Bag It – Any Way You Want!

In the ever-popular movement to become more sustainable, decisions are often made either too quickly or with incomplete information.  Or, both.

My experience of more than a decade in the retail industry shed light on that very fact, especially when it comes to the reaction toward plastic grocery bags.

A plastic bag ban is really a simple goal attempting to solve a very complex product life cycle issue and supply chain matter.  These campaigns are often misled and wrought with misinformation.

While I think bag ban proponents’ intentions are good—like most of us, they want to do the right thing for their community, their world and their future—it’s important to look at the entire life cycle of bags in order to determine what the best option is for the environment and the individual.

If the proponents’ goal is environmentally charged, and I believe this one is, then why force customers to have to select a paper bag, which is more carbon intensive to produce?

• First, it is paper bags (no offense to those of you in the paper/ timber industry, of course) that are more carbon intensive to produce and manage in the supply chain.  Plastic grocery bags require 70% less energy to manufacture than paper bags.

• Secondly, for every seven trucks needed to deliver paper bags, only one truck is needed for the same number of plastic bags, helping to save energy AND reduce emissions.  And, that’s a lot of trucks kept off the roads!

• Third, according to the EPA, it takes 91% less energy to recycle a pound of plastic than it takes to recycle a pound of paper.  That’s a lot of saved energy!

• Finally, also according to the EPA, 2,000 plastic bags weigh a mere 30 lbs.; 2,000 paper bags weigh 280 lbs.  Plastic bags take up a lot less space in a landfill.

If the motivation is about human behavior—to stop littering or stop the nation’s dependence on oil—I also think the end goal is misled.

Littering problems must be addressed directly.  Banning products just shifts the kind of litter from one form to another.

And, if the goal is to get people to embrace and regularly use reusable bags… well, that’s a behavior change I’m not sure any public policy can fix!  A lot of loyal reusable bag users are challenged to actually remember their bags (myself included).

If we want to protect our environment, use fewer resources and make manufacturing and supply chain processes less impactful on our world, I recommend that we look at the life cycle, the big picture, the holistic view… instead of the simplistic end goal of removing plastic bags from the retail environment.  As the facts show, plastic bags are actually the better option from an environmental standpoint.

And, why not let people make the choice about what they want to use- paper or plastic… or neither.

I’d like to make a suggestion.  Let’s all take it upon ourselves to REUSE (remember: reuse, reduce, recycle) our plastic bags multiple times, get the most use out of them before taking them to your local grocery store for RECYCLING.  Who’s with me?

- Karianne Fallow