What are the costs of things we use everyday that we can control? Bring bags with you to the store and never wonder about your answer. Help a cause and your community with these environmentally friendly recyclable shopping bags. Recyclable shopping bags last for years. Well over a billion one time use plastic bags are used for purchases in stores each day. Here are some of the actual costs paid by our environment and communities for the convenience of single-use plastic bags.

- The production of plastic for grocery bags uses petroleum and many times natural gas as well, which both increase the countries dependency on foreign supplies. Prospecting and drilling for these resources contributes to the destruction of fragile habitats and ecosystems around the world - including our own country.

- The chemical ingredients needed to make plastic produces toxic pollution during the manufacturing process.

- The energy needed to manufacture and deliver disposable bags uses resources and creates global warming emissions.

- Annual cost to US retailers alone is estimated at $4 billion which increases the price of everything we buy.

- Disposal of plastic bags creates an estimated 8 billion pounds of plastic bags, wraps and sacks enter the waste stream every year in the US alone, putting an unnecessary burden on landfill space and further causing air pollution if incinerated.

- Plastic bags can take up to 1,000 years to decompose. They often end up as litter breaking down into tiny bits, contaminating our soil and water.

- After plastic bags breakdown, the small plastic particles can pose threats to marine life and contaminate the food chain. Japanese researchers reported that plastic debris acts like a sponge for toxic chemicals, soaking up a million fold greater concentration of such deadly chemical compounds such as PCBs and DDE (a breakdown product of the notorious insecticide DDT), than the surrounding seawater. These turn into even more toxic food for marine animals.

- Hundreds of thousands marine mammals die every year from eating discarded plastic bags which they mistake as food. Turtles see the bags as jellyfish, their primary food source. Plastic bags that are eaten choke animals or block their intestines, leading to an agonizing death. Many cows, goats and other animals suffer a similar fate to marine life when they accidentally ingest plastic bags while foraging for food.

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