In these crazy times, you may be thinking that you just can't handle worrying about one more thing. Our collective wave of anxiety reverberates across the planet as we struggle to make sense of the world and our place in the grand scheme of things. And yet, we ask you to please keep the Climate Crisis and the state our beautiful planet in your mind, especially when considering your everyday purchases.
We know it's hard to remember the Fridays For Future climate strikes, the message of Greta Thunberg, and terms such as "single-use plastics" and "sustainability" with so much else going on. Headlines bringing awareness to the eco-danger of plastic bags have gone by the wayside of late.
But Flapper Press would like to remind us all about the dangers our planet faces, and some of the simple alternatives that can help. Because we really are all in this together.
Let's talk about "going green."
Plastic bags. When I think about how lazy I've been about my plastic bag, paper, and single-use plastic consumption over the years, I am ashamed. Since Covid-19, many grocery stores and other retail establishments will not allow you, for sanitary reasons, to use your own bags. That means paper bags and plastic bags are back in a big way—and that's not a good thing.
According to ConservingNow.com, plastic bags are, on the average, only recycled 1 for every 200 we use. That's crazy! We can do better than that.
It's estimated that 500 billion to 1 trillion of those nasty plastic bags are consumed worldwide every year—and billions of them end up as litter, with some 8 million metric tons of them ending up in our oceans. According to plastic-pollution.org, that's five grocery bags filled with plastic for every foot of coastline in the world.
Let's ditch the plastic bags!
If you can get by without bagging your fruit and vegetables at the grocery store, do it! You can also purchase reusable mesh produce bags when you got to the market. In some cases, when I can't use my own reusable shopping bags, I've even taken to just reloading my grocery cart with loose items and then bagging them once I get to the car.
Flapper Press is thrilled to open our Green Marketplace to feature sustainable products from American small businesses. Our first two products, EcoMe bags and Butterfly-Bags, can be found in our marketplace and are terrific alternatives to plastic zip-lock bags and paper and plastic shopping bags.
Read my interviews with the founders of each of these companies—Jolie Tres and Luke & Devon—and do your part to support small businesses with a mission to save the planet by creating sustainable products to support a "green" lifestyle.
If you happen to still end up with plastic bags, please be sure to recycle them at the appropriate locations. Stores such as Ralphs, Target, Walmart, Kroger, Safeway, Whole Foods, Home Depot, Lowes, and Sprouts have plastic-bag recycling containers near their front doors.
If you want to find out more about what plastic bags are doing to the environment, check out these sources for more information:
We can do this together! Say bye-bye to plastic bags. Be part of the solution. It's the least we can do. It may sound cliché, but together we CAN make a difference.