ReusableBags.com tackles plastic bag mess
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Introduced merely 25 years ago, plastic bags are accumulating in our environment at an alarming rate. They’re everywhere: strewn along roadways, stuck in trees, and piled up beneath our kitchen sinks. ReusableBags.com – a proactive, eco-conscious website – is helping battle this growing problem by raising awareness and offering effective, affordable, high-quality products for sale that help reduce plastic bag consumption. An estimated 500 billion to one trillion plastic bags are consumed world-wide every year. In the US alone, an estimated 12,000,000 barrels of oil are required to produce the 100 billion consumed annually. Additionally, retailers spend an estimated $4 billion on their plastic store bags, passing the costs on to consumers. A grass roots movement is gaining momentum worldwide as fed-up individuals, environmental groups, governments and visionary retailers pursue the common goal of reversing this nasty trend. The focus of these initiatives is to reduce consumption and encourage the use of reusable bags. “After researching the issue, I was amazed by the sheer volume and the growing negative impact on our environment,” said Vincent Cobb, founder and owner of ReusableBags.com. “I realized that using reusable shopping bags was a simple yet effective way to dramatically cut down on consumption, but it was impossible to find any place that offered a wide selection of durable ones that also looked good.” Realizing he was not alone, Cobb’s frustration transformed into motivation and ReusableBags.com was born. ReusableBags.com’s Facts and Newsroom sections inform consumers that although single use plastic bags are free to shoppers, the cost to society is enormous. Each year, billions of plastic bags end up as ugly, wind-blown litter. The site’s Gallery has dozens of telling photos, showing plastic bags littering our countryside and great cities from Chicago to Paris. Also, despite the common belief that plastic bags decompose and disappear, they actually persist, breaking down into toxic bits that pollute our oceans, rivers, lakes and soil. In addition, countless animals, most notably marine mammals, choke to death after mistaking plastic bags for food. Forward-thinking environmental groups and governments suggest reusable shopping bags as an important part of the solution. ReusableBags.com makes finding the right reusable bags easy and convenient by offering consumers a hand-picked selection of the best available – from innovative, ultra-compact ‘ACME’ brand bags that easily fit in your pocket, to stylish hemp totes and organic cotton string bag sets complete with stuff sacks for neat storage and transportation. They even offer shopping sets complete with reusable produce bags thereby eliminating another source of bag waste, and a heavy-duty category that includes a bag that comes with a lifetime guarantee. In addition to reusable bags, the site offers a number of accessories to help consumers “reduce and reuse” including organic cotton lunch bags and reusable sandwich wrappers that unfold into placemats; plastic bag dispensers for storing and reusing bags, made of Ecospun – a fabric produced from recycled plastic containers; message-based merchandise to help spread the word using the site’s slogan “Plastic Bags Blow / BYOB – bring your own bag“. ReusableBags.com also busts myths such as ‘paper is better,’ ‘biodegradable bags are the answer’ and ‘recycling can fix the problem,’ while providing useful news on global trends to diminish this menace. Things are starting to happen in the US, with more than 30 Alaskan towns outright banning them, and a report that New York City is considering a consumer-based bag tax modeled after Ireland’s enormously successful PlasTax. Meanwhile, ReusableBags.com is making it easy for savvy consumers to make a difference. Says Cobb, “By offering consumers a wide range of smart and stylish products to choose from, we dramatically increase the chances of getting consumers to embrace reusable shopping bags.” |
