Anyone who has a notion to complain about the cost of gasoline, the drain on fossil fuels, and the strain on our environment merely need pause for a moment and consider factors other than the presumed group of Saudi Arabians sitting around a table greedily rubbing their hands as they figure out how to stick it to the rest of the world.
In upcoming weeks, “What Women Need” will explore several of the factors that contribute to rising costs and dwindling resources — all of which are the result of everyday human choices.
The good news? There are simple yet effective alternatives to these choices that will directly impact our pocketbook, our environment, and future generations. What women need is to know about them, then act on them.
This week, plastic bags.
I have never felt good about loading my groceries into them, but I was stunned to read a report released by AlterNet that the number we use each year is causing a global epidemic.
As of the Fourth of July, I will never use them again.
Here are the facts:
About 500 billion to 1 trillion plastic bags are used worldwide each year.
Plastic bags are made from ethylene, a petroleum byproduct.
In the U.S. alone, an estimated 12 million barrels of oil is used annually to make plastic bags.
Although bags are given out free these days, they are not without their costs. Retailers in the United States spend $4 billion a year on plastic bags, which gets passed on to customers as higher prices.
An untold amount of fuel is used to transport the bags to their final destination.
Consumers then use these bags for a few minutes to transport a few items a few miles from the grocery store to home.
They then are disposed, where they begin impacting our environment a second time.
Environment California report that plastic bags kill up to 1 million sea creatures every year; the number of marine mammals impacted is estimated at 100,000 in the North Pacific Ocean alone.
British Antarctic Survey reports that plastic bags have been found floating north of the Arctic Circle near Spitzbergan, and as far south as the Falkland Islands.
According to the National Marine Debris Monitoring Program, plastic bags account for 10 percent of the debris that washes up on the U.S. Coastline.
Turtles, birds, whales, dolphins — they mistake them for food, or get tangled up in them, and the result is a series of gut-wrenching photos posted to the Internet.
But there’s more at play that we don’t see: Plastic bags photodegrade. That means over time, they break down into smaller, more toxic petro-polymers, which means microscopic particles enter the food chain (CNN.com/technology, November 2007).
Less than 1 percent of plastic bags are recycled, which is of little consequence anyway, because despite good intentions, it costs more to recycle them than produce a new one.
According to Jared Blumenfeld, director of San Francisco’s Department of the Environment, “There’s a harsh economy behind bag recycling: It costs $4,000 to process and recycle a ton of plastic bags, which can then be sold on the commodities market for $32.”
San Francisco is walking the walk, not just talking the talk, as the first U.S. city to ban plastic bags (March 27, 2007).
Here’s what others are doing:
Oakland, Boston, and several cities in Alaska are considering a ban, according to a report on National Public Radio.
Overseas, entire countries are banning plastic bags, including China (which by doing so will save consumption of 37 million barrels of oil each year, according to a report on CNN.com), Bangledesh, Rwanda, Taiwan, Singapore, Israel, Canada, western India, Botswana, Kenya, Tanzania, and South Africa, according to PlanetSave.com (February 2008).
Ireland has not banned them, but has taxed them since 2002, which has reduced consumption by 90 percent according to BBC News.
Since statistics by the Bureau of Labor point to women still doing the majority of grocery shopping, here’s what women need: Purchase reusable cloth bags, available for $1 each in the express lanes at Wal-Mart, and commit to using them each and every time you shop — at any grocery store.
Each cloth bag holds twice as much as a plastic one, they are easier to carry, and they are easier to stow in the back of the car because they sit up.
As an added bonus, the new, reusable bags are made from 85 percent recycled materials, including old water bottles.
The trick will be that, when I’m done unloading groceries, to remember to immediately put them back in my car so they’re ready for the next trip to the grocery store.
I have only this column and word of mouth, but wouldn’t it be great if by next Fourth of July, Crawford County statistics could read, “38,000 population, graduation rate 100 percent, employment rate 100 percent, plastic bag consumption 0 percent.”
If just one out of five shoppers your age stopped using plastic bags, it would save the consumption of an estimated 1,330,560,000,000 plastic bags in your lifetime.
Women: Do your pocketbook, the nation’s oil consumption, and the environment a favor. Stop using plastic bags. Start using cloth ones.
Andra Bryan Stefanoni is a freelance writer who can be reached at astefanoni@cox.net
PITTSBURG —
