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Joan Shuttleworth has fond memories of his childhood in the 1940s in Orchard Park, near Buffalo. "When I was seven or eight years old, I was shopping in a small store a block away from home," she says. "They were all paper bags or cloth, and the fish and meat would be wrapped in butcher paper. There was no plastic. "
The lightweight plastic polythene bags we know today were patented in Sweden in 1965. In 1979, 80% of European supermarkets used plastic, and in the early 1980s they were spread across the United States. United, pushed aggressively by the oil company Mobil. "We just did not think about it," said Shuttleworth, a 79-year-old retired nurse currently living in Oakland, California. "We did not realize how much they would become a scourge. It was stupid.
Today, much of our resource-intensive consumerism is still insane, despite growing awareness of the impact of our plastic waste. In the tumult and convenience of a grocery store, it is difficult to relate our own behavior to distant problems deep in the ocean. But the dozen perfectly intact plastic bags taken from the stomach of a dead-beaked whale from Cuvier in the Philippines this spring could be one of us. These bags were once used in a grocery store – on average 12 minutes – just to carry that bottle of wine home. A study by the Washington-based Worldwatch Institute estimated that 4 to 5 tons of bags, including shopping bags and garbage bags, were manufactured in 2002 alone.
Countries around the world are reinforcing the ban on plastic bags. Statewide bans have been introduced in California and Hawaii, as well as in 240 US cities and counties. Bangladesh banned plastic bags in 2002 after discovering that they were blocking drains and contributing to floods. China, Israel, South Africa, Rwanda and others have followed suit. Some, including the UK, have introduced fees for bags.
The regulation of plastic bags can have unintended consequences. Sales of small bin liners have increased 120% after banning bags, revealed a study conducted in 2019 by Rebecca Taylor of the University of Sydney, which had resulted in the scrapping of plastics thicker and heavier. The bans resulted in a 40.3 million pound reduction in plastic waste, but were offset by 11.5 million pounds of waste caused by the use of new bags instead of reuse of racks.
Examine the carbon emissions of different bags in isolation and our dislike of plastic bags seems misplaced. they just use a lot less energy and water to produce. A paper bag must be used three times to equal emissions of standard single-use polyethylene bags, and a cotton bag must be used 131 times, according to a study conducted in 2011 by the UK government, the Environment Agency . It's even worse if you take into account other environmental factors, such as toxic pollution, depletion of resources and the use of water. In 2018, the Danish government revealed that paper bags had to be used 43 times to compensate for all environmental factors, as well as organic cotton. takes 20,000 times.
While this is horrible, the study does not address the much less quantifiable effects of plastic pollution in the oceans and its impact on wildlife. Plastics annually kill about 100,000 marine mammals and a million seabirds. Once the bodies break down, the plastic persists to be eaten by even more animals.
For almost a year now, our family has been working to cut single-use plastics from us. I've had the same massive, solid bags since 2002, when I bought them in the British Habitat design store, and these pack animals did everything from laundry to camping, to camping trips. When we take them to the shops, we also bring home small homemade cotton bags. When we end up with Ziploc bags or bags of food (largely from other people), we rinse them and reuse them until they fall apart.
We are recycling diligently too, but recent reports on US backlogs sent to incinerators have confused me. It looked like the beginning of the end of sustainable recycling. So I went to the San Francisco-based Recology Recycling Center, a leader in waste reduction that, combined with strict urban waste regulations, helped San Francisco keep 80% waste outside of landfills.
I realized that I was thinking about recycling as a volunteer community service, but that's wrong. Recycling companies are business who take our waste and try to sell it. Glass, paper, cardboard, metal and plastic are sorted into different streams and packaged in one-ton bales for sale to manufacturers. Of the seven major types of plastics, plastics numbered 1 and 2, such as detergent bottles, are easy to sell, but the others are harder. If the plastic does not make any noise when you let go of it, it probably has no value.
"There is a strong demand for recycled paper bales, and Amazon and others need cardboard for their boxes," says Robert Reed of Recology. "It's 80% of the recycling bin. But the challenge for our man here who sells bullets is these substandard plastics. Recycling companies also hate plastic bags because they are entangled in their sorting machines and can easily be mixed with paper bales, making them less valuable.
Contamination is a huge problem. Plastic take-out containers can not be recycled if they contain food – we should rinse or dispose of our recycling waste – and this is one of the reasons why China stopped accepting US plastic waste in January 2018.
There is a plastic bag recycling system run quite surprisingly by the American Council of Chemistry (ACC), which spends millions to protect the interests of the plastics industry. Their Wrap program manages 18,000 bins in grocery stores across the United States, collects clean bags and plastic wrap from customers and reminds them not to put it into selective recycling. Half of the collected plastic is shipped overseas, mainly to Asia, where CCA says it does not know what is happening. The remaining 50% is sent to companies such as Trex, which manufactures melted plastic film panels and wood chips – which, like most composites, is too difficult to recycle. But perfect if you want terrace boards that will be around in 1000 years.
Companies have benefited enormously for decades from the use of cheap plastic packaging. Yet the cost of cleaning them has fallen on consumers and local governments. "These are complex and complex issues that require complex, multi-stakeholder solutions," says Christopher Jones, senior lecturer in environmental psychology at the University of Surrey, UK. "The government can introduce legislation and guidelines that can also affect retailers. So you also need on-board retailers. But there is some responsibility to the consumer … if you continue to buy cheap and unsustainably purchased products, they will continue to manufacture them. "
According to Jones, consumer behavior is influenced by both environmental factors – such as a plastic bag supplement – and by awareness of a problem, which can help a person relate their behavior to a more serious problem.
"Making people proud of their behavior is a better way to stimulate action," Jones says. "It's about creating a sense of empowerment and doing the right thing, and reinforcing your identity in a way that makes you more inclined to act in a way that's consistent and environmentally friendly."
As always, these environmental concerns only become more complicated as we get closer to us. But for all research, there is one simple constant: buy fewer things and reuse what you have.
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