Make being green easy, and it’s in the bag

by C. Commisso

February 11th, 2008 in Business, Environment, Recycle

I’ll be honest: I’m a “light green” with big aspirations. Would I love to live in an eco-village, ride my bike to work, drive a hybrid on the weekends, and grow my own fruits and vegetables? You bet. Is it going to happen in my lifetime? Not likely.

I’m the typical “consumer” most of our clients are talking to when they talk about being green. I aspire to save the planet, I can appreciate their efforts as a company or a service…but if they really want to help me help the environment, they’ve got to make it easy for me to participate.

Perfect example: I grocery shop at this great little international market near my house. It’s recently switched to using plastic bags made from recycled materials. According to the bags themselves:

• They’re made from 30% post-industrial waste
• They reduce road traffic. One truck can carry 2 million of these little beauties, where seven trucks are needed to carry just 1 million paper sacks
• They create 2% of the water pollutants and 70% fewer air pollutants than paper bags during production
• They use up a quarter of the energy needed for paper bags during production
• They save trees, since the bags are created from plentiful natural gas, not trees or oil. Good news for my backyard.
• They help in landfills by taking up less space than a paper bag

Of course, the store also keeps a stock of paper bags on hand, but they offer a solution for that too: customers get $0.10 back for every paper bag they return to the store for reuse and/or recycling. So if my calculations are correct, the collection of paper bags under my kitchen sink could net me about $2.00. Hey — that’s almost enough for a CFL!

See how easy that was? All I did was shop, and I did something that helps make the world a better place. Next thing you know, I’ll be springing for these.