Great-Grandmomma's (Don't) Got a Brand New Bag

Maybe your great-grandmother was like mine - toting a battered bag with her everywhere she went. (This was in addition to a handbag so hard it could be considered a deadly weapon.) Sometimes, the battered bag would produce food she cooked at home and brought for family. Sometimes, the battered bag would receive food she (or someone else) didn't finish at a restaurant. Sometimes, the battered bag would just be there, at the ready.

I've got my own bag, now. But it's not battered -- it's from Target and it folds into about the size of two makeup compacts. (It is just like the one pictured - shown in both folded-out and folded-up versions.) It cost me 99 cents. But it may help me save the planet.

Salon.com says plastic bags are killing us. The online newspaper says Americans throw away about 100 billion plastic bags every year - equivalent to dumping nearly 12 million barrels of oil. The bags are banned in some parts of Canada and folks there don't miss them.

If you're not on the no-bag bandwagon yet, climb on! You can get re-usable bags for 99 cents from most major grocery stores - Publix, Whole Foods, Kroger, Harris Teeter. Some even give a discount if you bring your own bags (Whole Foods) or charge you for taking a plastic or paper bag (Earth Fare). Trader Joe's enters you into a contest for free stuff.

As a BYOB (Bring Your Own Bag) fanatic, I have a few recommendations for newbies:

1. Get at least one bag that folds, zips or snaps small enough to carry in your purse. Others that may be larger, like for major grocery runs, can stay in your trunk, but you'll be amazed at how often you'll pull the little one out of your purse. (That trip to the mall you're going on just to help your friend find something? Yeah, you'll probably end up buying something. Better BYOB.)
2. For grocery shopping, be sure to get a bag that folds out to have a flat bottom. Otherwise your stuff will bulge and make the bag more difficult to carry. (Overall, the cloth bags are so much easier to carry than plastic, you'll marvel you didn't make the switch before!)
3. You may think you'll miss having plastic bags for trash liners or dog poopie pickups. You won't. Just dump your trash into a single, larger garbage bag, keeping the plastic bag liners in the smaller garbage cans. For dog poopies, newspaper plastic bags work fine and many parks and other areas have small bags for you, anyway.
4. Tell the salesperson you have your own bag as soon as he or she begins to ring you up. I've had salespeople grab a plastic bag quickly and, when I explain I have my own, the person will just throw the unused plastic bag in the trash. Argh!

Within the last few months, I've noticed more and more people bringing their own bags. It's not an oddity anymore, it's a simple thing we can all do to help curb pollution - and to help honor our great-grandmothers and their battered bags.