Ideal Bite

Most grocery stores offer a plastic bag recycling drop box in the front of the store. I save all my plastic bags (newspaper sleeves, zip lock, take out bags) and put them all in there. Plus, if you bring in your own linen or cloth bags, some grocery stores pay you up to $.10 per bag.

Our town has a system where we buy green (colored) Coventry bags at local stores. They come in tall kitchen and also a large size. They really encourage recycling and composting. Trash must be in a Coventry bag to be picked up. Anything in the recycle basket is free but if it's not recycleable and you want to throw it away you pay for it with the bags. I don't think I've passed a house on garbage day without a recycling basket at the curb.

My parents' garbage goes to an incinerator. Both households recycle but one cannot compost. Do you have any other recommendations for their garbage treatment?

Just a quick note, a representative of one of the companies that makes biodegradable bags told me at a workshop that throwing a biodegradable bag into a landfill is the same as throwing a regular trash bag there. Landfills are designed to be dry, 'sanitary' depositories for our trash where very little decomposes, even organics. In order for your biodegradable bags to be worth the extra money and benefit to the environment they should really only be used for organics and sent to municapal compost sites. We must be careful in the day of so much 'green' hype to still be aware of ALL the facts.

Deanna, I didn't understand the plastic bag problem and how biodegradables work in a landfill. Thanks, that was a great education! I'm working on canvas. http://carbonneutral.2truth.com

Forget the trash bags, just wash out the garbage cans (if possible using grey water). And a toast to the City of San Francisco, which just announced a ban on stores' use of petroleum-byproduct plastic bags.

At a composting seminar at my workplace, our local representative said throwing biodegradable bags in a landfill is actuallly worse than plastic, becauase of the methane gas produced as the bags biodegrade in the landfill (Ideally, we should be recycling/composting every object that CAN break down). But I think it's a bit of "picking your poison" becuase those plastic bags are made with petrochemicals. Guess we just can't win!

If you live in South-Central Texas, HEB Grocery Stores sell trash bags produced from 100% recycled materials, offering the bin out front to recycle all those plastic bags that you don't keep. Usually the bags are around the same price as the name brand ones (and sometimes cheaper). They have also started offering lines like "Seventh Generation Cleaning", recycled toilet paper "Sunrise", and others.........just a little FYI.

I see someone has talked about the fact that the compostable bags won't in fact compost in landfill. I had purchased compostable dog waste bags, but at the Green Festival in SF when I talked with the Sunset Scavenger folk there (local SF waste company), they advised me it will not compost since it goes into the landfill which is so compacted that the environment is anaerobic. Perhaps there would be a way to use dog poop for alternative energy??? All you inventors out there, get busy! This would be an inexhaustible resource...

Here in Belgium each municipality has different rules on trash containers- In my municipality we do not have the option of purchasing biotrashbags as all trashbags have our municipality name, have to bought from the local store and cost 12€ for 8 bags (thats abuot 18$ these days) the point forht costs is it pays the fees for garbage handling but also encourages you to recycle- more recycling = less bags used= cheaper- we do have to place our metal, plastic, drink containers (tetra paks) in special municipal bags but these cost less(20 for 5€) - I think the cost there just offsets the fee for recycling pick up- Glass and paper can be left on the curb in paper boxes or recycling bins, all electric appliances are taken to the container park and there are special pick-up days for paint, batteries toher small harmful items, we compost in our garden but if you don't have that option there is a separate composting can for pick up or you can bring large amounts of garden waste to the container mark where it will be turned into mulch - in total for our household of two people and two cats we put out on average 5 bags of "trash" a month (mainly plastic wrapping, kitty litter, meat waste or cooked food), 4 bags of plastic/metal/ drinks containers (catfood cans and juice cartons mainly) 2 large sized Ikea recycling boxes of paper and 3 smaller sized ikea recycling boxes of glass- eventhough I had recycling in the US the amount we recylced there was nothing compared to here.