Go Green tips for November 17th

Gotta tip you want to share with Sarah and the Go Green Ride at Five? Email her: sarah@921wvtk.com!

Here Sarah's groovy green tips for Wednesday, November 17th:

• Temperatures are cooling and odds are the windows probably won't be opening, anytime soon. Now is the time, before you have to stand in a foot of snow to do it, to store all your window screens. They definitely do not need to weather the winter with you and will have a longer life if carefully stored during the winter months!
• While I'm at it, make sure you've also already stored your summer equipment, as well. Your gardening implements, your hose, those open bags of mulch and potting soil, close them up tight and put 'em away!

In the green news: the county of Los Angeles is doing away with plastic bags. No, I'm not kidding. According to the Los Angeles Times, The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors voted just yesterday to ban plastic grocery bags in areas of the county under its jurisdiction. The first phase takes effect in July 2011, when 67 large supermarkets and pharmacies must stop providing disposable plastic bags. By January 2012, the ban will cover 1,000 stores throughout the county. The ordinance also seeks to keep shoppers from turning to paper bags as an alternative by requiring stores to charge10-cents to the consumer per paper bag. This ban does not include produce and raw meat bags. In Los Angeles County alone, 6 billion plastic bags are used each year, an average, per year, of 1,600 bags per household a year. And studies show that only about 5% are recycled. Not everyone is thrilled about this measure, many worry they'll be forced to buy plastic bags to simply clean up after their pets. Not only that, smaller merchants will feel the pinch since many cannot afford to stock reusable shopping bags to make available to their customers. I do think this is a step in the right direction, what do you think? Feel free to visit my blog at 921wvtk.com and post a comment or email me at sarah@921wvtk.com to give me your opinion! Reusable shopping bags are the wave of our green future, I'm on board, despite the inconvenience, how about you?