Bring Your Own Bag Saratoga is an initiative to change retailers’ and consumers’ dependence on single-use plastic shopping bags. Our goal is to minimize the negative impact of plastic bags on the environment, from their manufacture through the end of their brief useful life.
Our approach is to encourage an already-growing trend among consumers to rely on reusable shopping bags. We have accomplished this through outreach to local businesses, residents, and government, selling reusable bags with our logo, and by organizing a screening of the film Bag It in October 2013.
They are made from petroleum and natural gas, both limited and problematic resources.
Over 100 billion bags are used annually in our country alone, of which only 5-15% are recycled.
Those that are recycled can only be reprocessed a limited number of times before they join the waste stream. They are still plastic and do not biodegrade.
After their brief usefulness, they end up in landfills and litter our streets, lands and waterways; they kill or injure animals, interfering with a healthy food chain; they creating enormous “gyres” or islands of garbage in our oceans; they clog municipal water systems; and they leach toxic chemicals.
While cheap to produce, the impacts of plastic bag waste are costly.
Check out all these local businesses and citizens modeling our reusable bags!