Green Leaf Report

The average useful life span of a plastic grocery bag is estimated at about 20 minutes.  Even with recycling, more energy and chemical are required to process the bags for reuse, and there will always be waste of some sort from the reprocessing. China has recognized this problem and acted, leaving the US in the polluted dust:

Starting June 1st, China will ban free plastic bags from stores.  To encourage the Chinese to use cloth bags or baskets, each plastic bag is required to be sold- the costs cannot be hidden or included in the cost of any items sold.

It’s an excellent idea to counteract the waste of fossil fuels used in creating these short-lived shopping bags, and in reducing the amount of waste in landfills.  Let’s do the same thing everywhere; I keep a cloth tote full of cloth totes for my shopping trips, it’s no inconvenience. Join me!