Earth Day Celebrated With Paper Bags

American students used paper bags to celebrate Earth Day this year as part of a campaign to help improve the environment.

Earth Day is an annual event that happens every April 22nd and has stemmed from the Flower Power movement of the 1970s.

This day is dedicated to doing well for the environment by discussing environmental and social causes around the world. The idea is to get more and more people to eat less meat, cut their energy use and reduce the amount of plastics they consume and use.

Food Lion, a superstore in the US with a number of chains around the States, has got involved in Earth Day in a big way by introducing a number of sustainability measures around their stores. One example includes recycling bins outside their stores for their customer to drop in any used or unwanted bags. This has allowed them to recycle over 3,500 tonnes of plastic during 2013 alone.

Food Lion had the initiative this year to get the students at the local school, Philo-Hill Magnet School, to help out by uses the bags as canvases to create environmentally-friendly messages and images to show their customers. Students of the seventh and eighth grades joined forces to create eco bags that were then brought back in-store and welcomed customers to use them instead of their original bags.

Many of these students already have their own ways to help the environment and community with self-made projects. In fact, one of the students has organised a community project to go around the local area collecting rubbish. Another pupil has begun planting oak trees in the local park.

With many companies moving towards the paper bag instead of plastic carrier bags, it is great to see brands like the Food Lion using initiatives like this one to help improve the planet.