Blog Action Day: Stop Using Plastic Bags
‘œUse it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without.’ ‘“ New England proverb
About a year ago, I wrote a post called Making Peace with Plastic Grocery Bags and some suggested I should quit using altogether instead of just focusing on ‘œrecycling’ plastic bags.
One reader wrote, ‘œPlastic is just bad news period’¦ So long story short, finding cutesy little ways of ‘œre-using’ plastic doesn’t do anything. What we need to focus on is NOT using them at all. Next time you go out to shop, use canvas or a cute basket.’
Why is plastic just bad news? According to Charlie Goodyear at the San Francisco Chronicle, ‘œFifty years ago, plastic bags — starting first with the sandwich bag — were seen in the United States as a more sanitary and environmentally friendly alternative to the deforesting paper bag. Now an estimated 180 million plastic bags are distributed to shoppers each year in San Francisco. Made of filmy plastic, they are hard to recycle and easily blow into trees and waterways, where they are blamed for killing marine life. They also occupy much-needed landfill space.’
So San Francisco came up with a solution. Back in April, Pat Murphy at the San Francisco Sentinel reported on legislation that imposed a citywide ban on plastic grocery bags at supermarkets and chain pharmacies. The New York Times noted that antibag bills are being considered elsewhere in Boston; Baltimore; Annapolis, Md.; Portland, Ore.; and Santa Monica and Oakland, Calif.
‘œOur waste problem is not the fault only of producers. It is the fault of an economy that is wasteful from top to bottom ‘“ a symbiosis of an unlimited greed at the top and a lazy, passive, and self-indulgent consumptiveness at the bottom ‘“ and all of us are involved in it,’ wrote Wendell Berry in an essay called Waste.
More than 500 billion plastic bags are distributed, and less than 3% of those bags are recycled according to stats published in TIME magazine.
What’s the solution? BYOB’¦ as in Bring Your Own Bag. Anya Hindmarch helped re-ignite the movement with her Environmental Bag that’s pictured above. It received a lot of publicity and makes a stylish statement, but I’ll take function over form any day.
One of the reasons I haven’t become a canvas convert is because all the bags I’ve seen look like an over-the-shoulder tote’¦ something you would get for donating money to Public Television or snag at an industry tradeshow. These might be fine for tooling around the farmer’s market, but for weekly visits to the grocer’¦ those types of bags just don’t seem that practical.
If they made a bag with the look and size of a paper grocery sack then perhaps I would take the plunge. Well, they do. How come more shoppers haven’t discovered these? For an investment of less than $100 we can convert to canvas’¦ the sturdy, durable kind. Here are a few options ranging between $5 and $15 per bag:
- Heavy Duty, Super Strong Reusable Shopping Bags
- Down and Dirty No-Frills Version
- Bags Made from Recyclable Plastic
Finally, the challenge with using canvas bags is remembering to bring the bags with you to the grocery store. The blogger at Life Less Plastic provides a few strategies to help remember. For me personally, it’s best to just keep them in the trunk of my car. After all, that’s what I do with my yoga mat and I’ve never shown up to class without it.
So what are you waiting for? Take the challenge this Blog Action Day and spend $100 bucks on reusable bags. I’ll do it. Will anyone join me?
I should dig out some bags we’ve got stowed somewhere at my parents’ house. Could definitely do this. Of course, we use the plastic ones for our little trash cans and for other random things. But I think we have enough now to last us a while. And we’ll (unfortunately) pick them up when we forget to bring ours.
Hi Nina – Great post. Another eco-friendly reusable bag option for your readers is Hero Bags, San Francisco. Hero Bags are reusable heavy duty canvas bags designed for grocery shopping. Flat bottom, gusseted sides, velcro top closure and only $9.99 or buy a set of 4 and save $5. Please check them out at Hero Bags.
Thanks! Susanne
Canvas bags are the best for our Earth, not only they are degradable, but also they are re-usable. If you think canvas bags are boring, check this out: http://www.funtote.com/catalog.html , they have page after page of nice designs.
I use my Funtote bag for all my shopping, they are very simply, durable and unique.
Canvas is a step in the right direction, but I think my Mommie Dearest’s idea is even better.
She’s a seamstress by trade, and 17 years ago, she bought some “rip-stop nylon” (also called “parachute material”) from a Jo-Ann Fabrics store. She made a dozen grocery bags in a size just slightly larger than a standard Wal-Mart bag. We’ve used and abused them and they are STILL in perfect condition nearly two decades later.
What I think makes them better than canvas is that they are so thin, they fold up into something about the size of a deck of cards.