Iraq, among many other benefits? (Until I started this blog, I had no idea how many things I do every day increase our reliance on oil - water bottles, most regular body and face creams, scling film/saran wrap, washing up liquid, buying non-local products and now the grocery bags too.)

So let's just hope I don't fall foul of my own idiot-proof system.