Dave over at 365 days of trash has posted a great video on practical things you can do to reduce your dependence on plastic bags (and ultimately produce less waste at the grocery store). I couldn’t possibly have said it better, but I am am proud to confirm that we have been practicing all of his methods with great success over the past two months (except for the dog poo part – we don’t have a dog).
Thanks for the informative video Dave
The Clean Bin Project Blog 
Hey thanks for the nod. Come April, you’re going to see a ton of these coming on a whole host of ideas so hopefully you’ll find them just as useful. They’ll live at sustainabledave.org.
Consume Less, Conserve More!!!!!
Dave
A ban on plastic shopping bags is like “spitting in the wind”. Let’s all have a reality check folks! I am all for cleaning up our environment. However, singling out one source of plastic waste is absurd! All of you out there that are standing on your “soapboxes” calling for the ban of plastic shopping bags have no clue what effect that would have on the hard working Americans that produce these bags including the pyramid of suppliers and companies that support the manufacturers. The next time you are at the checkout line or strolling through the aisles of your local supermarket or convenience store, just stop for moment and take notice of all the items, wrapped, packed, stacked and labeled with plastic. I would have to make very an un-scientific guess that maybe 80% of all items you are putting into your “demonized” plastic shopping bags contain or are solely protected/packaged by plastic. This includes items packaged within a paper box. Think about it. There is FAR MORE processed plastic products going INTO your shopping bag, then there is contained within the shopping bag itself. Let’s not forget that we throw this all out into a big black heavy garbage bag. A plastic shopping bag ban is a total waste of time! The only sane option should be an enforceable plastic bag recycling program. ALL PLASTIC! Thank you for taking the time to read my post. For anyone that is in need of recyclable plastic bags or reusable shopping bags, please visit http://www.isellpackaging.com Global Packaging Solutions manufactures and sells a wide variety of environmentally friendly retail packaging products. All which are recyclable.
Although your comment doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with this post, I figured it was worth commenting on. I like your “spitting in the wind” analogy. I agree, plastic carrier bags are a drop in the bucket, and I also see the ridiculousness of putting a bunch of plastic wrapped items into a plastic bag and calling one of them more terrible than the other. However, we have to start somewhere. Eventually I hope we’ll have fewer plastic wrapped items going into reusable cloth bags. We have to remember that recycling is not a sustainable solution as plastic gets downgraded each time it gets recycled. I do think that in store charges for plastic bags are likely more effective than bans
I also wouldn’t worry about jobs related to plastic bags – I bet the wax paper bag guys lost a lot of jobs when the plastic bags came in.