Vail Daily 04.05.08 Will “paper or plastic?” soon follow “smoking or non-smoking?” onto the list of once-ubiquitous, now-obsolete questions? Could be if others follow the lead of Durango Natural Foods, which earlier this month announced that, starting in May, it will phase out plastic bags and charge 20 cents for paper bags. Durango supermarkets trying to get customers to bring their own bags…
As of Oct. 2008, IKEA will no longer offer disposable plastic bags at checkout. No, paper bags won't replace the plastic bags. Customers will need to bring their own bag, buy an IKEA reusable bag for 59 cents, or go bagless.
"After Earth Day 2007, the (reusable) bags turned up on everyone's list as one of the top ways to save the environment," says Vincent Cobb, founder of the Chicago-based Reusablebags.com, a line of eco-friendly products that includes grocery totes and produce bags. "They're right up there with eco-friendly water bottles and incandescent lights." And yes, using the bags is a good start, he adds, but not if you just buy them on a whim or out of guilt – and then don't use them. "It needs to become a habit," he says.
We’ve all experienced frustration at the checkout counter when a bagger uses a different plastic bag for each item or even worse, double bags our groceries for “extra support”. Now that the practice of using reusable bags is catching on, it seems that the new common challenge is confusion at the checkout. Improved training on the part of stores will help, as will well-designed reusable bags that streamline the process.
Our Take: Several readers’ comments brought up the fact that the el cheapo “99 cent” reusable shopping bags have a tendency to fall apart --one of a number of problems associated with the explosion of “freebie” reusable shopping bags being produced by many retailers. Our advice is to resist accumulating cheap bags and invest in a handful of well-designed, attractive, durable ones that you will actually use for years to come.
The movement to curb plastic bag use and production is gaining in popularity because of cities like San Francisco- the first US city to prohibit large stores from distributing disposable plastic bags. Now the plastics industry is fighting tooth and nail to prevent the trend from spreading across the United States. Many attempts at bans have already been prevented, usually ending up as voluntary recycling drives instead.
Our Take: While recycling has its place, recycling won’t solve the problem… An item that really stood out in this article was the shocking information that an amendment prohibiting local governments from imposing fees on plastic bags was snuck into an otherwise benign mandatory recycling law passed in California. This is a bold move we assume will be overturned at some point …
View Good Morning America Now's segment on BYO-Bag. With a focus on how to remember your reusable shopping bags, many of the samples featured were from our store. Guest Olivia Zaleski "really recommend(s) looking at that website. They have everything for everyone."
On a recent Sunday, I stood in a long line at the Dupont Circle farmers market. At the front was a young woman, juggling nearly a dozen apples as she tried to hand them to the cashier to be weighed. "Here, let me get you a bag," the cashier suggested. "No. No," the woman answered harriedly. "I brought my own!" The cashier glanced at the growing line of impatient patrons. And the young woman turned around, too, a pained look spreading across her face. "Okay. But then take them out. I can put them in here." Pause. "Really, I really don't want one."
It was, perhaps, a sign of the times. The plastic bag, that staple of modern life, is about to become radioactive.
Judith Morton fits the profile of an eco-friendly consumer: She worries about depleting natural resources, she recycles when she can, and she has three or four canvas shopping bags sitting at home.
Despite her good intentions, Morton's reusable shopping bags rarely leave her house, meaning that she still accumulates dozens of flimsy plastic grocery bags.
While thousands of shoppers have shifted to BYOB -- bring your own bag -- in lieu of answering the old "paper or plastic" question, many consumers struggle to make the switch.
"Our biggest concern with reusable bags is that people will get them and not use them," said Vincent Cobb, founder and president of Reusablebags.com, a Chicago-based Web site that promotes and sells reusable bags. "You're not going to fix the problem overnight. We've been programmed to shop this way. What's hard is not giving up."
New York Times 02.02.08 & International Herald Tribune 01.31.08
In 2002, Ireland passed a tax on plastic bags...Within weeks, plastic bag use dropped 94 percent. Drowning in a sea of plastic bags, countries from China to Australia, cities from San Francisco to New York have in the past year adopted a flurry of laws and regulations to address the problem, so far with mixed success.
After five years of the plastic bag tax, Ireland has changed the image of cloth bags, a feat advocates hope to achieve in the United States. Vincent Cobb, the president of reusablebags.com, who founded the company four years ago to promote the issue, said: “Using cloth bags has been seen as an extreme act of a crazed environmentalist. We want it to be seen as something a smart, progressive person would carry.”
Comment: Ireland has paved the way. What other countries, cities or states will step up, find the political will and follow suit?
Whether it's about peer pressure, a deepening environmental conscience or a head start on the upscale grocery chain's campaign to ban plastic bags by Earth Day, far more customers are carrying their foodstuffs home in paper and reusable cloth sacks.
"It kind of blew me away with how quickly it took off," says Vincent Cobb, founder of Chicago-based ReusableBags.com, a cloth-bag retailer that has been advocating on the issue for the past five years.
It's impossible to count how many customers are reusing bags, but area retailers say they've seen an uptick in recent months. Plastic bags are an easy target for retailers trying to go green, since they take oil to make and fill landfills. But some experts say that the practice will stick around even after the fad wears off.
"There's a trendiness to it, but the underlying fundamentals are there," said Vincent Cobb of reusablebags.com. "There's something permanent in the society moving forward. And there will start to be a little stigma to the plastic bags."
New York City is requiring new measures to increase the recyling of plastic shopping bags. China has announced it's banning them. Such measures are making reusable bags a big business. Host Tess Vigeland talks with Vincent Cobb, president of Reusablebags.com.
