Throughout 2013, Adding Light will take a look at practical decisions that everyone can take to contribute to making our communities more ecologically and economically resilient. Everything in this Daily Decisions comes from experience or research applied directly by our family or people we know directly.
When I was a kid, I remember this "new" grocery store in Chicago that did this crazy thing...they eliminated baggers. I had some older friends who worked at other grocery stores, and knew that baggers made a pretty good salary (especially for a teenager), but still didn't put together that it was a kind of form of "union busting". I only knew what the ad told me, that it brought prices down. Without baggers, customers found a double conveyer where the checker would place their groceries on one side after ringing them up, and we would then place the groceries in used boxes or bags while the customer on the other side was rung up. Truth be told, even with the lower prices, my folks never used it much. I have never asked them why, but seeing other "innovations" of that type die on the vine, I can suppose it might be partly because things that are less convenient fly in the face of the type of improvement we generally like to see in our lives.
Flash forward to the 2000s, and the paper bags of the 1970s are now almost all plastic bags. This plastic bag stands as a pretty cool innovation: a lightweight container that can carry many times its own weight, and can be reused frequently and for multiple tasks. However, this resilience and strength comes at a price. The bag takes significant time to degrade when left in a landfill, and when discarded outdoors (as is apt to happen when disposed bags are transported to landfill) the bag breaks down easily in sunlight and then works its way into the food chain. Because of this, the reusable bag is making its way back into the spotlight.
We started using reusable bags a little over five years ago. Because of my largely vegan diet, we had shopped at Whole Foods for years, and they had given discounts for reusing or not using bags for some time. We decided to get on board. Over the years, I estimate that we have reduced our plastic bag usage from about 500 per year to well under 50. One consequence of this is that we eventually had to move to reusable lunch bags for the kids (since we had typically used grocery bags for this). Also, many reusable bags are simply more sturdy plastic bags (although many have moved to biodegradable plastic) so we tried to get more cloth bags.
I should be frank about one thing in this whole discussion: the only solution that has absolutely no environmental impact is to not use a bag at all. Cloth and paper bags require fertilizer, energy and water and do not dispose at end of life particularly easily, although their weight makes them less likely to end up scattered about and finding their way into waterways. Most of what we based our decision on was to minimize the impact. Using a more resilient bag, and taking care to maintain those bags so they last over a long period of time, significantly reduces the energy input and environmental impact of our buying activities (more on that later). For now, using a cloth bag (preferably one from a fast-growing plant grown organically), and keeping that bag clean and wiped down regularly is a good decision for the environment...even if it feels less convenient, it is decidedly more convenient for our environmental as a whole.
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