Going Green: Do Away With Plastic Bags!

Hands up - how many of you are guilty of plastic-bag hoarding?? You know… when you visit the supermarket, and the cashier is bagging up all your purchases, and you try to score as many bags as possible? “Useful mah… can use to line the rubbish bin, tapau food to work, store clothes…” And at home - you probably have a mountain of plastic bags stashed in the cabinet under the sink, all rolled up in little balls and sitting in a bigger plastic bag, probably even sorted into different sizes, colours, uses…

Did you know that every year, an estimated 500 billion to 1 trillion plastic bags are consumed worldwide? That comes up to approximately 1 million every minute! Also, plastic bags don’t biodegrade, they photodegrade - which means they break down into smaller and smaller toxic bits that contaminate soil and waterways and enter the food web when animals accidentally ingest them. [By contrast, biodegradation is the process by which organic substances are broken down by other living organisms.] Plus, it takes about one thousand years (how many generations is THAT?!) for just one bag to decompose!

Here are some of the things that we can all do to minimise the usage of plastic bags:-

1. Fit as many items into one plastic bag as possible when shopping. Using just one bag less makes a huge difference.
2. Even better, bring your own bag. Some stores like Tesco now offer a reusable (albeit plastic) bag which you can purchase for just RM1, and when it can’t be used anymore they will replace it FOC infinitely!
3. Even, even better, why not get yourself a trendy reusable shopping bag that is small enough to roll up and store in the glove compartment of your car, or even in your handbag — ready for use any time you need to shop!

Merv and I stumbled upon a couple of sites where you can get yourself trendy reusable shopping bags at really affordable prices! And you can use these bags as totes to carry around other stuff as well - books, clothes, etc. AND — all of them fold up nicely into little rolls that you can carry around in your car / handbag - ready to be used whenever you need to do some shopping or carry stuff! In particular, we’d like to introduce you to the TinyTapir, a local e-store (soon to have a bricks-and-mortar presence in KL) which carries a line of yummy Envirosax bags! Check out the pretty (and cute!) designs of some of the bags:


Alternately, if you want more choices, just google “Reusable Shopping Bags” and you’ll find plenty of other choices! Remember, it goes a looong way even if you reduce your usage of just one plastic bag a day! Happy green-living!