Are bacteria considered “green”?
Just curious.
Every store I visit seems to be promoting the reusable “green” shopping bag. My favorites are actually from Iowa; they hold the equivalent of three plastic bags which means fewer trips to the car. I use them when I decide that we have entire too many plastic bags in the house. I may toss them all out after reading a National Post article today:
The study found that 64% of the reusable bags tested were contaminated with some level of bacteria and close to 30% had elevated bacterial counts higher than what’s considered safe for drinking water.
Further, 40% of the bags had yeast or mold, and some of the bags had an unacceptable presence of coliforms, faecal intestinal bacteria, when there should have been 0.
Yuck.
And you can’t really wash the typical reusable bag because they will fall apart. I guess that I could invest in good canvas bags and wash them often.
Or I could just use plastic bags.
I use paper and plastic. The only reusable bags I use are for dry goods and even then I only use washable canvas. It’s like the whole water bottle thing with kids at school. Water fountains are cleaner than water bottles unless someone washes the water bottles and the lids with hot soapy water every night.