Banning the Bag
Irish Spurn Plastic Bags
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/02/world/europe/02bags.html?pagewanted=1&_r=2&ei=5088&en=ca6ee794a0a88d50&ex=1359694800&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss
San Francisco Bans the Bag
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2007/03/28/MNGDROT5QN1.DTL
The use and distribution of the ubiquitous plastic bag is being called into question in multiple major cities. A cursory search reveals that other metropolitan areas in multiple nations have bans in place or plans to implement them.
Thinking of switching to paper? Before we crown paper bags the king of green, consider the fossil fuel use, green house gas emissions and materials consumption that goes into manufacturing paper bags as well.
http://www.reusablebags.com/facts.php?id=7
(note, this source has its own agenda, remember to look critically at where you find your information)
So what's the answer? Re-usable tote bags? Wagons? Shop and consume less? Recycle the bags? There are many options to be weighed.
In addition to the position taken is the need to design, implement, distribute and enforce the decision. In all cases, there are several players in the equation.
1. The people
2. The government
3. The corporations
4. The media organizations that distribute the information
Decisions such as the bag ban, similar to water restrictions in periods of drought, require a lifestyle change in order to make them successful as a policy. This requires buy-in from all levels of the strata.
Systems theorist Donella Meadows writes about leverage points, or places to intervene in a system. (see additional resources for article) How can design use this idea to find the leverage points inside the example of the plastic versus paper debate to make an effective change?
Or perhaps, intervention isn't necessary at all, by designer, or any of the four mentioned groups.
What is your position on design and policy decisions that require lifestyle changes to implement? As a designer, where do you fit into this structure?
You may use the bag debate as the framework for your position, but you must include at least one source not mentioned in this post to support your stance.
additional resources:
Leverage Points: Places to Intervene in a System
Donella Meadows
Complexity, Problem Solving, and Sustainable Societies
by Joseph A. Tainter, 1996
http://dieoff.org/page134.htm
Worldwatch Institute
http://www.worldwatch.org/node/1499
Pro-bag: Plastic Bag Makers File Suit Against Oak. Bag Ban
http://cbs5.com/seenon/consumer/plastic.bag.recycling.2.458279.html
http://www.plasticbagrecycling.org/00.0/
Plastic Shopping Bag Quilt by California artist Gioia Fonda
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/02/world/europe/02bags.html?pagewanted=1&_r=2&ei=5088&en=ca6ee794a0a88d50&ex=1359694800&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss
San Francisco Bans the Bag
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2007/03/28/MNGDROT5QN1.DTL
The use and distribution of the ubiquitous plastic bag is being called into question in multiple major cities. A cursory search reveals that other metropolitan areas in multiple nations have bans in place or plans to implement them.
Thinking of switching to paper? Before we crown paper bags the king of green, consider the fossil fuel use, green house gas emissions and materials consumption that goes into manufacturing paper bags as well.
http://www.reusablebags.com/facts.php?id=7
(note, this source has its own agenda, remember to look critically at where you find your information)
So what's the answer? Re-usable tote bags? Wagons? Shop and consume less? Recycle the bags? There are many options to be weighed.
In addition to the position taken is the need to design, implement, distribute and enforce the decision. In all cases, there are several players in the equation.
1. The people
2. The government
3. The corporations
4. The media organizations that distribute the information
Decisions such as the bag ban, similar to water restrictions in periods of drought, require a lifestyle change in order to make them successful as a policy. This requires buy-in from all levels of the strata.
Systems theorist Donella Meadows writes about leverage points, or places to intervene in a system. (see additional resources for article) How can design use this idea to find the leverage points inside the example of the plastic versus paper debate to make an effective change?
Or perhaps, intervention isn't necessary at all, by designer, or any of the four mentioned groups.
What is your position on design and policy decisions that require lifestyle changes to implement? As a designer, where do you fit into this structure?
