Sunday, March 08, 2020

The Plastic Bag Conundrum

The world seems to be going crazy over plastic straws and plastic bags.

I am not implying that this isn't proper. However, I think we're missing the larger picture.

Recently a fellow that I follow on Twitter posted that he purchased mint Lifesavers. He had a bit of a sore throat and understood that mints might help. He was quite miffed when he opened the bag to discover that each lifesaver was individually wrapped in plastic.

Once upon a time, Lifesavers came in a paper roll, with an inner wrapping of foil or wax paper if I recall correctly. When I was a good boy, my mother would pass me one in church. She would put her thumbnail under the top candy but through the wrapping, to raise the lifesaver a little. I would take the proffered, upraised candy and pop it into my mouth without anyone but me touching it.

It worked!

As for plastic bags, I get it, but what about all of the plastic that we put inside the bag?

Seen on a friend's FB timeline

Heck fire! In our province, even the milk comes in plastic bags that are not reusable. And those bags come inside yet another plastic bag. Frankly, this bothers me more that the plastic bag that the cashier then puts it inside to carry home. (Although I always tell them not to re-bag the milk. I don't need a bag within a bag within a bag.)


Also, I don't know about you, but at least in our house, we reuse those plastic shopping bags for garbage, especially in the kitchen and bathrooms. But there is no way one can reuse almost any of the plastic that is used to wrap the products that go inside the reusable, plastic shopping bags.

I think we are losing our minds when we get all worked up about plastic bags but are perfectly fine with this sort of thing.



There are other things to consider as some communities look into banning the use of plastic bags and insisting on paper. Unless things have changed, I once came across information that more energy is used to manufacture a paper bag than a plastic bag. Did you get that? The environmental cost of manufacturing a paper bag is (or at least was) greater than that of producing a plastic bag.

Then there are the trees! How does cutting down a tree impact climate change? There is much to consider.

And what about our household waste? If we bring home paper bags, do we then go out and purchase plastic bags for our refuse?  How does that help?

Don't get me wrong. I am absolutely and unequivocally not not not promoting the use of plastic. In fact, our careless consumerism disturbs me greatly. But for goodness sake, if we are concerned about plastic, that concern must go well beyond straws and bags.
On a personal note, I really should do better about bringing reusable bags on my grocery shopping trips. I once did so as a matter of course. I had 5 cloth bags that I would dutifully take to the grocery store. One day, I realized that 4 of them had somehow or other disappeared. How? I don't know. But they were gone.
Since we reuse the plastic bags anyway, I was so miffed that I gave up on reusable cloth bags for the time being.
I am not proud of this and probably will try reusable bags again at some point.
I am still very concerned about all of the plastic that we put inside whatever bags we use.However, I am more concerned about that packaging than I am about the bags themselves.

And if I, personally, ever see a banana wrapped in plastic, I swear, I will throw a hissy fit right in the store!

Addendum: Seen since I wrote the above.



19 comments:

Marcia said...

In the produce section of the store there is now a section where fresh vegetable and fruits are packaged in plastic. Some are already sliced and diced. Have we become so lazy we can't select our own vegetables and fruit?
Our grocery store has a recycle collection for plastic bags. They are collected by a company that combines the plastic with sawdust the make Trex - a decking material. WhenI unwrap the plastic from the 20 rolls of toilet paper I put that in there with the plastic bags I end up with despite take shopping bags along.

Jenn Jilks said...

We are making improvements, it is scattered, however, as big business lobbies against same.
I've seen those oranges on the internet!

PipeTobacco said...

I agree. The straw issue is silly compared to all the othe plastics containers we use. We really just need to work at and switch over to bioplastics that are not petrochemical
based.

PipeTobacco

Barbara Rogers said...

Right on the money! My household needs to recycle grocery to garbage bags. So I take the straw at the drive through for a coke.

Marie Smith said...

We haven’t had plastic at the checkout for almost a year now. Not a problem. The rest if it will be a bigger hurdle I fear.

gigi-hawaii said...

You made a valid comment about cutting down trees to provide paper bags. How does that impact the climate? Over here in Hawaii, we use cloth reusable bags. If not, we are charge 15 cents for a store bag. But, what about all that plastic that cover items in the store? You are right. It doesn't make sense at all.

