Take Plastic Bag Bans a Step Further

China. The UK. Ireland. Germany. Australia. San Francisco. Malibu. The list of countries and cities eliminating or considering banning plastic bags continues to grow. Some prohibit them all together, while others charge a fee to carry away groceries in that plastic that often finds its way to landfills.

Along with the plastic bag bans and growing concern over their lack of decomposition, grocery and all-purpose stores like Wal-Mart have offered shoppers a new choice: eco-friendly bags that can be used over and over again. The bags are usually symbolically green and can be seen around the entrances of most major stores. You can also probably find even more eco bags in the accessories sections of stores, sporting earth-friendly phrases. I have one myself, from my mom, telling everyone to “give green a chance.”

This does imply that shoppers are switching over to the reusable bags (though I rarely do see anyone here in the United States refusing plastic in check-out lines or bringing his own).

But how I see it is that there is absolutely no need for the cheap green bags to replace plastic bags.

The point is to eliminate needless waste, right? To get items out of landfills and to reduce energy expended in their decomposition? But the green bags seem to do the opposite. Yes, in some cases shoppers are replacing their plastic bags with them. But stores are expending energy in making those eco friendly bags when, let’s be honest, we all have useless bags sitting around our houses and apartments that could work just as well.

Why buy an “eco friendly bag” when you can just bring an old backpack, gym bag or messenger bag from home? Is it really necessary to advertise that you are green with a new bag when an older bag would work just as well and not take extra energy to produce?

>> Read more about plastic bag bans at Green Options

I agree that plastic bags should be banned. My sink cabinet is practically exploding from all the useless bags that stores hand out quite willingly. But if we’re going to take that step, shouldn’t we just go all the way and reuse bags that we already have?

Photo Credit: Mspack at Flickr under a Creative Commons License

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