You may use the bag debate as the framework for your position, but you must include at least one source not mentioned in this post to support your stance.
additional resources:
Leverage Points: Places to Intervene in a System
Donella Meadows
Complexity, Problem Solving, and Sustainable Societies
by Joseph A. Tainter, 1996
http://dieoff.org/page134.htm
Worldwatch Institute
http://www.worldwatch.org/node/1499
Pro-bag: Plastic Bag Makers File Suit Against Oak. Bag Ban
http://cbs5.com/seenon/consumer/plastic.bag.recycling.2.458279.html
http://www.plasticbagrecycling.org/00.0/
Plastic Shopping Bag Quilt by California artist Gioia Fonda
It Has been said there is no rite and wrong answer to this sort of a question, there are only answers that stand out as far superior.
There are certain things in the United States of America that Citizens have come to expect from living in our great free country. These same things that Americans expect are provided by businesses as a strategy to make customers have a better experience and encourage buyers to think they are receiving a great deal by providing something, anything for free.
Among other things Americas expect free bathrooms, complimentary water with lots of free ice, free refills of soft drinks, and finally free grocery bags when they purchase groceries. Grocery stores like to give you free samples, and free cookies, and especially free plastic bags, which cost the store about 2 cents per bag. The business is happy to pay that fee for customers because it makes the customer feel cared about and feels as though the store wants them to come back again. They use this cheep item as a convenient gift to those who shop at their store. What is left is a no value throwaway bag that serves a simple purpose.
This Lack of value is where the problem begins. When people don?t care about something they take it for granted, throw it away, or litter. This is not preferred, environmental enthusiasts will complain that landfills are growing and the bags are ending up alongside roads and riverbeds.
Some people suggest taxation as a solution for any problem. This is a bad idea. This happened back during the Revolutionary war. The government taxed paper, stamps, coffee, sugar, and when they got around to taxing tea there was an entire uproar in Boston geared to get rid of the taxes. Otherwise known as the Boston Tea party. Don?t tax this item; some people don?t use this item. Yeah, yeah, John Donne?s, ?No man is an Island Entire to?blah blah,? but also not every one is the same so why treat them the same, most people don?t litter and some recycle so don?t make everyone pay tax for the bags they will not want to pay it, and we already have too many taxes like that i.e. public school tax that home and private schooled people have to pay and social security tax that young aren?t receiving benefits from.
I along with most Americas find it to be simply unreasonable for the government to outlaw a store from giving something away for free. That is the point of the free enterprise set up here in the States where the government does not control businesses and the government does not force the plastic bag producers to shut down. If the government tries to take away citizens bags completely I predict a repeat of the tea party.
The great thing about plastic is its ability to be easily recycled. And the best thing about plastic bags is the way they are free and in abundance for your every need. They will rarely be used twice because they are prone to holes and tears, hence the lack of quality. But with recycling, being meted, and remade into anything else plastic, even a new round of plastic bags, these plastic bags are perfect for the purpose they serve. But again the problem is people trash them and litter instead of recycling. Therefore conclusion, change people behavior rather than just tax them for the clean up. Give the users of the bag the responsibility to clean up after themselves, don?t just pay someone else to pick up other peoples bags.
How do we make someone responsible for their bags?
In my time here on Earth, I have found that if you want to change a person?s behavior the easiest way to influence them is monetarily. Why did people oppose buying bags for even 3 cents per bag, that isn?t very much but it is the principle behind it. People hate when you take their money. This same theory can be applied to encouraging people to collect and recycle their bags. There is a super simple solution.
Offer a bounty on plastic grocery bags. That is about as simple as it gets. Just give a reward for every bag brought back into the store. When you assign a value to an object that has no true value, people take care of it more. Why do you take really good care of the green pieces of paper in your Wallet?
All that has to be done to fix this problem of people not recycling is the giving of incentive. Just something small only 5 cents for every bag returned. The moment money is given to people for returning bags, multiple things will happen. Most people will just start making an effort to save their personal bags to collect the reward to help the cost of their next round of groceries. Others will let their children collect the family?s bags and claim rewards for themselves; kids love that stuff. Of course as always some will not care about the reward and still throw them away. This portion of societies bags will be taken care of by other people who make a hobby out of collecting bags. They will drive up to the store with a U-Haul brimming over with the recyclable material to get every last bit of the reward. This little reward will cause people to go out of their way to pick up a loose bag so that when the roads have bags along the side of them and the riverbeds get lined with them, someone who wants a little extra cash will come by and collect.
Now you ask, ?Where would those 5 cent rewards come from, Lucas??
