A reusable shopping bag that I love
I've been bringing my own cloth bags to the grocery store for quite some time now, but whenever I made a quick stop somewhere (like at the drugstore or a craft store), I invariably forgot to bring a bag with me.
This past spring, though, I ordered an Earth Day special from Hip Mountain Mama, and included in the box was this zip-up green bag.
It's small, but when you unzip it, it turns into this decently-sized shopping bag.
The outside cover even turns into a pocket once the bag is unzipped.
When you're done with the bag, you can easily fold it and zip it up.
Because it's so handy and compact, I just put it right back into my purse when I'm done with it and that means I'm never without a reusable bag. I've lost count of the times this thing has saved me from having to take a plastic bag.
The bags cost $2.99 at Hip Mountain Mama, so they're a little more expensive than a typical reusable shopping bag. But, you shouldn't need to buy a bunch of them...I wouldn't want to store more than one in my purse, so I'm very content to own just one.
After all, I've got a large stash of cotton canvas shopping bags to use when I do a larger shop...this bag is just for those times when I'm buying a small handful of items.
Anyhoo, I highly recommend buying one if you're trying to stop using plastic bags.
And if you're not trying to cut down on your plastic bag consumption, I'll say that I think you should start! Between 500 billion and 1 trillion bags are consumed worldwide each year, and if we all started shopping with reusable bags, we could make a dent in that number.
Have you found any other reusable bags that are easy to carry with you?
Just so you know, I'm not affiliated with Hip Mountain Mama or with Green Bag, and I didn't even get my Green Bag free. But I've found it to be so useful, I wanted to tell you about it!
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Today's 365 post: I was making lunch yesterday
Joshua's 365 post: Extra Photos!
I have to say, that is a very high standard of fabulousness in the recycled bag stakes. Keep up the top work 🙂
I have a FANTASTIC bag that I bought from http://www.onyabags.com - it is made from a kind of parachute silk fabric so the whole bag squishes into a teeny stuff sac which is attached to a keyring. I have had mine for about five years and use it ALL the time. I love that they are pretty colours too 😉
Oh, those are really cool! And it's neat that they can get so tiny.
I have two Onya Bags too. love them. I also have a 5-sack set of Baggu bags: http://baggubag.com/#/Enlarge/BAGGU+X5/Blues/ I REALLY like these. All five bags fit in the center console of my Prius (which isn't big at all) so I'm never without my bags....
...provided that I remember to put the bags back into the car after bringing the groceries inside the house. THAT is the real behavior change people have to make in order for the exercise to be successful. We are at about 98% in our house, I'd say.
as soon as I'm done unpacking my bags I hang them next to my keys so the next time I go to the car I see the bags and return them to the van....it took me a few weeks to figure that out but now it's just habit...
i have 2 that I got on clearance at Kohls a few years ago that fold up and snap closed to about 8x8. Small enough that I can stick in my purse too. The best part is they are really large when you open them, so I can really fill them full. Kohls still sells them, for around $3 also, but I got mine on the clearance rack for less than $1. I've seen them on clearance since then from time to time too.
I love these-I keep a couple in my big mommy purse all the time.
Hah ha... Big Momma Purse. I like that...
I have a few bags similar to the one Laura has. I LOVE them! I also have a couple similar to your green bag that I found at Target years back for $2. If for some reason I forget my bags I will still request not to have a plastic bag and carry my purchase out in my arms (or my purse or my children's arms) if possible. My next investment will be reusable produce bags. 🙂
Target has one available for .99.
That is very cute.....
after I unload my groceries... I put the bags back in my trunk so they are always there! (now to just remember to pull them out when I am at another store other then the grocery store!) 🙂
I have an inslulated one that zips up into a little bag.... (a friend gave it to me.)
I will have to keep my eye out for one of those.....
I love reusable shopping bags! I have so many different styles I can hardly keep track. We live on a military base in Okinawa Japan and shop at the Commissary. I usually buy theirs b/c they have a thin sturdy piece that flips to the bottom when you open the bag up and keeps it from being so flimsy when you have heavy items. Great post! I love finding new ways to be eco-friendly.
Target sells the same one (but red) for $1.
I have one similar to that, it's also green, but I have no idea where I got it from! But I use mine all the time too.
I have these amazing bags I use for groceries, primarily. They're very heavy duty and they're thick and sturdy and lined with this material that helps keep your cold items cool. My husband's work had them as giveaways and he snagged some extras when they were done. I adore them and everyone always comments on how they wished they had some like them.
And I use reusables everywhere I go, if I remember. And if I don't, I try to carry my items or put them in my purse rather than waste a plastic bag.
~LeeAnn
I used to have one like this from Target (either $0.99 or $1.99 I think) but somehow I lost it. 🙁 Target is a particularly great store to bring reusable bags to because they give you a $0.05 discount when you do. That's not much, but every little bit counts!
My local grocery store does the same. $.05 for each bag. The trick is to remember to take the discount when doing the self-checkout. Sometimes I forget.
