The flap over plastic shopping bags
Posted to: Business
By Carolyn Shapiro
The Virginian-Pilot
© March 9, 2008
Everyday at the Norfolk entrance to the Downtown Tunnel, white plastic shopping bags blow between the wheels of fast-moving cars.
Out in the western part of Hampton Roads, the lightweight bags routinely rest in the cotton fields.
And somewhere out in the ocean floats a "Sargasso Sea" of plastic sacks, suggested Richard Wool, a University of Delaware professor of chemical engineering.
Americans adore the plastic bag, and their landscape shows it. No one has exact figures, but many environmental groups refer to 380 billion plastic bags and wraps used every year in the United States. Many of those escape into streets, trees and waterways. Ultimately, most bags end up in landfills, where they stay for decades, if not centuries.
It's debatable who's to blame for the proliferation. Consumers prefer the ease of carrying plastic rather than paper, plus the freedom from the need to remember a reusable receptacle. Retailers favor plastic's low cost, durability and space savings. Stuck with all those bags, waste handlers often lose them from their truck beds and plants.
As a result, a plastic bag backlash has spread across the globe - from Ireland to Isle of Wight County. It reflects a greater willingness among consumers today to embrace "greener" practices. With all the recent talk of bags, shoppers are giving more thought to the way they transport the goods they buy.
Why now?
Environmental concerns have prompted most of the measures to curb plastic-bag use throughout the world. In Isle of Wight County, though, the effort grew out of a desire to protect an important local industry: farming.
Thomas Wright, a Windsor supervisor, proposed banning plastic bags countywide after hearing from cotton farmers about interference with their harvests. The plastic has gotten tangled in machinery and melted in cotton gins, adhering to the finished cotton, which shows flecks of white where the plastic won't take dye, Wright explained. That diminishes its value.
Bags have blocked seeding machinery, preventing proper planting of corn and soybeans, he said. One farmer, he learned, even lost a cow that died after ingesting a plastic bag.
In Virginia, a municipality needs permission from the state legislature to take action such as a bag ban. Bills proposed in the General Assembly this year aimed to give the county that approval but failed to move out of committee. Instead, lawmakers asked the Department of Environmental Quality to study the problem and report on it by next year.
"They are a nuisance," Wright said, citing litter from plastic bags as well as problems for farmers. "It's up to the senators and delegates to have backbone. If they have pride for the commonwealth and for the consumers and farmers in the commonwealth, they'll do something about it."
In November, San Francisco became the first U.S. city to ban large grocery stores from distributing plastic bags. The ordinance will apply to chain pharmacies and drugstores starting in May.
New York City now requires retailers of a certain size to provide recycling programs for plastic bags. California passed a similar state law.
Whole Foods Market, the health-and-organic grocer based in Austin, Texas, announced in January that it would stop using plastic bags in its 270 stores nationwide as of Earth Day - April 22.
Ireland moved to reduce plastic-bag use in 2002, when it initiated a tax on the sacks, now amounting to a 33-cent charge for them at the cash register. The effort has largely erased the presence of plastic bags there.
China, in preparation for the clean-environment demands of the Olympic Games in Beijing this summer, has banned stores from distributing free plastic bags. Some African nations have considered bans as well.
What's the problem?
Plastic bags have incurred such ire mostly because of the journey they take after they leave the store. Their light weight sends them aloft into trees and waterways. After they land in those places, they don't break down.
Turtles and other marine life eat them, often causing sickness or death. The bags clutter in streets, clog sewer lines and tangle in electrical wires. In San Francisco, they caught in the gears of municipal recycling plants, costing $1 million a year in shutdown time, said Mark Westlund, a spokesman for the city's Department of the Environment.
Plastic bags compact more tightly in landfills than paper bags do, but their volume is much greater, and they last longer there than biodegradable paper.
The American Chemistry Council, a trade association that includes the plastics industry, cites many reasons that paper bags do more environmental damage than plastic. They require more energy to produce, resulting in more power plant pollution.
Paper does create a bigger "carbon footprint," said Wool, the chemical engineer. "The paper doesn't come out of a tree very easily."
Because paper bags are less compact than plastic, they also require more transportation - and fuel - to deliver an equal amount to stores.
