Plastic Bags

We all know that plastic bags are bad for the environment.    You know.   The ones you get from the store or that a newspaper may come in, for those who still read the paper.  But we all have them in our house and it might be nice to get at least one extra use out of them before we throw them away. 

My most often use for both kinds of bags are picking up after my dog.  This is way more cost effective than buying the bags at the pet store. She is a ShiTzu so the bags from the daily newspapers work really well.  What is even nicer, being in an urban environment, there are many free plastic wrapped circulars, ads and coupons that are deposited on door steps of apartment and condo buildings all over the neighborhood. Many of my neighbors are not interested in them and often leave them lying in front of their buildings for days at a time.  There is often a plethora of bags which I can pick up around the neighborhood to recycle the contents and use the bag later in the week.  Another bonus is getting multiple copies of coupons from the Sunday paper.  This is great for items I may stock up on at the grocery or drug store.   But, I digress.

My favorite magazine, Real Simple, has a number of other suggested uses. 

1.  Like Galoshes. Wrapping your shoe or slipper in them before you go outside to prevent the footwear from getting dirty or wet.  They make a note to be care on smooth, slick surfaces as you will not have any traction as you walk.

2.  Using them as knee pads.  If you kneeling on the ground while you are gardening or changing a tire, you wrap a bag around each knee to protect your pants before you kneel.

3.  Wrapping a wet umbrella in a bag to protect a purse, floors or carpets, when you are out.

4.  Head gear.  This one requires no pride on your part as you will have to unselfconscious to pull this off.  But if you get caught in the rain without an umbrella, you can use the bag as a rain hat to protect your hair.

5.  A paint brush protector.  Say you have started a paint job and get interrupted so you won't be able to finish the paint job you started until tomorrow.  By wrapping up the paint brush in a plastic bag and using a rubber band or string, you can leave the job without having to take the time to clean the brush or having the paint dry on it.

6.  Planter filler.  If you are transferring a plant to a bigger planter but want to keep the planter lighter and not use as much dirt, you can crumple a plastic bag at the bottom of the bigger pot before replanting the plant.  The article notes to not cover the drainage hole if the pot has one.


Kana Okada from Real Simple website





7.  As gift wrap.  Take three bags that might be different colors or don't have printing on them, and put them inside one another than put the gift in them.  Then tie the handles together at the top and cut the  handles and fan them out.  It looks pretty with multi-colored bags (see picture).  This one I thought was interesting although, I don't get too many bags that are any other colors than yellow or white and are do not have writing on them.

 

8.  This one is from my mother.  Since she lives alone and doesn't have a lot of garbage, she uses the plastic bags from the grocery store as her garbage bags in the kitchen.



While these ideas are not exactly eco-friendly and the bag will end up in a landfill, they each propose a way to get one more use out of the bags many of us have in our homes anyway.  And, in the case of the dog poop bags and garbage bags they offer a cheaper alternative to buying plastic bags.  In their own way they are kind of echo friendly as we are using these bags, which are often in the house anyway, instead of buying additional bags for these purposes.