Recycling — It’s in the bag

By Dave Churchill (Contact) | The Daily Journal

Published Friday, September 7, 2007

Slang comes and goes, and usually when it goes it is a good thing. The 1960s-era expression, “What’s your bag?” is a good example. Even as children of the ‘60s, growing up in trendy Madison, Wis., we weren’t sure whether to laugh or cry when we heard someone say that.

But it has been on my mind this week since a checker at Service Food sold me a re-usable grocery bag.

I had been vaguely aware for a long time that the common, plastic grocery bags are a mixed blessing. When it comes to convenience, plastic bags are nearly unbeatable. Tough, light, easy to carry — they make carrying groceries a whole lot easier than in the paper bag days, when brown sacks had to be carried carefully upright. Is there anyone over the age of 35 or so who didn’t have a paper grocery bag rip and spill stuff all over?

Unfortunately, the same traits that make those plastic grocery sacks so handy also make them a problem. They’re so light that, released into the air, they blow all over, catch in trees, hang in bushes and generally make a mess. For a few years, while I worked in Austin, the same grocery sack was caught in the branches of a tree outside my office window. It was invisible through the summer, but each fall it was still there – and might still be for all I know.

Along shorelines, drifting bags can entrap and kill some kinds of marine life.

One estimate I have seen is that as many as 5 trillion disposable plastic bags are used worldwide each year — quite a change from the early 1980s, when paper accounted for something like 95 percent of the bag market.

San Francisco has gone so far as to phase in a ban on plastic bags, attempting to eliminate the estimated 180 million bags that stores there distribute every year. It’s believed to be the first such law in the country.

What’s interesting is that paper bags are, in some ways, not much better. Paper takes more energy to create, it takes up more landfill space when thrown away and it is perhaps a bigger problem than plastic when left in lakes and oceans — although paper bags are more readily recycled than plastic.

So what’s a person to do?

The answer may be re-usable bags.

It’s an idea that makes a lot of sense for some people. My own grocery shopping is typically for a few small items, and one bag usually suffices. So it is not much trouble for me to cart the bag along when I go into the store.

But what about someone who buys a cartful of groceries? The re-usable bags strike me as not too convenient in that circumstance. One would have to haul along half a cartful of bags to bring home the day’s shopping.

Nor do re-usable bags help much with spontaneous shopping. Decide to pick up two or three items on the way home from work? You’ll end up using a disposable bag, unless you planned ahead, or keep your re-usable bag in the car at all times. (I’ve decided to store mine on the floor in the back seat.) And because I travel for my job, I sometimes buy groceries in towns where I am visiting overnight; should I pack my re-usable bag on the airplane?

Just like almost every other measure that reduces petroleum use (a good idea, since we’re going to run out one of these days), re-usable bags are simply not as convenient as disposable plastics. Making the choice that is best for the long-run is not easy in the short run.

One estimate I’ve seen is that a re-usable bag takes the same resources to create as 11 disposables. In other words, use it 11 times and you’ve “broken even,” on resource use.

I’m about three uses into my re-usable, and it will be interesting to see whether convenience in the end overcomes for me the long-term benefits of conserving. In a month or two, maybe I’ll be able to report whether re-usables are “my bag.”

Journal publisher Dave Churchill’s column runs on Fridays.