Of course it came from the initial purchase of the products. When you are initially purchase groceries the prices of all the products would be raised by fractions of cents. This money collected from all the products bought would be set aside to become the reward for bags returned. People would still not mind shopping at the store because the extra money for the bags is not noticeable through all the products. But people would be willing to make more of an effort to keep track of the bags so they can be returned. Other enthusiasts would spend time collecting their bags along with other people bags and turn them all in to receive the rewards.
With peoples basic instinct against paying for something that they expect should be free but a lesser disgust against giving money that they can get back at anytime just by bringing the bags back, customers will know it is for a good cause and accept with little contempt. The customers will be coming back to buy more groceries anyway so they would just return the bags on the next trip. Also the stores that act as a collection point for the bags would receive the extra business by drawing more people who come to collect the bounty money for the bags and going ahead and shopping there.
This same idea was used in Iowa and Michigan for the collection of aluminum soda cans, commonly known there as ?Pop?. With a survey of whether or not people bring back their soda cans for the return deposit of 5 or 10 cents each 40% reported they always do, and 32% said they donate the cans to charities that collect the cans to raise money for themselves.
All in all, instead of banning a very convenient carrier of groceries that people don?t mind if it tears, or forcing people to start carrying expensive cloth bags everywhere they go just offer a friendly incentive to help the plastic bags to find their way back into the loving arms of the grocery stores to be handed over to the recycling centers.
Among other things I think that America should make laws preserving free bathrooms, complimentary water with lots of free ice, free refills on soda, and finally free grocery bags when customers purchase groceries.
References:
http://earth911.org/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recycling
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intolerable_acts
http://www.constantchatter.com/forum/showthread.php?t=39900
http://www.freedomplasticbags.com/
http://www.plasticbag.com/
Posted by Lucas Van Dyke on February 24, 2008 at 02:18 AM EST #
First, there is no one solution to the issue of what natural resources are acceptable for the bag production for retail usage. In the long run, I believe plastic and paper bags are both unfavorable to the environmental cause for which imposed tax was implemented in San Francisco and Ireland.
Plastic bags are made from crude oil, which is a diminishing natural resource. Paper bags are made from trees, which is also a diminishing resource. These two types of bags are compared and contrasted on the bases of being biodegradable and environmentally unsafe to wildlife.
If I were in a position to design a policy that would require the people of the United States to seek other alternatives to plastic and paper bags, I would support reusable cloth bags.
Plastic bags are so convenient due to their elasticity, lightweight, and storability. Paper bags are convenient because of their strength to hold heavy items. They are both affordable and available. Why not design a bag with these physical properties in mind? Now, the complexity of problem solving has increased.
Many citizens of the United States see value in monetary things that give indication to their status to others. With that being said, I suggest a designed low cost reusable bag for retail shopping. This bag will be as customizable as the variation of outfits one person could were. This would give a personalized touch to the bag, which could make it valuable by the individuals who use them continuously.
People are going to find loop holes around any type of imposed tax on plastic and paper bags because they are so convenient. N. Gregory Mankiw, author of Principles of Microeconomics, reveals, ?[B]uyers and sellers share the burden of the tax, regardless of how it is levied? (p160). This is where ?negative feedback loops? are give from manufactures and buyers. Taxation of plastic or paper bags is not sole effective solution; although, it has been effective in use with other leverage points.
I think one of the biggest leverage points that can be used in dealing with this situation is to make plastic and paper bags socially unacceptable. When something is made socially unacceptable, dramatic changes can occur over time. Tobacco product usage is an example of this. It began with enlightenment of the masses. Companies, like Philip Morris, where made to print health warnings on their cigarette cartons. It was becoming clear to more people that a person can die from tobacco use.
As a child, over the course of many trips to New York, I noticed many Joe Camel Billboards were removed alongside Interstate 95. This action came as Joe Camel was seen as a symbol thought to target adolescents and teenagers to think smoking was kool.
In Addition, the cost of tobacco products increased dramatically. Smoking became a costly habit to continue. My mother continued to smoke; but, the price per carton caused her to smoke much less than before.
