Shopping Green

Shopping seems to be an inevitable way of life. We must buy food to eat, clothes to wear, and other essential items. In today’s society there are two ways that we tend to accomplish this; we either go to the store and buy the items we need/want or we buy them online and have them shipped to us. These activities we probably rarely question and speculate the impact we are having on the environment. Well, it’s time that we should.
The drive alone to the store is a producing carbon dioxide emissions and pollution. Not only that, but if you buy products that are manufactured in different countries then you have to think about the emissions that were produced for shipping the products to the store. This same idea goes for online shopping. Sure you aren’t driving to the store yourself, but you are having a truck (which probably pollutes more than a normal car) come to your house. Have you done anything for the environment by buying online? Another bad trait of shopping is all the plastic bags that you receive. These bags are filling the landfills at remarkable rates and they take a very long time to degrade.

Shopping may not be very green, but there are definitely ways that you can make it eco-friendly.  Shop your local farmer’s market. By doing this you will not only get fresh produce, but you can be sure that anything you buy has not been shipped across country in a truck, but only came from a few minutes away. Even organic produce and products at your local supermarket could travel hundreds of miles to get to your store. Buying from your local farmer’s market also helps the community’s economy and keeps individual farms alive in a time where big businesses are the major money makers. If you shop at the store, plan your meals for a whole week and go in to get everything you will need for that week. This way you will only need to drive to the store once a week. It’s also good to shop with reusable bags. These will keep plastic bags out of the landfills. If you do use plastic bags some stores will take those bags back and recycle them. There are drop stations. Just look around town to see if your local stores have them and then the next you go into to shop bring all your plastic bags as well. These are just a couple of easy green tips for going out shopping.

But what about buying online? Shopping online for little things that you can just drive to the store and buy is not very green, but shopping for larger items, like furniture and large appliances would be better online. Unless you drive a truck, you will most likely need furniture delivered to your house anyway, so save the drive time and the gas and just buy those items online.

Those are just a couple tips for making your shopping experiences greener, but there are plenty more out there. If you have any other tips, than please feel free to comment and educate us all.

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