New York state has intelligently decided to follow California and ban single-use plastic bags. Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s office finally made the decision to ban the bags for multiple reasons, which all include saving our planet from more waste and dying a sad death. We live on this planet and use its natural resources, so we should not be destroying it by filling our landfills with non-biodegradable plastics, which can take hundreds of years to break down. 

Cute sea turtles, minding their own business while they swim and live their lives, often get confused in the ocean and mistake plastic bags with jellyfish, which cause them to get sick or die. Other animals that live in our plastic-polluted oceans suffer the same fate because single-use plastic bags cannot be recycled, and plastic that can be recycled ends up in the garbage, which ultimately ends up blowing away in the wind or being dumped into the ocean. Recycling the single-use plastic bags is not easy because the only place they can be recycled is in the lobby of the nearest grocery store. The plastic bags require a different collection system and different processing equipment that many curbside recycling programs do not provide. The difficult part is that people need to remember to bring their old single-use plastic bags with them the next time they go to the grocery store. This is not done by many people, which is why they end up in landfills more often than being recycled properly. 

Instead of having all the extra trash to take care of after you grocery shop, and having to worry about recycling them in the grocery store lobby the next time you are there, if you invest in reusable bags, they can easily be folded away and stored. It will significantly cut down on the trash you produce weekly. The reusable bags are inexpensive for people to purchase, last for years and rarely break. The reusable bags can also hold more than the thin, flimsy plastic bags, and you do not have to worry about your milk splitting on your driveway or your cans rolling into the street. Reusable bags also come in many prints and designs, which are stylish while you shop. They also have characters on them from movies and come in various sizes to fit your needs.

While the switch to reusable bags may be tedious and annoying at first, it will help the environment in the long run. The first few times you may forget to grab your reusable bags while you are heading into the grocery store, but once you get into that habit, the change will be easy, and the impact on the environment will be massive. You can sleep well at night knowing no more sea turtles will choke on the plastic that you have been putting into our oceans. 

Photo from USFWSNorthEast via Flickr