When I was a teenager, Truth advertisement commercial started to air on television. They gave even more awareness to the effects of tobacco usage. They did so in such a personal way by giving a personal account by the individual affected by tobacco use or through the love one of a person that had died as an effect of using tobacco products. These commercials always hit close to home because my mom smokes heavily and has for a long period of time. However, being aware of these effects has given me the encouragement to try to intervene on her behalf. Now, the government is prohibiting smoking in government buildings, hospitals, airports, schools, and even drinking bars. An individual has to be so many feet away from these buildings in order to smoke. As a result, enlightenment and awareness are obvious important leverage points for change.
It would take this kind of effort to get people not to use plastic and paper bags. In the process for change, it is necessary for people to see the effects everyday and be close to those effects. And, the information should be made personal so that the issue isn?t brushed off because people think it doesn?t have anything to do with them or that it won?t affect their lives. The mass public needs to see the land fills of bags that have been there for years or decades. They should be informed visually and verbal about how plastic bags and paper bags are made; And, who and what is affect by drilling crude oil or cutting down forest? If possible, people should see a time lapse of how long it would take a paper and plastic bag to decompose. Last, they should be aware of the benefit of maintain our environment for future generations.
This type of awareness could help with the water consumption in Raleigh, if people saw pictures of Falls Lake every day.
In conclusion, any change that occurs will take time and will only lessen the use of plastic and paper bags.
Additional Source:
Mankiw, N. Gregory. The Principles of Microeconomics. Thompson Southwestern. 2007.
Posted by Emmanuel J Price on February 24, 2008 at 08:17 PM EST #
America is a lazy society, but we are trainable. Seat belts were invented by George Cayley in the late 1800s, and now it is habit (by law) to buckle up every time we hop in our cars, trains, or planes. From this has spurred the design and development of seat belt ?cushions?, extenders, booster seats, and car seats. We can learn to carry reusable bags to the grocery store.
?Significantly more consumers said they were concerned about rising prices at retail than the environmental friendliness of their food or clothing.?
Since the wallet does the talking, one alternative to Ireland?s 33 cent tax that could be implemented in the US is giving the option to buy paper bags in grocery stores. This would keep the power in the consumer?s hands. When arriving home from the store, it?s the consumer?s choice to throw the purchased bags away, or reuse them on the next trip.
Or, skip the bagging process completely and collect deposits on the plastic hand-held baskets already at the grocery store. I ?borrowed? one of these years ago from Food Lion and use it frequently when I just have a few items to pick up. I put my items in the basket while shopping, scan it at the register, and put it right back in the basket, and throw the whole thing in the trunk. Works great! This alternative has a long life, and there are already tons of them in circulation at markets.
However there is an entire untapped market for reusable canvas bags. Make the bags desireable with Vera Wang or Hollister logos, and suddenly everyone in the mall has a stylish bag on their shoulder to carry their department store purchases. Make different sizes, colors, a pocket for coupons, plastic lining for wet items, drink holder. The possibilities are endless. We use bags for everything from lunches, to overnight bags, to gym bags, to gift bags, to nearly every purchase we make from groceries to shoes.
The process of creating a cotton bag has a very low environmental impact. Using scraps from clothe-making and plastic bottles, EnviroTote © has developed an entire line of bags in a wide variety of sizes to suit anyone. Recycling paper bags is not the ideal solution. Reusing long-life products is the best answer.
The government takes too long to make decisions like this. It?s up to trailblazers like whole foods, trader joe?s, and the average joe to take the initiative and set an example for future generations. Even the sinister Wal-Mart has an initiative to reduce packaging from manufacturers by 30% which will prevent 667,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide from entering the atmosphere. This is equal to taking 213,000 trucks off the road annually, and saving 323,800 tons of coal and 66.7 million gallons of diesel fuel from being burned. As Donella Meadows says, a small shift in one thing can produce big changes in everything.
Media organizations have a great responsibility to portray and relay the effect of plastic bags on the environment accurately. Too often the media glosses over these issues because they themselves are the culprits of environmental murder. Magazines, newspapers, those damn phone books that sit in a pile 20-deep at apartment complexes. So much information is available online, and so few people do not have access to the internet, that there is no excuse for the media to still be stuck in the 20th century. People should have to request a phone book each year. Why buy a newspaper when everything in it is available online?
