plastic bags

Do you think of sewing as “green”?  I didn’t, until today.  It turns out that making your own clothes is something like growing your own food.  Anything you sew yourself is one less garment that has to be shipped across the world to your favorite shopping center. 

I had this epiphany when one of my fellow Hatchet bloggers offered me great solution for my plastic bag problem.

Suzy over at Sewing With Suzy read my post about needing a plastic bag intervention and offered to teach me how to make my own reusable shopping bag.  I should stop right here to say that I have no idea how to sew and I do not currently own a sewing machine.  In fact, the only thing I’ve ever sewed was a shirt in high school Home Economics that unraveled while I was modeling it on the stage.  But, hey, Suzy says I can make this by hand and that she’ll coach me all the way so I’m up for the challenge! 

If you’ve ever wanted to learn to sew or if you just like reading interesting blogs, be sure to check out Sewing With Suzy.  She writes about basic sewing stuff and even has us doing cool projects like the reusable shopping bag I referred to earlier. 

image courtesy of morkoproducts.com

Last year when I started gardening, I discovered one of those plastic grocery bags while digging a hole for my plant.  I have no idea how long it had been buried there, but I’ve lived in this house for almost 5 years and I’m pretty sure it wasn’t my buried bag.  According to National Geographic, those plastic bags can take hundreds of years to decompose and when they finally do, they release tiny bits of toxins into the soil (or lakes or whereever the end up). 

To keep these plastic bags from messing up the environment, we’re supposed to bring reusable bags to the grocery store.  I never remember to do this and it’s one of the things I really hate about myself.  The picture above is my broom closet.  It’s the worst room in my house.  In fact, when I told my boyfriend that I was planning to publish a picture of our broom closet on the Internet, he really freaked out.  I don’t blame him - it’s horribly embarrassing.

Ever since I dug up that old plastic bag in the yard, buying groceries nearly sends me into a panic attack.  I never think about the bags until I’m checking out and I hear that crackle of the plastic bag when the bagger snatches open the first one.  Furthering my guilt, the bagger only puts 2-3 items in each bag and double-bags the milk.  I stand there anxious, trying to prevent myself from lecturing the bagger about environmental issues because I realize that would make me look crazy, and mean.   Then I load all forty million bags in my trunk cursing myself all the way home for not remembering the reusable grocery bags.

Once the bags come home with me, they go in the bag (broom) closet to be reused as bathroom trash bags and lunch bags and even though it doesn’t look like it, many of them go in the recycle bin.   I hope the Green Gods appreciate that I have good intentions even though I’m forgetful.

Here’s a cool site that’ll tell you every horrible detail about the evil plastic bags, how you can take action against them and some cool reusable bags.

Do you BYO canvas grocery bags, or do you have a secret grocery bag closet?