One Giveaway I'm Happy to Write About

SimpleMom is giving away some reusable grocery bags. Although I'd certainly be happy to win another blogger's giveaway, I've never been willing to post about one before. I'm willing to help spread the word about this one because I really believe in using reusable bags at the grocery store and everywhere else that disposable bags are handed out. The statistics about plastic grocery bags are truly alarming. If the United States would follow other countries like Ireland, China and Bangladesh in banning free disposable grocery sacks it would go a long way towards reducing what has become a huge environmental nightmare. San Francisco is making a run at it, and I salute them, but their plastic bag consumption is a drop in the bucket compared to the total for the whole country.

Did you know:

• Plastic bags cause over 100,000 sea turtle and other marine animal deaths every year when animals mistaken them for food
• The manufacture of plastic bags add tons of carbon emissions into the air annually
• In the UK, banning plastic bags would be the equivalent of taking 18,000 cars off the roads each year
• Between 500 billion and 1 trillion plastic bags are used worldwide each year
• Approximately 60 - 100 million barrels of oil are required to make the world’s plastic bags each year
• Most plastic bags take over 400 years to biodegrade. Some figures indicate that plastic bags could take over 1000 years to break down. This means not one plastic bag has ever naturally biodegraded.

I use an odd mishmash of department store giveaway tote bags, beach bags and 3 olive green Baggus. SimpleMom is getting stylish by giving away several of six varieties of her favorite reusable bags. Go by her site and get the info to enter her contest. If you don't win, why not click on one of her links and buy the bags you like the best.

However you do it, stop accepting disposable bags!