What?s up with those blister packs? There MUST be something more user and environmentally friendly alternative to that.
Save the plastic production for important things like syringes, bed pans, catheters, IV bags, and thermometer caps.
http://www.enviro-tote.com/recycled_cotton_bags.html
http://www.cottoninc.com/TextileConsumer/Textile-Consumer-Vol-41/
http://www.walmartstores.com/GlobalWMStoresWeb/navigate.do?catg=677
Posted by Virginia Wallace on February 24, 2008 at 09:39 PM EST #
You go to the store and the teenager in the apron asks you, ?paper or plastic?? how are you to respond? You could either take the flimsy-wasteland-filling-animal suffocating plastic bag, or opt for the tree-cutting-energy-draining paper ones. Or, perchance, you have a third or even fourth option that the teenager has failed to mention. In design there is always another option or two or three or?
You realize that your groceries could actually fit in you oversized purse, your backpack, your briefcase or your left hand. ?Oh, I don?t need a bag, thank you?.
You remember that you have a few decently inexpensive canvas bags that you will reuse again and again, thus causing you to say, ?Oh, I have a bag already, thanks?.
You lack your own bags but can?t bring yourself waste one of theirs, so you ask, ?could you just put the items in the cart?? and figure that you?ll just put them in your car, in a boxes (perhaps) and bring them into your house that way.
You look at your groceries, realize that you can grow them in your garden or manage with out them. ?Silly me, I don?t need these items, could I please return them??
You are from a different country and are absolutely stunned that such a question has been asked and that all people don?t bring their reusable shopping sack with them to the store, so you look perplexedly at the teenager shake your head.
You can?t imagine why you would waste a handful of nickels for a bag. You mutter about the government and lug your groceries out of the store in your arms.
You take out your knock-off or designer [grocery] bag that the hottest celebrity was seen carrying and ask the teenager if he could, ?just put my stuff in this glamorous bag, thanks?.
You explain how cool your technology savvy multi terrain wagon with temperature sensing controls, GPS, cell phone charging dock and other customizable convinces is and ask that the groceries go back in there.
You are disgusted that this establishment still uses such evil conveniences. After a dramatic gasp, you exclaim, ?I shall take my business to a ?greener? elsewhere?!
You remind the teenager, ?Doesn?t this store have a policy where I get a discount if I bring my own bags?? and saunter out with a few more cents for your coin jar.
And so on.
But how often does that happen? A difference in the system of society is required before a different reaction can happen. Leverage points are the points in a system that allow for change to be implemented, which Donella Meadows writes about in her essay. These points are relevant to the designer in his or her implementation of a new change or new design. The top two leverage points mentioned by Meadows deal with paradigms. In an attempt to alter a situation, one must keep in mind the mindset of those who need to be convinced. They have assumptions and thoughts that may counter the new idea unless suppressed or critically looked at. If a plastic bag has always been used by a person to carry groceries, then to force them to use anything else would be absurd, unless they can be convinced that such a change would be best. As designers, it is our job to convince, on many levels of society, that the change we offer is a needed one. People have to agree to change before they participate, governments have to be convinced that their legislation is beneficial, media has to know that it will not be a waste of time, and for corporations it must be a change that will put them ahead. Designers have the opportunity to change the world, as long as they are at least a little practical in their methods. A new, off beat idea is great, as long as it fits the patterns of the society which it is introduced to. Keeping in mind the leverage points could aid a designer in implementing their design. Leverage points serve as reminders that society has created a system, which can be altered, but only carefully and with remembrance that there will always be a consequence. When designers create something, they hold a responsibility for their creation and the impact it has on the balance of everything else. There will always be more than one way to carry groceries. It is not the generation of new ideas that is the challenge, but it is rather convincing society of the greatness of the new idea that is the challenge.
Additional sources:
http://www.ecogeek.org/content/view/1315/
Posted by Emily Struthers on February 24, 2008 at 10:25 PM EST #
Designing something is not always an easy task. Some things are easier to design than others, but no matter what it is up to us designers to come up with a design regardless of the complexity of the problem. So when it comes to my position on design and policy decisions that require lifestyle changes to implement I believe that it is up to us designers to make these lifestyle changes easier to make.