I never bought into the whole save the planet stuff, but when I found out Price Chopper would give us 3 cents for each reusable bag we brought back and I saw the piles and piles of plastic bags that seem to pile up everywhere in the house, I made the switch. I have enough plastic bags to keep my car supplied with trash bags and to take back my soda cans.
If I'm stuck without my reusable bags, I ask for paper. At least those can be easily recycled or used for many different things.
Last year at the fair we got a few reusable bags for free. Hopefully this year we'll get a couple more so I can banish plastic bags forever! I see a lot of retailers in the future pushing reusable bags because it makes them look green but really just to eliminate the cost of purchasing plastic bags. Either that or they will go the Aldi route and start charging you a few cents for your bags.
In my area, Ikea charges for bags. But I think you are right. Others will likely pick up on that trend.
I have one that is almost the same as this, but it's red and has a Target tree design on it. They gave them out for free on Black Friday a few years ago filled with granola bars and snacky items to fuel your morning shopping. It folds as small as a wallet and is so convenient! I attached my CVS green bag tag to it.
I have three of the Target ones in my purse and the Kohl's one that folds, Target ones are much smaller (when folded) and having 4 extra bags is great!
I have a bunch of envirosax, and they live everywhere - desk, purse, backpack, other backpack, library bag...
Target made one like that a while back and I loved it! I have a small one that fit into its own little bag but I keep forgetting to carry it with me 🙁 Usually if I'm just running in somewhere though I try to not get a bag and just carry the stuff out. I've been known to tote out several things from Target just because I don't want a bag!
As an aside, my sister just moved to LA and apparently some of the stores there are starting to charge for their plastic bags! I LOVE that idea. Negative reinforcement is a great way to get people to bring their own bags!
On the other hand, there's the Walmart in Alabama I worked at for a year. Wow, those people LOVE their plastic bags 🙁
I love reusauble shopping bags. I use them at the food store but usually forget at other stores. I usually just say no bag though.
I sew shopping bags as gifts and use leftover or free fabric to do so. They take less than an hour to make start to finish and it is relaxing.
I use Chico bags, which are similar to the Onya bags posted above. They're a bit cheaper though. http://www.chicobag.com/p-16-chicobag-original.aspx the company is actually being sued by plastic bag companies for saying their product will lessen your environment impact and that plastic bags do damage to the environment.
Me, too. Love my Chico bags, and they stuff small enough to always have one along.
Otherwise I have an odd assortment of canvas and those spun polyester ones, but the mismatched pile works just fine!
I have a few Envirosaxs that I have replaced all of my reuseable bags with. They roll up small and I can tuck them in my purse or in the glove box of the cars. And bonus they were free as giveaways from my work! They are also very durable and hold over 40 lbs. I may have tested them with some wine one day 🙂 Oh how I love my reuseable bags!
I have one from The Container Store, and one from Pier One that are both grocery sack size that fold up into little pouches with carabiner clips. I just clip them to a ring on the inside of my purse and I'm never without a bag!
I bought that same earth day deal & I love that little bag! Its so useful and tiny. We also use the snack tin all the time. 🙂
I use the Target ones just like that too - very handy! I live in the San Francisco bay area and starting January all plastic bags are banned - from everywhere. Well, they are calling it a ban, but you can still use plastic bags if you want to pay .15 cents a piece. Yikes!
For all the people who use reusable bags all the time, what do you use for trash bags at home.
I find myself needing at least 5-6 plastic bags per week just to use for the bathroom garbage, kitchen garbage, and then for the litter box. I do use bread bags and all types of plastic bags that come in, but honestly, if I only used reusable bags, then I would need to buy trash bags from the store. I'm just curious as to what people do for that.
I would just email (or facebook, if you do that) a few people and ask them to save you any of their plastic bags that they don't use (when they forget to bring their reusables). Or you could always snag a few out of the recycle bins of them at the grocery store on your way out! 🙂
This doesn't make sense--we should stop using them but then also rely on the fact that other people will use them? I never bought into the reuseable bag trend because 1) You have to wash your bags regularly, so you're not carbon-neutral on this change 2) What the heck would I use for all my garbage? What do all the reuseable shopping bag people use? It's seriously confusing to me! I use reusable bags for a lot of things but I still get plastic bags with my groceries for the sole reason that I am not about to pay several dollars a month to buy plastic bags for my garbage when they are handed out for free (or merely pennies) with my groceries.
Despite my best efforts to keep from receiving plastic bags, they still make their way into my house, and since we don't produce a whole lot of trash, the few bags that make it in here work fine for trash bag liners. If I don't have liners, I leave the can bare and just dump the contents into the kitchen trash bag when it gets emptied.
If I didn't use cloth bags, I'd have a bazillion plastic bags sitting around here...way more than any household should need for trash can liners. 🙂
I don't put meat into my cloth bags (I have beef in my freezer from a cow portion and I buy my chicken from a local store where I bring my own glass container), so my bags rarely need to be washed. And adding a few bags to a load of laundry and then line drying them doesn't use a lot of electricity. I'm positive my cloth bags are a positive contribution ecologically speaking. If washing cloth was environmentally unsound, one would have to argue that we ought to wear disposable clothing too (not that I'm advocating that! 😉 ).
uh, that was all the exact things I was going to say that we do at our house, Kristen. 🙂 For the kitchen trash can, I buy recycled-content trash bags. They are more expensive per box, but if you do the math they are only pennies more per bag. (I just ran a comparison on Wal Mart's web site: 14.9 cents per bag for recycled content vs 8 cents per bag for the walmart brand--if you buy a 150-count box of bags, it goes down to 10.9 cents for the recycled-content bag.)
