NPR: How Green Are Reusable Bags?

[OKIsItJustMe]

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=111672574

How Green Are Reusable Bags?

by Tovia Smith
August 7, 2009

This story is part of a series called http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=111519254">How Green Is It? that will air throughout August on All Things Considered. The series examines some of the things Americans are doing — and buying — to help the environment and whether those steps really are as "green" as they seem.

Business are selling them, even giving them away hoping they will replace those plastic grocery bags that have become something of a poster child for environmental waste and destruction. From the Whole Foods Market to Home Depot, stores are jumping on the reusable-bag bandwagon, delighting many eco-minded shoppers.

"I think they're great! I love it," says Susan Klein, 42. "I have about five of them that I use all the time — for everything!"

But bagger, beware! Not all reusable bags are created equal.

"There are different shades of green," says environmental consultant Catherine Greener.

…

(Audio and full transcript available at the link.)

[ejpoeta]

1. I try my best to make sure I always have my bags on hand. I hate ending up

with a bunch of plastic bags!! That is my main reason. It's like they put one thing in a bag.. and i come home with twenty bags!! It's nice to have a few to use for my bathroom garbage and such, but I think i've gotten pretty good and having my bags and using them. I prefer them.... They hold more and are more sturdy... not going to break open on the way to the car.

[obliviously]

2. I have gotten them in several colors!

[enlightenment]

3. I like the old Walmart bags - the black ones.

Very big and sturdy - I've washed and dried them repeatedly and they're still holding up fine. Took me about 6 months to get in the habit of using them and now I have a collection in my car and in the house. I also bought a couple of pricier nylon bags that squash down to nothing - got a really nice one at Marks & Sparks last month that has a built in pocket to tuck it into. I carry one of those in my handbag, just in case.

[NNadir]

4. Equal to what?

Unless one wishes to establish that the reusable bag is worse than strip mining the Canadian boreal forest, one doesn't have a case.

What ever happened to the obvious?

I don't think that one can really make a case that one kg of PVC shipped from China once every two years is worse than one kg of PV shipped every week and then dumped into waterways.

NPR is such a boring waste of bourgeois angst these days.

What's NPR's point? "OH MY GOD, REUSABLE BAGS CONTAIN PVC!!!!!!!!!"

Does it occur to NPR that, um, radios are often contained in one of the most intractable polymers there is, polycarbonate?

The good should not be the enemy of the perfect. The claim that the good is enemy of the perfect, or that the very good is the enemy of delusions of perfection sort of reminds me of anti-nuke mentality.

A home recycled PVC bag - recycled in the sense that it is used for a period of years as opposed to in a disposable sense - is not worse than a huge pulp 18 wheeler hauling old growth forests to a paper bag hauling plant. Let's be clear, someone driving their own bag back and forth is not the same as someone asking for trucks to haul their disposable shit all around the planet.

I guess you can't be a reporter if you can do math.

[zipplewrath]

7. Garbage Magazine

I had a subscription to something called Garbage Magazine back in the early '90s. They ran an article in which they did the math comparing disposable diapers with cloth diapers. The end result was that the total waste stream was very similar. The readers, mostly environmentalists, were pissed. It was a matter of faith that cloth were "better". The math and science didn't matter. Oh, and the magazine didn't make it.

[Island Blue]

5. Plastic bags will be banned in my NC county

beginning September 1. This ban applies only to the larger, box store chains rather than mom & pop type stores. I've been using reusable bags for quite a while, but I'm excited about this new law.

http://hamptonroads.com/2009/06/nc-plastic-bag-ban-awaits-governors-signature

[saged52]

6. I use my recyclable bags

in every store - not just for groceries. also have several canvas bags that we rec'd. from donations to Environmental Defense - a win win.

[Nihil]

8. Well, that didn't take long did it?

As soon as environmentalists start to make real headway into the
wasteful habits of consumers, along comes some dick to throw FUD
into the mix and stop the progress.

There will *ALWAYS* be an even more environmentally-friendly way
to do something. This is no reason to stop progress towards that
nirvana by suggesting that people's current progress is, in some
way, not worth it.

This pissing about with "different shades of green" is nothing but
a distraction from the urgent issue of getting consumers to go
beyond the "one disposable plastic bag per item" mentality that
they've grown into over the years.

People don't have to change from their 20MPG hog to a Tesla in
order to improve their fuel consumption: going to a 30MPG car
is a good move, a 40MPG car is better, a Prius or Volt or Leaf
or whatever is better still but that first step - improving from
20 to 30 - is the major achievement at the moment.

People don't have to go without air-conditioning to improve their
home energy use: turning it in from the extremes makes a difference.

We need to keep the momentum going so *more* people are making a
difference, *more* people are prepared to change their habits in
order to help reduce their impact.

The "fine tuning" is a nicety that can wait for a later iteration
(and, let's face it, once people start to become aware of how they
can improve the situation, they will often make further changes
completely voluntarily).

Stop throwing crap at the ones who are *already* making the effort.

:rant:

(PS: I hope it's obvious that my ire is *not* directed at OKIsItJustMe!)

[kristopher]

10. Well said. nt

[OnlinePoker]

9. Green Bags and Garbage

My wife and I use cloth bags for all our groceries. The only difficulty now is what do we put our non-recyclable garbage in? Commercial plastic garbage bags are thicker than the plastic grocery bags we used to get and use. To my way of thinking, these would take a lot longer to break down. Unfortunately, our garbage can't be put into the garbage cans unbagged, so what's the solution?