Start looking for those tote bags

Salon runs a piece today, "Plastic Bags Are Killing Us," which pretty much lays out the problem with plastic bags:

Every year, Americans throw away some 100 billion plastic bags after they've been used to transport a prescription home from the drugstore or a quart of milk from the grocery store. It's equivalent to dumping nearly 12 million barrels of oil.

Only 1 percent of plastic bags are recycled worldwide -- about 2 percent in the U.S. -- and the rest, when discarded, can persist for centuries. They can spend eternity in landfills, but that's not always the case. "They're so aerodynamic that even when they're properly disposed of in a trash can they can still blow away and become litter," says Mark Murray, executive director of Californians Against Waste. It's as litter that plastic bags have the most baleful effect.

This is nothing that will surprise you guys since this year's posts have featured a lot of talk about plastic bags. The reason I'm including it is because there was one reaction to it that I found really interesting.

Kevin Coupe is a long-time grocery and retail industry observer and analyst, and he's pretty focused on answering the question "How can stores give customers what they want?" Here's what he had to say after reading the Salon piece:

We’re not there yet, but I can imagine a time, in five years or so, where this will be a non-issue – that the momentum against plastic bags usage will be so great that it won’t even be up for debate. It may not get to that point, but I wouldn’t bet against it. So, it seems to me, retailers have to start making decisions now. Do we fight the movement? Or do we try to anticipate where the customer is going, and work hard to be identified with the solution rather than the problem?

If it were me, I’d vote for the second option. It won’t be easy, and it won’t be fast. It will take a lot of consumer education, and there will be some blowback.

But I think this is where the consumer is heading, and I think it makes sense for retailers to get there first, or at least at the same time.

When I was a teenager and my mom was shopping at Shoppers' Food Warehouse, she brought her own bags and boxes because SFW would charge for using their sacks. I'm wondering if we're going to see a widespread return to this as stores try to pass on the costs of non-plastic bags.

Comments

[Polly]

Whole Foods is clearly doing what Coupe recommends--I mean, people rioted for those bags, and they got all kinds of press coverage. You slap a logo on some bags, and if they're well-made enough, people will probably use them for other things as well, so voila, free advertising. Also, I think there would be a building-store-loyalty aspect--I have a Trader Joe's canvas bag I got from who knows where years and year ago (I don't remember buying it), and frankly I feel like it's kind of rude to take it to another grocery store. (So I dug up some bigger Seventh Generation bags instead--but you know, another consumer might just stick with going to Trader Joe's.)

[Rebecca]

A number of the grocery stores here in Northern Ontario charge for their plastic bags, and have boxes or well-made cloth bags (for sale) available. I've been using cloth bags for the last few months after having not done it for years - one of them has a logo for a chain other than the one I most often go to, except it's older and the logo is fading. The rest are bags I got at conferences or made myself. (I do keep a couple of plastic bags on hand for things like meat or fish, so it doesn't leak all over everything else.)

Does anyone have any suggestions for alternatives to plastic bags at places were dry goods are sold in bulk? The Bulk Barn here is great for things like dried fruit and nuts, but I wish there was some other solution to using their plastic bags for the items.

[Maria]

The Nugget here in Sac sells a couple different styles of sturdy but cheap tote bags, and gives you a ten cent credit for every bag you bring yourself when you checkout. I got a free bag as one of their membership rewards. Ten cents isn't much, but eventually the bags will pay for themselves, and having cheap totes avaiable at the checkouts means that even if you forget your own, you can but a new one. I happen to love tote bags, so this works well for me.

[Uli]

I'm in Australia and we've been moving to this for a few years now. All supermarkets and a lot of other retailers sell their own reusable, practical, sturdy bags cheaply, won't give out plastic bags if you buy less than a certain number of items, and in some areas have banned them completely unless you're willing to pay for them. I also think it's only a matter of time before they're phased out completely.

[Polly]

Does anyone have any suggestions for alternatives to plastic bags at places were dry goods are sold in bulk?

I know EnviroWoman uses Chinese takeout containers, Rebecca. (If you don't know who that is, that's the lady who swore off plastic in 2007--her blog is at http://plasticfree.blogspot.com/)

I'm in Australia and we've been moving to this for a few years now.

That's interesting to hear, Uli. It seems like a quite a few countries have taken some pretty significant steps on this already, and people seem to be able to make the change without too much trouble.

[Meghan]

If the Stop and Shop I go to offered paper bags with handles, then I would just get paper all the time, since that is much easier to recycle. But they don't, and when you live on the third floor you need bags with handles. I try to reuse the plastic bags for all our small trash cans, but we still have a lot. Stop and Shop does offer canvas bags to buy; I should probably do that.

