Plastic shopping bags are bad, m’kay…

Plastic shopping bags are bad for the environment, and this can easily be surmised by anyone at all since they’re made of petroleum products and choke landfills and animals. Go to a garbage dump, if you will, and the first thing you will likely see are plastic shopping bags rolling across the “landscape” like tumbleweed. And those that weren’t just tumbling along just ended up sticking to the fences in clusters, like a bird that splatters against a windscreen in those cartoons. And yet as consumers we continue to turn to them out of force of nature or just because we couldn’t be bothered.

Europe was always a trend-setter in many regards, and it is no surprise to see them lead the way on this one as well. They have laws on shopping bags already on place, and Ireland even charged customers 15 cents per bag way back in 2002, leading to a sharp decline in the use of plastic bags. Heck, even China charges their people for plastic bags in an effort to cut back on their use! And yes, Italy and Mexico City have plain bans on these bags that are a menace to the environment. European retailers have been driven into a tizzy by this and they might well make that switch to banning it soon enough.

There are cities in America were plastic shopping bags are banned, such as San Francisco, Westport (Connecticut) and Edmonds (Washington) among others and as little as the 5 cent fee in Washington is enough to send the message to consumers, where consumption of the bags fell by 85% on the back of this being initiated. The only thing that remains to be seen is whether American retailers follow suit or whether they wait for their hand to be forced by regulations.

I believe stores and businesses should switch to reusable bags because that is the way to go for the future of our nation and for the sake of future generations. In fact, some stores even offer credit to customers that use reusable cloth bags and that is perhaps the best way of incentivizing the reduction of plastic bag consumption. Plastic shopping bags may not cost a lot monetarily, but they demand a heavy price from the environment. Cut back on their use for the sake of our planet, no matter if you’re a business or customer.