recycling

I wonder sometimes if recycling is really helping the environment when many of those things that are put in the recycling bin actually end up in a landfill. Lately I've been trying to cut back on some stuff and just try to make some things homemade. My husband bought me a really cool book from Reader's Digest called Homemade. It's not the easiest book to find. Usually your local library should have a copy. Upon reading it I ws instantly fascinated by all the things you could make in your own home. One of the things that has saved me a lot of money is home made laundry detergent. There are quite a few recipes online for this also, but I like the one in the book the best.
When my dryer sheets run out I plan to sew some sachets of my own and fill them with some lavender potpourri and put a few drops of lavender oil on it every once in a while to refresh it. I heard that this won't wreck my dryer like the dryer sheets do and it's better for the environment, since it will be less waste.
While I certainly do not advocate the waste created by plastic bags, I'm certainly open to creative solutions for how to make something useful out of something that normally gives me a headache. We have all experienced the cashier/bagger at a supermarket, who has no idea how to bag groceries correctly and therefore places only 1 (one) item in each bag. Now I understand if you have to keep chemical stuff such as hair care products separate from fruit; but when it comes to 3 different snacks that could easily fit in one bag, getting placed in separate bags for some weird unforseen reason, I have a tendency to get a little pissed off. That is seriously an unnecesary waste. Finally I have caved. I am going to gather every single last tote bag in my house, and take them all with me the next time I go grocery shopping. That way if the inexperienced cashier would like to use 20 bags, at least they'll be the reusable and durable bags that I brought in. Since I now have a surplus of plastic bags I will also attempt to make a tote bag out of the plastic bags. When I'm done I'll post a picture. The pattern that I'll be using isn't originally mine. So when I'm done I'll make sure to tell everyone where I got my pattern from. By doing some research on Youtube I found out how to make plarn (plastic yarn) from plastic bags. I'm curious to see if this works and what the end results will be. Either way I'm declaring war against plastic grocery bags.
Like I said above I'm not advocating the use of the plastic grocery bag, I just want to find something to do with all the plastic grocery bags that I already have in my house.
If anyone out there has tried a pattern for a grocery bag that they absolutely adore, then I'd love to know about it.
I'll probably be sewing some tote bags as well seeing as I already have a lot of reclaimed fabrics and sewing is faster than knitting.