Why Habits Matter to the Environment

Personal choices make a difference not just to families’ well-being, but to the health of the environment. For example, more than 2 billion single-use, plastic shopping bags are used in Los Angeles County each year. Some estimate that Californians across the state use as many as 600 bags per second. Almost all of them are used once and thrown away. Too many end up in the Pacific Ocean, where they pollute the water and harm marine life. On December 17, Heal the Bay’s annual A Day Without A Bag gives us the chance to reflect on what each of us can do to reduce plastic waste and protect our oceans. Switching to reusable bags – and remembering to bring them with us whenever we shop – is one important step. Heal the Bay is asking holiday shoppers and retail businesses to give up single-use shopping bags for at least one day. What happens to disposable plastic bags, especially if they’re not disposed of properly? Only about 5% of plastic bags are recycled in California.

• Plastic litters our beaches.
• Bags get caught in storm drains and have to be cleaned out, which costs money. • Plastic collects in the ocean, where it breaks down into tiny pieces but doesn’t dissolve. In some parts of the North Pacific, there is six times as much plastic as there is plankton.
• Seabirds, marine mammals, fish and sea turtles get caught in plastic or accidentally eat it (the bags look like jelly fish), which can hurt or kill them.

Plastic bags aren’t just a problem in California. All across Africa the landscape is littered with billions of discarded bags, and several countries have banned them outright. In California, San Francisco passed the nation’s first bag ban in 2008. Mexico City did the same in 2009. Now Los Angeles has passed a similar law, which will take effect in 2010, and Santa Monica is also exploring the possibility. Fortunately, this is an environmental problem we can all have an impact on, whether the law requires us to or not. Once you buy a few reusable bags, the trick is to remember to have them with you when you shop.

Here are a few tips that some people have found helpful:

Adults:
• Leave the bags in your car.
• Put bags back in the car right after you unload your groceries – this can make a good chore for children.
• Remember to use your reusable bags whenever you shop, not just at the grocery store. You can take them with you to the drug store or even the mall.

Children:
• Help your parents remember to grab their reusable shopping bags when they leave the house.
• Ask your parents if they have the bags with them when they park the car and head into a store.
• If you’re already in the store and remember that you left the bags in the car, suggest that all of you go back together to get them.

Building the reusable bag habit takes some practice, but it gets easier with time. Then again, you may find that even after you’ve remembered your bags for weeks, you suddenly get out of the habit and start forgetting again. That’s common, too. All you have to do is re-commit, and maybe look for some new way of doing it that makes it easier for your family to remember your reusable bags. The planet will thank you! See related programs: Greening Your Family When More Is Not Enough Global Citizenship for Families