Eco Friendly Trash Bag Alternatives To Make Your Kitchen Greener

• Thomas Nelson
• March 25, 2020
• Sustainable Living
• 0 Comments

Benjamin Franklin once famously said there were only two things certain in life: death and taxes. In reality, there’s a third that he forgot: trash day.

Pretty much everyone makes some amount of waste every day. Fortunately, much of that waste can be recycled. Approximately 75% of garbage produced in the United States can be recycled and just about everything else can be composted, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

But unfortunately, the average American discards about 4.4 pounds of trash every single day, amounting to 728,000 tons of garbage daily. That’s the same as 63,000 garbage trucks of trash!

If you’re like most people, chances are you bag up your garbage in a big plastic bag and set it at the curb on trash day. But wait a second, doesn’t that mean millions of plastic trash bags are headed to the dump too? Seems like kind of a waste, doesn’t it?

But what eco friendly trash bag alternatives exist? We’ll go through some options with you.

Look for eco friendly composting trash bags

Your trash bag doesn’t have to be made from plastic. There are a number of solid options for compostable trash bags, from BioBag to If You Care bags. Because they’re biodegradable, these trash bags will likely break down in a landfill environment.

Compostable trash bags are a better option than plastic trash bags, but it is still sending something that’s ultimately unnecessary to the landfill.

Reuse your grocery bags

Already an eco-genius who remembers to bring re-usable grocery bags to the store every time? Scroll past this bullet (and honestly, pat yourselves on the back!) If you haven’t hopped on the reusable grocery bag train yet (you should!) you likely have a number of paper and plastic bags lying around every week. But if recycling isn’t an option for your grocery bags, consider repurposing them as trash bags.

That said, if you do have curbside recycling, you can recycle your paper bags. If you received plastic grocery bags from the store, there’s a good chance that a big name brand store in your area will take those bags back for recycling. Sending these bags to the landfill may not be the eco friendly trash bag idea you’re looking for.

This suggestion is good in a pinch but still not quite the most eco friendly alternative to trash bags.

Go without a trash bag

The holy grail of eco friendly trash bag alternatives is simply not using a bag at all. Doing this is especially good if you’re already composting your food scraps, as fewer food items in the can will yuck it up quite a bit less. But you do run into an issue eventually: a gross can.

We’ve played around with this issue some. Washing your can every few days with soap and water does the trick, but it can be a little cumbersome and, frankly, still a bit gross. Here’s how we got around it.

Get a smaller trash can.

The smaller can needs to be emptied out more often which has three benefits. One, gross stuff in the can has less time to get super nasty. Two, it made us think about how much trash we produce even more. And finally, the smaller can is much much easier to thoroughly wash in the sink.

So there it is! The most eco friendly alternative to garbage bags costs nothing and requires little effort. How can you beat that?

Related article: 3 Eco Friendly Alternatives To Toilet Paper