I am writing today to pass on some information about plastic bags. This is an excerpt from a presentation I recently gave to a group of interested folks associated with MountainTrue and Conserving Carolina.

Americans use between 100 and 200 billion plastic shopping bags per year or about 500 per person each year. Most of these bags have lifetimes measured in minutes and end up in the trash.  A small percentage (less than 3%) are recycled and even less are washed out and reused.  Manufacture of these bags is from oil. The oil molecules are first ‘cracked’ to form smaller, more reactive molecules, then these are combined to form long chains of carbon and hydrogen atoms, which clump together to form the plastic, which is made into bags. It takes roughly 660 million gallons of oil to make one year’s worth of plastic bags for the USA. Is this a lot of fuel? Well that depends on your viewpoint:  660 million gallons of oil would give us about 2.4 gallons for every motor vehicle in the country, but it’s only a small percentage (0.14%) of the total oil we use (1 billion gallons of oil per day). Nonetheless, it is important for us to reduce and ultimately eliminate single use plastic bags. Here are just a few of the reasons:

1. More oil would be saved at home and less imported from overseas. 

2. Groceries and other merchandise would cost less. Bags cost stores about $.04 each, and that is passed on to consumers.

3. The appearance of our environment would be improved.

4. Landfills would fill up more slowly.

5. Wildlife, such as sea turtles and sea birds, which can ingest the bags, would be protected.

So what can we do to address this issue?  It’s very simple: Use cloth bags!

We can keep them handy in our cars when we go shopping.  We can suggest that stores place signage in parking lots and store entrances encouraging use of cloth bags. We can ask that stores give rebates to shoppers who bring their own bags. We can reuse some of the plastic bags in our homes before recycling them (most grocery stores have bins).

As the cartoon character Pogo famously said, “We have met the enemy and he is us.”  Bring your own cloth bags  when you go shopping — it’s very simple.  Just do it!

– Chuck Breckheimer, Volunteer Recycling Subcommittee, MountainTrue