Kyle City Limits
by BRENDA STEWART
Much to my chagrin, I realize that I’m a relatively deficient environmental steward. I seek refuge in my frigidly chilled house during these Hades-inspired Texas summers, I drive an eight-year-old gas guzzling behemoth and I take incredibly long leisurely showers on an as-needed basis. But one thing I do refuse to do is allow my groceries to be placed in a plastic bag. It took me a couple of months, but I finally got into the habit of keeping reusable bags in the back of my car and then, after having to run back out to the parking lot to retrieve them a couple of times, I trained myself to remember to actually take them into the store with me. It’s been a couple of years now and it’s just habit. I wouldn’t forget my wallet or my grocery list. I don’t forget the bags. It’s not rocket surgery.
At the grocery store last Sunday, though, I was staggered by the amount of plastic bags being filled. Hundreds a minute. And into those plastic bags went tons of other smaller plastic bags holding produce – sometimes a whole bag for a single lime. Out of the six or so check-out stands within my range, only one other customer brought bags. I wonder what part of the environmental disaster plastic bags are wreaking is lost on them.
So, for you plastic bag stalwarts, here’s just a few of the facts I turned up:
• Plastic bags do not biodegrade. Ever. Bags in landfills can take up to 1,000 years to decompose and in the process, they break down into toxic particles that pollute the soil and water.
• 500 billion to 1 trillion plastic bags are discarded each year worldwide (that’s more than a million per minute).
• The U.S. goes through 380 billion plastic bags a year, but recycles only 1-3 percent of them.
• Plastic bags are made from oil: it takes about 430,000 gallons of oil to produce 100 million plastic bags. That’s 1.6 billion gallons of oil used each year to make those little bags.
• The average family accumulates 60 plastic bags in only four trips to the grocery store. You can do the math.
• 45 percent of shoppers have bought a reusable bag but only 12 percent use them regularly.
And paper isn’t better than plastic, as I had always smugly thought. The reality: paper bags emit 51 percent more global warming gasses in their production, create 50 times more water pollution, use 4 times more raw materials and consume 2 times more energy. And, although they are biodegradable, around 80 percent end up in landfills where they do not biodegrade because of lack of oxygen.
Eight years ago Ireland imposed a 15-cent plastic bag consumption tax which reduced bag use by 90 percent and saved the country 18 million liters of oil. The average Irish citizen went from using 328 to 21 bags per year. Remarkable. But, I’m certainly not for more taxes or fees so it just makes sense to use our own bags and skip the government regulation, don’t you think? From what I read, the best reusable bags are made of renewable, biodegradable resources such as jute, hemp and cotton. But even better than that is scouting your house for bags you already own and utilizing them rather than buying more bags.
Okay. Here’s the snag: evidently you’ve got to run these reusable bags through the laundry on a pretty regular basis. A recent study examining random reusable bags found 10 percent were infected with e-Coli and 50 percent tested positive for coliform.
Evidently not only are people putting their raw meat in the same bag with their fresh vegetables and cross-contaminating, they are then folding up those tainted bags and putting them in the hot trunk of their cars to fester. To add insult to injury, quite often those same bags are being used for alternate purposes such as toting sweaty gym clothes or the occasional soiled diaper, creating little bacterial jamborees. The good news? Machine washing in hot water reduced the bacteria by 99.9 percent. Need an extra push to wash your bags every time you use them? A household toilet seat typically has 50 coliform bacteria; in these latest studies, the reusable bags had 500 to 1000 coliform bacteria. Uh, gross. Just wash them.
So, first of all, you have to commit to refusing plastic bags entirely. Put a couple of reusable bags in your car, take them with you everywhere and then force yourself to make the trek out and get them if you find yourself at the cashier without them. It only takes a couple of times before you “make it a habit and grab it.” I’ll do my part by turning up my thermostat and slowing down. I’m not sure I’ll go so far as to shower with a friend.
