Comments on: post off: do you clean your reusable shopping bags?

By: 5 Great Blogs | Just The Right Things

5 Great Blogs | Just The Right Things — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 02:55:54 +0000

[...] introduced me to some cool new products and ideas, it has also opened my eyes on a few topics.Â This post, questioning how clean reusable shopping bags are, made me look at mine in a whole new [...]

By: Elsa

Elsa — Sat, 09 Jan 2010 23:13:45 +0000

We almost never buy meat, so I don’t worry about cross-contamination. The bags do occasionally get grubby at the farmers’ market, if I get a particularly dirty bunch of carrots or chard, or if a beet oozes its rich color onto the fabric. I just shake ‘em out over the rubbish bin. We wash all the veggies before eating them, so what does an extra speck of dirt matter?

Once, though, a bottle of olive oil sprang a leak inside my reusable bag. I washed it by hand with plenty of dish soap; the oil washed right out. The bag is still going strong a decade later.

By: amy

amy — Sat, 09 Jan 2010 14:53:30 +0000

If they weren’t comparing the reusable bags to disposable bags, it really is a bunk study- unless they are assuming that 0% of disposable bags were contaminated with “some level of bacteria”- a really vague measure in itself.

By: K

Sat, 09 Jan 2010 04:26:53 +0000

What a ridiculous made up problem. Are they trying to say that a grocery store is really clean? That a delivery truck is? The hands of other shoppers? So as long as I put my purchases in a freshly pried-open plastic bag, I need not fear germs or dirt? I assume that any unwrapped food needs to be washed, whether it’s been in a reusable or a disposable bag.

By: Daffodil

Daffodil — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 15:53:53 +0000

I pop my Baggus in the wash about every 6 weeks — I go by “funkiness” and not by the calendar. Wash on gentle, air dry overnight, bingo — back in business. Wonder how I ever lived without them.

By: ogden

ogden — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 03:32:21 +0000

I don’t wash mine regularly, perhaps once every few months or so. But rarely am I putting exposed foods in them, most foods are already packaged in something else. And produce is washed before I eat it.

But since this association has a vested interest in increasing the number of plastic bags used, I’m not putting too much stock in their ‘study’.

By: Sarah L.

Sarah L. — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 01:47:28 +0000

Thanks for the BarfBlog link â€” it just answered my green shiny lunchmeat question, too : ) Glad I’m not the only one that just spot cleans, although I will start tossing mine in the wash ever now and again. Baggers adding a grocery bag over the meat dept. bag I place on still seems excessive, but maybe it’s part of store policy.

By: AJP

AJP — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 19:21:59 +0000

Guess what, the world is full of germs. We are full of germs. It’s only natural! I only clean my bags if something gets spilled or they smell funny.

By: Mary T

Mary T — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 17:59:30 +0000

Most of my bags are made of recycled plastic ala an Ikea bag — you can wash those by filing them at the sink, but it’s not that easy. I have washed the canvas bags but it’s not a regular thing. I do understand the concerns about meat and will keep up with that, but like a many-moons-ago scientist boyfriend once told me, this is why humans are born with advanced immune systems. (Not that we should care NOT AT ALL, just that we tend to worry a lot more than we usually need to.) Thanks sarah for the link to barfblog above — will check it out!

By: Laurie

Laurie — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 17:48:04 +0000

I do not eat meat and had not washed any of my bags (though I thought I should) until yesterday. I spilled soup inside one bag so I washed the lot of them and aired dried. Now I am happy I did!