If you really would like to go green, there is another option besides walking around with the lights off and carpooling.

Pick up some cloth bags to use instead of plastic or paper bags at the grocery store.

While those paper bags easily recycle, plastic bags do not. Even though some people like to save them and use them again, chances are eventually, that plastic bag will either float around in space, or end up in a landfill.

Plus, it could actually cost more to recycle the plastic bags than it would to make a whole new plastic bag from raw materials.

Though paper bags do easily recycle, not everyone in this area seems to have easy access to doing so, and paper bags cost grocery stores more than plastic bags do.

“The plastics that go into the landfill stay there forever,” said Mary Alice Drain, NIU Physical Plant energy specialist. “There are two problems with plastic, and they’re both related to the fact that it is a petroleum product.”

You can leave the tape on a box and it will fall off easily during the recycling process without ruining any of the box’s fibers. Leaving a paper sticky note on a bag will contaminate it.

Whether or not a plastic bag ends up in a landfill, it will not biodegrade.

As long as Americans are willing to use and toss away plastic bags, manufacturers will not be forced to change the way they do things, and the plastic bags will just keep on coming.

Countries such as Germany have made laws against putting any packaging material in landfills. This forced Germany and any country that ships anything into Germany to package things in recyclable or re-usable manners.

“When you go to the stores it’s a completely different thing,” Drain said. “You can’t get everything in little individual packaging.”

The entire way of grocery shopping in Germany is different. They don’t go to Meijer and pick up a week’s worth of food.

They go to the market, and stop in the butchers shop, the bakery shop, and the produce shop, and then often walk, bike, or hop on a bus to get home with a couple days worth of food at most.

While paper bags can add up, and plastic bags do no good for the environment, you have an option available that is bringing your own washable cloth bags to the grocery store to put your food in instead.

They are probably not that expensive, and they may keep you from spending too much on food you may not end up eating since you only have so many bags to carry it all with.