Teach Kids to Bring Their Own Bag

Illustration credit: Gary Currant/Penton Kids Press, used with permission

Help your child ditch the disposable-bag habit, before it even begins, by picking up My Bag and Me! (2008, Penton Kids Press), a 100 percent recyclable board book by Karen Farmer and Gary Currant that follows a little boy and his reusable shopping bag on a trip to the supermarket:

Let's take trip to our favorite store where My Bag and Me say,"Paper and plastic no more!"

Somewhere between 500 billion and a trillion plastic bags are consumed worldwide each year, according to popular estimates. One the other hand, notes the Sierra Club, a sturdy reusable bag only needs to be used 11 times to have a lower environmental impact than using 11 disposable plastic bags.

To help your child tip the ecological scale, the book includes a reusable Tyvek bag just like the one in the book, so your ankle-biter can tote it along on your next shopping trip. ::Penton Kids Press

Difficulty level: Easy