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Plastic bags
Jun. 7th, 2012 12:28 pmSo the City of Toronto is banning plastic grocery bags as of January 1.
Once we get beyond the predictable political reactions (another defeat for Mayor Ford! who is reacting in a predictably over-the-top manner at his defeat[1]!) I'm seeing a lot of people reacting with objections regarding how this will affect them. Aside from noting that other cities have gone this route without major problems, I'll just make the following observations:
1) Plastic bags at point of sale: The charge for plastic bags had been set at 5 cents. Reusable bags seem to be available wholesale at about 50-70 cents per bag (depending on type of bag) with advertising included. I understand that the cost for large-scale retailers, like Loblaws, is probably more on the order of 25 cents a bag, which makes the 99-cent price at Loblaws gravy for them. (This sort of cost level is why.I see reusable bags regularly being given out as promotional items: a 1/7 of a page advertisement in the Life section of Toronto Star, one-time, is $6,173.47. At 70 cents a bag, that's about 8,800 bags.) Plain paper bags with handles seem to run from 19 to 30 cents wholesale; plain grocery bags made of recycled paper are between 3 and 6 cents a bag, depending on strength.
There are two separate concerns here: those of the consumer, and those of the retailer.
On the consumer side, the simplest thing is always to have at least one reusable bag. The kind sold by grocery stores has the advantage of being cheap, but relatively bulky -- you can stick one inside a backpack or a briefcase, but not anything much smaller. There are nylon (about $5.00) and string mesh (about $7.50) reusable bags sold as consumer goods which cost more but bundle up into much smaller packages;[2] if you can carry a paperback or e-book reader around[3] it's just as easy to carry one of these as an all-times backup. I grant that you would need to use a nylon bag 100 times to break even with paying a nickel a bag, but it's not that large a cost; the grocers' 99-cent bags need only 20 reuses to break even, but are more bulky.[4] If you're going out to buy groceries, it should be straightforward to carry the same number of empty bags to the store as you'll need to carry groceries back from the store.
The alternative is to live with paper bags obtained at the check-out or buy reusable bags periodically as needed. The latter choice will be easier if the retailer prices the bags low.
In general, individuals who use cars are going to care less about the quality of the bags -- they have to last from the store to the car and the car to the home -- and those who are on foot will care more. In my experience deliberately car-free people are far more likely to carry bags at all times in any case, as they're more likely to be ecologically concerned.
On the retailer side, there are various possibilities.
2) Garbage bags: I've seen a lot of complaints about this. Kitchen garbage bags in batches of 100 cost about 5 cents each. Replacing grocery bags with kitchen garbage bags is a wash, financially. The same applies to bags for cat litter, scooping up dog faeces on a walk, etc.
3) Storage: I've occasionally used plastic bags to organize / separate items I've stored away. I've had to be careful, though, as I've sometimes found that I ended up using decomposable bags without knowing it, which turned into plastic flakes after a time. Better to use something else.
[1]'“It’s the people’s fault,” Ford told AM640’s John Oakley. “Honestly, sometimes I get so frustrated because the people are just sitting back listening."'
[2]I associate string bags with the mid-20th century; they weren't used for groceries (which at that time were invariably put in paper bags), but were general-purpose carrying tools, frequently used for women's dress shoes.
[3]OK, I always carry a briefcase with a small library to give myself some choice in what I'm reading. Currently the first volume of Caro's biography of Johnson, Heyer's Cotillion, Cherryh's Downbelow Station, Kress's Beggars in Spain, Abraham's A Shadow in Summer, and Dunnet's Queen's Play.
[4] On the environmental cost front, the Wikipedia entry on reusable bags indicates that a reusable bag needs to be used 171 times to break even on an environmental level, but I find that figure over-broad: I certainly suspect that the environmental cost of an organic cotton string mesh bag, a woven bag made from recycled products, a nylon bag, and a polypropylene bag are rather different. This Utne Reader article specifies a factor of 400 for canvas bags, but it seems to be going just by a comparative price factor.
