AppleInsider's Prince McLean
reported Saturday that Apple's retail stores are implementing a new
"no plastic bags" policy in order to cut back on unnecessary
packaging.
According to the report, customers making more than a comfortable
handful of purchases in the store will be offered assistance to their
car or the option of leaving their items at the store while they
continue shopping, if the Apple Store located in a mall.
This new policy is another element of Apple's efforts to enhance its
green profile, other recent measures having been reducing the size of
its product packaging and emphasizing electronic distribution of music
and software.
More Hype than Substance
The intent behind this initiative is commendable, but in the
instance of banning plastic bags from its stores, Apple is jumping on a
bandwagon that amounts to more hype than substance. Apple, of course,
is based in the San Francisco area, whose municipal governments banned
plastic shopping bags in grocery stores in November 2007.
Abroad, Paris and London have enacted similar bans. In Ireland and
in Germany, shoppers pay a recycling fee for plastic bags. The Los
Angeles City Council voted last summer to ban plastic shopping bags
from stores, beginning July 1, 2010. Shoppers will be obliged to either
bring their own bags or pay 25 cents for a paper or biodegradable
bag.
In
Canada, where I live, major grocery chain Loblaws has also launched a
"no free plastic bags" policy and will charge 5¢ per plastic
shopping bag when they are requested by customers (since the bags cost
about 1¢ and the Loblaw charge is 5¢; that's a tidy 400%
profit) to apply nationwide by April 22, 2009 - Earth Day. Our closest
Loblaw's SuperStore has already phased in the policy, and my wife and I
have begun lugging a wad of reusable cloth grocery bags on shopping
expeditions.
Not a Worthwhile Strategy
However, I'm not convinced that eliminating plastic bags from retail
is really a worthwhile strategy. As with another purportedly "green"
solution - biofuels - which can actually result in more carbon release
and environmental damage than their equivalent in petroleum fuels
would, and production of which is driving food costs into the
stratosphere, literally starving people to death in poorer countries,
moves to ban or tax complementary disposable shopping bags are largely
feel-good gestures that may do more harm than good.
Disposable plastic retail bags are arguably one of the greatest
innovations of the last 50 years.
When I was a kid, grocery stores provided paper bags, which were
awkward to carry, tore easily, had no wet strength at all, and were not
terribly useful after you unpacked them at home.
Plastic Bags Are Greener
According to one University of Winnipeg study, paper bags are twice
as energy intensive as plastic bags. The American Plastics Council says
that bag taxes or bans could cost tens of thousands of jobs and result
in an increase in energy consumption, pollution, landfill space, and
grocery prices as store owners increase reliance on more expensive
paper bags (endorsed as an alternative by the new Los Angeles bylaw) or
other alternatives.
Even the Sierra Club concedes that the energy and other
environmental impacts embodied in a plastic grocery bag is somewhat
less than in a paper grocery bag. The Film and Bag Federation claims
that compared to paper bags, plastic grocery bags consume 40% less
energy, generate 80% less solid waste, produce 70% fewer atmospheric
emissions, and release up to 94% fewer waterborne wastes.
...recycled plastic bags are in high
demand....
National Geographic reported that somewhere between 500
billion and a trillion plastic bags are consumed worldwide each year
and quotes the American Plastics Council's Laurie Kusek, noting that
recycled plastic bags are in high demand from companies that turn them
into building materials, chopping them up, mixing them with wood pulp,
and shaping them into "composite" lumber.
"We also feel it is important to understand that plastic grocery
bags are some of the most reused items around the house," Ms. Kusek
said. "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."
Plastic Makes More Sense than Paper
Disposable plastic bags are stronger, have convenient carry handles,
are unaffected by water and other fluids, store efficiently, can be
immensely useful in a variety of reuses, and cost retailers about a
penny apiece. It is estimated that seven out of ten disposable plastic
shopping bags are currently reused by consumers for purposes such as
lining household wastebaskets and participating in municipal organics
programs. Banning or taxing them, or or charging many times their real
cost as a deterrent, is arguably counterproductive and wrongheaded.
After Ireland introduced an environmental "levy" (i.e.: tax) on
plastic bags in 2001, Irish polyethylene consumption actually
increased from a pre-levy 29,846 tonnes to 31,649 tonnes in 2006.
Reasons cited: consumers started buying purpose-manufactured,
single-use plastic bags to perform myriad utilitarian roles, such as
lining wastebaskets formerly filled by recycled grocery bags, as well
as becoming used to the tax and asking for plastic bags again.
Nevertheless, more businesses like Apple and Loblaws and governments
across the US, Canada, the UK, Europe, and Australia are hopping onto
the anti-plastic bag bandwagon in what amounts to a visible (but
simplistic) address of a complex issue.
As Lord Dick Taverne of the UK independent charitable trust Sense
About Science recently observed, "This is one of many examples where
you get bad science leading to bad decisions which are
counter-productive. Attacking plastic bags makes people feel good but
it doesn't achieve anything."
Plastic Bag Myths
What about popular factoids, like the one that plastic bags can
persist in the environment for 500 to 1,000 years and a misquoted,
endlessly regurgitated 1980s report that bag litter kills 100,000
birds, whales, seals, and turtles annually?
Partial truths, exaggerations, or outright bunkum.
The original report on marine life primarily referenced abandoned
fishing gear, finding that between 1981 and 1984, more than 100,000
marine animals, and a million birds, were killed by discarded nets and
such.
Some plastics are indeed environmentally persistent, but plastic
bags can be made biodegradable. Iowa State University has developed a
bag made with 90% cornstarch and 10% PVC that simply melts away after
six months exposure to the elements (a downside of biodegradables is
that they're not recyclable, and can cause problems in the recycling
stream if mixed in with petroleum-based bags).
The Canadian Plastics Industry Association claims plastic bags leave
a very small carbon footprint and represent less than 1% of landfill
contents and less than 0.5% of litter. Of course, we could do a better
job of recycling plastic bags, but the good news is that they're
eminently recyclable.
I suppose the trendy anti-plastic bag push is unstoppable, but it
doesn't make a lot of objective sense.
