Reuseable Bag Program

Reuseable Bag Program

“Give the Sack to Plastic Bags”

Here’s something that every one of us can do to help turn the tide on a flood that is polluting our oceans and waterways, killing alarming numbers of birds and sea creatures, and littering our highways and parklands.

We Can Break the Plastic Bag Habit

Yes, change can be difficult, so Carpinteria Beautiful is offering to help. We’ve purchased 1000 roomy, reusable grocery bags that will be distributed free during April, Carpinteria Beautiful Month. All we ask is the recipient’s commitment to make regular use of them while shopping. Don’t forget and leave them in your car!

One of these reusable shopping bags holds the contents of four single-use plastic bags. If each household used just one sack each week, plastic bag usage would drop by over a million bags a year — in Carpinteria alone!

We all have plenty of plastic bags in our homes: bread bags, newspaper bags, wrappers. Reuse these for lining wastebaskets, taking out the trash and walking the dog. You get the idea.

Carpinteria Beautiful members have taken the pledge; the City Council and City Staff have their sacks; many aware Carpinterians have already switched. You can do it too. Come along!

The Numbers Tell the Story

In California alone, over

  • 600 plastic bags per second are used and discarded.
  • Plastic bags do not biodegrade. They break up into tiny toxic bits that remain in the environment indefinitely.
  • A million Pacific seabirds and 100,000 sea mammals die annually from ingesting discarded plastic.
  • Whole areas of ocean now have more plastic than bio-mass (living matter).
  • Plastic bags require huge amounts of petroleum to manufacture.
  • The bags cost retailers millions of dollars each year to buy, a cost passed on to the consumer.
  • Cleaning up littered bags costs cities millions in tax dollars.
  • Plastic bags are choking our landfills.

Need we say more?

In 2009 the “It’s In The Bag” Program was launched.

During the month of April, CBer’s handed out approx. 5,000 reuseable bags to people shopping at Von’s and Albertsons in Carpinteria.

In an effort to have people to continue to use their reuseable bags, throughout the summer, CBer’s randomly gave gift certificates to shoppers at Von’s and Albertsons who were using our Carpinteria Beautiful bags.

As we continue to try to educate people of the importance of using reuseable bags, instead of plastic bags, raffle tickets are being randomly handed out to anyone using any kind of reuseable bag, then, at First Friday a drawing is held and the winner receives a gift certificate to different businesses throughout Carpinteria.

Please take a moment to view our video “It’s In The Bag!” You too can break the plastic bag habit – join us!