Investigation in Our Community: Do People Use More Reusable Bags or More Plastic Bags?

My Junior and Senior Kindergarten students have become very conscientious about reusable containers and bags (much to their parents’ dismay, at times). Last year, our school launched a reusable bag campain. Our middle years students designed a logo and we had hundreds of washable reusable bags printed. Each family in our school received 6 reusable bags. We were interested to see if this campaign made a difference–what is actually happening at the grocery store?

We contacted the manager of the grocery store and he was willing to let us come and collect data in the grocery store for an hour. We created a very simple electronic graph and decided to use our iPads for data collection. We thought it would be silly to use paper graphs when we were doing a sustainability project!

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Two pairs of students graphed reusable bags and two pairs of students graphed plastic bags. Our data was a bit disappointing…. Watch our video and find out what we learned!

Plastic Bags vs. Reusable Bags video

Now we have another challenge: how can we encourage people to remember their reusable bags? With our Hamiota friends, we will be brainstorming some ideas and trying them out in our communities