By Gary Headrick
I’d like to share some thoughts with you regarding those handy little plastic bags we carry our groceries in. I love the way you can just grab a load of bags, knowing that if you’ve got a good grip on the handles, those sturdy vessels are going to easily make it from the store to the kitchen counter. Not so with the paper ones. I can even find other uses for either type before they finally end up in the trash, and I feel good knowing that both kinds are recyclable. So what’s all the fuss about reusable bags?
Unfortunately, all is not as it might appear. Those “chasing arrows” symbols indicating that something you are throwing away will find its way back to some purposeful existence is mostly an illusion because we have not created a sufficient market or other form of incentive to do much with them after being collected. The 3 percent of bags that do find their way to a facility that turns them into something new, usually go with many of our other waste products all the way to China and back on some carbon churning form of transportation. Once the new product has been made in a place where there are few environmental restrictions, and little regard for the worker, it returns as merchandise that is often found to be harmful to ourselves and the environment.
As for the remaining 97 percent of plastic bags that are not recycled, they end up in a landfill or worse yet, in the ocean. In the ground, they simply never go away. They can only photo-degrade in sunlight, which simply means that they gradually break down into smaller and smaller particles which also never really go away. Plastic can be toxic to begin with, but as it floats around the ocean, waiting to be mistaken for a turtle’s favorite food, the jellyfish, or snagged around the neck of some other sea bird, fish or mammal, it bonds with other petrochemical toxins that we have dumped into the oceans. Once they reach the size of plankton, which is outnumbered by plastic particles 46 to 1 in some parts of the ocean, they are easily consumed by the food chain that we all depend on. Concerned yet?
I could go on about the amounts of oil it takes to make the 380 billion plastic bags that are used in the United States each year. Or the 17 cents per bag our fiscally strained cities must pay for removal and disposal, but enough of all that bad news. There is a simple answer. Don’t use them! By choosing to bring a reusable bag to the store, you become part of the solution. Not only are you the cure for plastic bag syndrome, you also save millions of trees used for paper bags. Although paper is much more earth friendly, as trees provide us with fresh air, recycling them is a harsh chemical process that is also expensive. See how much good you can do with this simple adjustment to your daily routine? The only difficult part is just remembering to bring reusable bags with you!
San Clemente Green will be teaming up with our city’s Environmental Department, Watershed Task Force, Surfrider, Sierra Club, Earth Resources, Heal the Bay and others on Thursday, December 18 for an event called Day Without a Bag. Between 4 p.m. and 6 p.m., you’ll see us in front of some of your favorite stores, including Trader Joe’s, Ralphs and Albertson’s. We will have a variety of free reusable bags to choose from, along with some of our own unique handmade bags we give to those who would like to donate to our cause.
If San Clemente Green sounds like an organization you would like to join, send an e-mail to gary@sanclementegreen.org so we can let you know what’s going on in our “green” community.
Gary Headrick has been an architectural illustrator for more than 25 years (www.ha-ap.com). In August of 2007 he and his wife, Laurie, decided to do whatever they could to make our town sustainable by forming the grassroots organization San Clemente Green. Now their expanding group is mainly focused on helping the city to create a Sustainability Action Plan, reducing plastic waste, negotiating bids for community pricing for solar power and more. Please contact him at www.sanclementegreen.org to become part of this positive force for change.
PLEASE NOTE: The opinions offered here are solely those of the guest columnist and may or may not be shared by the San Clemente Times staff. We appreciate, however, their willingness to share their views, and we invite responses to be sent to letters@sanclementetimes.com.
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