Christina said...

A halved avocado in a vacuum plastic wrap?? Oh the insanity of it all! I have not seen anything like that here in Glasgow, thank goodness. Although we can buy sliced apple in a little plastic bag, and similar nonsense like that. I feel quite smug about our twice weekly milk delivery, the milk is in re-usable glass bottles. You are right, a plastic carrier bag to carry all the shrink-wrapped produce does seem the smallest problem, particularly if you re-use the bag.

Vicki Lane said...

It's pretty much impossible to avoid plastic. I always use cloth shopping bags and have little cloth bags to put loose produce in. But if I want strawberries or blueberries or any number of other things, they are in little plastic boxes or bags. Not to mention all the other things -- yoghurt, sour cream, etc.

Probably our efforts would be best directed at a letter writing campaign to manufactures--bring back the waed cardboard cup for yoghurt, the metal tube for tooth paste. And all the laundry products that are now in plastic--why? I still buy Arm and Hammer soap powder in a cardboard box but all the other brands are in plastic. It's insidious.

DJan said...

At least people are paying attention to all this now, rather than mindlessly buying bananas in individual packages! I've not seen that before, but the sliced oranges I have. We are drowning in plastic. :-(

Thickethouse.wordpress said...

I seem to be good at getting the large reusable bags for the groceries, but poor at remembering to bring the small reusable ones for produce, etc. You seem to have more plastic than we do. I think Aldi is phasing out plastic in a few years.

Joanne Noragon said...

Too many producers shoving it at us. Too much to boycott. Or, we could take them one at a time...

Kay said...

I agree about the overuse of plastic. However, I really feel we have to start somewhere. As for trees, products made from its fiber is biodegradable and we should start growing more trees. Perhaps make more things with bamboo that grow quickly. I don't know exactly what the answer is. I just know we have to do something.

Rita said...

I'm housebound but Leah (DIL) shops for me and she only uses cloth bags. I have my groceries delivered and they only have plastic bags that are supposed to decompose faster or something--and I recycle those for trash, too. But we really do have way too much plastic packaging everywhere. I love that facebook rant. :)

Haddock said...

I still don't understand the bananas wrapped in a plastic/cling wrap

jenny_o said...

Yes, a thousand times YES! I've tried to write about this and end up feeling I will alienate people, but you've done an excellent job. I couldn't agree more. A huge factor in the plastic vs paper or glass issue is the cost of transportation of products - paper and glass being heavier and bulkier to transport, something to seriously consider because transportation of goods is one of the single greatest causes of carbon emissions. I agree with Pipe Tobacco that we need to concentrate on figuring out how to produce packaging that breaks down properly while still being light and easier on the environment in all other ways.

Great post and appreciated so much.

MARY G said...

I grew up pre plastic wrap. Wax paper and paper bags were available and that is what my parents'household used. We use some plastic in my house now, but as much as possible is reusable. Those thin plastic bags in a roll in the produce section can be stuffed in a grocery bag and reused lots of times. What I have a guilt trip about is buying stuff that has been transported a long way. Blueberries in January. Any fruit in the winter, in fact. And I hate clam shell packs.
Good post, AC. Lots of thinking in the comments.

David M. Gascoigne, said...

Don't give up on eliminating single use plastic. That would be like going on a diet to lose twenty kilos and declaring ahead of time that if you can't lose it all it's not worth trying to lose some. We take our own produce bags to market, our own bread bags (we buy at the bakery, not the plastic-wrapped stuff in the supermarket), always decline a bag when offered......and so on. It is for the time being impossible to eliminate plastic completely (printer cartridges seem to be packaged to withstand nuclear explosion) but you can certainly make a dent in it. A trip to the ocean, or even your local wetland for that matter, gives you all the incentive you need. A friend of mine from Hong Kong was recently on a research expedition to Antarctica and plastic bottles were floating in the ocean even there.

Terra said...

I agree, wrapping produce in plastic that is not recyclable is wrong on every level. Your photos show bananas in plastic, half avocados in plastic, how wasteful. I prefer picking out individual fruit and veg and putting my choices in the bags I bring. Here in California a trend that is good is beginning, to put berries in cardboard instead of in plastic.

William Kendall said...

Wisely said.