When we go grocery shopping here in St Louis (or anywhere else, of course) we are confronted with many choices: Where will we shop? What will we buy? How much of it will we buy? Each choice has a significant environmental impact. Will we walk, bike, or drive to the store? How often will we return in a week or a month? Will we support local farmers? Will we support organic, sustainable farming practices? Will we purchase recycled paper products? When given the choice between like items will we choose the one with the least amount of packaging? Will we eat farm raised or wild caught fish? Free range or factory raised meat? Rechargeable or single use batteries? Paper or plastic?

Even if you’ve never thought of the aforementioned choices it’s unlikely that you’ve never considered the last one. We are dutifully asked each time we check out at a grocery store whether we would prefer paper or plastic bags. Most of us make a choice based on convenience-Well I could use the paper bags in the kitchen garbage can-or-I could use the plastic bags to bring my lunch to work-or-Since I have a lot to carry plastic is easier…

But which choice is best for the environment? I’m here to tell you that it is plastic. I mean paper…yeah paper. Or is it plastic?-Read on.

According to the Wall Street Journal Americans go through 100 billion plastic shopping bags each year. A study in 1999 found that 14 million trees were cut down to produce the 10 billion paper grocery bags used in the US that year. Both plastic and paper bags use toxic chemical solutions during production. The use of these chemicals contributes to air and water pollution. Millions of gallons of these chemicals pour into our waterways each year. These chemicals remain toxic for a very long time and work their way through the food chain. Further toxicity is created as both types of bags degrade.

Given that information they both seem equally bad for us. But maybe paper is better because plastic bags are often mistaken for food in marine environments where hundreds of thousands of sea turtles, whales, and other sea animals die each year from consuming them. But then again, maybe plastic is better because paper bags offer us a double whammy in regards to global warming. Green house gas absorbing forests are cleared in order to make the bags and green house gases are emitted during production.

Who cares! Let’s just recycle both of them and we’ll have nothing to worry about. Right? Wrong. According to another Wall Street Journal study only 10-15% of plastic bags and 1-3% of paper bags are ever recycled.

Now neither option sounds good. What can we do? Well, in 2001 the Irish (in Ireland not Dogtown) consumed 1.2 billion plastic bags. This caused the implementation of the plastic bag consumption tax, or PlasTax to be introduced in 2002. The PlasTax reduced consumption by 90% thus saving 18 million liters of oil from plastic bag production. Maybe this will happen in America, maybe just Dogtown-probably neither. Thus, we are left with two choices-move to Ireland-or buy re-usable shopping bags and bring them with you whenever you shop. Each high quality reusable shopping bag that you use has the potential to eliminate hundreds or (for you shop-a-holics) thousands of paper and plastic bags over its lifetime (not your lifetime-that will be many, many, thousands more).

Go out and get your self and/or your friends and family an Earth Day (April 22) present this year. The reusable shopping bag revolution can begin…..now!

See you at the store.

Joe Mohr