Bring Your Own Bag to Duke Street Whole Foods and Alexandria Children’s Nonprofit Gets a Nickel Each Time

ALEXANDRIA, VA – Now through the June 1, 2020, you can support The Child & Family Network Centers (CFNC) in Alexandria when you bring your own bag at Whole Foods at 1700 Duke Street. By bringing your own bag, you’ll save on the five-cent bag fee, which will automatically be donated to CFNC!

CFNC at 3700 Wheeler Avenue was started in 1984 by a group of mothers living in a public housing community after they learned that 17 of their children failed kindergarten. From that modest beginning, CFNC has continuously grown both the reach and depths of its programs in response to community need. CFNC currently serves 138 children and their families in 8 preschool classrooms in Alexandria

Why Bring your Own Bag?

According to Reusethisbag.com, the average American goes through six shopping bags per week. With a population of roughly 300 million, that means 1.8 billion bags are used and discarded in America every week, and all of that trash adds up.

How long does it take for plastic bags to decompose? A plastic bag can take from 15 to 1,000 years to break down, depending on environment. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, which has been collecting plastic bag statistics for more than a decade, roughly 2% of plastic bags are recycled in the United States. The rest are left to live on indefinitely in landfills or decompose in our oceans, where they leech toxins into the water and soil.

An estimated one million birds, 100,000 turtles, and countless other sea animals die each year from ingesting plastic.

The United States uses about 100 billion plastic bags per year, with the average person using between 350 and 500. Think custom paper tote bags are better? Think again. The U.S. cuts down 14 million trees a year to supply the raw material to make paper shopping bags.

The average reusable bag has a lifespan equal to that of more than 700 disposable plastic bags.One person using reusable bags over their lifetime would remove more than 22,000 plastic bags from the environment. Isn’t that an even better incentive?

So bring your own bag to Duke Street Whole Foods and you will help Alexandria kids and the planet at the same time!

For more information about CFNC and the Nickels for Nonprofits program, cfnc-online.org