Study: Reusable Grocery Bags Are Germ Houses

I give up. Just three months ago I started what I thought was an environmentally conscientious effort to help do my part to save the planet. I ditched plastic grocery bags in favor of a slew reusable "green" carry bags for carting food stuff home from my local grocery store. As a recent Tonic.com story reported, there are even prettier reusable bags coming into play.

Now it seems I'm also carting around lots of germs, bacteria and fungus that could make me and my family ill. The reusable grocery bags are actually an "active microbial habitat and a breeding ground for bacteria, yeast, mold and coliforms," according to a study released by the Environment and Plastics Industry Council (EPIC) this past May.

If you want to read the full report, click here, but in short, lab testing shows that the eco-friendly approach to stopping more plastic hitting landfills has quite a downside. According to EPIC, the report was commissioned last fall to get a better understanding of how people use reusable packaging and to address any concerns for public health and safety.The study found that 64 percent of the “used” reusable shopping bags (16 of the 25 bags) showed some level of bacterial contamination. Yeast was also found in five of the bags and mold was found in six. In comparison a single-use shopping bag showed no evidence of bacteria, mold, yeast or total coliforms.

So what's an environmentally conscious person to do?

Well a good first step is to air out the bags in the sun after every use, and wash the bags in the hot water cycle. Yet the report says even doing that might not eradicate all the germs.

Me? Well, I'm not going to let a few germs get in my way of doing my part. I like my eco-green bags and the feeling of superiority I get toting them into the store on Sunday mornings. I also get 5 cents back for every one I use during a shopping trip.

I'll take the risk and in the meantime try to find out just who or what funded the EPIC study.