by Ann Bibby To my continuing shame, I am still a plastic bag girl. Despite owning enough Lululemon bags (another shame for another post) to easily carry a week’s worth of groceries for our family of three, I find myself standing at the checkout bag less and once again accumulating more plastic sacks. I even allow double bagging. It’s that bad. The time has come for me to declare myself a BooBs girl for the good of the planet.BooBs? Bring our own bags. Perhaps that’s all the movement needs. A provocative acronym accompanied by a slick ad campaign and the environment will be free of the scourge of our wanton consumerism waving like tiny flags from shrubbery and chain link fences. Although other countries in the world - Ireland, South Africa, Germany and Taiwan - have imposed taxes to discourage use and China has even banned them as of June 1st this year, plastic still rules in the United States with 100 billion bags per year finding their way to consumers homes. Most of those bags end up in landfills but they are a threat to wildlife as well.Though they are easy and cheap to produce because they are made from petrochemicals, 12 million barrels of oil are needed just to supply the U.S. with plastic bags. They are not only an environmental problem with each bag taking from 400 to 1000 years to degrade but a drain on our non-renewable natural resources. So what can be done? Other countries are doing it by putting steep taxes on their use or by regulating their phase out. Irish consumers are bag free after their government introduced a tax and promoted the idea of alternative bag use.To build a new habit takes thirty days. One month. My goal for the next thirty days is to always have cloth or other types of reusable shopping bags with me. I am going to divide the bags we have, purchase a couple of new ones if necessary (most groceries carry and sell their own logo cloth bags for less than a dollar) and carry out purchases from wherever I shop using cloth bags only. I can hear my husband chuckling in amusement as he reads this because I have been threatening to break my plastic addiction since last fall, but the truth is that plastic shopping bags do not make good garbage can liners and are too thin after a single use to carry much of anything without breaking. The only way to show the doubters that a plastic bag free life is not inconvenient or impossible is by example, so here I go.It’s BooBs time people. Bring our own bags when we shop.
