The Reusable Bag, For Better or Worse

A draft report by the Environment Agency in the UK is fueling the bag debate... again.

I go a few trade shows every year - some for work and some just for fun - so I've acquired a collection of reusable bags that were free giveaways. I have fabric ones (nylon, cotton, and canvas), plastic ones and ones made out of recycled materials. I actually try not to get any new ones now, but sometimes the program guide or sample comes in one, so my collection grows despite my best intentions. I purge them by giving them to friends who swear that they will use them.

Using a reusable bag can be an good environmental choice. If it is used multiple times - at least once a week - four or five reusable bags can replace 520 plastic bags a year, according to Nick Sterling, the research director at Natural Capitalism Solutions, a nonprofit focused on corporate sustainability issues.

But I've come to realize that a reusable bag that is never reused is just more waste and clutter. One popular type of reusable bag is made of nonwoven polypropylene, which requires the same amount of energy to produce as an estimated 28 traditional plastic shopping bags or eight paper bags. In addition, their additional weight increases the fuel required to ship them, and if thrown away, they will take even longer to breakdown because of their thickness. Cotton or canvas options aren't perfect either, as they can require large amounts of water and energy to produce and may contain harsh chemical dyes. Paper bags, though recyclable, require the destruction of millions of trees and are made in factories that contribute to air and water pollution. They are also heavier than single-use plastic, further increasing their carbon footprint in shipping.

The solution is to use the bags long enough to off-set the increased environmental impact. A cotton bag would have to be re-used 171 times to balance out it's environmental costs in comparison to a single use plastic bag. Even a paper bag has to be used three times to balance. Getting into the habit of using your reusable bag for every trip to the store is crucial to making it environmentally friendly.

Don't forget to wash your reusable bags frequently. Past attempts to justify the single-use plastic bag include claims that reusable bags are often contaminated with dangerous food-borne bacteria, leading to food poisoning. The risk of this is minimized by simply washing the bags, with or without bleach.

Of course, buying from Green Earth Organics reduces your bag usage a lot. Our bins would have the same issue as reusable bags, so we are sure to reuse our bins many, many times, washing them with biodegradable soap every time, and when they are too old to use to deliver to homes, they get retired to our warehouse, where they keep our shelves tidy by holding bags of rice, pasta, and more. If they are too beat up for that, they get used to hold food to be composted, saving the warehouse staff from having to go to the compost bin out front for every bad apple.

Living greener is often not as straight forward as we'd like, but we can all make the best choices we can every day to reduce our impact on this planet.