Paper, though, comes from trees, which can be replanted. The common plastic grocery bag is made of polyethylene, typically derived from petroleum - a nonrenewable fossil fuel. Every pound of polyethylene bags requires about 2 1/2 pounds of crude oil to produce, Wool said.
"In the environment, they're very different," Westlund said, explaining that San Francisco has no problem with an increase in paper bags to substitute for plastic. "You can also put a paper bag in recycling curbside. With a plastic bag, you can't do that."
Most municipal recycling operations, including the Southeastern Public Service Authority, cannot accept plastic shopping bags. They typically are set up only for rigid types of plastic and glass, and bags get contaminated and rendered unfit for use when they come in contact with food.
What's at stake?
Plastic bags cost about 1 to 2 cents each, said Dave Heylen, spokesman for the California Grocers Association. Paper bags run between 5 cents and 9 cents, depending on volume and quality of materials.
Consider the cost for Food Lion LLC, which operates about 1,300 supermarkets, including 93 in Hampton Roads. It purchases about 1.5 billion plastic bags each year. The retail industry has estimated that 80 percent to 90 percent of the bags that carry home groceries are plastic.
Food Lion spends about five times as much for a paper bag as for plastic, said Karen Peterson, a spokeswoman for the North Carolina-based retailer, which has the most stores and sales in Hampton Roads of any supermarket chain.
Who's targeted?
Most of the anti-bag initiatives have focused on grocery stores. But retailers of all types and sizes - from small booksellers to giant discounters - use plastic bags. Dollar Tree Inc., based in Chesapeake, uses only plastic bags - no paper in its 3,411 stores nationwide.
"Most of our members use plastic bags," said Margaret Ballard, who helped fight Isle of Wight's measure through the Virginia Retail Federation, which lobbies for Hampton Roads merchants. "There are lots of consumers who prefer plastic bags."
San Francisco's ordinance started with grocery stores simply because of the "sheer volume" of bags that they release, Westlund said. Shoppers visit the supermarket typically once a week, carrying out 10 to 12 bags each time. They might take home a plastic department store bag a few times a month.
Ultimately, San Francisco would like to expand its restriction to all plastic shopping bags, Westlund said. Wright, the Isle of Wight supervisor who proposed a bag ban, also said he favors an across-the-board approach.
What's ahead?
Those on both sides of the bag debate support a switch to reusable sacks. Retailers like the idea because every bag a shopper brings saves them the cost of a new one, not to mention the ire of anti-bag activists. Environmentalists champion reusables.
The U.S. consumer, though, has resisted. While many like the concept, some balk at the initial cost - even at a mere 99 cents in most grocery stores - to replace something they now get for free. Others simply forget to use those they buy.
Farm Fresh began offering reusable mesh totes made of plastic for $1.99 at its Market at Harbor Heights store, which opened in September in downtown Norfolk. For each reusable bag a shopper provides, the market discounts 5 cents off the grocery bill and donates another 5 cents to the Chesapeake Bay Foundation. The retailer has since expanded the reusable bag program to its other 43 stores.
Last fall, Harris Teeter supermarkets also started offering reusable bags for 99 cents. Food Lion sells a multiple-use mesh bag in its new Bloom and Bottom Dollar stores.
"Until shoppers develop a routine of bringing their reusable bags back, we are hesitant to discontinue offering plastic bags," wrote Jennifer Panetta, a spokeswoman for Harris Teeter, in an e-mail. "If shoppers have not developed this routine, it is our fear that they will choose paper bags, and we will see an increase in environmental impacts across a number of categories, from global warming effects to the use of precious potable water resource, not to mention the depletion of a vital natural resource - trees."
To make the heightened use of paper bags more palatable, San Francisco required grocery stores to use a higher percentage of recycled materials. Harris Teeter, based in North Carolina, also boosted the recycled materials in its paper bags to 100 percent last year, Panetta said.
In efforts to avoid outright bans on plastic bags, many retailers also have tried to encourage more recycling. Environmentalists estimate that only about 1 percent of bags used get recycled, while the plastics industry sets the portion closer to 5 percent.
Heylen of the California Grocers said industry efforts to "reduce, reuse, recycle" ultimately depend on the willingness of the shopper. "It's modifying consumer behavior that's tough."
Carolyn Shapiro, (757) 446-2270, carolyn.shapiro@pilotonline.com
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