Eco-friendly Bags Reduce Pollution and Help Protect Endangered Species

Anyone who has visited the beach has likely seen plastic bags and bottles wash ashore. Many animals die as the result of entanglement in these products, while others ingest broken down plastic and pass the toxic substance up through the food chain. Eco bags are made of sustainable materials and can be reused, making them a great solution to at least part of this complex problem.

Advantages of using Reusable Grocery Bags

Here are the main advantages of using reusable shopping bags:

• Reusable bags, totes and lunch bags are portable. You can keep some in the car for impromptu trips to the grocery store.

• They are reusable, meaning you don't throw away hundreds of bags each year. Once in landfills, plastic bags stick around for a long time and often end up in waterways and other natural areas.

• Because they are made using environmentally friendly materials and processes, ecobags reduce the amount of petroleum-based products, which impacts global warming. Further, by replacing paper bags, reusable bags help reduce deforestation.

• Bags made of natural materials, such as cotton, are strong and easy to wash. Jute bags biodegrade quickly to reduce land fill mass.

Types of Eco-friendly bags

There are many different kinds of eco-friendly bags that allow you to match your style and make the biggest change in your personal habits. This is more important than ever as Earth moves toward a crisis--more than 1,000,000 species could experience imminent extinction due to lack of resources and human encroachment on their habitats.

Materials used to make environmentally friendly bags come from recycled waste, which helps reduce the amount of trash in the local landfill. This material can be re-processed into a fabric with no harm to the environment. Better yet, the bags are often biodegradable and disintegrate without consuming space in the landfill.

Since the bags are available in a multitude of styles, materials and designs, you won't feel like you're sacrificing your aesthetic preferences to do what's right for the planet. Some of the materials employed include vinyl, jute, hemp, nylon, cotton, paper, and recycled plastic. The wide range of options results in a variety of customized designs. Canvas and nylon are some of the most popular materials.

Many companies, such as grocery chains for example, acquire wholesale eco-friendly bags from industry specialists like Ecobags, in order to promote their business, while promoting an environmentally friendly lifestyle. It's fairly easy to customize the color scheme to match a business's branding and then print logos, as well as other patterns and messages that will be seen each time customers reuse the bags.

Impact of Plastic Bags on the Environment

During the production process to make plastic bags, petroleum must be extracted, refined, and processed. Each of these steps uses energy produced from fossil fuels, which increases greenhouse gas emissions and contributes to climate change.

The ocean is one biome affected by plastic waste. In fact, about 13 million tons of plastic is returned to the world's shorelines every year. Some plastics leak toxins into the water that may lead to cancer and cause other health issues. However, the biggest issue is how much plastic is consumed by animals, leading to dire results for the whole food chain, including humans.

Ocean birds, turtles and fish are negatively impacted by plastic debris. About 100 million marine animals perish every year due to the consumption of plastic waste. Once an animal eats it, plastic can cause issues as in passes through the digestive system. Larger pieces can clog the gullet, stomach and intestines of marine mammals.

Animals often starve to death as a result. Bigger fish eat smaller fish and consume any plastic embedded in the digestive tract or other tissues. In turn, people eat the bigger fish and risk illness or injury, including cancer, if toxins are allowed by buildup in the body.

These are just more reasons to turn to ecological bags and become part of the solution.