21 May Three Great Reasons to Choose Canvas Shopping Bags
The path to a greener life always starts with one simple step; and what seems like a small action can make a big, big difference. If you’re looking to green your home and your habits but you’re not sure where to start, we have one simple suggestion that will really put you on the right track to a global green revolution:
Just say no to plastic single-use shopping bags, and switch to reusable canvas shopping bags instead.
This might sound like a little thing, but when you consider the damage done to our precious Earth by plastic bags – from their production all the way through to their disposal – the impact you can make with this one easy switch is huge. Here are three compelling reasons to pack in that plastic habit, and make the greener choice.
Get your very own gorgeous green-friendly canvas shopping bags online from Faithful to Nature – and wear your Earth-loving values with pride.
1. The Price of Producing Plastics
Plastic bags are produced using petroleum and other harsh chemicals; the production process used to create the bags is toxic to the environment, so they start doing damage before they even make it into the supermarket, and into shoppers’ hands.
The petroleum used to produce 14 plastic bags is enough to drive a car 1 mile (1.6km). When you consider that 160,000 plastic bags are used around the world every second – just think about how many kilometres’ worth of fuel is being wasted on creating more of what we don’t need!
2. The Use and Abuse of Plastics
Because most of us think of plastic as being so convenient, it’s become easy to treat it lightly – and irresponsibly. The average family uses around 60 plastic shopping bags in a month (four weekly supermarket shopping trips). Most of these are used only once and then thrown away; very few are recycled. Around 10% of the total waste generated will be plastic; single-use shopping bags, bottles and other common household items.
And of course, while out of sight is out of mind for some, all that plastic rubbish has to go somewhere after you throw it away – which brings us to our third reason to make the switch:
3. Plastics and the Planet
Plastic only starts breaking down after around 500 years and will only fully degrade in 700 to 1000 years. Plastic bags were only introduced to shopping markets in 1977; so that means every plastic bag that’s ever been produced is still around, and hasn’t degraded yet.
What’s more, plastic doesn’t biodegrade like natural waste; instead it photo-degrades, breaking down into smaller and smaller pieces of itself, which remain toxic even after the plastic has fully broken down. These plastic pieces contaminate the Earth’s soil and water.
Because plastic is so light and aerodynamic, there are plenty of bags that don’t stay put in the landfills or rubbish bins. Many of them blow out into the surrounding environment, where they wreak havoc. One particularly disturbing problem is the effects of plastic on marine wildlife. Thousands of sea birds, marine mammals and turtles die every year from accidentally ingesting plastic bags, and many more get tangled up in plastic waste and other rubbish floating in the ocean. With this in mind, it’s not an overstatement to say that switching to canvas bags saves lives!
Ditching those plastic bags is easy and affordable; check out our range of eco-friendly bags and backpacks online, and make the switch today. Remember the words of Mahatma Ghandi – “In a gentle way, you can shake the world.”
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