April 16th, 2009 Paper or Plastic?
Saying yes to paper next time you’re at the grocery store may do less good than you may think. Whenever I’m home visiting my family and happen to stop in San Francisco, I have to use paper bags, there are no other options: plastic bags are illegal there. Several cities have taken this measure in order to be environmentally conscientious. Though paper bags are seen as a more environmentally friendly alternative to plastic bags, there are still flaws they possess. Billions of paper bags are used each year which adds up to quite a few trees!
Though paper bags have major drawbacks, plastic bags are if anything, much worse. They are not biodegradable and must go through the process of photo degradation where they break into smaller and smaller toxic pieces that contaminate water and soil, harming animals that happen to ingest the pieces. Because they are not biodegradable, plastic bags can take up to 1,000 years to decompose. Every year plastic bags tossed carelessly aside kill numerous numbers of marine life such as dolphins, whales, sea turtles, etc, who mistake them for food. Plastic bags also consume value resources such as oil which is needed in their production. Plastic bags are obliviously not ideal for many reasons!
A better alternative to “paper or plastic” would be a reusable bag. These can be purchased online or at most grocery stores. Some of these bags serve the double purpose of being eco-friendly and providing the bag’s manufacturers, often victims of HIV, poverty, or genocide with money to survive. Who knows, San Francisco may soon be on their way to becoming the first city to require reusable bags. Until that day comes, we owe it to ourselves, our homes, and our environment to do the best we can to protect and preserve our earth.
April 18th, 2009 at 1:28 pm
I live south of San Francisco and the plastic bag controversy has spread to my community as well. There was a proposal before the city council to begin collecting $.25 per plastic bag paid by the consumer at the business where the purchase was made. While the idea might initially sound appealing, there are flaws within the design: additional man hours by the businesses involved to collect, report, and transfer these funds, the high cost to the consumer (a large number of whom are lower income anyway, as reusable bags are more likely to be purchased by people of greater means), and the fact that some people will still be careless with the bags they do purchase, leading to a continuation of the “blowing plastic bag” problem. The proposal has been shelved for now, but there are things we can do to work toward decreasing our plastic bag dependence:
Do purchase about 8-10 launderable bags for grocery/retail shopping. My favorites are at http://www.africabags.org. Use these whenever you are shopping someplace where low quality plastic bags are used. These are the ones that are very thin and break easily; you can’t reuse these for any other purpose, so they just go right into a landfill.
When you are visiting a store that provides good quality bags (like Target), go ahead and accept them. You can use these bags for many other purposes—lining a catbox or trashcan, to pack a lunch, or even to clean up after your dog. We would buy other plastic bags to do these jobs (like trash can liners) but by reusing these high quality bags they are doing double duty and saving us some money in the process.
The plastic liner that your newspaper arrives in is also great for packing sandwiches or cleaning up after your dog. It isn’t just the grocery bags that need to be reused!
If you do find yourself stuck with some of those torn, poor quality plastic bags, don’t throw them away. Take them with you to the grocery store. Most groceries have a drop off bin for used plastic bags. I’m not certain if they recycle them, but it will keep them from blowing away in the breeze.
Does anyone have any ideas that I haven’t mentioned here? I’d love to hear them!