What to Do with Plastic Bags

Everybody has one. Be it a closet, a cabinet or a box in the garage, almost every person in this country has a corner of his or her home dedicated to a maddeningly fast-growing collection of plastic shopping bags. (I myself just graduated from the “bag full of bags” method of plastic bag collection to the “shove them in a drawer” technique.)

Even the most environmentally conscious among us can’t seem to keep those tiny emblems of modern convenience from overtaking at least some part of our homes. We have tote bags for the grocery store, but we sometimes forget them. We request paper bags as much as possible, but we know ice cream would make the bags disintegrate before we made it to the front door.

So, what’s a guy or a gal to do? Since most curbside recycling programs don’t accept plastic bags, the best option to unload a large number of bags is to find a grocery store or other retailer that offers drop-off plastic bag recycling services; an increasing number of them do these days, especially among the bigger chains.

For those of us without a drop-off site nearby, it’s time to get creative! I like to use shopping bags to line my bathroom and kitchen trash bins, which offsets the number of actual trash bags I have to buy. I also use them to wrap up fruits and vegetables in the fridge, replacing some of the sandwich bags I would usually buy.

What creative solutions have you come up with to address the burgeoning plastic bag situation in your home?