Reuseable grocery bags. I was doing it part time, but pledge to use them every time.

Can I have your pledge to do the same?

My sister gave me a large red reusable shopping bag for my birthday. I've also picked up four cloth bags from my local Wal-Mart. Sometimes I forget to put them back in my van and end up using the plastic ones at the registers, but now I'm going to make the effort of getting some more and putting the ones I have already back into my van to use each time I shop, wherever I shop.

The reusable shopping bags I've seen in both stores and online are made of strong, durable, lightweight and water resistant polypropylene. They are rated for over 30 pounds and can easily replace three to four of regular plastic grocery bags. I like the heavy duty one Tiffany got me, but they don't have an online store (yet, Tiff?). I believe they were called Earth Bags and come in different sizes and with different handle options.

Why should you use reusable shopping bags? Listen to this:

Experts estimate that 500 billion to 1 trillion plastic bags are consumed and discarded annually worldwide—more than a million per minute.

The facts:

Plastic bags aren’t biodegradable. They actually go through a process called photodegradation—breaking down into smaller and smaller toxic particles that contaminate both soil and water and end up entering the food chain where animals accidentally ingest them.

According to the Environmental Protection Agency, more than 380 billion plastic bags are used in the United States every year. Of those, approximately 100 billion are plastic shopping bags, which cost retailers about $4 billion annually.

According to the Food Marketing Institute (FMI), the average American makes 2.3 trips to the grocery store each week, walking away with five to 10 bags each time (not hard to do if you're feeding a family of five like I am!). That's between 600 and 1,200 bags per shopper each year. Or 40 billion grocery bags each year!

The production of plastic bags requires petroleum and often natural gas, both non-renewable resources that increase our dependency on foreign suppliers. Additionally, prospecting and drilling for these resources contributes to the destruction of fragile habitats and ecosystems around the world.

Hundreds of thousands of sea turtles, whales and other marine mammals die every year from eating discarded plastic bags mistaken for food. Turtles think the bags are jellyfish, their primary food source. Once swallowed, plastic bags choke animals or block their intestines. On land, many cows, goats and other animals suffer a similar fate to marine life when they accidentally ingest plastic bags while foraging for food.

Collection, hauling and disposal of plastic bag waste create an additional environmental impact. An estimated 8 billion pounds of plastic bags, wraps and sacks enter the waste stream every year in the US alone, putting an unnecessary burden on our diminishing landfill space and causing air pollution if incinerated.

Are you a visual learner? Then watch this.