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Paper NOR Plastic -- BYOB
My wife is a bag lady. And I'm a bagger at the local grocer. Call it the ecolution of Liana and Burke Sisco.
Now, when the check-out person at the grocery store asks "paper or plastic" we say, "neither, thank you. We brought our own."
Reusable bags are one of those practical applications of the environmental mantra "Reduce, Reuse, Recycle" that we can all practice.
We always had the best intentions. We'd save the plastic bags and try to remember to take them with us the next time we went shopping. We never did. Or we'd try to find ways to reuse the paper bags, but they always end up being used to tote more paper and plastic to the garbage can and then ultimately on to the landfill.
The truth is that both paper and plastic bags represent a huge environmental problem:
- The USA consumes billions of bags per year that require millions of barrels of oil to produce.
- Plastic bags don't biodegrade, they photodegrade—breaking down into smaller and smaller toxic bits contaminating soil and waterways and entering the food web when accidentally ingested by animals. They never fully decompose.
- It has been reported that paper bags produce 70 times more water pollution and 50 times more air pollution than plastic bags during their life cycle.
- It is estimated that 100,000+ marine animals are killed every year by plastic.
- It is estimated that 53% of plastic shopping bags are distributed into circulation via supermarkets and grocery stores.
Reusable bags are an excellent way to combat this problem. By using 10 reusable bags you can replace 1,040 paper and plastic bags per year.
Australia and Ireland have taken leadership roles in reducing the use of plastic bags. Other countries, including but not limited to the United Kingdom, South Africa, Bangladesh, Vietnam, China, Japan and Taiwan have introduced some form of governmental reforms aimed at reducing the country's consumption of HDPE bags.
In this country San Francisco became the first city in the nation to outlaw the use of plastic checkout bags. The ordinance requires large supermarkets to discontinue use of the plastic bags within six months and large chain pharmacies within the next year.
Burke Sisco
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Reader Comments (2)
We work hard sveryday to develop plastic that will breakdown in a landfill. We have made great strides in that venture but there is more to do. Recycling is the best answer all around for us all. Communities need to push for stricter laws on recycling. The plastic industry alone is not responsible for the problem.
Certainly, the best solution, as ecohomeguy has aptly demonstrated is: BYOB.
The problem is remembering to bring your paper, or plastic bags back with you to the store for one more trip, extending the use of each paper or plastic bag one more time, effectively lowering your environmental impact in the consumption of paper or plastic bag consumption 50%. That's substanital!!!
But, we rarely remember to re-use, I know I don't, so the best solution, as Burke suggests, is to BYOB, have a set of reuseable, canvas or nylon (something far more sturdier, and impossible to recycle), bags dedicated for trips to the store (note: BYOB is not just for the grocery store anymore - bring them to the Mall, etc.!! I guarentee at the mall check-out counter you will get the same incredulous stairs we got 15 years ago in the grocery store!). Store them in the trunk of the car, not the closet, so they are always near to hand when you have forgotten them once again.
Once we've established that BYOB is your best solution, and re-use is your next best solution, and we admit that neither is widely practiced, nor always remembered, we come back to the same age-old (fifteen year age-old) question, "paper, or plastic?" We have forgotten our bags, and haven't purchased enough re-useable bags to carry our entire grocery purchase.
The answer is not as obvious as the City and County of San Francisco would like you to believe.
First of all, I am blessed, because I live in a major metropolitan area, and either my paper, or plastic bags can be easily recycled. I bag my excess plastic bags and drop them (clean) in the bin outside my local Publix grocery store (NOTE: along with my clean styrofoam food containers - bet ya didn't know that), 24 -7!! I recycle the rare brown paper bags I pick up, at the bins outside the Dekalb Farmer's Market in Decatur. I'm lucky.
I'm also lucky because I live near a working food coop! At Sevenanda in Atlanta (and I'm sure my pal, ecohomeguy could supply us with a link here!), I have a choice between paper, and used cardboard boxes (their products were shipped in) at the check-out line, and I always choose the used cardboard box, then recycle it over at the Dekalb Farmer's Market. Sometimes, several of them.
And here's where I'm going to ruffle some paper feathers: I NEVER choose paper. Two reasons. Paper comes from trees (and some post consumer waste, but mostly from post paper-production tree parts), and plastic comes from fossil fuels. Trees in this world ARE NOT a renuable resource. Not at the present rate of consumption increasing over the last fifty years.
And second, paper bags weigh many more times than their plastic counter-parts and are a lot bulkier, and consume an enormous (comparatively speaking) amount of space, water, and fossil fuels to produce and ship.
Just like much of our produce in this country is essentially a PETROLEUM PRODUCT [food is grown with a generous application of petroleum derived fertilizers, a cautious (but effective) application of petroleum derived pesticides, and then shipped thousands of miles (ever buy a grape from Argentina!) in a vehicle that consumes enormous amounts fossil fuels, relatively inefficiently (the same petroleum inefficiencies apply also to the tractor and farm equipment that till the land, broadcast the seeds, apply the fertilizers, apply pesticides, and later harvest the bounty] [oh, and I left out the fossil fuels used to ship the seeds, fertilizers, and pesticides to the farm in the first place], the paper bag is a petroleum product. When it comes to shipping, the paper bag consumes fossil fuels far greedier than its plastic sister.
Sure, there are draw-backs to producing, consuming, and disposing of plastic grocery bags as well; the arguements are many. But the paper alternative is NOT the green alternative many will have you believe.
In conclusion, BYOB, buy organic, and Please don't drink the water! If these choices aren't available in your small town, then move to the City and breath our breath-taking air!
Tommy Conlon