Except for yard waste and leaf contents, plastic bags – now as common as plastics in our clothing – are ubiquitous for collecting and containing trash. Thrown into landfills with their contents or burnt at huge incinerators, these bags generated from petrochemicals don’t compost or whatever else happens but they do spew noxious fumes into the atmosphere. Wouldn’t it be nice if we went to moderate – not great – lengths to minimize the number of plastic bags of any size that are tossed into the trash pile.

How, you ask?

A possible answer is that many of these trash bags are only partially filled. While it may not seem appealing, one trick is to dump the half-filled ones into others that are only partially filled; consequently, the empty bag can be used again. It’s a nice way to cut back on the number of plastic bags purchased by resorting to this plan: it’s good for the wallet/pocketbook and it’s good for the environment (unless one is using paper bags or compostable ones for the same trash contents).

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I don’t know the process but Wegman’s, Lowe’s, and Roche Brothers all have containers for recycling plastic bags into – I surmise – new ones. The commonly mistaken belief is that one-step recycling – as we have in blue bins in Boston – recycles plastic bags. While other types of plastic placed into the blue bins are in fact recycled, the plastic bags placed into the same blue bins merely gum up the entire process. Therefore they are collected separately for two reasons: they don’t thwart the recycling process and they are recycled on their own – yes, a two-fer.