Bring back brown paper bags to save the world

Brown paper bags – that’s my contribution to the great green debate.

This solution popped into my head when I opened the cupboard door under the sink to be confronted with a mass of carrier bags growing at the rate of a B movie monster preparing to take over the world.

I try to re-use plastic bags, but when I opened that door I realised the point of no return had come. There was no way I could ever use that many carrier bags and for everyone I do re-use, another four seem to appear.

This is because you can’t buy anything these days without it being bundled into a carrier bag. Purchase an item you can carry in one hand and it is immediately thrust into a plastic bag – try and refuse the bag and you get the look that says ‘who is this lunatic?’

And before you suggest the bag-for-life approach, believe me I do that and still come back with another handful of unwanted bags. That’s because even if you trot off to Tesco clutching your sturdy pre-prepared shopping bags, you’ve still got to pop your vegetables into little see through plastic bags. And thus the carrier bag monster under the sink continues to grow.

Why is this happening? Plastic is terrible for the environment but we just can’t stop using more and more of it. Paper is easy to recycle but we’ve abandoned those friendly brown bags in favour of the carrier bag monster under the sink.

To test my theory I contacted the green expert Dave Hampton, aka the Carbon Coach. I asked him if supermarkets switching from plastic to brown paper would make a big difference.

He replied: ‘Yes, is the short answer. I think the world switched to plastic so they could be re-used more than paper. Then we forgot and binned them each trip. Re-use of bags is good too, better than recycling in fact - so a good strong shopping bag (like gran used to have) is a must.’

And don’t think this isn’t your problem. Our addiction to plastic is soon going to start costing us dear, as we won’t meet EU recycling and landfill targets, the Government will be fined and the taxpayer will end up footing the bill.

So before that happens shoppers should rise up and demand a brown paper bag revolution. Which supermarket do you think will have the nerve to go first?

- Simon Lambert, This is Money

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Comments

[jessica]

Is there any thing about if we shouldnt ban them?

[geoff]

I think supermarkets will use the "green" excuse to benefit their bottom line. If they considered the customer first, then surely they could change to paper bags, just like most supermarkets in USA, or use starch based bags as supplied by the UK company Stanelco.
Also, if CO2 is so harmful to the environment, why have the supermarkets never banned the sale of fizzy drinks?
Maybe profit is more important than being green!

[Megan]

I tell myself this.. there is something else we can do! What I don't understand is why there's so many people that don't care about our environment. They think their just one person who doesn't matter and cannot make a difference. The world's so caught up in war and can't see the big picture. We all live in the world and every move somebody makes can either help or destroy it. Why haven't our leaders taken control. Every little move can help such as using paper bags when shopping. I'm not giving up there's still more to being done. :)

[Ruth]

This government legislates for everything else, why doesn't it legislate for recyclable and biodegradable packaging, including paper instead of plastic bags? Also, if packaging were limited to a very few varieties, this would help councils reach their recycling/rubbish reduction targets. My council will not collect any plastic in the regular recycling rubbish collection, and I can only recycle plastic bags by driving a long way out of my usual daily round.

[T. Bishop]

Where have all these bags come from? You can't blame the public for this recycling nightmare, it is the shops and manufacturers that have created this. I remember going shopping with my mum - she had a wicker shopping basket and if anything was put in a bag it was a paper one, usually though she just put everything straight in her basket! And it wasn't that many years ago!

[Patricia Whittaker]

I always take my own bags--you get points at Tesco for bag reuse , and you know what points mean.

[Angus]

I agree, we all have to reduce our consumption of bags. Grocery store's employees try to separate the items into perishables, non perishables, and I told them just put everything in one big bag, I am only 2 minutes from home anyway.

[soumya]

what I dont get is this - environmentalists say dont use plastic, use paper instead. but paper is made from trees. so essentially u have to fell a tree to make paper. isnt that a bad thing too?

i think the world should just move towards greater enviro consciuosness. when u use plastic, dont take another bag till this one is all gone. use paper only for essentials. and no diapers and paper towels are not essentials. and recycle paper. the second part is corporates have to start playing a role. if companies asked employees to follow these rules in the work place we would see far less paper wasted.
i can see thats where we are going. previously there used to be only non profits in the enviro business now companies like greendimes,
terrapass.com etc have come to see this as profitable business. that can only be a good thing.

[Penny, Guildford]

When I go shopping to a supermarket, I do the strangest thing - you will hardly believe I do this thing and it has huge rarity value. I will share my quirky behaviour with you and then you can join me in helping to save the world! Are you ready? I TAKE MY OWN BAGS! They enormous, long-lasting, stand up nicely in the car bags, made of some amazing durable material and I only need two of them rather than 6 plastic carrier bags. I hope this catches on!

[SuzyP]

They also use the same type of paper bag on the continent!! Ban the Bag!!

[Jane Adams]

Grocery stores in the US use paper bags rather than plastic so why can't we?

[Ade]

I find re-using from the under-sink bag mountain tricky because I mostly do my shopping on the hop - on the way back from work or whatever. (I do try to bung everything in my rucksack where possible.)

I try to make up for that by using them for every other conceivable purpose - but that still means sticking most of them in the recycling.

I'd like to know how effective the recycling is though. You hear lots of stories about how only a fraction of what you bung into the bags actually gets recycled. And can carrier bag plastic really be 'recycled' anyway?

[Chris Worth]

I re-cycle mine by using them as liners for the kitchen pedal bin.

[Jean]

OK, be prepared to be treated like a loonie, does it matter? In my local market, the stallholders call me the lady who doesn't want a bag thank you. Who knows, it may catch on.