Using the 171 figure from the Wikipedia article, and assuming that one reusable bag holds as much as two plastic bags, then you would need to use a reusable bag from a grocery store (price one dollar) 10 times to break even financially based on the prior fees and 86 times to break even environmentally (or about a year and a half at one grocery run a week). For a five dollar nylon bag you would need to use the bag 100 times to break even financially, but the environmental costs are probably not the same as for the grocery bag, and for a string bag the number is about 150 times. However, the latter two types of bag would presumably be used several times a week for smaller purchases, and possibly for several purchases in a single day.
The incremental cost of washing cotton bags when added to a laundry load is probably pretty small, so calculations regarding the environmental cost of keeping the bags clean is probably misplaced, since it seems to be based on washing each bag separately.
The bottom line seems to be that using a bag until it wears out will almost certainly be better for the environment and less costly financially. Collecting reusable bags is lose/lose, although you can argue that if you get all your bags as promotional giveaways there is a financial win and that you aren't providing direct feedback to encourage the production of more bags.
[5] A typical reusable grocery bag holds about twice what a disposable plastic bag does, and will also hold safely rather more than a disposable paper bag of the same size. In my experience, and allowing for variation in the make-up of a typical grocery load, a reusable bag carries about $20 worth of groceries. (Much more if I'm buying meat, and more again if I'm buying meat from Cumbrae's (I have a very nice quilted bag from Cumbrae's which provides some insulation for purchases, which I got for about $5.00.)) Most of the other things I buy cost rather more by bulk. Providing a reusable bag or a discount equivalent to its cost for every $50, say, would amount to a %1 (or less, for purchases over $50) discount and acts as a marketing strategy if the bag is marked with the retailer's advertising.
Once we get beyond the predictable political reactions (another defeat for Mayor Ford! who is reacting in a predictably over-the-top manner at his defeat[1]!) I'm seeing a lot of people reacting with objections regarding how this will affect them. Aside from noting that other cities have gone this route without major problems, I'll just make the following observations:
1) Plastic bags at point of sale: The charge for plastic bags had been set at 5 cents. Reusable bags seem to be available wholesale at about 50-70 cents per bag (depending on type of bag) with advertising included. I understand that the cost for large-scale retailers, like Loblaws, is probably more on the order of 25 cents a bag, which makes the 99-cent price at Loblaws gravy for them. (This sort of cost level is why.I see reusable bags regularly being given out as promotional items: a 1/7 of a page advertisement in the Life section of Toronto Star, one-time, is $6,173.47. At 70 cents a bag, that's about 8,800 bags.) Plain paper bags with handles seem to run from 19 to 30 cents wholesale; plain grocery bags made of recycled paper are between 3 and 6 cents a bag, depending on strength.
There are two separate concerns here: those of the consumer, and those of the retailer.
On the consumer side, the simplest thing is always to have at least one reusable bag. The kind sold by grocery stores has the advantage of being cheap, but relatively bulky -- you can stick one inside a backpack or a briefcase, but not anything much smaller. There are nylon (about $5.00) and string mesh (about $7.50) reusable bags sold as consumer goods which cost more but bundle up into much smaller packages;[2] if you can carry a paperback or e-book reader around[3] it's just as easy to carry one of these as an all-times backup. I grant that you would need to use a nylon bag 100 times to break even with paying a nickel a bag, but it's not that large a cost; the grocers' 99-cent bags need only 20 reuses to break even, but are more bulky.[4] If you're going out to buy groceries, it should be straightforward to carry the same number of empty bags to the store as you'll need to carry groceries back from the store.
The alternative is to live with paper bags obtained at the check-out or buy reusable bags periodically as needed. The latter choice will be easier if the retailer prices the bags low.
In general, individuals who use cars are going to care less about the quality of the bags -- they have to last from the store to the car and the car to the home -- and those who are on foot will care more. In my experience deliberately car-free people are far more likely to carry bags at all times in any case, as they're more likely to be ecologically concerned.
On the retailer side, there are various possibilities.
- Charging for plain reusable bags at cost would ensure expenses are covered and would avoid overly irritating consumers. This would probably amount to a similar charge to that currently levied for plastic bags.
- Charging for reusable bags at a profit creates a profit centre, but is less attractive to consumers (unless everybody is making a profit, in which case the price-with-profit will just be seen as "the price").
