Paper, Plastic, or Canvas?

Some of my favorite memories as a child were getting up early on Saturdays mornings to go with my dad to the Food 4 Less grocery store located at the intersection of Noland Road and U.S. 40 in Independence, MO (coincidentally this is where a Lamar's doughnuts, Best Buy, and Toys R US was located as well). Getting up early on a Saturday morning was well worth it if it meant me and daddy could have some time alone together. At the end of our shopping venture, as I would start chowing down on my "ole spunkenmyer muffin" the bagger would always ask paper or plastic?

Increasingly less store patrons don't have a choice; you get plastic whether you want it or not. Plastic sacks, believe it or not, are the biggest expense of grocery stores. This expense would be more if stores would allow customers the option of paper sacks (which cost more to buy then plastic sacks). However, if given the choice should one choose paper or plastic? The quick choice would be paper due its ease of recyclability, however, in order to produce these paper sacks 14 million trees have to be harvested every year, and they create 70% more air pollution during production. Alright, so lets use the plastic that we're already supplied with, right? It takes 12 million gallons of crude oil annually to produce plastic sacks, and creates 4 times more solid waste.

So, either you fill up land fills faster and make the landscape look worse or you make Brazil look even worse. Thankfully, we have a third option. An option that was a bit of a fad a few years ago; the canvas bag. The consumer is given a reusable bag that neither fills up landfills, reduces a depleting supply of crude oil, or makes the street look worse. These bags are relatively inexpensive to produce passing the savings on the consumer, and tend to hold more then the average plastic bag. When stores first started selling canvas bags

If you want to avoid looking like "eco-freak" carrying a suitcase load of canvas bags into the grocery store their are options for plastic and paper bag lovers.

• Recycle! Of course you can take paper bags any where paper is recycled, but now stores like Wal-Mart are setting up bins for people to place their plastic bags in to be recycled later. 
• Reuse! If you don't want to recycle find another use for your bag. The majority of plastic sacks make great liners for trash cans found in most bathrooms.