Green Options » plastic bag bans

Take Plastic Bag Bans a Step Further

Amanda Peterka — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 20:42:54 +0000

China. The UK. Ireland. Germany. Australia. San Francisco. Malibu. The list of countries and cities eliminating or considering banning plastic bags continues to grow. Some prohibit them all together, while others charge a fee to carry away groceries in that plastic that often finds its way to landfills.

Along with the plastic bag bans and growing concern over their lack of decomposition, grocery and all-purpose stores like Wal-Mart have offered shoppers a new choice: eco-friendly bags that can be used over and over again. The bags are usually symbolically green and can be seen around the entrances of most major stores. You can also probably find even more eco bags in the accessories sections of stores, sporting earth-friendly phrases. I have one myself, from my mom, telling everyone to “give green a chance.”

This does imply that shoppers are switching over to the reusable bags (though I rarely do see anyone here in the United States refusing plastic in check-out lines or bringing his own).

But how I see it is that there is absolutely no need for the cheap green bags to replace plastic bags.

Not Just Plastic Bags, M&S Plastic Bags.

Pem Charnley — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 14:29:41 +0000

This story contains additional media. Click here to view the media.

I apologise profusely for having brought that advert to an international audience, but I had to. It’s cathartic to share.

I shudder at the voice-over to such an extent that I need to lie down in a darkened room afterwards and gnaw at my knuckles. Hideous snobbery. What were the creatives thinking?

But to M&S. Or Marks and Spencer, to give them their full title, a clothing and food store from here in the UK who in an announcement to the press state:

“Marks & Spencer is to roll-out a 5p charge for food carrier bags in all of its UK stores from the beginning of May to encourage customers to reduce the number of bags they use and to raise money for environmental projects.”

Red, Green & Blue: Is It Time for a Plastic Bag R.I.P.?

Shirley Siluk Gregory — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 17:28:17 +0000

The city of New York is the latest government considering restrictions on plastic shopping bags, with a proposal in the works to require large stores to offer in-house recycling and reusable bags for sale. But is action like that enough to stop the plastic bag scourge?

From Africa to Canada, Australia to Ireland, and in the oceans in between, plastic bag trash has become a pestilence seemingly without end. And everyone has taken a different approach to try and curb it. In Burkina Faso, women who discovered the ubiquitous trash was killing their livestock have developed a cottage industry that spins plastic trash into hand-crocheted dolls. Ireland, on the other hand, has managed to reduce plastic bag use 90 percent by charging a tax on the totes, and some places in Australia ban the bags outright.

Even though I always carry along a reusable string tote, I’m guilty of letting baggers at the grocery pack my purchases in plastic when I’m in a hurry, or I’m buying too much to fit in a single bag. I’m sure others do the same. And the problem is convenience: it’s just easier to go with plastic sometimes and say you’ll recycle later.

So maybe it’s time to put an end to convenience. A measure like the one being eyed in New York City probably won’t do much to stop plastic bag use by hordes of shoppers who — like me — just want to get their stuff and go. But a tax or a ban? That would have an impact. The bottom line is: does anybody really ever need to use a plastic bag again? Why not end their use now?