Ditch the Old Bag

We see them tangled in trees and on fences, floating in the Chattahoochee and in our lakes and creeks and even blowing through the air on a windy day. “Single use” plastic grocery bags, they are everywhere and most of us use them all the time. These are the non-biodegradable plastic bags we get at most retail grocery, hardware, and big box stores. From a slow beginning since their development in the 1970’s, these plastic bags have become ubiquitous. I for one am old enough to remember having paper grocery bags as a child. Can any of us imagine not having this convenience? They are cheap, light, tough, water proof and you can carry several with one hand. From what I understand, one of the first companies to develop them was the Dixie Bag Company that was based right here in College Park.

 I’m the first admit that I don’t carry the reusable bags with me shopping. (That would require way too much planning and coordination.) So I make myself feel better by declining a plastic bag when I only have one or two items and collecting and recycling bags at home.

Most, if not all, of the grocery chains in Buckhead have designated containers to recycle plastic shopping bags. Some Publix stores even have them outside in front of their stores making it very convenient. My collected bags usually ride around in the back of the car for a few days (or weeks!) before I remember to put them in the store containers, but they do eventually get there.

Now why is it so important to recycle these things? For one, according to Peggy Ratcliffe of LiveThrive Atlanta, an amazing 1trillion of these “single use” bags are used annually in the United States. Of that, only about 7% are recycled. So that means the other however many billion (my calculator can’t count that high), are destined to lie, float or blow around or end up as trash, sitting in a landfill somewhere.

Disposal of the billions of bags each year is a hidden cost to all communities. They require transportation to the landfill, take up space in the landfill and may take as many as several hundred years to decompose in the landfill.

But the bags that are not put in the trash are the greatest menace. In a recent article in Garden Gateways magazine, Lorene Faulkenberry pointed out that they are a disaster to our local drainage systems, rivers and creeks and kill fish and other marine animals. Submerged bags, floating in the water cause serious damage to boats and municipal water intakes. This has inspired some, mostly coastal communities, to ban the bags or place fees on their use. Most of Europe, much of Canada and many nations across the world have limited the use of the bags or have banned their use. Some U.S. communities have been in the news recently for banning their use, these include areas of the Outer Banks in North Carolina and the entire state of Hawaii.

I would not go so far as to advocate banning plastic bags. But, I think we can all do a better job by being more careful with them, keeping them out of the trash and getting them somewhere that will recycle them. This is one quick and easy way to be a better steward of our environment.