Check out this YouTube video that captures the essence of the mania surrounding last summer's arrival of Anya Hindmarch's much touted "I'm not a Plastic Bag" tote bag. (Great slogan - but a lousy reusable shopping bag.) This 2 minute video tells a simple story of absurdity. The following viewer comment says it all "Wow! It's amazing what we Americans will do..."
Once upon a time, the question was plastic or paper, which had its own somewhat uncertain calculus of virtue and waste. Now, it has begun to dawn on people that you don’t need either. Plastic bags are not the biggest single issue out there, and no expert on global warming would suggest solutions rest wholly with decisions made by individual consumers. On the other hand, it is estimated that the United States goes through 100 billion plastic bags a year, which take an estimated 12 million barrels of oil to produce and last almost forever. And if individual decisions can’t solve the problem, the wrong ones can certainly compound it.
After the plastic water bottle,you
couldn't do much better than the plastic shopping bag as a symbol of American
consumerism run amok. We go through 380 billion a year. An estimated 5.2% get
recycled; in landfills, they could last 1,000 years. Bags are made from oil,
and our bag habit costs us 1.6 billion gallons each year. That last statistic,
and its link to global warming, is starting to drive change.
See how four high-profile programs rate: Walmart,
Target, Whole Foods and Ikea.
In the wake of San Francisco's recent ban on plastic grocery bags, other jurisdictions from Los Angeles to New Jersey are considering restrictions on the use of plastic bags. And since last summer, California law has required all large supermarkets to offer reusable bags for sale. Meanwhile, worries about climate change and marine pollution are leading more individual consumers throughout the country to answer "none of the above" when faced with the cliched choice of "Paper or plastic?" "The market has absolutely exploded," said Vincent Cobb, founder of ReusableBags.com, an online store that has sold a wide selection of grocery totes since 2002. "If you asked me two years ago, there were dozens of reusable bags. Now there are a hundred or more."
The Wall Street Journal’s Catalog Critic critiques reusable shopping bags: “we wanted lightweight, strong bags spacious enough for lots of locally grown produce and organic spelt flakes. But -- this was harder -- we also sought chic sacks with no strident slogans. To test our five candidates, we brought them to the store and loaded them with half-gallons of milk, canned goods, a baby watermelon -- the usual.”
Best Overall, the Acme Workhorse 1500, was styled like a typical plastic grocery sack. Of nearly weightless nylon, it folded into a tiny rectangle for storage.
Our take: We are very proud to have our Acme Workhorse bag selected as "Best Overall" -- we spent over 2 yrs developing and refining this bag - as with all bags we develop, we really sweat the details! Since its introduction back in early 2003 it has been one of our most popular bags and has inspired lots of knockoffs. Look for more outstanding products and innovations from our award winning line of Acme Bags!
Carrefour's reusable bag campaign that was launched on February 26th, 2007 in the UAE, aimed at creating awareness on the impact of plastic bags that pollute the ecosystem and encouraging shoppers to reduce their use, has registered total sales of 600,000 reusable plastic bags.
Available at checkout counters as an alternative to plastic bags, the Carrefour reusable bag are sold at cost price. "If they are damaged at any point, the bags can be replaced at any Carrefour outlet free of charge," added Jean Luc Graziato, Vice President of Marketing and Sourcing at MAF Hypermarkets (Carrefour).
Our Take: Here is an example of a growing trend among retailers - virtually giving away massive quantities of cheap reusable bags (even plastic bags in this case!) as a major tactic to address the problem. There is a host of problems associated with these kinds of "freebies". The primary one being - are consumers actually going to use these cheap shopping bags or are they going to sit and start accumulating in people's closets? (This is what happened in Australia). In essence we've merely replaced one "use and toss" bag with another! Our advice is to own a handful of attractive, high-quality, bags that you really like and will use. Looking for suggestions? Visit our store
When I finally made the decision six years ago to begin to use reusable bags I thought it would be easy. In fact, it was far from simple.
Look around your home for some bags that you can bring to the store. Make it a family project to decorate your reusable shopping bags. Local grocery stores and other local stores sell affordable and reusable handle bags. Try it, you just might like it!
Concerned over the environmental damage caused by the billions of paper and plastic shopping bags discarded every year, shopper Denise Miller simply brings her own canvas bag to fill with groceries and carry home. She may not be in the minority for long.
With environmentalists targeting plastic shopping bags as a massive source of litter and waste, a growing number of cities and nations are passing laws and levies to reduce their use.
In the United States, the trend is being pushed by another simple reality: while certain forms of plastic packaging would be hard to do without, plastic shopping bags are easily replaceable. Vincent Cobbs, founder and president of reusablebags.com, a Web-based business which sells environmentally friendly alternatives to disposable shopping bags, drinking bottles and other products, said business is up 20 percent in the last two months, with most people buying canvas shopping bags.
These eco-friendly totes take a load off your mind, arms. If green is the new black, then a reusable tote is the new must-have designer handbag. Of course, the Anya Hindmarch "I'm Not A Plastic Bag" tote is out of the question. Fear not. The reusable-bag movement is in full swing, with options for everyone from trendy fashionistas to serious eco-friendly shoppers."There's a lot more out there than the straight-ahead canvas bag," says Vincent Cobb, founder of reusablebags .com.
There is universal agreement when it comes to features to consider when looking for the right reusable bag: personal style, a wide-enough base, sturdy fabric and an ability to be compactly stored when heading out for a shopping spree. The bags sold by ReusableBags.com are "fully green, all the way down to the ink used to print the slogan," says Cobb.
Our Take: The thrust of the story is practical bags versus fashionista bags - of the hundreds of options of reusable bags out there, the editors endorsed a total of 3, all of which were from our proprietary Acme bags line. Our bags were considered "seriously green" and "perfect for the activist."
