King County’s second annual “Bag your Bags. Bring ‘em Back” campaign brings together recycling, reuse and reduction right in your kitchen and grocery store.

We all end up with at least a few single-use plastic bags at home no matter how hard we try to avoid them. Now it’s easier than ever to recycle them. Just take your plastic bags to participating grocery stores, including Fred Meyer, QFC, Top Food & Drug and the Duvall Family Grocer.

Nearly 50,000 tons of recyclable plastic bags and plastic wrap ended up in King County’s Cedar Hills Landfill last year, and this program helps us put those bags where they belong.

More kinds of plastic bags than ever before are now accepted by store collection programs. Types of plastic bags and wrap you can bring in for recycling include: grocery bags, bread bags, produce bags, wrap for products such as paper towels and toilet paper, bubble wrap, dry cleaning bags, newspaper bags, and shrink wrap.

The campaign is called “Bag your Bags” because that’s the way you need to do it. Loose bags get stuck in recycling machinery or cause litter problems, so always stuff your bags in a single bag, knot it up and take it in.

Many folks are surprised to learn that a strong demand exists for recycled plastic bags to make products such as composite lumber. That deck you have admired at your neighbor’s house might well be made of composite lumber, which consists of plastic bags and wrap combined with reclaimed sawdust.

For more information on King County’s Bag your Bags campaign, visit www.BagYourBags.com.

Recently more attention has been focused on the waste and litter problems associated with plastic bags, in the Northwest and around the world.

Reducing our consumption of bags by using durable bags will always be the most effective approach. But it’s bag-tastic that we now have increased recycling options as well.

Karen May, King County Solid Waste