February Wrap-Up: The plastic bags have been officially ditched!

Many, many thanks to all of you who participated in this month's challenge to eliminate plastic bags from your homes.  Although it's a feat easier said than done, there are a lot of us who are making strides in this effort.  Sometimes this means that we still must use plastic bags in our daily shopping and errands, but we're finding ways of using those bags over and over again, keeping them from joining the landfill sites in our communities.

Nicole, of Resolving Timeline Issues said, “Plastic bags seem to propagate and multiply and eventually they take over your kitchen, laundry room and any other storage space you have.  (I have visions of them taking over my garage and there will be no room for anything else.)”

Although Stephanie Schmidt did not leave a blog link, she shared the fact that she uses plastic bags to make jellyfish when teaching kids about marine sciences.  Genius!

Steph of Adventures in Babywearing left a link to a post she wrote last Earth Day about avoiding the use of plastic bags in the grocery stores:  "When I go to the grocery store, I bring my string bags and place them on the conveyor belt before I unload my groceries. Usually they already know that I bring my own bags, but if not I'll just tell them that I brought my own, and that they hold WAY more than you think! If I have something really heavy or run out of my bags, I'll request paper. But really, paper isn't much better than plastic. The best choice is to bring your own!"

Echoroc, of The Private Workforce commented that she recently saw an employee throw a plastic bag in the garbage after she told her she would prefer not to take it home. Obviously, this employee could have reused the bag with the next customer!

Shama-lama Mama wrote a post that included a beautiful photograph of a plastic bag in reusable action...in a trash can.  "We have been working on this, buying a few reusable canvas bags which we keep in the car we usually take to the grocery. But I still have a stash (smaller,but a stash nonetheless) of plastic bags we get because I sometimes take the other car, forget to bring the reusable ones into the store, or we sometimes buy more food than we have bags for...That is why I am including this beautiful photo of one of my lovely trash cans."  Thanks, Shama-lama Mama!

Monet, of Everything but Pickles commented that her grandmother has made tote bags from plastic bags she had found, and proudly "saved from ending up in landfills, in oceans, or blowing around on freeway off-ramps."

And last, but certainly not least, Karen of This Mommy's Journey wrote in that she made a cool pillow for a friend's child, and filled it with crinkly plastic bags.  What a great idea!

And now, without further ado, I am pleased to announce the winners of our draw, courtesy of Green Mom Finds.  (Drumroll, please...)

The three winners of a Greenloop reusable shopping bag are: Stefanie Schmidt, Monet and Steph.

The winner of a Skeeda reusable bag is Shama-lama Mama.

The winner of a set of reusable mesh produce BYO Bags is Nicole.

Congratulations, and thanks again to everyone who participated!

Next up:  Stay tuned for an introduction to March's challenge, Eco-Fashion.  I'm a little ashamed to admit that I may need some help with this one, since my knowledge of eco-fashion is limited to organic cotton t-shirts and the use of hemp in manufacturing clothing...should be an interesting month!

Comments

[metro mama]

Eco-fashion: two words--value village!

[motherbumper]

Oh also for eco-fashion: Joe Fresh has an organics line that is AFFORDABLE! Organic cotton T-shirts from them rock (and have cool designs).

Congratulations winners (damn those bags are cool).

[Izzy]

Congrats, winners! I totally covet those Greenloop bags.

[Shama-Lama Mama]

YAY!!! The Skeedo bag was the one I was really hoping for! Thank you so much! It will be used VERY often!

[Lara Robinson]

I love my reusable bags, and don't have any grocery store plastic bags left. However, I don't know what to do with the 7 I receive each and every week with my newspaper. They're handy for picking up my dog's poo, and yet they seem to multiply faster than I can use them.

[Shama-Lama Mama]

So excited about this win! I am curious... should I send my address to someone, somewhere? Thanks again!

[Nicole]

Woo! I was coveting those!

At the risk of letting my Only-Child Syndrome (OCS) out, how do I collect? :)

[Mom On The Run]

The grocery store in my town is the first plastic bag free Super Center in Canada - how cool is that? Too bad I ALWAYS forget my made from recycled plastic bags at home and end up placing all the loose food in the bottem of my bike trailer/jogging stroller to roll around under my kids feet - arrrgh!