The Bag Battle

Earlier this week San Francisco passed a law which prohibits large grocery stores and drugstores from using non-recyclable and non-biodegradable plastic bags made from petroleum products. They will be the first US city to pass such legislation.

The environmental impact of such legislation could be significant. San Francisco which has a population of about 740,000 uses approximately 200 million bags per year. It is estimated that by decreasing usage by 100 million plastic bags a year the city will save 1.5 million litres of oil, and eliminate 4.2 million kilograms of carbon dioxide.

Not to be out done, the community of Leaf Rapids in Northern Manitoba is going to be the first community in Canada to have similar legislation when their by law preventing retailers from selling or distributing single use bags goes into effect this Monday April 2nd. [For more information check out the article on CBC.ca.] Apart from the fact I am not sure what 'single use' bags would pertain to, and it could be a convenient loophole, this is still a step in the right direction.

By the way, although it got little mention in the North American media, European countries have had bag restriction legislation in place for many years. A good place to start for more information about this, check out this BBC article.

All of this anti bag talk started me wondering if it would be possible for my family to go 'bag free'. I expect like most people we try to re use grocery bags where ever possible as garbage liners and dog pooh receptacles. Those bags that have holes in them, or for some other reason cannot be reused, we save and take to the local grocery store which has a recycle bin for plastic bags.

At the end of the day, I think my family has pretty much maximized what we can on the reuse and recycle side of the environmental action items. As for the more important reduce action item, apart from remembering to bring a cloth bag more frequently when doing grocery shopping, I am a little bit stumped. Unfortunately, it appears to be a reality that bags of some sort are needed for the garbage, and more importantly, dog pooh.

One consideration is to try to start using bio-degradable bags. However, according to Reusablebags.com, the energy used to produce biodegradable bags is comparable to plastic bags. Furthermore, unless the municipal garbage program already has a process in place to maximise the benefits of biodegradable bags rather then just treating them like plastic bags, then most, if not all of the benefit is lost!...sigh...

The good news is that I am confident there is a good win/win solution to this problem. I just have to figure out what it is! Will let you know.