A guest post by Christina Crowe – Salad Sticks

After leaving the supermarket carrying a few plastic bags packed with groceries and heading over to the car, most people don’t stop to think about where these bags come from or what happens to the bags once they’re thrown away. I most certainly didn’t think about such matters when I would walk into grocery stores, accept my purchases, and leave while clutching several bags as I do so. This, of course, was until I learned that plastic and paper bags aren’t as great as they seem.

The truth is, plastic and paper bags are destroying the environment. What do you usually do when you’re done with shopping? You throw the grocery bags away don’t you? And then where do they go?

Most plastic bags roam the streets, get caught up in sea turtle bellies, strangle innocent birds, or just sit in landfills for hundreds of years while slowly releasing toxic chemicals into the ground until they decompose. Because sea animals mistake plastic bags for jellyfish, the bags usually get eaten, causing internal infections, blockages, starvation, and even death. If that isn’t bad enough, plastic bags also waste massive amounts of oil, looking at how many of them are manufactured each year. What’s even sadder is that some stores pass out these deadly choking devices like they’re nothing at all, bagging purchases with two or more bags when one bag would have sufficed, just because the bags are so insanely cheap.

Paper bags aren’t that much of a difference. It takes way more energy to manufacture a paper bag than a plastic one, since paper bags are heavier. Paper bags are also the reason why billions of trees have to die each year. If the bags aren’t recycled, they then take up more space than they should in landfills.

Buying a few reusable shopping bags will not only help the environment, but it will make your shopping so much easier in the process. I’m beginning to use reusable bags, and I bring them with me when I go shopping. All I have to do, really, is leave the empty bags in the trunk of my car, fill the bags up with the items in my carriage after leaving the store, and drive on home. I find that reusable bags are so much easier to manage, and I don’t have to deal with as much clutter as I normally do with plastic or paper bags. Reusable shopping bags can even be washed. They’re also sturdy and can withstand more weight than a normal shopping bag can.

Overall, I feel great that I’m helping the environment, and, at the same time, I don’t have to worry about piles of food tearing from bags and landing on the porch floor at my feet while I attempt to unlock the house door after a long day of shopping. It’s a wonderful feeling. It truly is.

You can visit Christina Crowe at Salad Sticks or contact her via email (salad_sticks@yahoo.com).

Going against their own 2008 pledge to cut funds to groups which "divert attention" to progressive energy sources, ExxonMobile continues to shell out the dollars.

Lobbying groups The National Center for Policy Analysis (NCPA) and The Heritage Foundation received more than $125,000 in 2008. Policy and communications director for the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment, Bob Ward, claim the two lobbying groups have both published "misleading and inaccurate information about climate change."

In a web memo published in December by the Heritage Foundation they claim, "Growing scientific evidence casts doubt on whether global warming constitutes a threat, including the fact that 2008 is about to go into the books as a cooler year than 2007". Scientists unassociated with Exxon, believe the changes are due to natural changes, having nothing to do with the long term global warming trends.

The NCPA web site states, "NCPA scholars believe that while the causes and consequences of the earth's current warming trend is [sic] still unknown, the cost of actions to substantially reduce CO2 emissions would be quite high and result in economic decline, accelerated environmental destruction, and do little or nothing to prevent global warming regardless of its cause."

No wonder gas is so expensive. Big oil has to shell out big bucks to manipulate the public about the facts. Just remember, every time you fill your tank, you're practically financing the lobbyist.