- Absorbing the cost of paper bags would basically be a continuation of what retailers used to do uniformly before the introduction of plastic bags. Many larger retailers or chains (e.g. department stores) still do this with paper bags with handles and advertising designs. (Note that back in the day grocers who used paper bags also provided smaller plastic bags for wrapping meat and frozen goods in, to prevent the bags from disintegrating with the condensation; the equivalent would probably be allowed even under the new regime, much as produce bags will be.)
- Giving away reusable bags printed with advertising with a minimum purchase is another alternative.[5] This is most likely to be attractive to stores with a strong brand, and less attractive to, say, convenience stores, both because they don't tend to advertise in that way and because the purchase size is typically small.
- Selling reusable bags with non-advertising designs is, of course, already a practice in some stores: that's the main source of nylon and string bags. There may, however, be a broader market of making bags with T-shirt style slogans available for purchase at a checkout.
2) Garbage bags: I've seen a lot of complaints about this. Kitchen garbage bags in batches of 100 cost about 5 cents each. Replacing grocery bags with kitchen garbage bags is a wash, financially. The same applies to bags for cat litter, scooping up dog faeces on a walk, etc.
3) Storage: I've occasionally used plastic bags to organize / separate items I've stored away. I've had to be careful, though, as I've sometimes found that I ended up using decomposable bags without knowing it, which turned into plastic flakes after a time. Better to use something else.
[1]'“It’s the people’s fault,” Ford told AM640’s John Oakley. “Honestly, sometimes I get so frustrated because the people are just sitting back listening."'
[2]I associate string bags with the mid-20th century; they weren't used for groceries (which at that time were invariably put in paper bags), but were general-purpose carrying tools, frequently used for women's dress shoes.
[3]OK, I always carry a briefcase with a small library to give myself some choice in what I'm reading. Currently the first volume of Caro's biography of Johnson, Heyer's Cotillion, Cherryh's Downbelow Station, Kress's Beggars in Spain, Abraham's A Shadow in Summer, and Dunnet's Queen's Play.
[4] On the environmental cost front, the Wikipedia entry on reusable bags indicates that a reusable bag needs to be used 171 times to break even on an environmental level, but I find that figure over-broad: I certainly suspect that the environmental cost of an organic cotton string mesh bag, a woven bag made from recycled products, a nylon bag, and a polypropylene bag are rather different. This Utne Reader article specifies a factor of 400 for canvas bags, but it seems to be going just by a comparative price factor.
Using the 171 figure from the Wikipedia article, and assuming that one reusable bag holds as much as two plastic bags, then you would need to use a reusable bag from a grocery store (price one dollar) 10 times to break even financially based on the prior fees and 86 times to break even environmentally (or about a year and a half at one grocery run a week). For a five dollar nylon bag you would need to use the bag 100 times to break even financially, but the environmental costs are probably not the same as for the grocery bag, and for a string bag the number is about 150 times. However, the latter two types of bag would presumably be used several times a week for smaller purchases, and possibly for several purchases in a single day.
The incremental cost of washing cotton bags when added to a laundry load is probably pretty small, so calculations regarding the environmental cost of keeping the bags clean is probably misplaced, since it seems to be based on washing each bag separately.
The bottom line seems to be that using a bag until it wears out will almost certainly be better for the environment and less costly financially. Collecting reusable bags is lose/lose, although you can argue that if you get all your bags as promotional giveaways there is a financial win and that you aren't providing direct feedback to encourage the production of more bags.
[5] A typical reusable grocery bag holds about twice what a disposable plastic bag does, and will also hold safely rather more than a disposable paper bag of the same size. In my experience, and allowing for variation in the make-up of a typical grocery load, a reusable bag carries about $20 worth of groceries. (Much more if I'm buying meat, and more again if I'm buying meat from Cumbrae's (I have a very nice quilted bag from Cumbrae's which provides some insulation for purchases, which I got for about $5.00.)) Most of the other things I buy cost rather more by bulk. Providing a reusable bag or a discount equivalent to its cost for every $50, say, would amount to a %1 (or less, for purchases over $50) discount and acts as a marketing strategy if the bag is marked with the retailer's advertising.
