It is time for BYOB! Yes, bring your own shopping bag! As we continue our journey through a busy 2010, it’s crazy to think about the amount of purchasing we historically do here in America and world-wide. Whether it be regular trips to the grocery store as we keep our kitchen’s stocked for superb meals and tasty goodies or those sometimes dreaded (yet skillful) “6 bags on each arm” walks through the neighborhood shopping mall, all of it adds up to a whole lot of needless garbage. Probably the most blatant examples of this waste is disposable grocery bags.
An estimated 100 billion plastic shopping bags are used each year within the USA, according to the Wall-Street Journal. Most plastic bags end up in landfills and the rest frequently end up in rivers, ponds, lakes, streams or in the sea, where animals can ingest or become entangled in them. Considering the number of shopping bags that are consumed and wasted each year, the time is now to extend the word about the positive benefits of eco friendly reusable bags. After all, the majority of us want to give back to our families, friends and communities as often as possible.
Creating a BYOB strategy in our individual shopping habits is a straightforward way to do just that. If we can elevate awareness at this time, the positive outcome for the environment is immense for 2010 and well into the future. Quite a few cities have already made gradual but significant progress in endorsing the usage of wholesale eco bags in recent years. Encouraging consumers with plastic and paper bag bans, savings at the register for reusable bag usage and tax motivations are a few to speak of.
Right here in America, the San Jose City Council only just approved among the nation’s strictest bans on plastic and paper shopping bags. This is a gigantic victory for the Bay Area, that has 1 million plastic bags per year accumulating in and along the San Francisco Bay. San Jose becomes the most recent bay area city to enact some type of ban on disposable shopping bags; others include San Francisco and Palo Alto. Tracy Seipel of the San Jose Mercury News reported that it was in fact ONE man who truly jump-started the ban, an additional great example of the influence of one person. Here’s a an excerpt:
“While visiting his sister-in-law in Taipei, (Kansen) Chu (elected to San Jose city council in 2007) went grocery shopping and was surprised to get charged for plastic grocery bags. The next day, he brought his own cloth bags back to the store. “I guess the question,” said Chu, “was, ‘Why not San Jose?’ ” He began a conversation with the city’s environmental services staff, which later moved to council committee discussions.
Save the Bay’s 4th annual report on the most garbage-strewn sites in the region further demonstrates the need for BYOB. The 50-year-old environmental advocacy group focused on 10 particular bay-area sites where approximately 15,000 plastic bags were retrieved in one day last year in their report. Here’s an excerpt of an article in the San Francisco Chronicle by Kelly Zito.
According to (Save the Bay’s) research, Californians use about 19 billion plastic bags each year, 3.8 million in the Bay Area. The average use time for the bags – made using about 12 million barrels of oil each year in the United States – is about 12 minutes. In addition to the hundreds of years it can take for a plastic bag to decompose in a landfill, the bags also force downtime when fed into traditional recycling equipment. Typically, the bags get wound into conveyor belts or gears and must be cut out by hand.
Ten US cities have banned plastic bags so far, five within the past year. Even Mexico City enacted a ban on plastic shopping bags, which went into effect in August. The city of 20 million at the moment faces the realities of effective enforcement, which is not simple when the Mexico City Chamber of Commerce estimates there are actually 35,000 vendors in Mexico City’s downtown vicinity alone.
Bans on plastic bags aren’t really the only effective way to cut back harmful waste attributable to disposable bags. PlasTaxes, which tax consumers at the register for using plastic bags when shopping, had been primarily introduced by the Irish. John Roach of National Geographic reported in 2008 relating to the worldwide momentum that’s been building from the time when Ireland instilled a PlasTax in 2003. The Irish confirmed they could trim down plastic bag consumption by 90% or more. Momentum is rising internationally, predominantly in America. From Washington, DC to Edmonds, WA to North Pole, AK, communities and governments are spurring an international trend to cut back the unsafe environmental effects of disposable shopping bags. In the great state of Hawaii, the governing body is currently taking into account a bill to ban single-use plastic bags (SUP), or to establish a small fee to utilize SUP bags.
Even key retail stores like Target and CVS are taking action by enacting savings at the register for customers who choose to BYOB or simply carry-out their items without a bag. For the naysayers, it’s convenient to ignore recent momentum in reducing disposable bag waste. But to a few, the wide-spread adoption of eco-friendly reusable green bags is inevitable. Have a look at just how smoking is becoming taboo in America. Indoor smoking bans have caught on like wild-fire. In the same way, who is to say the usage of disposable bags won’t turn out to be taboo one day in the (hopefully near) future? The use of eco-friendly recycled grocery bags is certainly gaining steam. Our personal decisions to carry our recycled shopping bags can go considerably farther than we believe. That’s what BYOB is all about.
Of course, plastic and paper bags need to be recycled and it’s important to bear in mind a bunch of large retailers including Albertsons and Wal-Mart will recycle plastic bags for you (just need to bring them your accumulated stash). That being said, a BYOB shopping strategy can make your life a whole lot simpler because there isn’t a need to accumulate that cabinet filled with plastic bags or determine what and when to deal with it. Keeping a few eco bags in the car or backpack is a good way to ensure you have them when required. Thus give back this year by remembering to BYOB! No matter whether it be at a convenience store, the shopping mall, or while grocery shopping, we can make a difference for the environment and help elevate awareness one transaction at a time. For the fight to eliminate disposable shopping bag waste, 2010 is our moment.