300,000 Tons of Plastic Shopping Bags: Thoughts on resolution

Three years ago I made a firm resolve to stop accepting plastic shopping bags at the grocery store.  Americans send over 1 billion plastic grocery bags to landfills each year, adding 300,000 tons of unnecessary landfill waste. I find this fact both disgusting and striking: - striking because reusable shopping bags are such a viable solution.  The average American throws away 4.5 pounds of trash each day. I believe that we need to identify the most accessible solutions to cut back on waste creation and plastic shopping bag reduction is clearly a low hanging fruit.

I bring all this up to give context to a phenomenon.  It took me nearly a year after I made this resolution to actually stop accepting plastic grocery bags. One year! Why does it take us so long to change our behavior?  My wife and I now always keep reusable bags in the trunk of our car.  Why did it take me a year to get in the habit of storing reusable bags in my trunk?!

The song Words Leave Out The Rest was born out of the desire to actualize resolve.  To be who we know we are and who we know we should be.  To walk the walk. To follow our sense of right.

-Michael