Grocery Bag Do's and Don'ts

We don't really need grocery bags, or most of the other plastic and paper bags we collect on our daily shopping rounds.

How can I be so sure we don't need these ubiquitous sacks that accumulate so readily in kitchen drawers, hall closets and garage storage bins? Because when we have to pay for them, even just a few cents, we stop using them. And we manage to get our milk and bread and miscellaneous goods from store to car to house anyway.

The Sierra Club, among other groups, has weighed in on the paper-vs.-plastic question and decided that when it comes to environmental impact, it's a tie. Plastic bags take less energy to make and recycle and they take up less room in landfills.

But paper bags start out as trees, a renewable resource, while plastic bags are made from petroleum. And paper bags are less likely to end up in landfills because more municipal recycling programs take them.

Moreover, cities and chain stores looking to have an environmental impact tend to focus on cutting down on plastic bags because they're far more common. They carry 80% of our groceries, up from 5% in 1982, the Sierra Club reports.

We might think that we can't live without them, but when Ireland levied a tax on plastic bags, usage dropped almost entirely within a few weeks, according to a New York Times report (NYT).

And you can't credit that transition to Europeans simply being more willing to go without than we convenience-addicted Americans. The same thing happened when Ikea began charging a mere nickel for plastic bags in the U.S. last March. The store aimed to cut plastic bag use by 50%, but 92% of customers began buying a reusable Ikea bag, bringing their own or simply carrying their Gruva lamps and Sommar candles in their hands. Ikea has since gotten rid of their plastic bags entirely.