Australia and China are phasing them out, Germany and Ireland tax them, but in the United States, the plastic shopping bag is still king…
Americans use 100 billion plastic shopping bags a year, according to Washington-based think tank Worldwatch Institute, or more than 330 a year for every person in the country. Most of them are thrown away.
A handful of U.S. cities and states have made moves to cut that number and Whole Foods Market, a supermarket pitched at the organic and natural food shopper, said it would phase out plastic bags out by Earth Day on April 22. But critics say the United States is years behind countries in Europe, Asia and Africa…
Made from crude oil, natural gas and other petrochemical derivatives, an estimated 12 million barrels of oil are used to make the bags the U.S. consumes each year…
“The mentality in America is plastic bags come from plastic bag land,” said Mastny, of the Worldwatch Institute. “We don’t think about where they come from and where they are going.”
The plastic bag lobby is as big as the Oil Patch Boys lobby. Oh…
Plastic bags are just easier. Easier to carry from the car and they also make great mini garbage bags.
They’re very useful around the home. My supermarket bags are all re-used, sometimes for years.
Besides the use of oil and any pollution in manufacturing…one of the best things to put in a land fill is plastic, totally inert and no leaching of chemicals. Oddly one of the worst things is biodegradable paper due to leaching
Since the U.S. uses 20 million barrels of oil per day, I wonder what the big fuss is about?
12 million barrels = 0.0016 annual usage.
Seems to me the Brickley engine would be a better deal. Not much of a change to existing engine design. If we’re going to use internal combustion for awhile, every little bit helps, and 20% is more than a little bit.
http://cagematch.dvorak.org/index.php/topic,3449.0.html
I was in Korea recently where they charge a nominal fee (I think 2 cents per bag). It’s enough to encourage people to re-use their bags. But if you need a new one you can get one.
We just need to change our mindset.
#1: Unless you remove the handles, paper bags are just as easy to carry, and they are also perfect containers for your paper and carton recycling.
They also generally hold more weight and volume than plastic bags…
Of course, all in all, canvas beats them both.
I’ve been using shopping baskets for 15 years. I’ve always been ecologically responsible, but also using baskets is a time saver.
for those of you not familiar, the basket is like a rectangular laundry basket, but stronger and a little smaller, holding the equivalent of 4-5 bags. We put them in the car when we go shopping for groceries.
We simply reload the cart at the cash, and load the baskets right in the car (minivan, but a trunk is just as convenient) they don’t spill their contents on the ride home, and we carry the equivalent of 4-5 bags at a time easily into the house.
Saves time, saves the environment. If you want bags for household use, buy some instead of supporting excess waste and environmental stress.
#4–Bubba–I don’t think shopping bags made out of internal combustion engines would be very convenient.
Love the link though. Even better is the “plug-in hybrid” that moves us to a decentralized interactive green energy self sufficiency mode. It however is also no good as a shopping bag.
At my local Superstore (Canadian large grocery store chain), they’ve eliminated plastic bags. Instead, they offer large plastic bins for $3 that you can use every time you shop there (don’t ask me how much oil the bins use, but that’s another story…)
I was skeptical at first, but I’ve come to love the bins, and I don’t miss the bags at all. They fit perfectly in the shopping cart, they’re very sturdy, and my groceries don’t get bashed around in the truck of the car. I use them at home to cart around stuff, and can even stand on them to replace light bulbs in the ceiling.
It’s about time that the environmentalist crawl back into the hole of which they came. As I recall their hysteria about paper bags lead to plastic in the first place. Now it’s the plastic that is the problem. Why don’t you guys make up your mind or better yet butt out of everyone else’s life. It’s more than obvious that you have no idea what you’re talking about.
Oh yeah and by the way it’s time we drill for our own oil and build a few refineries. At least that we be at the mercy of every two bit tyrant in the world.
Plastic Bags Rule!
I use the hell out of the plastic bags. Hell, I brought my lunch to work in a Wal-mart bag today. I use them for little garbage bags all over the place. Most of the time, they get used until they either tear or get something nasty in them. I use the same bag for lunch usually for about a week before it starts fraying bad from tying and untying the handles.
Skippy, I’m from Canada as well. The baskets I use were introduced By Knob Hill Farms (now defunct) 20 years ago. I still have a few of the originals in perfect shape. The only ones I wrecked were used for unintended tasks. 🙂
I’ve been using and reusing paper grocery bags for years at my house. They fit trashcans perfectly, they fit big green garbage bags perfectly, they’re reusable. So what happens? My local supermarket chain stops carrying them and switches to plastic. You know, the ones that refuse to stand up in the trunk? The ones that tear the handles if you put anything in them that weigh more than a banana? Not to mention the idiot bagger who puts ten pound roasts on top of yogurt cups (and then laughs when you complain). Must be a college student.
