Sandrine Daniels
Special to the Mirror
Are you up for a challenge?
In this article, let me tell you about the effect one small decision can make when shopping, by taking reusable bags instead of plastic and paper.
I will also explain the action project I have been doing in Campbell River during the last month and its success.
Last, but certainly not least, I would like to thank some people who made it happen.
Enjoy!
To start off, why should you switch to using reusable bags when shopping?
Plastic bags take a toll on our environment. Enormous amounts of plastic bags are used and produced each day.
The carbon emissions coming from the factories create pollution, thus causing the earth to heat up; global warming.
When plastic bags are put in the landfill or are littered, they break down very slowly or maybe not at all.
As the plastic bags break down, animals mistake them for food. Once they are in tiny plastic fragments, smaller creatures eat the pieces as food as well. This results in animals suffering and dying young, all because of what human beings do for convenience.
Use reusable bags!!!! Be environmentally friendly. Make good choices when it comes to keeping a healthy, happy and safe environment.
When shopping, you can make an astonishing, amazing and unbelievable difference by simply using and reusing reusable bags!!!
Paper bags are biodegradable, but even then people cut down trees to produce the bags and animal habitats are lost.
My message for you is to stop using plastic and paper bags!!!!
I am a student from École Phoenix Middle school and for a class project, I decided to try to make Campbell River use more reusable bags.
I started by typing proposals for some of the larger grocery stores, explaining that I would give posters to hang up and stamp 500 of their paper bags for one month. I also explained the negative effects of plastic and paper bags. I then delivered these to the stores.
In the meantime, I created large posters to hang up in the stores that signed on. The posters read: “Go Green for 2016. Bring your re-usable bags and take paper over plastic.”
I went back to the stores a week later to see if they were interested and three stores were on board.
I also got a stamp made that said GO GREEN 2016 and I stamped for one month, each store roughly 500 paper bags per week.
My main message for this project is to encourage the use of reusable bags.
Finally, I would like to thank the stores who participated.
A huge thanks to Quality Foods, Save-On-Foods and Thrifty Foods for their generosity, willingness and kindness. I greatly appreciate you following through with my project.
In conclusion, go green for 2016 by using your reusable shopping bags.
Sandrine Daniels is a student at École Phoenix Middle School