!#8# Canvas Bags - Do Your Part For the Environment

!±8± Canvas Bags - Do Your Part For the Environment

The affects of global warming are being felt everywhere from the North Pole to Australia the speed of change is alarming scientists. The problem is only going to get worse with developing countries like China and India set to produce more and more CO2 gases. Believe it or not we all can do our little part in protecting the environment by simply changing a few of our habits. By making the switch from plastic and paper bags to canvas bags we can all save millions of trees from being cut down each year. Plastic shopping bags are just as worse they're made out of a byproduct of petroleum which is used in so many of our products we use today. The problem with petroleum based products is that when it's converted into products like plastic bags and containers they never break-down leaving behind a mess in our landfills and waterways. If we are serious about saving our forests from deforestation and saving the planet we have to make the switch from paper bags to canvas bags.

Canvas bags are a great alternate to the standard shopping bag as the statistics relating to the consumption of shopping bags is staggering. Each year American's on average use about 10 billion paper grocery bags which equates to around 14 million trees that are cut down. The number of plastic bags we use each year is even higher as most stores offer us a plastic bag for the smallest of purchases. The great thing about canvas bags is that they're more durable than the plastic shopping bag. You can fit a lot more groceries into a canvas bag as opposed to a plastic bag which you need to double bag for heavier items.

Many people including myself always thought using paper was better than plastic bags but paper in some ways is even worse than plastic. From an energy perspective the typical canvas bags uses 14 times less energy than plastic bags and 39 times less energy than paper bags these figures are based on the canvas bag making 500 trips. Five hundred trips would be a modest figure because the average life span of canvas bags is around a year and half. Plastic and paper bags are able to be recycled but the energy costs are extremely high. It takes a lot of valuable energy to turn these products into other reusable products. At the end of the day canvas bags are a smarter greener choice and we should all be using them.