Hey I love my plastic bags too-keeps the company that makes them in business which creates needed jobs!
Have you read Animal, Vegetable, Mineral? In that Barbara Kingsolver (the author) points out that the decrease in tobacco smoking has had a huge impact on the area of Virginia she grew up in. The deep valley farms were ideally suited for growing tobacco and not a lot else.
Money from growing tobacco put children through high school and kept food on the table for many families.
But surely you wouldn't encourage your children to smoke in order to keep those farms in business? Not to mention cigarette manufacturers, cigarette packet manufacturers, hauliers carrying the cigarettes, tobacconists, cigarette machine manufacturers and servicers...
"We need the jobs" can't be an excuse for something that is wrong. And actually, how likely are they to even be made in the US? If they are, perhaps they could make some of the products currently imported from China instead?
I think you probably meant your comment as tongue in cheek, so I apologise if I appear too heavy handed.
*The following link contains pictures that some may find distressing* but I'd urge anybody who wonders why people are making a fuss about plastic bags and plastic rubbish to please look at the pictures-
http://standupforournation.blogspot.com/2010/06/what-have-we-done.html
As to trash bags, once you've recycled and composted you should be left with pretty much dry rubbish, which doesn't need a bag.
And like Kristen I seem to still acquire masses of supermarket bags if I ever needed one.
I agree, Hazel. I think we should focus on supporting businesses that treat the earth well and that that treat people well. Plastic bags don't treat the environment well, and since they're produce China, the companies that make them aren't likely to treat their people well either.
I think it's much, much better to support the reusable bag industry. 🙂
p.s. customers *are* paying for those "free" plastic bags at the store--it's just not reflected on the receipt. Just like the electricity and the floor polish, the store pays for them and then passes the cost on to the customers.
My most compact reuseable shopping bags are these that I got online. Of course, when I bought mine several years ago, they only had black not these cool colors!
http://www.reuseit.com/store/reuseit-workhorse-original-bluesign-fabric-p-2391.html
A cashier commented the other day on my eclectic collection of bags (gifts, freebie bags, purchased bags, etc - hardly any two alike!). I have a "bag of bags" that I take with me when I go shopping. At the grocery store, I bring the whole tote with me. At other stores I'll usually pull a bag or two out to stuff in my purse and carry in with me. I do have at least one bag in my purse in case I forget the bags in the car or make an unexpected purchase. I also just keep about 5 bags in the trunk of my car, separate from my "bag of bags" so that I always have some with me if I'm driving somewhere. To get these car bags back to the car, I usually just leave them with my purse to go out next time I go. But I also usually only use one or two of the trunk bags at a time so I have more left on stand-by.
Can you post a picture of your purse? I'm just curious b/c I don't think that shopping bag you carry in it would even fit in my winter purse which is much bigger than my summer purse. I know it wouldn't fit in my summer purse. This is not a criticism. I'm just nosy and crazy about purses and bags.
I lucked out and found some perfect nylon bags that fold up into tiny little bags with a key chain hook on them--2 for 99 cents once at Claire's. I bought 10 of them and they are perfect for shopping. The folded up bag in it's little pocket is about 2" wide and 3" long, but they open up into a perfect size for groceries. I try to remember to keep one in my purse and the rest in the trunk of my car. I've had these for a few years now.
I also love the bags sold at Whole Foods for 99 cents to $1.99 each. They are stiff and flat bottomed like a paper grocery bag, made from recycled material and really cute. They last forever, too. These are much easier for carrying heavy things like large cans or bottles, big watermelons or squashes.
Target has reusable bags in 2 different sizes that zip up and can be stored in your purse (for those of you who don't like to shop on-line for everything).
For those of you who still have extra plastic bags floating around your house, even after mostly using reusable bags, you could try donating them to thrift stores. While most larger chains such as Value Village likely have their own bags with logos, some smaller thrift stores love to have donations of bags, so they don't have to purchase them. Whenever I have collected too many, I drop them off at the small store in my town.
My husband got a few Chico Bags from his work and I LOVE them. They fit into themselves with a little built in pocket and are very lightweight and only about two inches square. They pull out to be larger than a typical plastic shopping bag and are made of a nylon-type material that is capable of carrying all the weight you can stuff into one. I also have a bag from REI that is even smaller, but costs about $8-$12, but is worth the cost. I carry these in my purse, which is a smallish purse and always have them handy. I get lots of comments on my non-disposable bags. And they are easily hand washed and air dried when needed.
I have a large collection of 'green' bags. In South Australia, where I live, there has been a ban on plastic shopping bags for almost 4 years. The green bags go through the wash so easily. I now collect re-useable cloth bags whenever we're on holidays, including when in US a year ago.