Plastic Bags and Sandwich Bags Alternatives

My wife and I have spent years trying to minimize the impact of our lives on the environment and we are always looking for new ways to improve. I want to share some of our findings with everyone... Maybe some of them will seem obvious and unexciting to you, but I hope that out experiences will still be useful to some people… If you have something to add – please share with us.

Today I want to share some findings in our ongoing battle against plastic bags:

1) Grocery bags. Part 1. Paper or Plastic?
Neither. There is really little excuse for pointless plastic (or paper) grocery bags, especially considering availability of reusable cloth grocery bags. It might sound silly, but the biggest challenge we ran into is remembering to take them with us. The obvious solution was to keep them in the car. Once we bring our groceries home we put the bags by the door, this way we put them back in the car the next time we go out.

2) Grocery bags. Part 2. Reuse. (aka Trash Bags. Part 1.)
The way things are done nowadays we still end up with a constant supply of plastic bags. Since our recycling center does not accept this type of plastic, we devised a way to get rid of them by using them for trash, instead of buying those giant plastic trash bags. Grocery bags might seem too small for this purpose, but if you recycle (and compost) then you probably don’t produce much trash to begin with.
Of course, unfortunately it means that those pesky grocery bags still end up in a landfill, but at least it’s a small grocery bag and not a giant super thick plastic monster that used to go into our trash bin. Especially if you consider a situation when trash needs to be taken out even when those giant bags are only quarter full, due to say foul smelling food scraps... And this way we at least try to minimize the impact.
I would love to use the bio-degradable bags, but the bio-degradable bags still need to be manufactured out of something. And that something is usually trees (and energy). So we believe that using plastic grocery bags for trash, while also minimizing the amount of trash by recycling and composting is the best solution.

3) Sandwich bags.
We started to use glass Tupperware, which comes in variety of sizes (including tiny square ones). If absolutely necessary we use Unbleached Waxed Paper Bags (like these ones). The major downfall of waxed paper bags is that they do not completely seal the food. However if you use them in combination with generic plastic sandwich bags – it allows you to reuse the plastic ones over and over again, without staining them with food and without staining your food with plastic.