As we are in the middle of the spring months, it is time to think about the outdoors and how we can better care for the environment. When you think about helping our environment, you think of Earth Day, April 22.

But why limit yourself to one day? What some people don’t know is that there are several easy ways to improve the quality of our lives on Earth that may not even affect your daily routine.

As unassuming as it might seem, to mention one’s efforts not affecting their daily routine, but for most it is vital, when making small lifestyle changes, to not outright change one’s lifestyle. So, what can you do to start making some easy changes in your life? It’s as simple as keeping your trash where you can see it.

While on a bike ride in the warm weather, the last thing you want to see is trash on the roadside. Products we use every day, such as plastic bags and aluminum cans, take years to decompose. A simple way to limit the roadside trash is to keep a convenient garbage container in your vehicle until you reach a garbage can where you can throw it away. How easy is that?

I like the added insinuation that you’ll be riding your bike a lot in the summer weather — it’s a good connection to make. I know I just pumped up my bike tires, and am looking forward to getting the most out of the ever-improving weather.

Read on for more on junk mail, the trouble with plastic bottles, the benefits of reusable bags, and how to make everyday your own personal Earth Day.

In their Aug. 15 Blowback, L.A. County Supervisors Yvonne B. Burke and Zev Yaroslavsky argue that consumers should be charged a 25-cent tax for each plastic bag they use. The Times of London wrote in a March 8 editorial, “Many of those who have demonized plastic bags have enlisted scientific study to their cause. By exaggerating a grain of truth into a larger falsehood they spread misinformation, and abuse the trust of their unwitting audiences.”

Regrettably, the supervisors are doing precisely what The Times warned against — spreading misinformation. Burke and Yaroslavsky assert that “about $375 million each year is spent in California on cleanups and other efforts to mitigate the environmental effect of disposable bags, costing each household about $200.” Nearly 37 million people live in California, and $375 million divided by 37 million is $10.14. Are we to assume that each household has 20 people? Burke and Yaroslavsky do not state how the $375-million figure is calculated, but it is apparently the entire California litter cleanup budget — for everything. Why do they pin the entire state litter cleanup budget on plastic bags?

See, this is a bit of a bummer to hear. Do we not already have approximately a million reasons to put a limit on plastic bags? Why fudge the numbers? The plastic bag thrall is looking for any reason at all to discredit our mission as trivial and unreasonable, and we don’t do ourselves any favors by helping them out with exaggerations.

Not that this article is spotless, either — and of course, why would it be, when it’s written by our good pal Stephen L. Joseph? It’s full of all the same tired old ad hominem attacks, straw man fallacies, false dichotomies, and even subtly links reusable bag champions to… communism?!

Burke and Yaroslavsky criticize plastic-bag manufacturers for trying to “protect their profits.” There’s no shame in that; this is not the old Soviet Union.

Oh, well okay. So the point of this is most certainly not that the LA Times article is right — it’s just that, perhaps from now on, we need to choose our words much more carefully and stick to the hard and fast facts. The opposition makes up enough nonsense reasons to counter us every day. Let’s not help them by giving them real ones.

We know that that paper and plastic bags aren’t exactly born of the best conditions. But when all is said and done, how much do we really know about the step-by-step process of making our disposable transport containers? Are we simply repeating rhetoric, or do we know how bad things really are?

Last night, premiere news-mag The Huffington Post published an examination of the reproductive cycle of the paper and plastic shopping bag. It is thoroughly above-and-beyond in its report, standing out as it weighs the environmental benefits and costs of even the processes you want to believe in the most.

When you’re done using paper shopping bags, for shopping or other household reuses, a couple of things can happen… If you choose the recycle paper bags, then things get a little tricky.

The paper must first be re-pulped, which usually requires a chemical process involving compounds like hydrogen peroxide, sodium silicate and sodium hydroxide, which bleach and separate the pulp fibers. The fibers are then cleaned and screened to be sure they’re free of anything that would contaminate the paper-making process, and are then washed to remove any leftover ink before being pressed and rolled into paper, as before.

When an article is willing to look at recycling as objectively as the landfill alternative, you can pretty much count on it to be a reliable source. Even biodegradable plastic bags are held up for shameful scrutiny, leaving no stone unturned in the investigation. So what form of grocery transportation does Huffington Post ultimately endorse? The answer should come as no surprise.

Ultimately, neither paper nor plastic bags are the best choice; we think choosing reusable canvas bags instead is the way to go. From an energy standpoint, according to this Australian study, canvas bags are 14 times better than plastic bags and 39 times better than paper bags, assuming that canvas bags get a good workout and are used 500 times during their life cycle. Happy shopping!

And isn’t the happiest shopping done when you know it’s not at the expense of your environment? If not, perhaps it should be.

Image via the article!

1. A plastic shopping bag can take anywhere from 15 to 1000 years to decompose. In a compressed landfill, deprived of atmosphere to help them biodegrade, paper bags don’t fare much better.

Off to a smashing start already, and there are still twenty-four more to go. Check it out!