Little Bit of Green

As your bagger starts bagging your groceries asks the inevitable question: Paper or plastic? If you say paper, your groceries are put into large paper bags lunch, all the various Styrofoam containers, cups and condiments are put into paper sacks. What do you do with all of these paper bags when they’ve served their purpose? Do you just toss them out? I hope not! There are many uses for used paper bags that keep them out of the landfill.

That’s right. We must do whatever possible to keep our bags out of the garbage dump. We need to figure out what other uses we can make of the used, no longer needed paper bags. Let’s begin with the most obvious use. Recycle them. They can go into the recycling bin right along with all of your newspapers, copy paper, magazines, and catalogs. Recently such recycling dumpsters have been popping up in many parking lots, such as parks, churches, and shopping centers. These recycling companies will accept just about every type of used paper except for cardboard. If you throw away a lot of newspaper, you can use the brown grocery bags to store the newspapers until you’ve accumulated enough to warrant a trip to the dumpster. They are just the right size to hold the newspapers without crumpling or folding them. This gives the paper bags one more good use before they are recycled.

Another use for paper bags comes up when you need to mail gifts. If you have to mail gifts, paper grocery sacks can be cut open and used as an outer wrapper for mailing. Just be sure to tape them securely to prevent the brown paper from being torn in the mail. For example, if you are mailing a shirt in a box from a department store, you don’t need another box for mailing. Just wrap the gift-wrapped shirt box in a cut-open grocery bag, tape it shut, and write on the address.

You probably don’t want to eat lunch out every day. It’s costly and gives you too many calories. You should brown-bag it two or, even better, three days a week. When you package up your lunch, don’t use a fresh, new lunch bag every day. Save your carryout bags and reuse them for your lunch. Your wallet will be fatter and your waist thinner.

Brown grocery bags are also useful for kids’ crafts. Cut open a bag and lay it out on the table to protect it and to make clean-up simpler. The kids can paint or play with their clay without dirtying the table. They can even paint on the bag itself. Think of the paper will be saved. Grocery sacks also work as by painting with poster paint, watercolors, or colorful markers.

As you can see, reusing paper bags can make one small contribution to your recycling effort.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!