Plastic bags in cultures and communities

Let's think for a moment about plastic bags.  

Their widespread (or not) use is very much a cultural construct:  A recent National Geographic article points out that 

"In Denmark, which passed the world’s first bag tax in 1993, residents use, on average, four plastic bags per year. By contrast, in the United States, which is the largest generator, per capita, of plastic packaging waste, Americans use almost one bag per person per day."

The Covid-19 pandemic has altered our perceptions of how "necessary" these bags are -- and largely in an erroneous  and misguided way.  Plastic bags do not reduce -- and actually could increase -- transmission of disease.  In particular,  an experiment recently published in The New England Journal of Medicine indicates that the coronavirus might actually persist longer on plastics than on other materials like cardboard.

Plastic bags have become, for me, a symbol and a tool for institutional racism.  By this, I mean that plastic bags came into widespread use for reasons of institutional and economic profit, and that profit tends automatically to continue to benefit corporations and people who have economic privilege, while worsening the lives of people who don't have have that privilege. 

We know that plastic bags have terrible ecological negatives.  Their lightweight nature means they blow away and get tangled in trees; they are among the top five items found in river/beach clean-ups.  They shred easily, and are therefore a major source of micro-plastic in our rivers, oceans, and even deserts.  Sea creatures, cattle, and even elephants are sickened by eating them.  

But these bags also have terrible, adverse effects on people and communities.   When I think about institutional racism, I think about how many communities have tried to ban bags, and how those effects have been opposed and often thwarted by lobbyists for plastic bag manufacturers.   I think about how many communities (in the U.S. and globally) have fought against landfills moving into their areas, and how garbage disposal poisons the groundwater and fouls the air of people who don't have the clout to make it stop.  Plastic bags are temporarily convenient for a shopper, perhaps; they might be seen as a financial expediency for a merchant; but the real benefit accrues to the companies that produce and sell these bags.  And we all use them at the expense and detriment of the people who do not have the power to oppose the continued degradation of their own economies, ecologies, and personal well-being.

Caption reads: "a man lifts a sack of recyclable materials
at the Dandora dumpsite in Nairobi, one of the largest
and most toxic in Africa". 
[Benedicted Desrus, National Geographic]

One of the "institutional" aspects of this phenomenon is that it's very hard to opt out. When a local merchant hands you a bag whether you want it or not; when the grocers explain that they need to wrap their lettuce in plastic bags for sanitary reasons; when your professional society says they have to package their journals in plastic to keep them from getting damaged in the mail . . . all of these are institutional and cultural pressures to accept plastic. 

I think about this institutional pressure as the country turns to face, head-on, the thorny and ugly issue of past slave ownership.   If everybody else in the society owned slaves, the question goes, how culpable was a person who owned slaves?  (And note that by "everybody", people mean "people with the economic and social prestige to make such choices", not "everybody").   If everybody around you is using plastic bags that end up poisoning the natural environment and endangering the health of other people -- people who have had landfills and dumps thrust upon them without their consent -- how culpable are those of us who use plastic bags?

Staten Island landfill (Image from the article, 

Landfill health study: Did the dump make us sick?)

It's hard to know how to respond.  We want to take care of ourselves in these troubling times.  And yet, I want to remind us all that plastic is not just a personal choice; plastic has societal impacts that reach far beyond us, and I believe we ought to accept some responsibility for mitigating those impacts.

Here's just a quick reminder of the most effective strategies for avoiding plastic use, in decreasing order of effectiveness.

1. Refuse.   Do your best not to take the bag in the first place.  This is harder than it sounds (and it might sound hard, but it's harder yet).  
2. Reduce.  I'm enough of a realist to know we're unlikely to get to 0.  My newspaper carrier still gives me plastic bags about 50 times a year, when the weather looks wet, but the other 300 days of the year I get my newspaper naked, so I'll take that as a good start.
3. Reuse:  For example, instead of buying food storage bags, look to bags you accidentally got some other way (cereal bags work great in the freezer).  Or, instead of buying trash bags, use dog food bags, bags that merchants incomprehensibly sent with their boxed packages, etc.
4. Recycle.   Grocery stores often have bag recycling places.  Plastic bags are ironically both the most recycl-able and also the least-often recycled of plastics.  (But remember, this is actually "down-cycling", not actual re-cycling).  

Please DO recycle:

·       Grocery & retail bags

·       Newspaper bags

·       The outer wrapping from napkins, Paper Towels, Bathroom Tissue & Diapers

·       Bread bags

·       Dry cleaning bags

·       The outer wrapping from bulk beverages

·       Produce bags

·       All clean, dry bags Labeled #2 or #4

 

Please DO NOT recycle:

·       Food or cling wrap

·       Prepackaged food bags (including frozen food bags & pre-washed salad bags)

·       Plastic Film That has Been Painted or has Excessive Glue Residue