As you pay for your groceries, the bagger asks the inevitable question: Paper or plastic? If you say paper, your groceries are put into large paper bags with a rectangular bottom.
When you buy carryout for dinner, all the various boxes and cups and condiments are put into paper sacks.
What do you do with all of these paper bags when you get them home? Do you just throw them away? I hope not! There are many uses for leftover paper bags that don't put them into the landfill.
That's right.
We need to do whatever we can to keep our bags out of the garbage dump.
We need to figure out what other uses we can make of the leftover, no longer needed paper bags.
Let's start with the most obvious thing.
Recycle the empty bags.
They can go into the recycling dumpster right along with all of your newspapers, used computer paper, magazines, and catalogs.
Recently such recycling dumpsters have been popping up in many parking lots, such as parks, churches, and shopping malls.
These recycling dumpsters take just about every type of used paper except for cardboard.
If you throw away a lot of newspaper, you can use the paper grocery bags to store the newspapers until you've accumulated enough to warrant a trip to the dumpster.
They are just the right size to hold the newspapers without crumpling or bending them.
This gives the paper bags one more useful duty before being recycled.
Another use for paper bags comes up at holiday and birthday time.
If you have to mail gifts, brown paper grocery bags can be cut open and used to wrap the gifts for mailing.
Just be sure to use enough tape to prevent the brown paper from being torn in the mail.
For example, if you are mailing a shirt in a box from a department store, you don't need another box for mailing.
Just wrap the gift-wrapped shirt box in a cut-open grocery bag, tape it shut, and write on the address.
You probably don't want to buy your lunch every day.
It's expensive and gives you too many calories.
You should carry your lunch two or, even better, three days a week.
When you make your lunch, don't use a fresh, new lunch bag every day.
Save your carryout bags and use them to carry your lunch.
Your wallet and your waist will both thank you.
Paper grocery bags are also useful for kids' crafts.
Cut open a bag and put it on the table to provide protection and to make clean-up easy.
They can paint or play with their clay without dirtying the table.
They can even paint on the bag itself.
Think of the paper this will save.
Paper bags also make a good material for textbook covers for the kids' school books.
They can customize these book covers by painting with poster paint, watercolors, or colorful markers.
As you can see, reusing paper bags can make one small contribution to your recycling effort.