Plastic Bags

By Brynn Stonehouse

These days all I can think about is plastic. I’m obsessed with the amount of products that are made with plastic - from the packaging of my food, toys for my daughter, to the bags that I carry these new purchases in. Plastic is everywhere!

I could (and many have done so before me) write an entire book on the state of plastic in our world, however for this article I will focus on plastic bags.

Here are a few facts to get started:

• The U.S. uses approximately 100 billion plastic bags annually, of which around 2% are recycled.
• 500 billion – 1 trillion plastic bags are used worldwide annually, of which around 1% is recycled.
• Plastic is made up of primarily petroleum (another word for OIL) and natural gases.
• The average use rate of a bag is 20 minutes, from store to home, and the estimated average decomposition rate of a bag is roughly 1000 years (according to the E.P.A.).

So what happens to a plastic bag after the 20 minutes of use and before it has fully decomposed?

In my search for this answer I discovered a few different outcomes, which left me in quite an uneasy state.

The 2% of recycled plastic bags is turned into other plastic products such as PVC pipe, Trex decking, or other plastic packaging. This means 98% of 100 billion plastic bags, or 98 billion annually, in the U.S. are thrown into our landfills, clogging our gutters, blowing in the branches of our trees or have ended up in our oceans, and therefore, in the bellies of our sea life.

The fifth most common item of debris found on our beaches is the plastic bag. Over 50% of our marine litter is some form of plastic (This is an entirely different topic and to give it full justice, I will discuss it in a separate article at a later time). One million birds and 100,000 marine animals die each year from the ingestion of or entanglement of plastic.

The list continues on and as I write I can feel my hopelessness and despair of how overwhelming this issue really is. I think about the resources and energy it takes to recycle a plastic bag like the hot water used to wash it, and the soap that I send down the drain. Where does that go and what effect on the environment does it have? Now I’ve opened Pandora’s box, and what can I really do about that? It becomes catastrophic and too much for me to handle.

Somehow I manage to come back to earth and refocus on just the plastic bag. I don’t want to shrug it off and do nothing. I know I can do something about MY use of the plastic bag. Turning it back into just one object makes it more approachable to me.

 I know that I alone will not stop the use of 100 billion plastic bags in this country. In fact since I started my research I have used a handful of plastic bags for my veggies at the grocers or a purchase at Fred Meyers. I sometimes even relapse completely for a few days and throw out the plastic bag of rotten zucchini that was lost in the back of my fridge. Oh! That’s where that smell was coming from. Or I toss the two-month-old moldy cottage cheese container from the back of my fridge. That’s far easier to do than open the lid, dump the putrid contents into the toilet and clean out the container before tossing it into my recycling receptacle. Right? But then within a day or two my guilt starts to grow and it’s not so hard to do the before mentioned tasks. After all that would only take a pair of rubber gloves and, one, maybe two minutes of my time.

So what can I as an individual do to curb my consumption of plastic bags?

Here are some ideas:

Reduce

• Don’t accept a bag for small purchases

When I have only a few items to carry to my car I put it in my purse or hand carry the items even if I look awkward as I expose my purchases to the other shoppers.

• Use canvas/re-usable bags instead

Many of Seattle’s residents carry their canvas or reusable bags to the grocery store already. Way-to-go Seattleites!

• Keep an extra bag on hand

Try to keep at least one bag (it can even be a plastic bag that you are re-using) in your car. Hang it on a hook by the door (or the door knob so you don’t forget) or put it in your bag. Most grocery stores give a five-cent refund for each bag reused. The PCC doesn’t even offer plastic bags anymore. I have to admit that when they first started to carry plastic bags I was a bit shocked, but they didn’t do it for long.

• Ask your local stores to stop providing plastic bags or to impose a fee when they do

• Buy Biobags, which are made from corn and are completely biodegradable

Try to go one week with out accepting one new plastic bag, and then try two weeks. See how long you can go!

Reuse

• You can of course reuse a plastic bag at the grocery store.
• Store screws, brackets or other like items, especially if it goes to a piece of furniture you are storing.
• Use as packing material for dishes and such (then recycle when unpacked)

Many people are finding creative and useful things to do with all those plastic bags. One local woman organizes turning the plastic into “yarn” and crochets totes, baskets, water bottle holders and many more items. See links.

There are many more ideas out there. You can do a search online.

Recycle

Save your bags by stuffing them all into one bag. First make sure they are clean and clear of any debris and dry. Then put them in your recycling container, take them to your local grocery store (most have a big box towards the front of the store), or take them to the dump to be recycled.

San Francisco is the first city in the U.S. to have banned traditional plastic bags. They use bio-degradable ones usually made of corn. The ban went into effect in November of 2007. Many other countries have completely banned the use or impose a heavy tax on plastic bags. Ireland imposed around a 22 cent tax on every bag, after which the use dropped by 90%. If this happened in the U.S. we would eliminate the consumption of 90 billion bags a year (that’s close to the 98 billion bags we throw out annually). Italy is the first country to ban plastic packaging. Some other countries and cities that have banned or discouraged the use of plastic bags are: China, Mumbai (formerly Bombay), Australia, Bangladesh, South Africa and Taiwan.

There is of course so much more to be said about our use of plastics this day and age. I do encourage you to start by becoming aware of your personal consumption. We will never change what we first are not aware of.

How can you lighten your environmental footprint? The task is too great for me to think of eliminating the trillions of bags out there but when asked at the grocery store, “paper or plastic” the third unspoken option can always be “neither”.

Links

reusablebags.com

earth911.org

http://www.seattle.gov/util/Services/Recycling/Recyclable_Items/PLASTIC_2003120207594611.asp

http://picasaweb.google.com/karunapoole

Garbage Land: On the Secret Trail of Trash by Elizabeth Royte

Paper or Plastic: Searching for Solutions to an Overpackaged World by Daniel Imhoff