Sack It to Them

I never thought I had an emotional attachment to plastic grocery bags – who would? But when news hit last month that the Boston City Council wants to ban them at large retail stores, I was struck by the ungreenest of thoughts: Time to start hoarding. At least, that’s how I felt until I crawled out from the bag I’d been hiding under and learned a bit about the menace that lives among us.
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In case you’ve missed the growing anti-bag movement, which focuses on non-biodegradable plastic bags but also takes a swipe at paper, you should know that there are now two Americas. One is full of people clicking onto websites such as 1bagatatime.com and reusablebags.com and learning that non-biodegradable plastic bags not only choke turtles and whales but also take 1,000 years to decompose in landfills, contribute to global warming, and, because they’re made of polyethylene, increase our dependency on foreign oil. The other is inhabited by those who think no purchase is too small or lightweight (e.g. chewing gum) to warrant bagging.

As Americans have been double-bagging with abandon, using an estimated 84 billion plastic bags annually, other countries have turned on the threat, including Australia, Singapore, Taiwan, South Africa, and Bangladesh. In Ireland, use of non-biodegradable plastic bags plummeted 90 percent after the equivalent of a 17-cent-per-bag “plastax” was started in 2002.

So what’s up with the country that gave Al Gore an Academy Award for an environmental slide show? All I can say is, enjoy your bags while you can, because the winds of change are blowing. (And guess what won’t be wafting: discarded plastic bags, a la the lovely scene in American Beauty of a sack dancing with fallen leaves.) In March, San Francisco became the first major American city to ban non-biodegradable plastic bags in large groceries and pharmacies, and now other cities and states are considering action. In Massachusetts, not only has the Boston City Council taken aim, but state senator Brian A. Joyce, a Milton Democrat, is poised to file legislation that would levy a fee on non-compostable plastic bags at big retailers, with a few exceptions. The fee, paid by customers, would start at 2 cents per bag in 2008 and rise to 15 cents by 2014.

And yet, as with other embattled species – trans fats, cigarettes, American Idol’s Sanjaya – plastic bags have their supporters (beyond dog owners). Those in the grocery and plastics industries talk about using plastic bags responsibly. Recycle, reuse, reduce is their mantra, and they defend the bags, which cost about 1 cent to produce, compared with about 4 or 5 cents for a paper bag and up to 10 cents for a biodegradable plastic bag. Although regular plastic bags can be recycled, they rarely are. The rate is 1 percent, compared with 20 percent for paper, according to the US Environmental Protection Agency.

Chris Flynn, president of Massachusetts Food Association, the trade group for the supermarket industry, warns that we shouldn’t “demonize a product that has certain benefits.” He says plastic bags prevent meat juices from leaking onto other groceries, help keep products cold, and are easier to carry for folks with limited arm strength. Flynn himself uses plastic sacks to line trash cans and wrap Christmas ornaments for storage. The website of the Film and Bag Federation, a division of the Society of the Plastics Industry in Washington, D.C., lists such admirable secondary uses as “Take them to the food bank where they can be used to give needy people their food,” and “Use them to take the clothing [kids] grow out of to Goodwill.”

Though Flynn extols the bags’ benefits, he also points out that some grocers are trying to help consumers kick the bag habit with incentives (like 5 cents off your order for every bag you bring in). But perhaps the solution comes not from trivial financial enticements or an outright ban – which James W. Hunt III, chief of environmental and energy services for Boston, says is “appealing” though possibly too onerous or difficult to enforce.

If we really want to change behavior, let’s go with negative reinforcement. Establish special checkout lanes for those without their own bags, and let them wait it out when cashiers there call for a “price check” on every fifth item.