[drunken monkey]

"A number of the grocery stores here in Northern Ontario charge for their plastic bags, and have boxes or well-made cloth bags (for sale) available."

Here too, in Toronto. It's mostly the discount chains that charge for bags, but it wouldn't surprise me to see others make the move. All the stores under the Loblaw banner sell reusable bags, and I see people using them around town, obviously not just for groceries. Same with a few other brands of bags. I got a nylon tote that folds up really tiny to carry around in my purse, because it's small, but I use the other bags for all my shopping. Very few plastic bags make their way into our apartment now, and when they do it's mostly my boyfriend's fault. (Boo.)

I have no compunction about using bags from one store at another. If they're not charging for the bags, I am ultimately saving them money -- the stores purchase the bags to give to the consumers, after all. I've never met any resistance to it, in any case. I think there's more awareness now, so nobody's that surprised when I've got my own bag. I've noticed as well that clerks are sometimes asking me if I want a bag for small purchases instead of automatically giving me one. I don't know if that's on company orders or not, but it's definitely happening more often lately.

[Ky Eliza]

When I was in Italy for a semester, they charged for plastic bags-- I think it added up to ten or fifteen cents per bag. I never, ever used their bags. I made sure my backpack was near empty and stuffed it full instead.

Now, I have a bunch of Trader Joe's bags, which I will bring anywhere (hey, Stop and Shop, if you don't want me advertising another grocery store when I come in, offer me the same deal TJ's or Whole Foods does) and even use as totes for the stuff I bring to and from work. If I forget them, and I am only picking up a few items, I will usually say, "No bag, please."

[Nee Stewart]

I live in Germany, and plastic bags cost about 15 cents at the grocery store. Most non-food stores give you a bag, but they (and the ones you buy) are very sturdy and everyone reuses them. As a matter of fact, most people who have cars use a sturdy plastic, fold-up bin instead of bags to transport their groceries home.

You can also buy canvas totes at almost any grocery store. My husband especially likes to buy the ones that depict local scenes; he thinks they make perfect gifts.

When my daughter was a baby (10 years ago now), her sitter gave me a cloth Whole Foods bag. That bag has been all over Europe with us because it is sturdy and roomy. It is the perfect conversation starter with other expats, for instance on a fjord tour in Norway, because invariably someone will ask *which* Whole Foods.

People who mail us packages from the States often use plastic bags as padding; I've been collecting them to transform them into a crocheted rug, if I could just find the pattern again.

[molly]

I would think stores would totally embrace this movement since it means less expenditures for them.

I recently was given a free tote bag from World Market, which has been added to the free tote collect my husband has from various trade conferences. Looking through some of our bags brings back wonderful memories of a red hot economy before the tech bubble blew, since many of the totes have the logos of defunct Silicon Valley start-ups.

Although, won't it be strange in the future not to see plastic bags blowing in trees?

[Lisa S.]

Oh my gosh, it will be wonderful in the future not to see plastic bags blowing in trees.

Or in the bay. When I was boarding the ferry last week, I heard two brown gulls dolefully peeping as they attempted to eat a plastic bag that was half-submerged. It will never be too soon to get rid of THAT sight.

[Ky Eliza]

So, after typing the above comment, "hey, Stop and Shop, if you don't want me advertising another grocery store when I come in, offer me the same deal TJ's or Whole Foods does," I made an impromtu visit to Stop and Shop today.

And lo and behold, there were 99 cent fabric-y bags for sale next to the register! I bought one of course, because I had more than I thought I would and was wondering how I was going to carry all the stuff I had gotten to the car without a plastic bag.

[SP]

I am actually still using one of those old Shoppers' Food Warehouse bags! I bought it just after I graduated college, and it's still going strong, 15 years and 3000-some miles later.

[molly]

LisaS, it will be wonderful in the future not to see a plastic bag, I totally agree. I only think it seems strange right now to think of a plastic bag-free future because of how pervasive they are in our society. They are every where you look and have even made it into our films, like America Beauty.

[hannah]

My mom's been using Tom Thumb canvas bags for ages now- 18 years, maybe? Is Tom Thumb even still around? I need to let her know hiw ahead of the times she was.

Anyway, she takes them to Kroger/Randalls/H-E-B all the time, which is why I've never minded taking mine to Whole Foods or Ralphs (both of which give you a nickel per bag- I may have protested when Ralphs knocked it down to 3 cents for a non-Ralphs bag).