Problem Product/ Grocery Bags

This April we’re getting back to an Environmentalist classic: the notorious issue of the disposable Grocery bag. It seems we’ve been wringing our hands over this one for years. The problems of this convenience became visible soon after the introduction of the plastic grocery bag in the 70s, as the seemingly diaphanous sacks started to accumulate at home and in landfills. The ubiquitous nature of the bags deliveres a toxic a double punch: easily forgotten about and capable of flying on the wind, they have become a significant wildlife hazard as they harbor drifting invasive species, are swallowed whole by sea creatures, and photodegrate into toxins.

While other countries have taken the elimination of the plastic bag very seriously (Ireland has had an approximately 0.15 cent/ bag tax since 2002, which has cut bag consumption by 90%), we in the US seem to persist in their use. Even when most of us have re-usable bags at home, and know we should use them, the shopper who brings his or her own bag to the grocery store is as rare as ever. The reasons for this are many; convenience, cheapness, and the sense that re-using the bags as trashcan liners and lunch carriers legitimizes their acquisition. Guilt in the US market is also mollified by the recycling stations at the grocery stores, where the bags are collected to be “downcycled” into plastic composites. In the last instance, mollified is really the right word. Though the recycling stations make us feel as though something is being done about the bag problem, only 1-3% of the plastic grocery bags are actually recycled; a figure that reflects the high cost of recycling the low-grade plastic in bags.

What of paper grocery bags? Unfortunately the news there isn’t too good either. While the perception that paper grocery bags are a more ecologically responsible choice persists, the data suggests the overall environmental cost of paper bags is at least equivalent to that of plastics. While they are recycled at a much higher rate (15%) than the plastic bags (mostly because paper recycling is available in many places where plastics recycling is not), they require much more energy to produce and to recycle than do plastic bags. While the paper bags are not as ubiquitous in the environment as plastics, studies show that paper bags take just as long to degrade in landfills as plastics do. (Modern landfills are sealed from light, water and oxygen; so very few things in a landfill degrade at all.)

So the evidence brings us back to the fact we’ve known all along; that bringing our own bags to the supermarket is by far the best solution to the problem. According to the Sierra Club, it takes only 11 uses of a reusable bag to render the environmental impact of its production null relative to the cost of using new bags each time. Furthermore, there’s nothing saying that one needs to go out and buy reusable grocery bags. For starters, you could simply bring the same bunch of plastic grocery bags to the supermarket each time you go. If nothing else, this would be an interesting way to investigate the sturdiness of the bags. Once the last clutch of plastic bags wears out (should it ever wear out), it might be time to round up all the old tote bags and backpacks lying around the house, and enlist them in the effort. In this instance, you wouldn’t even need to re-use the bag 11 times in order to reap the environmental benefits.

Just knowing that re-using bags is a great solution to the problem hasn’t done much to help us accomplish any real reduction of our bag use. We’ve known the bags to be an environmental and waste management problem for over twenty years, but in each of those twenty years, domestic consumption of disposable bags has grown. Today, it is estimated that the world uses between 500 billion and 1 trillion new plastic bags each year. Like so many environmental problems, linking our everyday actions to their global consequences is not easy. On the scale of the other things we could do to help mitigate our environmental impact, the decision to re-use our grocery bags seems minimal, perhaps even unimportant. On the other hand, if a quarter of the people who got new bags today were to start reusing them for the rest of the year, the economic and environmental savings would be tremendous.

Perhaps the most important action to take, then, is to advocate for greater economic incentives for re-using bags. The 15 cent/bag tax in Ireland has had a tremendously positive effect, reducing Irish bag consumption by 1 billion each year since its instatement in 2002. While many supermarkets will hand out a .05 cent discount per re-usable bag (and Whole Foods ups this to .15 cents during the month of April in honor of Earth Day...) it seems that these small incentives have yet to be enough. While some cities (including San Francisco! surprise!) have considered instituting a bag tax not unlike the one in Ireland, none have yet to do so. The idea of a bag tax in the U.S. seems to generate considerable corporate and consumer anger. While I personally agree that it is insulting to suggest that we need to be taxed in order to do something so simple as bring our own bags, I can’t help but admit that it’s a punishment we deserve. Let’s do ourselves a favor and write to our congressional representatives, asking them to bring it on.
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On Re-Using Bags/
By Shannon Densmore

One thing that I am militant about is bringing my own bags to the grocery store. I store them in the trunk of my car or just bring one from home when I walk to the local grocery store. We've done this for a while, and we continue to be totally grossed out by how many bags people walk out of grocery stores with these days, and everything is double bagged. This has driven me crazy since I worked as a part time cashier at a grocery store in Canada as an undergrad in the early nineties. Back then I was on the wrong side of the equation, I have to confess. I groaned and sighed when I saw a shoppers with his own bags because I perceived it as a hassle, not much of one looking back, but at the time it was as if they had asked me to make their bed or babysit their kids or something really terrible.

Now that I'm on the consumer side of the UPC reader, I just tell the cashiers that I have my own bags and that I'll bag MY OWN groceries. I find this is necessary because if they bag them they inevitably insert more plastic bags that I don't want (around shampoo or toothpaste or a piece of meat). What I have had to come to terms with though is that store workers are totally clueless about why people bring their own bags, which is very discouraging. They think I'm crazy instead of thinking about the act itself. There is so little time to educate while checking through, given that you have to pile everything on the belt, get your bags out before they start shoving everything in double plastic and then there is the bagging and paying. I find it so trying that I go through self check-out wherever possible so that I don't have to explain. But then there’s no opportunity for education.

There is so much room for improvement on this front. Stores could save money if they didn't have to pay for all of those bags, which is the only thing they care about."Win-win" situations like these are a great way to increase awareness and see effects.

Okay done on that issue. One conservation campaign we grew up with in Canada still seems to me to be the best and yet I haven't seem it since I was a kid. It was REDUCE, REUSE, RECYCLE. It was the three arrows logo on the recyle bins. Now it is just RECYCLE. I see people recycling bags at stores, but where is the reducing and re-using? Once again convenience triumphs over all.

Links About Grocery Bags
One of the amazing things about the Grocery Bag Issue is the lack of good data and clear analysis about the costs of single-use bags.

ReusableBags.com has well-organized information on the environmental costs of single-use bags, but also has an alterior motive: they sell reusable bags over the internet.

Sierra Club.org The Sierra Club has a meager page on bags. but it's better than nothing.

National Geographic's Article on the Environmental cost of plastic bags.

43 Things: A cool website where people rally around common goals. Here's the page for peple who want to re-use their grocery bags.

Grassroots Recycling Network's links on Grocery Bags.

SF Gate Article on the failure of the San Francisco Bag TAx to materialize.

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