Complaining does no good… they just say to shop elsewhere if I don’t like it. Jerks.
#12, one of the best uses I’ve found for them is when I need to take my power tools somewhere. I throw the tools in the bins, throw the bins in the car, and the inside of the car doesn’t get banged or scratched up.
I don’t have a problem with plastic.
I reuse the bags for numerous things… Carry lunch, picking up dog crap (NOT the same bag!), trash bags, triple layered to drain oil for transport to recycler, and so on.
Paper kills trees and just gets thrown out with the trash.
Plastic bags are a plague on the earth and its environment.
Fine in your kitchen, i guess.
However most people never think about where the bag is going , after they throw it away or out of their S.U.V. window on their way to the shopping mall or even their big time hunting vacation.
These plastic bags lie swilling around in the environment.
Look at any beach and you will see tons of these bags as well as assorted plastics , washed ashore with the tides- some from American cities, some with labeling as far away as Japan and Europe.
Hm.. well, plastic bags hold a good deal more carbon out of the atmosphere than killing a bunch of trees to make paper bags. If the plastic was properly melted and recycled this wouldn’t even be discussed, but nobody wants to do the recycling because it isn’t profitable without subsidies.
How sad is it when it’s far cheaper to make and buy NEW items than to recycle the old ones? This is the biggest problem with the tech industry, largely because of our infrastructure.
In any case, stop bitching about it all and just use canvas bags to shop. You shouldn’t use paper OR plastic.
When they first started using plastic it was to HELP the enviroment. Save the trees and all that.
“The mentality in America is plastic bags come from plastic bag land”
nice of them to make stupid assumptions while holding their noses so high in the air.
#8, OK, bobbo, I’ll bite:
“Seems to me the Brickley engine would be a better deal than worrying about plastic bags.” But I love bags made from IC engines! 🙂
I’m glad you enjoyed the link. The animation was cool, I thought. And 20% without much change to mfg. tooling is great, too. Same HP, less gas. Win/win.
And yes, I reuse my IC plastic bags until they just won’t work anymore.
Hey Bubba–I know I was tweaking the gods, but still, I waited until the dip/dork award had been issued before I posted. Can’t presume on your mercy.
Doesn’t everybody store the bags and use them in many ways? Seems years ago there were quite a few articles on how plastic had less of an environmental impact than did papers bags if total cost was calculated.
Still–given their specific limited one time use, seems like a natural fit for sugar based plastic or whatever?
Lets recap though. Your engine while very interesting is still an infernal combustion engine and bad for the environment no matter how efficient it becomes.
The Plug-in Hybrid really is the way to go and the “vehicle to grid” technology is the real grabber. All off the shelf right now, a real stimulus to the economy, energy self sufficiency==no drawbacks except for car dealers. Someone always has to pay.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plug-in_hybrid
I am just so confused about the issue at hand. My solution is to make 5 trips a day by car to the market, buying only what I can carry in my hands so I don’t have to make a choice between paper and plastic. See, a bit of analysis and the issue is resolved!
#10 – Get bent.
Whether you are right or wrong, all your kind of people do is bitch. This article is just conveying information. Environmentalists are trying to proactively make the world better for all, as if that were some sort of crime.
What have you done?
Answer – charge a nickel for each plastic bag used. That will drive reuseables.
Incentive is a powerful force.
No more free plastic bags from the market? Damn! Now I’ll have to buy new ones to put the cat poop in.
#25 – Right on.
#26 – Right on.
In my area Publix supermarkets sold really nice canvas grocery bags for 99¢ each. Those suckers will never wear out.
We have a lady(about 60 y/o, Birkenstocks, long pleated skirts, typical hippie attire) here in the neighborhood who collects old discarded clothes, cuts them up and fashions grocery bags from them. They hold about twice what a plastic bag holds, with nice, comfortable handle straps, and if they get soiled, they are washable. She does about 30 at a time then gives them away in front of the local Albertsons market. She refuses to take money for them. It’s amazing how many people actually use them. She’s been doing this for about 9 months now and when I walk up to the market, I see almost everyone local carrying at least 1 of her bags to the store.
Gotta love those old California hippies.
Plastic bags in Ireland cost 20 cents each. This has encouraged people to buy canvas type bags or reuse the plastic one’s. It not that big of deal.
#24 – Environmentalism is all well and good until the environmentalists start trying to destroy all that makes life worthwhile in the name of the environment. I was actually a contributor to the Sierra Club in my youth before I started paying attention.
#26 – I do that too. I shouldn’t have to buy bags for that.
I’m waiting for woven stainless steel cloth for my reusable grocery bags. I could also use that to make dog toys that actually last.