When it comes to the issue of paper versus plastic there really is no winner. Each candidate has its pros and cons. That is typical with most things in this world. Very rarely will you find a "perfect" solution to a problem, and even when you do how sure are you that it is "perfect"? What evidence do you have to support your claim? There is always the possibility that something can be done to approve upon an already operating design. Yes a design thought to be perfect could be suffice for the moment, but if you really wanted to I believe that anything given time and thought can be made better. When it comes to me being a designer I am not always searching for a new alternative to a problem. Some times you have to learn to see one alternative and come up with variations. When it comes to variations there are many when it comes to the usage of plastic bags. On one website I found a compilation of various people voicing their opinion on how they use and resuse plastic bags. One person said, "I stuff two to three of the plastic bags in old pill bottles. I can just put the pill bottles full of plastic bags in my purse or car, this not only lets me save the plastic bags but I am also reusing pill bottles too." (Thrifty Fun). If you continue on down the list of testimonials you can find that most of these ideas only require a little bit of thought and not much change regarding your lifestyle. There are so many plastic bags out there right now as you are reading this, so why look for new alternatives to bring into this world when we can put the same thought required to come up with a new alternative into that of finding a variation of an already propsed idea. The only change really needed is in our state of mind. We need to stop waiting for one designer to come up with a solution to a problem, when we are all just as capabe of doing the same thing for ourselves. When you do come up with a solution for yourself tell a friend and hopefully this will make up for the slack of a few individuals. Then if someone feels inclined to do so seek out media coverage and make sure that your idea has some backing. If people choose not to do your idea it could at least get them thinking and they might just come up with their own. Even with all of this said I still believe that those qualified designers should still continueto work towards coming up with a great solution.
I also know from personal experience that people will reuse plastic bags. I know of one store back in Winston-Salem, NC called Aldi. You were required to purchase bags in order to have your groceries bagged. If you did not feel like buying bags then your groceries were not bagged and you were left with the task of figuring out how easily transport your purchases. Those people that chose to buy bags tended to keep their bags in their cars and bring them back to the store with them when they next shopped. This to me was not a bad idea, and this store was always packed so I am sure that there were few that diagreed with this policy as well.
Even if a design did require lifestyle changes in order to be implemented I believe that in some cases there are sacrifices that are needed to be made for the sake of progression. So overall I believe that us designers should strive to find solutions to problems, but when change is needed we should be able to make that change as comfortable as possible. It is all apart of the design process.
Reference
http://www.thriftyfun.com/tf740430.tip.html
Posted by Justin Torrence on February 25, 2008 at 12:48 AM EST #
Ever since we were little kids, society has taught us that having a lot of money and owning a lot of things is the key to a good life. As a person that one day hopes to have a lot of things, it?s unfortunate to say that in the very near future, those dreams will most likely be shattered. Not because I?m lazy and don?t want to work for it, but due to all of the pollution and wasting we?re doing today it?s going to come back to haunt us. Honestly, wasting plastic bags should be the least of our worries, what we should be doing is looking at the big picture. The only way to truly care for the environment is if we completely reduce our energy usage and pollution to the absolute minimum, which means you can?t have Hummers and all those appetizing luxuries. About a week ago I had the pleasure of listening to one of the countries top global warming experts, Dr. Bob Bruck. Although I don?t remember the exact numbers, I do know that each individual American wastes more energy in a single day than some people in other countries waste in months. The problem with us Americans is that we don?t stop to think about where the resources are coming from nearly enough, and when we do, we rarely do anything about it. The one good thing about the position our country is in right now is that we really do have a chance to make a huge impact on the overall energy usage in the world. The transition has long begun, with everyone ?going green? and advertising for a healthier environment, the only thing that has yet to happen is the fact of people buying into it. Anyone can say they care about the environment but how often do you forget to turn the light off before you leave a room, or maybe your just to lazy to walk across Leazer hall to find the recycling bin so you just throw your paper, bottles and cans in the garbage while no one?s looking. Everyone does it, which is the exact reason we are still increasing the amount of pollution each year. So who knows, maybe one day all of us Americans will buy into this thing calling recycling before we are forced to.
