Outright ban those bags

April 22, 2009, the local Superstore began charging five cents per plastic bag at checkouts to promote the use of environmentally-friendly reusable bags. Last month, it stopped charging for plastic bags as a way to “thank customers.”

Last week, CBC Halifax profiled some consumers who switched to Sobey’s just because of the five-cent policy. They didn’t like having to remember to bring their own bags.

Maybe these folks really don’t understand they are adding to a global problem.

Loblaw Co. Ltd., which owns the 51 Superstore outlets in Atlantic Canada, had started out saying charging for plastic bags drastically cuts usage. Apparently, stores with a deterrent program distributed nearly 55 per cent fewer bags per $1,000 worth of sales, compared with stores not charging a fee. But, obviously, there wasn’t enough consumer buy-in – not in Atlantic Canada.

Why are North Americans so slow to adapt to change? In European cities, particularly in Germany, companies are forced to deal with detritus of packaging. British shoppers have been bringing their own bags along for decades.

Hypocritically, many retail outfits - even Canada Post - are hawking plastic-coated, reusable shopping bags. Most of them are made in China, with its dubious environmental record. I applaud the three Cochrane’s Pharmasave Stores locally for providing their customers biodegradable bags.

But cloth is better than plastic or paper. When I haul my worn, beige cloth bags into Kent Co-op, I get a five-cent rebate. It seems to me you attract more flies with honey.

There has got to be a better way to encourage fewer plastic bags. I think government has to pave the way when consumers aren’t acting sustainably. January 15, for example, the NWT government began charging a 25-cent surcharge on disposable grocery bags. Unfortunately, the territorial government's five-year plan to reduce waste in the territory applies only to grocery stores, and not Wal-Mart or Shoppers Drug Mart, which do sell grocery items. Officials say the levy program will be expanded to include all retail stores within the next two years. The first province or territory in Canada to have such a program, the NWT plans to put the money collected from the bag levy into an environmental fund.

In 2007, San Francisco introduced legislation that prohibits large supermarkets and drugstores from providing customers with non-biodegradable plastic bags, the first U.S. city to regulate shopping bags.

According to what I’ve read, each ton of recycled plastic bags saves the energy equivalent of 11 barrels of oil. It’s positive the recycling of plastic bags in North America has jumped from one per cent in 2000 to seven per cent lately, and maybe higher if you factor in reusing the bags for garbage - but we could do more.

Petroleum hydrocarbons really belong underground, not in the environment in plastic form. The 500 billion to one trillion bags manufactured annually are a global challenge, and the only way to address the problems they create is to, first, decrease use and, then, stop their manufacture.

Garbage bags were the second most common form of litter after cigarette butts in the 2008 International Coastal Cleanup Day sponsored by the Ocean Conservancy, a national marine environmental group in the U.S.

Last June, a top United Nations environment official called for a global ban on plastic bags. The reason is the “Great Pacific Garbage Patch,” a growing field of floating plastic trash miles across. Some say it is twice the size of Texas, located between the West Coast and Hawaii. The huge raft of trash is full of exceptionally-high concentrations of plastic and other junk that has been trapped by the currents of the North Pacific. Despite its immensity, the patch is not visible with satellite photography because it consists of very small pieces, almost invisible to the naked eye. Most of its contents are suspended beneath the surface of the ocean. "Single-use plastic bags which choke marine life should be banned or phased out rapidly everywhere. There is simply zero justification for manufacturing them anymore, anywhere," says Achim Steiner, executive director of the U.N. Environment Program.

We have examples of governments standing up for plastic reduction. Now, our government needs to help retail business overcome stubborn, lazy and recalcitrant consumers.