Solving the World’s Plastic Bag Dilemma Begins at Home

Plastic bags, being both lightweight and water resistant, are ideal carriers for transporting groceries and clothing, especially for consumers traveling by foot, bicycle or public transportation. For these consumers parting with plastic bags is unthinkable.

Businesses and government leaders from around the world have responded to the consumer’s “unthinkable” act in a variety of ways in the last decade to reduce the usage of plastic bags that are often carelessly discarded and picked up by the wind and deposited along roadsides, left floating in lakes, rivers and oceans or tangled in trees. Furthermore, those bags that do make it to the landfill take hundreds of years to break down. With trillions of plastic bags produced annually that’s a lot of garbage lying about waiting to decay. 

Legislation has been written and passed in many countries to discourage the usage of plastic bags. In January 2002, the South African government required manufacturers to make plastic bags more durable and more expensive. This action has resulted in a 90 percent decrease in the number of plastic bags used.  A similar approach has been implemented in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania’s Zanzibar Islands.

In April 2007, legislation was passed in Leaf Rapids, a town in Canada’s Manitoba, banning the use of plastic bags in shops. The passage of similar legislation in San Francisco, California and parts of Alaska have prompted other US cities to consider legislation banning plastic bags. 

In Malaysia, where plastic bags are routinely used at grocery stores and food stalls across the country, IKEA recently announced beginning on World Environment Day, which is set for Friday, 5 June, the store will no longer provide free plastic bags to customers. A 10- to 20-cent fee will be charged depending on the size of the bag. The store’s famous “Big Blue Bag” will be available for $1.90.

Charging a fee for using plastic bags is not a new concept to consumers in Ireland. The government there charges a 32-cent levy per plastic bag in the hopes of discouraging consumers from using plastic bags.

Reducing the amount of plastic bags used annually through legislation does help to alleviate the problems caused by them; however an equally effective alternative to the problem is recycling. Recycling plastic bags or turning them into collection bins, which are conveniently located in stores across the US, is one-way Americans can tackle the plastic bag dilemma.

There are various ways in which plastic bags can be recycled. The most common uses for reusing plastic bags brought home from the store include placing the bag onto your hand as a glove for cleaning up after dogs, placing a bag inside a small bowl to catch the discarded parts when preparing fruits and vegetables and lining winter boots with a plastic to prevent feet from getting wet if snow slips inside.

For a recycling practice to be successful in the home so that it lasts for more than a week or two it’s important to provide family members easy access to the plastic bags. Some suggest stuffing the bags into empty cans having plastic lids such as empty Pringle’s and coffee cans. Others suggest using empty tissues boxes and pulling the bags through the slit already present. And yet others, suggest a plastic bag caddy that is made from fabric that is stitched together on two sides to form a cylinder to which is added a drawstring closure that family members can reach through to remove or add bags as needed.

 Another concern often debated over the usage of plastic bags questions the wisdom of producing them in the first place. Plastic bags are made using oil. As such, many believe producing plastic bags, which are most often used only once, to be a wasteful use of this precious natural resource. This may seem a silly complaint at first but when you consider that 500 billion to 1 trillion plastic bags are used worldwide each year it becomes less amusing.