Posted by Patrick Prince on February 25, 2008 at 10:43 AM EST #
Environmental deterioration caused by the persistent use of plastic bags has become a serious issue. There are many negative effects that stem from their use. Fossil fuels are used both in the manufacturing and transportation of plastic bags. Burning fossil fuels is known to create air pollution and release carbon dioxide that leads to global warming. Disposed plastic bags create massive amounts of waste to be added to already overfilled landfills. Bags that do not make it to the landfill create litter that harms wildlife in addition to degrading the aesthetic quality of places.
Paper bags have been offered as an alternative to plastic bags. Despite their positive image as the environmentally friendly counterpart to plastic bags, in many ways they are actually worse for the environment. Manufacturing paper bags takes over four times as much energy as manufacturing plastic bags. Paper bags lead to greater amounts of pollution too. They cause seventy percent more air pollution and an astounding fifty times as much water pollution. The energy required to recycle paper bags is yet another capacity in which plastic bags are less detrimental. Needless to say, paper bags are not the green solution to the problems caused by plastic bags.
The solution lies not in the implementation of a single new type of bag or even a tax, but in ushering in a new paradigm of environmental consciousness. Paradigms are listed by Donella Meadows as some of the most powerful leverage points. Well intentioned but ultimately insufficient changes such as switching to biodegradable bags are not enough to solve pluralistic problems of the environment. Concern for the environment must be ingrained in people?s character for them to be willing to make the lifestyle changes necessary for improvement on a large scale. A reevaluation of priorities must occur for people to change their focus from economic health to environmental health, although these ends are not always in conflict. While small, incremental steps such as converting to canvas bags helps, bigger change in mindset is needed to address the underlying goal of environmental health.
Posted by Chris Satterwhite on February 25, 2008 at 01:32 PM EST #
I would like to say that people do not necessarily need bags at all when they go to the grocery store. The man store that stands out in my mind is Sam's Club. At Sam's you simply but your items into your cart and then at the cash register the person rings up the items and puts them into a different cart. So personally, I do not believe the question is design a new bag to help the environment/pollution but to design a new shopping cart that is more costumer friendly than the current easily broken down carts that are out in the market currently.
I agree with the article "Reusable Bags" in it's stated fact that both Paper and Plastic are not helping and they are both hurting the environment and costumer in their each individually way. Where when one is lacking harmful qualities the other exceeds. With that light I believe in a new design of a "cloth" bag. I say "cloth" because it does not necessarily need to be made out of cloth but a possible synthetic material. Looking back at Sam's Club they also SELL(!!) possible freezer bags for a few dollars to keep your cold, perishable items in.
I also agree with what is going on in San Fransisco with the banning of the paper bag. I would like to acknowledge that paper and plastic bags have been around for quite sometime. Even though that plastic was made as a way to replace the paper the time has come for a change. I understand that paper bags are trying to be refined to making them more "eco-friendly" but no matter how it is changed the forest are still be torn down fossil fuels are still be used and there is no change. One could almost parallel the use of paper bags and fossil fuels. Both which cause damage and are outdated and should be refined.
To conclude, maybe one day I will be in a position where I'm redesigning the bag for a more eco-friendly use on the society of that day, being in ID. Until then I hope that people realize that the banning is a sign of a change and they need to take that sign and run with it. A form of reusable bag will be in our future that I am at least somewhat sure of.
Extra resource:
http://www.greenfeet.net/newsletter/debate.shtml
Posted by Luis Zapata on February 25, 2008 at 02:54 PM EST #
To support the idea that Luis started, if you think about it the bags are only usefull for lifting the items from the cart into the car and the car into the house. The idea of shopping bags have gone unquestioned for so long that it is hard to immagine an alternative but it wouldnt be a big leap to remove the bags from the equation all together. i belive the designers roll in this transition is two fold.
First the removal of the bags should coincide with the redesign of the shopping cart simmilar to the video we watched in class. making the cart easyer to manuver and fill as well as unload. the very selling point of the cart can be that no bags are needed. this will both help introduce the new cart as well as justify the removal of the bags.
second the designers must address the issues of taking the groceries from the car into the house. this is already an issue for elderly people even with the bags. if their was a simple and ecofrendly way of transporting your food from your car to your house the need for shopping bags would be removed.
Posted by Jake Ryan on February 26, 2008 at 12:52 PM EST #