Earth Matters: Bags don't have to be ubiquitous

Mona Blaber | The New Mexican

1/25/2008 - 1/26/08

Last summer, I decided to go bag-neutral. Armed with a mountain of sacks from previous purchases, I vowed never to take another bag.

It went well until I actually bought something. I walked into a salon intending to buy just a brush and walked out with a brush, two jumbo bottles of shampoo and conditioner and one plastic bag. Before the day was out, I slipped up again, forgetting until it was too late that a Subway sandwich means a plastic bag unless you speak up.

Plastic bags are convenient and difficult to avoid; conservation groups estimate that between 80 billion and 100 billion are given to consumers every year in the United States. Those 100 billion bags require about 12 million barrels of oil to manufacture and take up to 1,000 years to break down. Standard plastic bags don't biodegrade. They photodegrade, which means they break up into ever smaller pieces that enter the soil and water as well as the food chain, killing birds and marine mammals by entangling them or clogging their intestines.

Even when properly disposed of, the sacks can fly away and sully the landscape. In South Africa, where they're now banned, they're so ubiquitous as litter they're called the national flower.

Pamela Dupzyk, program director for the Santa Fe Watershed Association, which sponsors cleanups of the Santa Fe River, estimated that workers find about 10 bags per block around the river. "You find them a lot caught in the willows," Dupzyk said.

Whole Foods this week announced it was phasing out plastic bags. Earlier this month, China banned the flimsiest of bags and required charges on thicker bags. San Francisco's ban on nonbiodegradable bags went into effect in November. Several Alaska towns have followed suit, and other American cities are considering it, including Boston and Austin, Texas. Bangladesh banned them in 2002 after they clogged drainage systems and caused major floods in 1988 and 1998.

The plastics industry says bans are not the way to go and instead encourages measures to increase recycling. New York recently passed an industry-supported requirement for all large stores to collect and recycle plastic bags. But in San Francisco, pushing recycling for several years produced a recycling rate of less than 5 percent. The EPA put the U.S. rate at just 0.6 percent in 2002.

The industry also argues that plastic bags are more environmentally friendly than paper, because paper uses trees and requires more energy in manufacture and transport, which is true, according to a study by the Institute for Lifecycle Environmental Assessment.

That's the point: If we use our own bags, we don't need either. Paper and plastic both use precious resources and energy, contributing to carbon emissions and climate change.

"I don't want it to turn into paper vs. plastic," Santa Fe City Councilor Chris Calvert said. Calvert said he doesn't think a ban makes sense for Santa Fe, but a charge on plastic — and even paper — is a possibility.

Indeed, though Whole Foods will keep recycled paper bags on hand for customers who don't bring their own, "we're really pushing reusable," spokeswoman Kate Lowery said. The Santa Fe store has increased the bag credit from 5 cents to 10 cents for customers who bring their own, and the store sells reusable, recycled plastic totes for 99 cents.

Whether it's recycling or reusing, though, voluntary measures may meet with only limited success. Lowery said the reuse rate in San Francisco is about 20 percent. The local Whole Foods manager told The New Mexican this week that about 15 percent of Santa Feans reuse bags (though a shift manager guessed last week that the rate was about 35 percent). Frank Gonzales, store director of the Albertsons on Guadalupe, said about 10 customers an hour bring their own bags. That's great, but it means billions of new bags are still being distributed. Even conscientious shoppers, myself included, commonly forget to bring our own bags. Can legislation save us from ourselves?

In 2002, Ireland instituted a different approach: a "plastax" of about 20 cents on plastic bags. The government announced that bag use went down more than 90 percent, and 75 million euros have since been raised for environmental projects. And those who use their own bags or go without can avoid the tax. China's recent legislation is similar.

Calvert said it makes sense to first make reusable, sustainable bags readily available, possibly through free distribution of a business-sponsored tote, and "once we saturate the city, then you charge for the plastic." He said he may bring forth a resolution directing city staff to work on the issue and present recommendations: "I'm definitely interested in doing something, but I don't want to do something that isn't going to work or is going to cause more problems than it solves."

If it can't be reused, recycle it: Gonzales said the recycling bins at the front of Albertsons stores are for more than just grocery bags. Albertsons accepts newspaper-delivery and dry-cleaning bags as well as clean shrink wrap, sandwich bags and any other type of plastic bag without strings or other materials attached, he said.

Contact Mona Blaber at mblaber@sfnewmexican.com.