Whole Foods Wraps It Up On Plastic

This is a great idea. I love it when I remember my reusable bag at the grocery store. I have started carrying one with me in my purse and it’s amazing how often I use it!

Great idea!!! I was there this weekend and they didn’t even offer plastic…just gave me paper…which I was happy about

I wish more grocery stores would follow suit.

I’m sorry if I’m less than pleased, but what’s the perceived benefit of eliminating plastic bags? My household re-uses them as small trash bags — they’re great for dirty diapers or picking up after a dog. This will just force me to buy more little doggie-poo bags, or small trash bags (or shop less at Whole Foods for stuff I can buy elsewhere).

Those recycled bags — because of the whole paper recycling process — pollute the air more than just cutting down trees (which are renewable and more abundant in America than they were 100 years ago).

I doubt this is done purely out of the goodness of the Whole Foods heart — it’s just marketing in tune to helping folks thing they’re doing something good for the world. And of course, expect any increased cost of those 100% recycled paper bags to be reflected somewhere on grocery receipts.

Lee- I kinda know what you mean by reusing bags, but the majority of folks don’t use as many of them as they acquire. You’ll still get plastic bags from numerous other stores…mall stores (they produce a ton), discount stores (Target, WalMart), drug store, etc. If you save them just like you’ve been saving grocery bags, I think you’ll still have enough for picking up doggie poo.

Plastic bags are better??? Let’s consider:

Plastic bags are made from non-renewable petroleum resources. Plastics can be recycled, but not as easily as glass, aluminum or paper… In addition to not being easily recycled, plastic production and processing require the use of toxic chemicals. Many manufacturing plants that produce these chemicals also produce hazardous waste and pollute the air. In 1986, the EPA, Environmental Protection Agency, ranked the 20 chemicals whose production generates the most hazardous waste. Five of the top six were chemicals commonly used by the plastic industry [propylene, phenol, ethylene, polystyrene, and benzene]…
via http://tinyurl.com/2ft7a9

The energy and other environmental impacts embodied in a plastic grocery bag is somewhat less than in a paper grocery bag. But paper is easier to recycle, being accepted in most recycling programs. The recycling rate for plastic bags is very low.
via http://www.sierraclub.org/bags/

Many, many bags are reused as book and lunch bags as kids head off to school, as trash can liners, and to pickup Fido’s droppings off the lawn.”
But like candy wrappers, chewing gum, cigarette butts, and thousands of other pieces of junk, millions of the plastic bags end up as litter. Once in the environment, it takes months to hundreds of years for plastic bags to breakdown. As they decompose, tiny toxic bits seep into soils, lakes, rivers, and the oceans, said Cobb.
via http://tinyurl.com/ywoot5

(back to me…) So, there’s no clear cut answer, because you are right, Lee, in that plastic bags initially emit far fewer emissions than paper. But both are greener than the other ~ just in different ways, as I’m not a fan of the chemicals and petroleum used for plastic bags.

Lee, I do have to give you a golden star for reusing your plastic bags so happily.

If you really wanted to get on a rant, however, I suggest you should buy a few reusable canvas totes for your shopping and *not* spew rhetoric of the glory of plastic bags and the seemingly (to you) insincere antics of Wholefoods.

As for your trash can liners and doggy-poo bags, check out the functional, biodegradable, compostable corn-starch bags like those at http://tinyurl.com/2b6unb. Then you can earn yourself full-on boasting rights.

[…] so that’s not my stance, but that’s part of the conversation going on over at my buddy Doug’s blog.  In fact, one commenter states: I doubt this is done […]

Wow! I guess I’ve stepped in some doggie-poo here!

Ashley Sue, I have to say your points are refreshing. Generally, ‘green’ folks are the way they are out of some sort of near-religious zeal. More often than not, their main point seems to boil down to “just because”. But you’re sort of a Christian Apologetic; at least you’ve put forth some reasons for hating plastic bags.

I pretty much disagree with all of those reasons, though. First, it’s irrelevant that toxic chemicals are used in the production of plastics. Plastic is a material that’s probably done more to improve living standards and to increase the average human life-span than probably anything else ever manufactured. Simply because bad stuff goes into making plastic is no reason to throw the baby out with the bathwater. That bad stuff doesn’t make it into Falls Lake.

Toxic chemicals are used to produce a lot of things, including paper. But paper production is horrible for the environment. According to some estimates paper production produces 70 percent more air pollution and 50 times more water pollution than plastic production. So paper is in no way ‘greener’ than plastic — or equally green — unless you assert that plastic in landfills (full of paper — by far the largest category of trash in them) will degrade and seep into our water supplies and cause cancer, or that we’ll run out of room for all of our trash.

Both of those would be ill-founded assertions, though. According to the EPA, today’s landfills are so well made that they might cause one cancer death every 50 years (compare that to the environmentalist bible, ‘Silent Spring’, which has caused millions of deaths since it was published — http://rachelwaswrong.org/ — now that’s something I’d rant about). And, we’re simply not running out of room for our trash. Economists have evaluated how much trash we create, and I’m pretty comfortable with their findings. Anywhere from a 15 to 45 mile square section of land, 120 feet deep, would be enough to hold all of the rubbish Americans produce over the next 1000 years. And the total human population is leveling off as the world becomes more developed. We won’t run out of space for humans, or our trash, even if no one ever finds a better way to dispose of it — which I doubt. As for the rubbish produced by armchair environmental scientists, well, there’ll never be a container big enough for all of that.

I guess there are a couple of valid arguments here, but they have little to do with what’s good for the environment. Using a reusable bag won’t impact that landfill (the one that isn’t hurting anyone or overflowing into the Atlantic). And a reusable bag is way better than using anything recycled. I guess people can feel good about that. And I have to agree that I hate litter, so fewer Whole Foods bags blowing around is a good thing.

