Green for less: Eight eco-friendly products from the dollar store

There's an old saying that "necessity is the mother of invention" and the necessity, in this case, is to save our planet from the hitherto wasteful and thoughtless ways of its inhabitants.

Thankfully, there's an answer for most of the environmental problems we've inflicted on the earth. With that in mind, here are some buck or two solutions from the dollar store.

Bioplastics are made from renewable sources such as vegetable oil or corn starch, as opposed to petroleum based plastics. I can buy a box of ten biodegradeable 20" x 22" plastic kitchen bags for $1. Compare that to Wal-mart's Great Value brand that you'll pay $5.27 for to get the same number of biodegradeable bags.

If your municipality has a kitchen compost program, you can buy 17" x 16" compostable kitchen organics bags at the dollar store for $1 for a package of six. Wal-mart sells the same size compostable Glad bags for kitchen organics for $4.97 for a package of 20. That's about 25 cents per bag as opposed to 17 cents per dollar store bag.