Green Options » shopping bags

Carnival of Green Crafts #3: Trash Into Treasure

Skye Kilaen — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 21:31:52 +0000

Welcome to the Third Carnival of Green Crafts!

Before we begin, let me just thank all of the crafters who participated in this month’s carnival for taking a weight off my mind. After reading all of these posts, I now have NO worries at all about landfill space anywhere in America. Seriously, y’all, crafters are obviously the solution to the trash problem. Go us!

Before we begin, a few administrative notes: We’re pleased as punch to announce that the fourth Carnival will be September 4th at Whip Up. Send in your posts via the carnival submission form today! For background information about the Carnival, please see the Carnival of Green Crafts home page. And in case you missed the previous editions, here are the first Carnival, here at Crafting A Green World, and the second Carnival, at BlogHer.

Thanks so much to all the crafters who shared their posts with us for this edition of the Carnival. Let’s dig in!

Eco-Friendly Materials

Tiny Decor gathered a list of the Top 10 Modern and Eco-friendly Fabric Sources on Etsy. You HAVE to see what she’s collected, there are some real knockouts.

Plastic Bags: Can We Kick the Habit?

Ross Kendall — Sat, 21 Jun 2008 11:38:00 +0000

Adventures in the development of truly biodegradable plastics are showing that technology can help us with our environmental challenges, but make no mistake technology on its own will not be able to deliver us from our environmental quagmire. This will only happen when we are mature enough and motivated enough to make positive and voluntary behavioral change.

Some members of the Australian community went into paroxysm when our muddle-headed environment minister toyed with the idea of charging a modest fee for plastic disposable shopping bags that are ordinarily handed out free.

The plastic charge

Being and free and plastic is of course a lethal cocktail as far as nature is concerned. There are roughly 6 billion plastic bags used each year in Australia and this end up clogging up land fill sites or stuck in the throats of hapless aquatic life form, normally the very endangered.

Those against the move argued that people would struggle to get their shopping home, and that a large percentage of the replacement bags that customers used would be made of plastic anyway. It was also argued that the old free shopping bags were great as garbage bin liners and if they were not available then alternative bags, again plastic, would have to be purchased for the purpose.

Nordstrom Bags Go Green

Shirley Siluk Gregory — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 20:29:10 +0000

Over the next few months, Seattle-based Nordstrom Inc. plans to phase out its non-recyclable shopping bags in favor of paper bags with recyclable cotton handles.

The switch is expected to take place between April and September, as the retailer runs out of supplies of its current propylene-handled shopping bags.

Want A Tip On Bagless Shopping?

Max Lindberg — Wed, 05 Sep 2007 14:29:10 +0000

I couldn’t pass this one up. Reuben Miller sent this to me from his Stumble site and it just seemed like too good an idea to pass up.

Imagine, driving, or riding, or whatever your shopping cart to the grocery store, detach the bike and wheel the cart into the store. Once at the checkout, no need for bags: just load the groceries into the cart, attach it to your bike and voila, a bagless shopping trip.

Of course, if you live in anything but a ground floor apartment it may not work so well, unless, of course, your building has an elevator. In any case, this just may have market potential.

Reuben Miller

Image source: Idealist