Will that be plastic or paper? Remember when store clerks used to ask that question at check-outs back in the early ’80s?
It was a time when manufacturers had perfected the small, single-use plastic bag — ideal for consumers to carry home their purchases, especially from grocery stores.
For the most part environmentalists heralded the arrival of the plastic, saying that phasing out the paper bag would save millions of trees every year.
As the world turns … here we are less than 30 years later and once again the phrase is beginning to be heard again … will that be plastic or paper? This time there’s an added twist: would you like to buy a recyclable bag? The world has discovered the plastic bag isn’t the solution to anything really.
Yes it made shopping easier. And yes the plastic bags are invaluable for putting inside kitchen garbage cans. And what would people use to pick up the poop when walking their dogs?
But plastic is a long-term danger to the environment because it is not biodegradable and is petroleum based. Plastic shopping bags can take up to 1,000 years to decompose and as they do so, they break into tiny pieces and leach toxic chemicals into soils, lakes, rivers and oceans.
The plastic bag has become one of the most prevalent types of litter on land and in the ocean where it is a danger to marine animals that ingest the bags, thinking it is food.
St. Albert city council this week voted to make no changes to bylaws or policies on the use of plastic bags. Instead council received as information only a report from the environmental advisory committee on the use of the bags.
There will be an argument by some that council was avoiding its responsibility and should bring in a ban, like Fort McMurray did a year ago, or like a handful of U.S. cities have done and a handful of other cities in Canada and the U.S. are thinking of doing.
The problem is that this is not a local problem. It’s a worldwide one and it won’t be solved by small communities like St. Albert or Fort McMurray banning the use of the plastic bags.
It is estimated that about one trillion of the bags are used annually around the world. The Alberta government says about 900 million are used each year in the province.
Yes the argument could be made about baby steps. But it will take a lot of giant leaps to change people’s habits concerning plastic bags.
Even in countries where the bags were banned or a tax has been placed on their use, the problem hasn’t been solved. Many stores in Canada have been charging for the bags for years and people willingly pay the tax.
In Ireland a 15-cents-a-bag tax introduced in 2002 dramatically reduced the single-use bags at checkouts. But the sale of packaged plastic bags has reportedly increased about 400 per cent, resulting in a net increase to the landfills.
The solution appeared to be the “environmentally friendly” reusable bags. The issue there is the cost and the quality. Many of these bags are designed (deliberately?) to last only a few years so consumers are stuck buying costly new ones. And there’s concern the energy used to create these bags is not environmentally friendly enough, especially those made in China where the use of lead in many of their products is a constant concern.
People are creatures of habit and breaking this addiction to plastic bags will not be easy. And it won’t be solved by isolated bans by small communities like St. Albert.
