What's Your Bag Plan?

Yukon Government is planning to ban single-use bags

When that happens, you’ll need to know, what’s your bag plan?

Are you a bring your own bagger? A boxer? Do you juggle your juice home or stick pickles in your purse? Whatever the method of getting your groceries home, doing it without a single-use bag is a good decision for the planet.

Why ban bags?

Single-use bags are a poster child for our throwaway society. The average life of a single-use bag is just 12 minutes.

Replacing single-use bags with reusable bags makes environmental and economic sense. A large scale shift to reusable grocery and retail bags will prevent the use of significant petroleum, paper and water resources and the release of harmful emissions associated with making and transporting single-use bags. Single-use bags litter our sensitive wild spaces and take up valuable space in our rapidly growing landfills. Switching to reusables is key to extending the life of our landfills, and is one small step we can take to move towards a circular economy where resources are kept in circulation as long as possible.

Ditching single-use bags is also a small step towards more lighter footprint living, something absolutely necessary if we’re to avoid ecological collapse. Our lives of convenience are killing the planet, and recycling our plastic bags or buying “green” bags won’t save it.

What happened to the bag fee?

We brought a petition with nearly 1700 signatures to Yukon Government earlier this year. After public consultation, Yukon Government has decided to go for a full ban on single-use bags. It remains to be seen whether this will include plastic and paper or just plastic.

Take Action!

Small, local actions help make an impact and bring about local change. Here are some things you can do right now:

• Bring your own bag and encourage your friends and family to do the same!
• Tell local retailers and politicians you want to see concrete actions to reduce single-use consumption!
• Bugged about bags? Share your story on social media with the hashtag #ThinkOutsideTheBag! Be sure to tag your retailer!
• Tag companies with pictures of their single-use packaging and ask for change!

Get in touch with us at info@zerowasteyukon.ca or through our Facebook page!