Recycling Bags Saves $$ and Planet

I started shopping at Stop and Shop four years ago when we moved into our new house.

I love Stop and Shop now for a number of reasons. It's clean, the people who work there greet me by name, they have good 10 for $10 deals...and BEST of all, they give me $.05 for every bag I bring in to bag up my compra. They accept any bag as reusable, but I love what I call "green bags", AKA, reusable canvas shopping bags. I bought my first set at Stop and Shop a couple of years ago. Their green bags are cute, they are actually green, they cost $.99 each and will be paid off after 20 visits. Stop and Shop pays ME to use them. That's 2 months of shopping and the bag has paid for itself. The bags holds 4 times what a plastic bag can with strong handles that are comfortable on the shoulder.

It took some practice bringing those bags shopping with me. I started with 3 and my collection has grown to a number of green bags which actually come in red (target), purple (a work conference), white (staples) and black with monarch butterflies (toy's r us). Greens bags are totally in trend now as well. I overheard a woman at the Trader Joes telling her friend of the ridicule she got for not having green bags with her at the store. Her friend laughed. I snickered. If you can make it happen, its a nice thing to do...ridicule? Not so much.

Trader Joes has a perk, if you bring your own bag, you can enter a raffle to win free groceries. I bring my green bags there and enter every time, even if I buy a power bar. No win yet, but I am hopeful.The other perk to Stop and Shop is they collect plastic bags. They have a bin and you can put your plastic bags in it.

I love reducing my carbon footprint in anyway I can. So it's become a bit of an obsession for me, and here is what I have collected in plastics, to take to the plastic recycling bin in one week. Sick.

Here is what can be recycled. I take a bag of collected bags to me each week to Stop and Shop. And if I forget my green bags, I use the recycled plastic bags and save some change.