To the Editor,

The winter holiday shopping season offers Princetonians an easy challenge: let’s bring our own reusable cloth bags to shop with when we buy for people we love. Let’s refuse a new bag if it’s offered; let’s bring our own bags. Let’s help save Planet Earth.

A reusable cloth bag is the only environmentally sane bag to use. It comes from a renewable resource (unlike reusable plastic bags, which are oil, or recyclable paper bags, which destroy our rainforests, their carbon-storage systems, their erosion-prevention through root-systems, and their habitat for countless species of creatures). A reusable cloth bag will last for decades; free of toxins in production, it is entirely washable.

Here are some scary figures on plastic bags:

Each American uses 500 single-use plastic bags a year, the equivalent of 12,000,000 barrels of oil, from extraction to landfill (Americans use 1 billion single-use grocery bags per year). These numbers translate as follows: each person is responsible for 125 lbs. of greenhouse gases (carbon dioxide) that contribute to climate change. In Princeton, 10,000 households (3-plus persons per household) are responsible for 1,250,000 lbs of carbon dioxide. Single-use plastic bags cost far more than money: they clog sewage systems, cause danger to workers at landfills; they kill wildlife and aquatic life; because they do not biodegrade, they come back through the food chain to poison humans and contribute to endocrine disruption.

Princeton Borough and Princeton Township passed a Joint Resolution last winter urging everyone to replace single-use plastic bags with reusable cloth or plastic bags, or recyclable paper. Let’s do it! Let’s all contribute momentum to the burgeoning BYOBag Campaign (Bring Your Own Bag) in Princeton.

Let’s be responsible shoppers. Let’s know that recyclable paper bags cost more to produce than plastic bags, cost 71 percent more energy to produce than plastic bags and use 69 percent more energy to compost than plastic bags, which are oil. So let’s refuse both paper and plastic. Let’s go for cloth: cotton, hemp, jute, and other materials.

Sustainable Princeton just received accreditation by Sustainable Jersey as a community in the vanguard of environmental activism for sustainable living.

Let’s validate that accreditation once again. Let’s all help make Princeton a Sustainable Princeton by using reusable cloth bags. Remember to bring them when you shop. Let’s be a truly responsible community by respecting the limited resources of our planet — all the time, not just during a holiday shopping season.

Daniel A. Harris
Dodds Lane