Do you use paper, plastic or bring your own?

I bring my own as often as I remember. But I made the mistake of buying the Safeway bags, which are long rectangles. They are such a pain, because you have to hold them with your elbows at right angles, otherwise they’ll drag on the ground. Woe is me.

I have my own bags from Wal-Mart, but I don’t use them like I should. I always forget to bring them in with me.

I use plastic bags, but I recycle every single one. It irritates me when a bagger will only put a few items in a bag when there is clearly room for more.

I am amazed at how many clerks thank us when we produce our own bags to. old to young. It’s cool.

I try to bring my own—I normally have one folded up in my bag wherever I am. When I don’t have a bag with me, I get a paper bag because I take public transit or walk and they are easier to carry.

I always bring my own.

I bring my own. Except when I forget in which case I go plastic (no paper bags in the UK).

Recently starting bringing the canvaas bag that Price Chopper sells. I get 3¢ per bag (only another 90 or so trips to get my money back), but more importantly I no longer have a cabinet under the sink filled with millions of plastic bags.

I bring my own when I remember to pull them out of the trunk and bring them in. I was so proud when I decided I would start leaving them in the trunk in order to always have them with me. Even that doesn’t do any good though if I don’t remember to grab them!

@jonsblond ditto for me, too. We have 6 Wal-Mart bags. I like the way they’re made. Good flat bottoms & roomy. And I also get irritated at so few things in a bag the way they pack them. You can buy just a few items & you walk out with 15 bags. It’s ridiculous. When we do get plastic bags, we also recycle. I hope more people get to using their own.

I bring my own. I purchased a lot from ReusableBags.com I especially love the ones that fold up into small pouches because I can store them under the seat on my motorcycle and in my car’s glove compartment. I always have them with me, even for impulse purchases.

I bring my own. It’s a nice Whole Foods bag that I got as swag at some networking thing. It’s the perfect size and folds to a small enough size to fit my handbag.

@Divalicious – We got some from there to. We got a couple that clip on the edge of the cart to hold open as well. Those rock. And they are really cheap there if you buy more than a few.

my own bags are in the car but I always forget to bring them in!

@Bri_L Those will be on my wish list, too!
Sometimes I spend more on bags than I do on things to fill them. Sigh

@Divalicious haha. Ditto that my friend

In college we didn’t use anything. We shopped at Aldi and unless you wanted to pay for the $0.05 bags you were out of luck. We just threw the food in our trunk and used luggage when we got home to carry everything in.

I bring my own because I get 50 PC points for each reusable bag I use each time I use it. 20,000 points = $20 at the grocery store. Combined with using my PC credit card (which gives me points for each dollar I spend on it), I usually end up getting $20 in free groceries once a month.

Generally paper. When I shop the co-op, I bring my own, but mostly I use paper, because I can put all my recyclables in paper bags. Every paper bag I get is re-used, in fact some times I run out and take a few extras. As for plastic, when I do get plastic it usually ends up being used to dump cat litter in when we scoop out he boxes, or to dump really spoiled, smelly food we find at the back of the fridge…basically I avoid getting plastic if I can, but if I do get it, I use it when I want something that won’t leak. The biggers ones I may re-use multiple times like to bring old clothes to the Goodwill, to bring my swimming suit and towel to the gym, etc. If I have an abundance of plastic bags I recycle them at my coop.

I bring my own to HEB. Not only do I “feel good” about being a good Do-Bee, I don’t over buy because it all has to fit into my bags. I get plastic at Target and PetsMart, and then use the bags to pick up dog poop when I take the guys for walks. The handles make them easy to tie to the leashes so they are always handy, and their light weight makes them easy to turn inside out and use as a “glove” for picking up poop (although the warmth coming through the plastic is a bit disconcerting).

oh mother in laws!

i usually only get a few things at a time from the store so i just tell the clerk i don’t need a bag, and carry the stuff. or put them in my purse, so that’s kind of like “bringing your own”

they always think i am weird when i am like “oh no its ok, i don’t need a bag.” what is so weird about that!?

when is the US going to catch up with the rest of the world and make people pay for the bags???

@alive – right about the time they go metric.

@alive ; What a great revenue source for the government! $.25 environment fee for every grocery bag would either encourage people to use recycle bags or would create revenue for failing local governments. California should institute a fee like that! Responsible people would bring their own bags and irresponsible people would pay. GREAT IDEA!!!

I do all three depending on if I remember to bring the bag, how much I am buying, and where I am.

If I get paper or plastic, I reuse most of them and take the rest back to the store.

I bring my own, also keep them in my trunk. Except at Giant, where I shop a couple of times per month. I like to use their paper bags to collect all the mixed paper we recycle.

My favorite bags are the ones that Whole Foods sells, and the blue bags lined with foil insulation available at Walmart.

I got one of those cloth bags from some trade show I went to. It works great as a grocery bag. Though I get odd looks when I use it unless I’m in a store that promotes that kind of green-ness.

@alive – Some stores in the NYC already do that. A general version of such a policy has been bandied about here as well.

I bring my own as often as I remember.

Feels ackward though when the staff trys to charge me for the bags everytime as if I am buying them for the first time. It seems like there should be a simple soln to this somewhere.

@nfitzgerald – Here is a helpful tip: buy the bags at two different stores that you commonly use. Then take the bags from store A with you when you go shopping at store B, and vice versa.

Or write your name on them in permanent marker.

I bring my own (at least to grocery stores) because I live in NYC, and I have to walk three avenues and two streets to the grocery store, and plastic bag handles stretch, hurt my hands, and break. My own bags allow me to carry them on my shoulder, and they are made of fabric, so they won’t break. I love them :)

I always bring my own. Check out chicobag.com. This is a company I now work for after being involved in the bag issue for a long time. We make bags that squish up into a little pouch and also have carabiners so you can clip them to a purse, belt loop, backpack, etc! Maybe it’s time to bug Ben again about making fluther chicobags!

I bring my own. Ikea has awesome bags for $1.59 each, or there’s the oversized 59 cent bags that are great for bigger things.

@emilyrose: They have those in my grocery store :D

We bring our own bags, and bag our own groceries. The clerks always thank us.
Sometimes we forget, and then we use paper. We need them though, because we use them for recycling.

I use them every chance I get and remember to bring them. I’m grateful for the way Pathmark has because they have cool designs like polar bears, the beach, flowers, nature, and animals. Very vibrant in color and can hold a lot. My kids love the bags so they’re usually the ones to remember to grab them when we go. Very cool to be able to buy $150 worth of groceries and they all fit in about 5–6 of these bags rather than 25 plastic bags that seem to rip more easily these days because they make them thinner. I tell the clerks “Fill ‘er up! I don’t care how heavy they get.” :-)

I try to remember to bring my own recyclable bags. Where I grew up, plastic bags were always illegal to use (yay!), so I never experienced using plastic grocery/shopping bags until I was living at college. I found (and still do find) plastic bags to be incredibly annoying and wasteful. You can barely fit anything in them, and you sometimes need to use more than one to fit heavy things.

In my hometown, we would use paper bags, reuse them for scrap paper or projects (they made great book covers), and then recycle them. I wish more people would do that… I feel gross every time I forget to bring my reusable bags and get stuck with a car-full of plastic.

I bring my own cloth bags to the Shop and Save and the Co-op. I keep them in the trunk of my car so I won’t forget.