Reducing waste and living more sustainably is all about making small changes that add up over time. In A year of monthly waste reduction goals, I shared 12 monthly goals that anyone interested in making simple changes to reduce their environmental impact can make. January’s goal is to eliminate disposable shopping bags.

This post was originally published in January 2020 and updated in December 2022.

The World Counts estimates the average plastic shopping bag is used for 12 minutes and can take up to 1,000 years to break down. Considering the world uses 5 trillion plastic bags a year, this is a huge problem.

On a personal level, this simple change can reduce a lot of waste. Think about it. If you make two trips to the store each week and use an average of five disposable bags on each visit, that’s over 500 bags a year.

When I was young, I remember my mother always taking reusable bags on her trips to the market or grocery store. Over the years, the reusable bags were replaced by paper shopping bags. Then, the paper bags gave way to the convenience of disposable plastic shopping bags.

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Is charging for bags the answer?

A few years ago, stores in Ontario started charging five cents for plastic shopping bags. This was enough motivation for me to buy some reusable shopping bags. I now have a collection of shopping bags and bins that I keep in the trunk of my car.

The biggest challenge is remembering to take the bags into the store when I go shopping. This is more of a problem on the small trips to buy one or two items than on my big weekly grocery shopping trips. For this reason, I keep a couple of small packable shopping bags in my purse so I always have a bag handy.

For me, this was such an easy change to make so I am always surprised at the number of people I see buying plastic bags when I am shopping. Obviously, the five-cent charge for bags isn’t enough to incent behaviour change. It might not seem like much but, over a year, those nickels add up to at least $25.

What about eliminating plastic from stores?

Before the pandemic, the store where I do most of my shopping offered loyalty points for each reusable bag I brought to the store with me. Even this carrot didn’t result in widespread behaviour change. When the pandemic hit, stores banned reusable shopping bags which sadly set us back a few years in terms of progress.

Happily, things have returned to normal on that front and many national grocery chains have eliminated plastic bags from their checkouts altogether. That’s a big step in the right direction.

Let’s get back to the days when everyone brought reusable bags to the store. Invest in a few sturdy, reusable shopping bags and take them with you on every trip!

What are your waste reduction goals for this year? Tell me about them below.