When someone asks paper or plastic, what’s the right answer? A couple months ago, I wrote about the evils of plastic bags and how many cities, including Seattle and San Francisco, have legislation in place or proposed to ban them. As it turns out, plastic bag bans may not be so great after all.
If plastic bags are banned, retailers will turn to their next best (economical) alternative, which are paper bags. As luck would have it, paper bags not only kill trees (although many are manufactured from recycled paper), but they cost more to transport due to their increase weight to volume ratio, require 40 percent more energy to manufacture, and take 91 percent more energy to recycle (pound for pound) when compared with plastic bags. Paper bags contribute more to global warming than plastic bags. It turns out plastic bag bans and paper bags aren’t so great after all. Boy, this environmental and global warming stuff sure can get complex with these second the third order effects.
Should we just throw up our arms in protest and give up? Of course not! Give up is never an option at TTMYGG. If you don’t know already, the answer to my question above turns out to be neither! What we all should do is carry reusable shopping bags. There are numerous places to buy them, and many only cost a few dollars (or less!). Some supermarkets such as Whole Foods even give you a credit for bringing your own bag, meaning you can recoup the cost of the bag fairly quickly. Trader Joe’s enters customers carrying reusable shopping bags into a monthly lottery to win $50 in free groceries.
If you’re feeling particularly flush with money and want to make a reusable bag fashion statement, don’t worry, there are many options. If you really don’t want to donate this money to a good cause, you can buy designer reusable bags. Castiglioni has a folding nylon bag which retailers for $843, while Stella McCartney has an organic canvas tote for $495. Not to be outdone, Hermes sells its Silky Pop grocery bag for a mere $960, but at least it collapses into a wallet-size pouch. Trader Joe’s bags come in at a whopping $3. Decisions, decisions,…
I have read about some so- called biodegradable plastic trash bags. I still do not know if the corn base or petro base bags are stronger. http://www.buygogreenonline.com also which one completely breaks down.
Michael,
Where’s the bag located at the website you posted? I’m curious to see it.
Thanks!
Many grocers now carry the reusable bags (all of the larger ones do) and there are other alternatives besides $800 designer bags. We offer $3.00 ones
Oops - don’t know how that happened. The $3.00 ones are Ecologie Bags and sell online. My sister started the company last year when she read about the expensive designer ones. She figured most of us can’t/won’t afford something like that and besides, we need more than one to carry our groceries each week.