If you stay in Calistoga, you will be welcomed with a reusable bag the next time you go out for buying your groceries. The City Council recently agreed on the request made by the Green Committee to purchase around 1000 reusable bags for handing them out to shoppers. The Committee wanted to hand these out to the residents of the town to make them give up on plastic bags and use reusable shopping bags instead. These bags will be given out at grocery as well as retail stores.

1000 Reusable Shopping Bags to Be Given Out

Now that the request had been accepted, the Committee is planning to purchase 1000 eco-friendly grocery totes which will cost around $1600. These bags will be dark green in color and will have a logo reading Keep Calistoga Green” imprinted on them in white along with a leaf above the words. The leaf will be surrounded by a eco-friendly message in English and Spanish reading ‘protect our earth'.

These bags will be around 13 inches wide and 10 inches deep. They will be approximately 15 inches in length. They will have long straps and a flat bottom which will make them appropriate for carrying grocery items. Volunteers of the committee will distribute these bags after the start of next year, outside important local markets.

The committee, since a long time, has been planning to persuade the city council in imposing a ban on plastic bags in the town,but couldn't. It finally succeeded in asking dealers to opt for a voluntary plastic bag ban. President of Green Committee, Karen Chang, said that the survey was done around 68 establishments of the town and revealed that 53 percent of them don't use any kinds of bags at all, be it plastic or paper. Approximately 16 percent of businesses that were a part of the survey said that they used plastic bags.

CalMart, which is the largest business in the town to use plastic bags, too has agreed on discontinuing the use of these bags. The store has already made reusable bags available for its shoppers.

Why Reusable Shopping Bags?

It is a known fact that plastic bags create a lot of litter and as they are non-biodegradable, they just stay in the environment for a very long time. This hurts the quality of environment. Reusable shopping bags on the other hand are eco-friendly which makes them better than plastic bags.

Source:http://napavalleyregister.com/news/local/calistoga-buys-reusable-bags-for-shoppers/article_20e189bc-5d2a-11e3-9616-0019bb2963f4.html