Dispose of Disposable Plastic Bags

From "Thinking Green," a column in the Duxbury Clipper by Dick Rothschild
Published May, 2015

So, how goes the battle to eradicate those disposable plastic bags or at least to decimate their numbers? And, why is it so important to get rid of them? Let me answer the second question, first.

     Last year in the America, we used about 12 billion barrels of oil to produce over 100 billion polyethylene bags. In doing so we managed to pump another 45 billion pounds of CO² into the atmosphere, speeding up global warming. Only 3% of those bags were recycled - and where do you think the rest of them went? That’s right. The other 97% are littering the earth.  I’m not just referring to far-away places like Bahrain, Benghazi or Bangladesh. Think Duxbury. Duxbury roads, Duxbury open spaces, the street you live on, Duxbury Beach. Not to mention the oceans where these bags kill 100,000 whales, seals and turtles a year.

     Locally, the largest number of disposable plastic bags are dispensed by our supermarkets. And, to their credit, they have been making an effort to encourage reusable bag use and to be unwasteful in using the disposable kind.

Brian Houghton, V.P. of the Massachusetts Food Association, the grocery market trade group, showed me a report from the 380 some stores they represent, detailing a 33% reduction of plastic and paper bags use from 2007 to 2012. Encouraging, but we don’t yet know whether the reduction is continuing at a healthy rate because reports for 2013 and beyond are still not complete. 

            Of course the disposable plastic bag problem could be solved in one fell swoop if Massachusetts were to enact a statewide ban on their use. A bill to do just that (H696) and another which would only reduce usage (S.359) were proposed in 2013, but both died in the legislature’s Ways and Means Committee. A subsequent bill limiting use (H787) has been filed, but given the fate of its predecessors, well-funded plastic bag industry opposition and the fact that the Massachusetts Legislature fails to enact 95% of the bills proposed to it, would you be willing to place a bet on passage? Neither would I.

            Five Massachusetts towns, however, including Brookline, Cambridge, Great Barrington, Manchester and Nantucket, have enacted their own bans on disposable bags.  Each town has different regulations creating a nightmare for the supermarket chains, one which will only get worse if the trend continues.

        Recognizing that near term statewide action is unlikely and that a ban by t Duxbury would have no effect on the two large supermarkets in Kingston, Sustainable Duxbury decided to tackle the problem directly with supermarket management.  So far, two meetings have been held between a Sustainable Duxbury group headed by Janis Owens and representatives of Stop & Shop, Hannaford and their parent corporation, Delhaize America.

      Lots of ideas to eliminate or reduce disposable bag use have been generated. One proposal to eliminate disposable bags entirely, credit customers with 10 cents for each of their own reusable bags at checkout and charging them 10 cents for each reusable plastic bag furnished by the supermarket, didn’t get much traction because supermarket representatives felt it would engender too much customer resistance. Another idea, to create an express check-out lane for customers with their own reusable bags is receiving consideration. Supermarket representatives were especially enthusiastic about training cashiers to ask customers at check-out if they wanted reusable bags, giveaways of reusable plastic bags, having Sustainable Duxbury volunteers in the stores to encourage customers to switch to reusable bags, and other in-store events to promote more reusable bag use.  One of these has already materialized.

In recognition of Earth Day both Hannaford’s store manager, Steve Beane and Stop & Shop’s manager Joe Laflamme hosted reusable bag events in their stores in which Sustainable Duxbury Volunteers, Janis Owens, Fenna Hanes, Marion Thayer, Jeanne Penvenne, Mike Wilson, Jim Savicki, Paul Maybe and Dick Rothschild gave away 450 attractive reusable bags contributed by the stores. It was an opportunity to hand out information and, one-on-one, to encourage hundreds of shoppers to opt for reusable bags.

Maybe we are seeing the beginnings of a partnership between the management of these supermarkets and the community, designed to combat the scourge of disposable plastic bags. Let’s hope so.