But I don’t litter, and I don’t buy in to unfounded fears, and I surely don’t want to use recycled paper. So for my Whole Foods meat and fish shopping, I’ll probably be stuck with one of those damned reusable bags anyway.

Hehaehh

I have to say, Lee, you know your stuff!

Reading your posts gives me a tremendous amount of thoughts to ponder, however, which is why I did any research in the first place. I have to say, I was 100% gungho on the switch to paper until you made your points.

I have to say, as well, however, that I’m still 100% against plastic though. I think plastic bags are nothing more than mere convenience. And even if the toxic factor (which I believe evidence shows does leak overtime into the soil) isn’t really an issue, the fact I see more of them at the lakes, creeks, trees and parking lots than anywhere else. That bothers me more than anything else.

I have to say, Lee, I am thankful for your insight. It made me realize that none of us have any room or right to bitch unless we are doing EVERYTHING we can to carry our own bags and limit our use of both paper or plastic. Carry your own grocery totes, check into truly biodegradable corn starch plastic bags, and say “neither, thanks. I brought my own” when asked paper or plastic.

Now, I’m carrying my big ol’ handsewn bags (double-stitched for strength) to avoid the paper too. You’re right, I don’t care to exploit our air for recycled paper either.
Ultimately, however, I’m looking forward to stores charging for each bag of theirs you have to use or just offering no bags at all, like Costco or Aldi.

Sams Club too!

Oh, evil Wallymart-owned Sam’s Club.
And you know, I was thinking on Lee’s comment that plastic has done more to prolong and better life for the human race. I won’t dispute that in cases of angioplasty-type surgeries and plastic glasses lenses. But I also believe plastic has become a bane on our existence, our petroleum reliance and environment.

So not all plastics are crap. But tell me how a plastic peanut butter jar prolongs anyone’s life ~ much less how a plastic bag gets credit for that… any thoughts?

LOL!

Ashley Sue, certainly a plastic peanut butter jar isn’t a life saver. Nor are plastic bags. At the consumer level, they’re conveniences. But maybe there’s a bigger picture. Plastic containers are generally lighter and cheaper than glass containers. Plastic bags, aside from what’s already clear about paper bags being worse air and water polluters, take up far less space and weight. That saves everyone money and cuts down on pollution (more weight = more energy required to ship all of those heavier containers). Plastics, of course, are everywhere though, not just in packaging. The reason is that they’re cheaper, lighter, and stronger than comparable materials. All of that translates into a lot of benefits for you and me. Paying less for a plastic chair than a wooden chair or less for a plastic bottle than a glass bottle means that people can spend money on other things, like food.

Those savings are everywhere. When you’re rich — like most Americans are compared to the rest of the world — it’s easy to discount these savings and say, “I’d rather pay the extra $2″. For much of the world, though, $2 is a meal for an entire family. We take everything for granted, because we’ve never suffered (on a side note, because we’re obsessed with not being ‘dependent’ on oil, our ethanol use is going to drive up the price of corn, which will result in higher grocery costs — no big deal to Americans, but higher grocery costs in sub-Saharan Africa are a really big deal. And no one cares if we make a few more kids starve to death, as long as we feel good about ourselves.) But all of these cost savings have cascaded down over the last half a century to the point that we’re all a lot better off.

I’m not saying that pollution is good, or that we should just forget about the environment. What I’m saying is that we’ve got far more important problems to deal with, and that our actions — regardless of whether they seem like the right thing to do — should be fully justified.

Plastic bags must be an important enough problem if entire countries ban their use - Uganda, China (June 2008), Rwanda, Eritrea, Somaliland for example. Other countries, such as Ireland, have instituted a “plastax”. Cities in the U.S. are considering bans as well.

In the Pacific Ocean there is an area the approximate size of Texas that is a nearly solid mass — an island — of plastic debris. The Algalita Marine Research Foundation has shown that this plastic island has 1,000,000 times more toxins than surrounding seawaters, and six times as much plastic per weight of water than zooplankton. And their most recent expedition uncovered that the acreage of this area is expanding rapidly.

Add to that the hundreds of thousands of sea turtles, whales and other marine mammals die every year from eating discarded plastic bags mistaken for food.

Biodegradable plastic bags are readily available for diapers and doo-doo.

The countries that have banned plastic bags (through authoritarian coercion, in particular) have a lot more difficulty cleaning up their trash to begin with, and might better spend their time cleaning up human rights abuses first. China is a horrible example to use as an environmentally concerned country. China is consuming more and more oil, and plastic bags (China was using billions of them a day) are, of course, made from oil which drives up their cost of becoming the world’s largest economy. A country that has charged surviving family members for the cost of the bullets used to execute their kin by firing squad should be presumed to have motivations other than altruistic environmental concern.

The island with an area the ’size of Texas’, or twice the size of Texas, or the size of a continent, depending on who you ask, is a gross fabrication. Even a video made by the foundation you mention fails to show an ‘island’ or anything remotely like an island of trash. There’s trash floating in the Pacific, and yes, it’s bad for turtles and birds. Stating there is an island of trash (and in this case falsely) immediately raises concern, regardless of how true the statement is. Ironically a lot the trash that is floating in the ocean comes from places like China, where, again, there’s little infrastructure in place for proper dumping.

We could argue all day about the good and bad side of plastic. The real problem is that as a nation we just produce too much trash PERIOD. Mostly for convenience sake. Think of all the individually wrapped cookies that come in boxes because we just don’t have the time to sit down at a table and eat a cookie with a glass of milk. All I know is that I have way too many plastic bags and I can’t find a proper place to turn them for recycling. Does anyone know of a place in Raleigh where they accept trash bags? I can’t find one around where I live…