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I have been reading the book "No Impact Man: The Adventures of a Guilty Liberal Who Attempts to Save the Planet and the Discoveries He Makes About Himself and Our Way of Life in the Process," by Colin Beavan http://noimpactman.typepad.com/blog/. Wow, this book is awesome. Full of extremely interesting facts about what we are doing to our environment, and examining the question: are we really improving our quality of life in the process? If you've not read it, you should. But be careful, it just might change the way you do things.
One of the things Beavan learns and discusses in the book is how damaging our use of disposable plastic bags really is. Among other things he states that "there are 46,000 pieces of plastic floating in every square mile of ocean." This is causing a startling amount of sea life to perish due to blocked digestive tracks. What are we doing?!!?
I decided that our family must do what we can to not be a party to this type of destruction. We've jumped on the bandwagon of taking our own reusable bags to the grocery store so we can eliminate plastic carry out bags at the register. But this weekend I've started taking it a step further. I am not, by any stretch of the imagination, a seamstress. But I have a very dear friend who is wonderful at sewing. I enlisted her help to make reusable drawstring bags that I can take with me for produce and bulk items. She made the first one and showed me what to do, and I made 8 more. I am thrilled with the outcome. I have 2 small ones for items like rice, oats, small amounts of produce. I made 4 large ones for ears of corn, large amounts of sweet potatoes at Thanksgiving and Christmas, or other large items. Then I have 3 medium-sized ones for the in between stuff. Here's what they look like:
They are made out of muslin, and are machine washable. I just stuck a couple of them in a mesh bag and did them on the gentle cycle and hung them to dry. No problem! In the future if I just need to wash one of them I'll most likely do it by hand.
Of course, I had to run out to the store today and buy some things to try them out. I estimate I eliminated 7 or 8 plastic bags in my shopping trip, between my homemade bags and the reusable carry out bags. It'll add up!
As iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another. --Proverbs 27:17
