The age-old question is often a tough one. Choose paper and you may contribute to the cutting down of important carbon-reducing trees. Choose plastic and your grocery bag is bound to end up in a landfill for the next one thousand years. But some places are making the age-old paper or plastic question a little bit easier: Bring your own or pay the price!

What's Wrong With Plastic? Worldwide, hundreds of thousands of birds, whales, seals and turtles are killed as a result of suffocating on plastic bags. In light of this problem, some governments have introduced a "plastax", or tax on plastic bags used at the supermarket. In 2002, Ireland launched a plastic-reducing initiative that added a 20 cent per bag tax onto each grocery bill. The revenue raised was put toward a "green fund" to support environmental projects such as recycling.

While there was some initial opposition, the national response was largely positive. And, to the delight of the Environment Ministry, consumer behavior was changed. Within the first three years of the program, the use of plastic bags went down by 90 percent while raising 3.5 million dollars for Ireland's green fund.

This program caught on in other countries where the use of plastic bags was out of control. Bangladesh, Denmark, Hong Kong, South Africa and Australia are only a few examples of countries that mandate a tax or charge for plastic bags. Even IKEA, a popular home goods store, charges 10 cents per plastic bag at its retailers in Australia. ALDI supermarket in the United States does the same - only offering empty cardboard boxes for free.

While this plastax has caught on worldwide, it hasn't seemed to spread much around the United States. We are still consuming more plastic bags than any other nation and thus contributing to a seemingly endless amount of waste in our landfills. While most major retailers now feature reusable canvas bags for sale near the checkout, the use of these re-usable bags lags in comparison to other countries. Help make it the trend to use canvas bags by using them each time you go to the grocery store. You can even order your very own organic, recycled Eco-bag over the Internet.
Together, we can say, "Good-bye!" to plastic bags!
(Article written by Jennifer B.)