Earth Bytes: In the Bag

Welcome to our first Earth Bytes. Every Tuesday we'll offer up one easy way to be a little more eco-friendly. Today's hot tip? Composting.

Forget paper or plastic, the right answer is neither. Reusable totes are the best thing to happen to grocery stores since sliced bread. Here's the Earth Bytes lowdown:

• It takes 1,000 years for a single plastic grocery bag to decompose.
• We use 100 billion plastic grocery bags every year.
• Replacing plastic bags with canvas or nylon totes saves about 12 million barrels of oil a year.
  
• Paper bags are more eco friendly than plastic, but it still takes 14 million trees to produce a year's supply.
• One ton of paper bags fills 3.3 cubic meters of landfill space.
• Canvas grocery totes last an average of two years.
• It costs around $4,000 to recycle one ton of plastic bags. It costs $0 to reuse your nylon or canvas grocery bags.

Check out tomorrowsworld.com or reusablebags.com to invest in your own hip, enviro-friendly reusable grocery bags.