They now make "paper" products, as well as utensils, out of corn and/or wheat. I believe they require light to decompose, but they are very environmentally friendly. Why not bring a bunch on your next trip, and research where they could buy more in their area?

Doing a quick search, I found this website: <link>

I'm sure there's tons of other stuff out there.

• The single most useful change a shopper can make to improve the environment is taking their own reusable shopping bags to the store. Plastic sacks are made from petroleum based products, are not biodegradable and leach poisons back into the ground.

• Stop buying over-packaged goods. If they don't sell, companies will stop producing them.

I spelled leech wrong.

; )

You know, I hear what you're saying about plastic bags. In fact, I hear it everywhere nowadays. But here's the catch, and it never makes it into any of the news articles:

I reuse those plastic bags. I rarely through any out right away. They make great garbage bags for little trash containers. And for travel, nothing's better for wrapping up your shoes. Without ever throwing them away I never seem to collect too many, meaning that the ones I get while shopping are about what I need anyway.

Paper bags won't do for any of the uses mentioned above, because they are not water resistant and tear easily. And if I brought a canvas bag to the store I would just have to buy garbage bags for my house, which is a total waste of money.

Also, it seems that plastic is environmentally superior to paper in a few ways: it doesn't require trees to be chopped. Also, plastic bags are lighter and thinner than paper, meaning you need fewer trucks and burn less carbon transporting the same number of plastic bags from the factory to the store.

zbird:

They make great garbage bags for little trash containers. And for travel, nothing's better for wrapping up your shoes.

Why does your trash need a bag? By placing your trash into a disposable grocery sack, you are gift wrapping it. This is how billions of non biodegradable sacks make it into landfills. Trash should go into the bin and either be disposed of directly or recycled.

zbird:

Paper bags won't do for any of the uses mentioned above, because they are not water resistant and tear easily.

Water resistant where? In your luggage? I have canvas sacks with drawstrings that hold my shoes inside my luggage. Near as I can tell, this is to prevent the soles from getting grime on my clean clothes. It is not about water resistance. But that's just me. Canvas doesn't tear either and it launders very well.

zbird:

And if I brought a canvas bag to the store I would just have to buy garbage bags for my house, which is a total waste of money.

Where do you put this plastic garbage bags? Inside the TRASH CANS? That is what trash cans are for. You're confusing waste of money with waste of bags.

zbird:

Also, it seems that plastic is environmentally superior to paper in a few ways: it doesn't require trees to be chopped. Also, plastic bags are lighter and thinner than paper, meaning you need fewer trucks and burn less carbon transporting the same number of plastic bags from the factory to the store.

My point was to use your own grocery bags, not paper. Most paper sacks used in a grocery store are made from trees that were grown for the express purpose of becoming paper products. I'd rather not chance it, I bring my own bags.

Bags are going to have to get into the stores one way or another. A truck can bring them, plastic or paper OR YOU CAN BRING THEM.

Thanks for your reply.

Um, maybe I'm missing something....you don't use trash bags? You just...throw..the trash in a can? All loose? Pardon me for saying so, but AckK! That's totally gross. I don't care if you call it "gift-wrapping", that's just so unsanitary, I can't fathom it.

Let me see. What do I throw away that is nasty?

I recycle paper, plastic, bottles and cans.

I compost veg matter for my garden.

I throw trash into the bin directly.

What is so nasty you cannot throw it into a bin?

No, you spelled it right the first time. 'Leach' means for a liquid to leak through something. A 'leech' is that sluglike creature that sucks your blood.

Interesting points, pbev, although I think they ultimately show that people have to do different things to save the earth depending on their circumstances. Thinking about this issue got me thinking how elegant, effective, and liberating a carbon tax would be. No snobbery, niceties, or guilt trips about other people's lifestyles. Just make people pay for their carbon output and watch them find ingenious ways to reduce it in order to avoid the cost.

Anyway, here are my answers to your remarks:

I live on the sixth floor of a New York apartment building and dispose of my trash by dumping it into a garbage shoot. Plastic, water and tear-resistant bags are necessary because if the bag breaks in the shoot the garbage could sit there for a long time, attracting rodents. Suffice it to say my neighbors would hate me.

I can see how not using trashbags could be doable in the suburbs or the country, as long as you didn't have a mouse/insect problem. It would be especially practical if you also had a compost pile for organic waste (which tends to be 99% of the especially icky wet garbage). But it won't work in Manhattan.

I console my conscience by the fact that living in Manhattan allows me the ultimate environmental virtue: not owning a car.

Canvas is heavier than plastic, so packing your shoes in canvas means more weight for you and the carbon-burning airplane to carry. Of course, you can argue that the extra emitted by plane carrying an extra canvas bag is infinitisimal, but then, so is the carbon emitted in the production of a plastic bag for each of my shoes (but note to environmentally conscious women everywhere--YOU CAN MAKE A DIFFERENCE BY NOT PACKING 5 OUTFITS AND A GALLON OF COSMETICS FOR EACH DAY OF YOUR TRIP!).

I recycle paper, plastic, bottles & cans. I compost vegetable matter, egg shells, etc.

So what do I throw away that is nasty? Well, you should not compost meat or dairy products. So trimmed animal fat or fish bones get tossed to the trash. I scoop my cat boxes, and that is not flushable. It goes into the trash. (I tried a wheat litter product, but it was more expensive and not as effective as the clay brands.)

Where I live, you must pay a private service for trash pick up. However, if you take recyclables to the dump, they allow you to toss your trash for free. It is two humans, three indoor cats and one outdoor dog at the house. We don't accumulate enough trash/recyclables for a weekly trip. Our trash and recycling sits in the bins for two weeks before dumping. (By the way, summers are long and hot where I live.) I cannot imagine the smell if it were not bagged up in plastic and then contained in a lidded plastic bin. Even with bagging my trash, I still wash my bins out about every month.