They move with surprising grace across parking lots on breezy days. The performance can be mesmerizing – weightless dancers twirling and dipping in the arms of an invisible partner. When the wind dies down, they fall to earth and become the artless litter they were always destined to be. Such is life in the wild for the plastic grocery bag.
Almost since Mobil Oil introduced the bags to American consumers in 1976, there has a been a movement to get rid of them. At first, shoppers simply didn’t like the idea of giving up paper packages for slick interlopers. But the cost savings for grocery stores was significant – and that meant there was no turning back.
In 1986, according to a timeline created by the Earth Policy Institute, the General Federation of Women’s Clubs suggested plastic bags were probably not very good for the environment. Over the next 20 years, in places such as Nantucket, Denmark and India, those concerns led to action in the form of bag taxes and outright bans. In 2007, San Francisco became the first U.S. city to outlaw them. Less than a decade later, 132 city and county bans or fees were in place in the United States.
In New Hampshire, the battle against the plastic bag has been rough going. Officials in Keene and Portsmouth have tried to implement bans recently but have been thwarted by the state. A bill proposed this legislative session that would have allowed towns and cities to pass laws regulating the distribution of plastic bags went nowhere, so eco-minded officials are looking for other paths to extract their communities from the grip of this polyethylene menace.
There are plenty of good reasons to rid the world of plastic grocery bags, not least of which is the fact that plastic isn’t biodegradable. Americans throw away 100 billion plastic grocery bags every year, says Scientific American’s EarthTalk blog, littering the landscape and slowly releasing toxins into the soil and water. While the bags may be little more than a visual distraction for summer strollers, they can be deadly for creatures on land and sea who share the planet. And then there’s the matter of the 12 million barrels of oil needed to produce those 100 billion single-use bags. Even those dwindling few who bristle at the mere mention of the words “climate change” have to admit the bags are not exactly Earth-friendly.
The bags do have their defenders. Many of them point to some rather disgusting data regarding the reusable bags that are meant to replace their single-use counterparts. Bloomberg columnist Ramesh Ponnuru points to a study of reusable bags in California and Arizona that determined 51 percent of them contained coliform bacteria. The same study found that 97 percent of people never wash the bags. Ponnuru also cited a 2012 Los Angeles Times story reporting that a noroviurs outbreak in Oregon was linked to “a reusable grocery bag left in a hotel bathroom.” The proper course, Ponnuru writes, “is to encourage people to recycle their plastic bags – or, maybe, just let people make their own decisions.”
That conclusion no doubt resonates with a lot of people in the “Live free or die” state, and that explains the legislative opposition. But maybe there’s a better way.
In places such as Washington, D.C., Ireland, and Scotland, grocery stores charge customers 5 cents per single-use plastic bag. It’s a small fee, one that isn’t much of a burden even on the most cash-strapped shopper, but research shows that a nickel has the power to change behavior. Because they have to pay a fee, customers are forced to think about something they previously took for granted.
As Chris Mooney wrote in the Washington Post, “You don’t have to confiscate all the plastic bags. . . . You can just give people the slightest push, and let them fix the problem themselves.”
That, too, should resonate in New Hampshire.