While driving on a highway have you ever noticed the plastic bags decorating the trees? In South Africa, plastic bags have been dubbed the “national flower” because so many can be seen flapping from fences and caught in bushes. I remember visiting a friend who rented a second floor apartment in a house. There was a lovely tree you could see from the kitchen window. Unfortunately, it had a bag stuck in its branches. I asked her why she didn’t remove it; she showed me the height of the bag in the tree and asked if I had a ladder that tall…. Well, the bag remained and she eventually moved to another home.

While on vacation in southern Europe in the late 1980’s, I noticed that most people carried their own bags to the grocery stores. I loved that idea and started to bring my own net bags to the store. This confused many cashiers and when I only purchased a couple items, I told them I didn’t need a bag, some actually argued with me and told me that I must take a bag. Thank goodness, times are changing. Many cities in the US are starting to ban plastic bags and some countries have introduced a bag fee as well.

How did this all happen? When did plastic bags take over our world? Well, sometime in the mid-1980s, people started to use more plastic bags than paper bags for carrying groceries from the store to vehicles and homes throughout the developed world.  By 2009, the United States International Trade Commission reported that 102 billion plastic bags were used annually in the United States.

Most people do not realize that most plastic bags made from polyethylene is derived from natural gas and petroleum and does not compost or degrade very easily. There are some vegetable-based bioplastics, which can decay organically and prevent a build-up of toxic plastic bags in landfills and the natural environment. Unfortunately, most degradable bags do not easily decompose in a sealed landfill.

According to a 2007 study by Boustead Consulting & Associates, It takes almost four times as much energy to manufacture a paper bag as it does to manufacture a polyethylene bag.

Not only do both paper and compostable resin bags use far more fossil fuel in production and manufacturing, but they also use twenty times as much fresh water vs. plastic bags. Additionally, most paper comes from tree pulp, so the impact of paper bag production on forests is enormous.

In March of 2002, the Republic of Ireland became the first country to introduce a plastic bag fee, or PlasTax. Designed to rein in their rampant consumption of 1.2 billion plastic shopping bags per year, the tax resulted in a 90% drop in consumption, and approximately 1 billion fewer bags were consumed annually. The purpose of the fee was to change consumer behavior, not to generate revenue, moving habits from mindless consumption, to reducing and reusing. In a nutshell, it’s a simple market-based solution in the form of a consumption tax. Individuals pay a fee of $.15 per plastic bag consumed at check out. Retailers save money since they only have to stock a smaller quantity of bags (in Ireland, before the tax, on average stores were spending $50 million a year on single-use plastic bags). Many retailers are also now benefiting from selling reusable bags. Added bonuses are that litter has been dramatically reduced and approximately 18,000,000 liters of oil have been saved due to reduced production of bags. Now, reusable shopping bags, rather than paper, are taking the place of plastic disposable.

The secret to using reusable bags is to have a bunch of them and keep them in your car. Once they are brought into the house and emptied, leave them on the front doorknob to ensure they will return to the car.

For many years, I have been gifting cotton canvas bags. Recently, a good friend sent me a canvas bag from my favorite co-op in San Francisco, Rainbow Market. It is such a wonderful and utilitarian gift that I proudly shop with. We just sent him one from a local artist in Ithaca; I hope he enjoys using it.