Monday, February 12th, 2007
Bag the Bag
Here’s the Thing:
Take 1 less plastic bag next time you leave the supermarket.
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No laptops were harmed |
The pile of plastic bags under my kitchen sink is getting out of hand. No, it’s been out of hand for a while — in fact about a year ago I started a second pile in a shopping bag under the microwave. I now have a paper bag of plastic bags supplementing a plastic container of plastic bags, each of which had an active useful life span of about six minutes — the time it takes me to walk from the Key Food to my apartment.
I try to reuse the bags as often as possible, but honestly, what am I going to do with six hundred plastic shopping bags, most of which have small holes in them? It’s a war I’m never ever going to win. And I’d bet a lot of us are fighting the same war and we’re all losing.
Imagine the sheer number of bags flowing into and out of New York City every day, most of which will only see a couple blocks worth of daylight in their lifetime. I can’t even begin to guess at the amount of wasted natural and human resources — making the bags, shipping the bags, carting the bags away in the trash. And the amount of bags that sit in landfills around this country? (There are over 3,000 active landfills and 10,000 old municipal landfills across the United States, all of which will eventually leak into ground and surface water, according to zerowasteamerica.org.)
And if your local supermarket checker is anything like mine (and I bet he is), he’s a bit bag happy. Okay, I get that my eggs need to go in a separate bag so they don’t get jostled by the big bad Tropicana man. But do they really need to be double bagged? Does that 8 oz cereal box need two bags? How about the package of sponges and toilet paper? Especially if I’m just walking a few blocks — or even better — out to my car and then in from my car. Seriously, lose the second bag every once in a while. Maybe pile a few more things in the same bag. Or, if you’re really bad ass, get a big stinking canvas bag to carry home all your oversized jars of marmalade.
This is New York. Imagine if each one of the 8 million of us asked for one less bag this week. Every week. That’s nearly half a billion fewer bags to end up in landfills this year. And that’s just New York City and just one less bag per week. It seems to me there’s a lot of potential here.
on Sunday, February 18th, 2007 at 4:59 pm:
Thanks for a great post! In French supermarkets (granted the service in France overall is not exactly consumer-oeriented…), you have to bring your own bags, or they charge you 50c per bag! That’s where I got into the habit of bringing my own sturdy saddle bags, that I conveniently hang on my bike rack -It has several benefits: you help save the planet (less plastic wasted), you use a non polluting transportation vehicle, and you get your exercise…as you might have to go to the store more than once a week - And possibly, you save money, as you have to carefully select the most necessary and nutrious items you can carry! I have this great sticker on my bike: Vehicle Powered By Food
on Monday, February 19th, 2007 at 10:10 am:
We often ask for paper in plastic - this is stronger than one plastic, so things don’t rip as much. Where we live all paper recycling needs to be in paper bags, so this is what we do with all our paper bags, they are used to bag the recycling.
People with children in diapers who don’t have a diaper genie or other some such will also appreciate the grocery bags, they’re a good size for bagging one or two dirty diapers. We shop at the grocery store rarely enough that our plastic bags just keep up with our twins’ downstairs diapers.
I’ve noticed that bulk stores like BJ’s and Costco don’t have/offer bags. We actually buy most of our groceries there, which saves us money. Any thoughts on using those stores rather than the grocery stores?
on Monday, February 19th, 2007 at 1:21 pm:
I bought two carrier bags from a craft store when I was in India in 1997. One wore out after 8 years and I’m still using the second. No broken eggs yet. People notice the Chennai label and compliment me for my bag fashion.