"shopping bags" news and stories

Choosing not to bring a reusable bag to the grocery store might cost you in the near future. Lawmakers in Connecticut have proposed a bill that would charge 5 cents for plastic or paper bag use, with a hearing scheduled for Wednesday. Plastic bags are already taxed in D.C., and Oregon has similar legislation in the works.

The 5-cent fee proposed by Connecticut lawmakers would be used for municipal recycling efforts, reports the Associated Press, but it also serves as a deterrent. Now that resuable totes are easy to come by (most grocery stores have them for sale), environmentalists want plastics done away with.

Everyone needs to grocery shop at some point, fueling the continuing desire to live, even if you're not a big fan of doing your own cooking. Grocery stores have their own standards for packing bags based upon how to enable your foods to travel well: cold items with cold items, produce in one bag, don't cram too much in. The last rule is the one that gets tricky because sometimes it seems like you end up with 10 bags for 10 items when you're leaving the store. It could be more, if some of the plastic ones are doubled-bagged. Recycling the paper and plastic bags is an excellent idea, but switching to canvas grocery bags is an even better one. They are reusable, so they help cut down on waste, and many stores will even give you a per-bag discount for bringing them in! The bags can be purchased at many supermarkets, as well as being available online, and will pay for themselves in a few uses. They usually cost from $7-12.