By Vanessa Holt
It seemed to happen all at once.
One day, I went out to run a few simple errands and I think I came home with 30 different plastic bags. I bought a single greeting card. Got it in a plastic bag. I bought a gallon of milk and some eggs — got two separate plastic bags. And on it goes, floating up like beige, white and yellow phantoms when a gust of wind strikes.
You may have heard some of the statistics about exactly how many of these things we bring home every day. New Jersey might eliminate them from the waste stream if the Plastic Bag Recycling Act (A-4555) becomes law, mandating recycling and eventual elimination of these bags from large retail stores. Whether it passes or not, though, reducing their usage should be something both residents and businesses strive for.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency estimates 380 billion plastic shopping bags are used per year in the U.S., and as of this writing (Monday night) several Web sites promoting the use of reusable bags (including reusablebags.com, a site that sells exactly that) had their counters at 471 billion bags used in the U.S. based on their calculations for 2007.
One of the easiest New Year’s resolutions I’m making for 2008 (and I’ve started early) is to avoid bringing any more of the ubiquitous bags home, whenever possible. We each supposedly wind up with 300 of them annually and I suspect it’s actually much more. I can’t think of a day that goes by that I don’t go into a store of some sort to buy one thing — even something as small as a greeting card, or a gallon of milk — and it always comes out in a plastic bag. Previously, I was often too distracted to notice, and I just shoved them into the big bin of plastic bags when I got home.
Sure, I re-use them, use them for trash, use them to bring lunch to work. But there are still so many of them. Many grocery stores have bins to collect them for recycling, but they are not part of the curbside recycling pickup.
So I have the green canvas bags. I affectionately call them my “hippie bags” and I’m delighted that most grocery stores sell them for around a dollar these days. The problem is remembering to leave the house with them. But I do, more and more, and now the problem is getting the actual groceries in them without the requisite armload of plastic bags tagging along. It’s harder than it seems.
For example: I loaded up a basket just with fresh produce, and proceeded to get it weighed. As each individual type of fruit or vegetable was weighed, they placed it into a separate plastic bag. Lemons and limes: form two separate lines! Apples and oranges must not rub shoulders! I intervened with horror and put them all, naked as the day God made them, to fraternize freely in the green hippie bag.
I realized that we’ve become accustomed to having plastic bags around, not just to carry things, but to organize and distinguish them, to make the purchase “official.” If you’ve just bought a book and walk out of the store with it, even though you paid, don’t you feel a little bit like you just got away with something? A bag in a way is like a receipt, in that it’s a proof of purchase. Well I wouldn’t have a bag if I hadn’t bought something, would I?
It requires a real shift of mindset to start looking at things “outside of the bag.” Bringing your own bag might seem awkward at first — where do I put it while I’m shopping? How do they know I brought the bag in with me? What do I do if my eggplants touch my avocados? And there are a few things that just need to be bagged.
There was the nut issue, for instance. A dozen kinds of nuts: each priced differently according to weight. I’m not going to run through the store with cupped hands full of filberts and walnuts, and I’m not going to just start scooping them into a cart. So, we compromise a little. At the end of the day, if I came home with fewer bags than I would have otherwise, I feel like it’s a start.
The bag issue is obviously not the only, or the most important, one out there. But it’s a start, and it’s possibly the one thing that every person can do with virtually no effort. If you’re buying one item, and you have a purse, or a pocket, or can just carry the object out yourself (along with the receipt, of course), and the cashier reaches for a bag, just say you don’t need one. Most stores will be happy to oblige, and to reduce their own costs.
Some stores even offer incentives if you “bring your own.” Some grocery store chains offer discounts or other incentives for customers who bag it themselves. Talk to the owners or the people working in both chain and local stores if you’re curious, and maybe if they get enough inquiries, they’ll start as well.
Vanessa Holt is managing editor of The Register News, a Packet publication. She can be reached at vholt@pacpub.com.
