A venerable symbol of our modern, throwaway culture appears to be on its last legs – and not a moment too soon.
The plastic shopping bag: Perhaps the second most ubiquitous piece of litter on city streets after the cigarette butt, we can see them blowing in the wind almost every day of the year.
And it's not just the litter. The bags, when they land in a landfill, take upwards of 1,000 years to decompose completely.
But now its reign as the unquestioned king of transporting everything from cereal boxes to clothing, from lettuce to laptop computers, from newspapers to nappies is coming to an end.
Cities across North America – indeed the world – have begun to put in place bans and restrictions on the use of these environmental demons. In California, arguably the most environmentally conscious state in the U.S., San Francisco banned the use of the bags last March. Since then, other cities have followed suit, including Leaf Rapids, Man., last April, the first Canadian town to enact a ban on the use and sale of these single-use sacks.
Several other Canadian cities are studying the issue, or instituting measures to reduce their residents’ dependence on plastic bags. Calgary city council has asked for a report on how best to reduce the number of plastic bags used by Calgarians. In Toronto, consumers will have to pay five cents for every bag they take away from a store.
These are useful first steps. Sure, there are obvious drawbacks to an outright ban on using plastic bags. The consumer will have to pay for new bags, but they will be reusable and more durable, more than offsetting the cost. There is also the concern over how people will throw out their garbage, and pick up their dog droppings, if they can’t use the bags they bring home from the store.
And these are not frivolous concerns. There are disadvantages to using other types of bags for these purposes. Paper bags become weak and often break when they get wet, and reusable cloth bags are not a hygienic alternative for picking up dog poop.
But other options do exist, as most Europeans have found, and need to be better publicized here.
Many stores are now providing their shoppers with biodegradable plastic bags. In appearance, these resemble the typical plastic bag. But the key difference is that the biodegradable bags will break down under the proper conditions. However, these conditions are difficult to achieve in a landfill, and result in the bags taking upwards of several decades to fully break down. Still, this is less environmentally damaging than the thousands of years non-biodegradable take to break down.
The best available option is the reusable compostable bag. As the name suggests, they can be thrown out with other waste to be turned into compost.
Communities around the world are finally waking up to the environmental menace plastic poses. Ottawa, on the other had has done nothing as a city. It has left to private businesses to find their own way. A few years ago, Somerset Coun. Diane Holmes mused about a city-wide ban here, but that came to nothing. It’s time that plan was resurrected. Ignoring the issue is doing no one a favour.
The planet – and our children – deserve it.