Local bans force grocers, bag makers to rethink the plastic bag

WASHINGTON - The inevitable question faced by shoppers at the grocery checkout, how to tote their food home, may soon get simpler.

Faced with a growing push in some jurisdictions to ban or limit use of plastic bags, many grocers in recent months have encouraged consumers to recycle bags or bring their own. At least one, Whole Foods Market Inc., plans to do away with the bags altogether.

But many grocers report that about 90 per cent of their shoppers still ask for plastic. And the bag makers, a billion-dollar industry, oppose bans, calling instead for consumers to reuse or recycle the bags. They favour legislation that encourages the recycling of bags but not outright bans.

Plastic bags have a split personality: They draw shoppers with their durability and light weight, but environmentalists consider them a scourge, tangled in tree branches or swirling in waterways where they can be scarfed up by unsuspecting aquatic creatures.

"Taking that old familiar checkout question 'paper or plastic?' to 'what type of reusable bag do you have today?' would be great," said Kate Lowery, a spokeswoman for Whole Foods, which said Tuesday it will eliminate all plastic bags from its 270 stores in the United States, Canada and Britain by April.

Some municipalities have tried to curb the use of the bags or keep them from becoming litter. The New York City Council passed a law this month requiring stores to collect and recycle bags, following a similar law in the state of California.

Last April, Leaf Rapids, Man, a community about 980 kilometres northeast of Winnipeg, became the first community in Canada to ban plastic bags. Last spring, councillors in the resort community of Tofino, British Columbia, also voted to ban plastic bags.

And in December, Manitoba's liquor stores said they would no longer offer customers single-use plastic bags once their current supply runs out.

San Francisco passed a bag ban that took effect in November. The only plastic bags now allowed for big grocers are made of compostable material. Similar regulations are being considered by cities nationally, though proposals in places like Baltimore and Annapolis, Md., foundered last year.

The United States lags behind many other countries globally in placing limits on plastic bags. Ireland and Germany levy fees for every bag handed out by stores, and several African nations have set thickness requirements that have effectively banned the flimsy thin bags that float in the air. Earlier this month, China, the world's fastest growing economy, banned free plastic shopping bags and encouraged people to use cloth ones instead.

"This issue is not going away. It is not necessarily going to take over the plastic bag market in a year or two, but it is indicative of a real trend," said Allen Hershkowitz, director of the solid waste program at the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental group.

Plastic bags are a favourite of grocers because of their price, around two cents per bag compared to five cents for paper. Used widely since the 1970s, environmentalists now estimate between 500 billion to a trillion bags are produced annually worldwide. Made from fossil fuel-based polymers, the bags are virtually indestructible, taking years to break down and commonly ending up in landfills.