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Bagging Plasticby Carol
Reid Patronage! Honest
Weight Food Co-op
has had a longstanding policy of charging for bulk plastic bags and
containers,
as well as encouraging shoppers to supply their own, which can then be
weighed
before filling in order to subtract the tare weight from the final
price. In an
effort to further this practice, we will now be raising the prices on
these
bags and containers. We will also be charging for the thin produce
bags, which
we did not charge for in the past. The reasons for this are twofold:
the
increase in price and the fact that we want to encourage our customers
to reuse
and recycle. New container prices will be: •
Paper and plastic bags (the thicker plastic): from 3¢ to 5¢ •
Produce plastic bags (the thinner plastic): from 0¢ to 2¢ •
Plastic containers: from 13¢ to 15¢ We
also want to encourage you to bring canvas bags with you to transport
your
groceries and, if you have extra disposable bags on hand, to consider
either
reusing them or donating them to the Co-op for other people’s use. We
will not
be charging for these as they do not add to the waste stream (since
we’re not
purchasing any new ones), but we will still give 5¢ off for every
nondisposable
bag that customers use for shopping here. When
Mr. McGuire had “just one word” for the eponymous graduate in the 1967
movie
classic — and that word was “Plastics” — he apparently meant it as an
investment opportunity. But the wary, nonplussed protagonist was
impelled to
inquire, in any event: “Just how do you mean that, sir?” Forty years
later, the
word has acquired even more sinister implications. Plastic has even
more
applications now, too, many of which would be hard to live without. One
of them,
however, the ubiquitous “plastic bag,” is probably doing more to
undermine life
on earth than any other product most of us still use on a regular
basis.
According to Katharine Mieszkowski’s August 10th article on Salon.com
(the
one that finally persuaded me to stop accepting them in stores):
“Plastic bags
are killing us.” Unlike
a lot of items that presumably cannot be fashioned from another
substance, these
plastic tote bags are depressingly unnecessary and, though touted as a
“convenience,” generally turn out to be more inconvenient than not. Do
we try
to repurpose them in creative ways, à la “Hints from Heloise?”
Do we attempt to
recycle them by bringing them back to the place where we got them, or
some
other place that will take them? Do we vow to reuse them the next time
we go
shopping, although like many things that are everywhere you look,
they’re never
right there when you need one? Or do we stuff them guiltily one inside
another
in the pantry or, worse yet, throw them out with the trash? (Some
people
apparently just drop them on the ground to blow away in a gust of wind
— the
ultimate, if temporary, “out of sight, out of mind.”) As
I mentioned earlier, I’ve been refusing plastic bags (with a couple of
slip-ups) for several months now. But it isn’t that easy. First, you
have to
remember to bring some canvas bags with you, which involves the
cultivation of
a new habit for most of us (keeping one or more in the car, in your
backpack,
etc.). Second, you have to be on your guard against determined baggers
who will
attempt to slip you some of theirs, despite your express wishes. (When
this
happens, I rearrange my groceries at the exit and then return the
unwanted plastic
to its little hanger at the checkout counter.) On a few occasions,
caught
unprepared, I’ve opted for paper bags, but their environmental impact
is almost
as bad as plastic’s. Although
not what Emma Lazarus had in mind when she wrote of “the wretched
refuse of
your teeming shore,” plastic bags are now clogging the oceans and
threatening
the wildlife that lives there and sustains our food supply. Mieszkowski
reports
that some 100 billion plastic bags are discarded every year,
“equivalent to dumping
nearly 12 million barrels of oil.” There are 46,000 pieces of plastic
floating
in every square mile of ocean, and the coast of |
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