I was recently chatting with some friends about little things we’re all doing to go green and save money in the process. One of my friends mentioned the raging controversy over bottled water and its negative effect on the environment. We talked about the number of water bottles that end up in landfills and how the bottles themselves are a petroleum-based product–and how all of us were going to try to drink less bottled water in the future. But then someone raised an interesting point about bottled water that hit me right in the pocketbook: it is more expensive than gas.

Hard to believe but if you think about, she was right on the money. If I were to go to my local Wawa (the PA version of 7-11) and purchase the cheapest bottle of water, I’d pay about $1.29 for 16.9 ounces. Bring the container up to a gallon size (128 ounces) and do the corresponding math (thank you, algebra), and guess what? A gallon of bottled water costs $9.77. Holy cow.

It’s interesting when you take a slightly off-center look at news about how America is going green and/or ways to save money, such as the gallon of water stat above. What’s also interesting is how national companies are reacting to the greening of America.

A recent USA Today article talked about Nissan’s newest cars that have a “gas guzzling” warning light in the center of the speedometer. The idea here is to make drivers aware of their gas-guzzling driving habits by letting them know when they’re using a lead foot. Nissan says that in test drives, people ended up using 10 percent less gas in response to this warning light. Hey, it ain’t a hybrid but it’s not a bad notion either.

Here’s another example of a different way of approaching green. Earlier this year, the retailer IKEA started imposing a plastic bag tax at the checkout counter, so says TreeHugger.com. Want a telltale blue-and-yellow plastic IKEA bag to carry your purchases home in? Be prepared to pay up–a nickel for each bag. Really, that’s not much money but it might snap shoppers into realizing just how many shopping bags we use and toss each year. (A recent Fast Company blog entry estimated that number at about 100 billion, with a “B”, bags a year.)

On the flip side my local grocery store doesn’t offer enough of a financial incentive for me to reuse my plastic shopping bags–I get a whopping 15 cents credit for each bag I bring back to reuse. Whoopee. However, some retailers that collect your plastic bags for recycling are actually doing something good with them: one supermarket I know sends those used bags to the company that makes Trex decking material. (Now that’s pretty cool.)

Picking up on this reusable trend, my nearby Giant supermarket started selling green (literally) reusable bags for shoppers to use. They cost 99 cents each and look like they would hold three boxes of cereal, max. Frankly, they seem like a rip-off to me.

Instead of paying for these bags, think back to the last conference you went to or special event you attended, where you took home a canvas bag. How many of those canvas bags do you have lying around the house? A quick peek in my coat closet turned up eight of these bags. Did you ever stop to think how well these would work as reusable grocery shopping bags? Good for the environment, good for clearing clutter from you house, and, because they’re free, good for your wallet.

I’m going to put a bunch of these canvas bags in the trunk of my car so I’ll have them with me the next time I have to run to the store. You might want to try that, too.

P.S. It seems that canvas-bag chic is all the rage. Check out this USA Today article.