Resources for Health Roots & Shoots, affiliated with the Jane Goodall Institute, formed in the spring of 2003, when a small, committed group of children and their families resolved to take action to care for their communities, the environment, and animals through service-learning projects. Over the past five years our program has grown to include over a hundred families from all over the Phoenix metropolitan area and has completed more than one hundred exceptional projects, such as planting a community garden, building solar cookers, removing invasive buffelgrass, re-vegetating preserve areas, constructing artificial homes for burrowing owls, and many more blogged at our website, www.resourcesforhealth.org.

Our most notable project, an effort that is ongoing and sustainable, is "Pollution Solutions". Launched for Earth Day 2005, the project was inspired by the numbers of bags one family estimated they saved from the landfill by reusing their own cloth bags for grocery shopping. Calculating that 3.8 million disposable bags would be saved from our landfills if each citizen in Maricopa County used just one less bag one time, we were motivated to educate ourselves and others about the effects of plastic and paper shopping bags on the environment and to take action to address the issue.

We researched the lifecycle of disposable bags, including the natural resources from which they are made, the chemicals and energy used in the manufacturing process, the energy used to transport them from factories to retail stores, and their ultimate fate as garbage. We learned about the 100 billion plastic bags and 10 billion paper bags that are used in the United States every year. We raised our awareness about the 267 marine species affected by plastic trash and the 100,000 marine animals that die every year from accidentally consuming plastic trash. We also discovered that many countries worldwide have taken legislative and community action to reduce the number of disposable bags consumed.

Once our membership was educated with this information and empowered with their own cloth bags to reuse, we extended our roles as environmental stewards by creating outreach materials and sharing our project with the community. With support from business sponsorships and a State Farm Good Neighbor Service Learning Grant, we have continued to educate our community and provide other young people with their own cloth bags to decorate and reuse. By decorating their own bags, children of all ages express themselves through art and create a bag that they and their families are proud to carry. Many youth showcase their thoughts and feelings about the trees and animals they protect when they "Choose to Reuse!"

In honor of Earth Day 2006, Pollution Solutions helped launch the Roots & Shoots National Reusable Bag Campaign, inviting over a thousand groups to unite in ridding our communities and our world of disposable bags. A year later, Resources for Health Roots & Shoots members presented Pollution Solutions in the Regional Showcase at the 2007 National Service Learning Conference. On the conference's opening day, San Francisco announced a citywide ban on non-biodegradable plastic bags. In 2008, in part due to our group's efforts, a new bill has been entered into the Arizona State Legislature proposing a retailer tax on plastic and paper bags.

Our impact on the environment can be estimated by the more than 5,000 cloth bags distributed to date. If each one of those bags is used in place of a disposable bag just one time per month, together they save 260,000 disposable bags per year from becoming litter, harming wildlife, or ending up in the landfill. A far greater environmental impact is reflected by the influence of our efforts through media coverage, Roots & Shoots National Reusable Bag Campaign, and local legislative lobbying. We are proud to be part of an ongoing American culture shift away from a disposable society and are honored to be partnered with Conservation International to actively promote this environmental revolution.

Partner Statement

Conservation International (CI) is proud to sponsor the "Pollution Solutions" program developed by Resources for Health Roots and Shoots. Encouraging the use of reusable bags is a simple and effective solution to a global environmental problem. This ambitious program leverages the power of each consumer to make a difference through their everyday actions.