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This sign near the entrance of the Athens Kroger notes that over 100 billion single-use plastic bags are thrown away each year.
This sign near the entrance of the Athens Kroger notes that over 100 billion single-use plastic bags are thrown away each year.
In my “Letterkenny” voice … I was shopping at Kroger the other day …
Store charges 5 cents per paper bag …
Less than two weeks ago, the store wasn’t charging for paper bags in the good ole days when the baggers asked if you wanted paper or plastic?
I can go to Walmart and not get charged — same with Seaman’s.
I contacted Kroger for comment, but the company did not respond.
Still, 5 cents per paper bag is a small price to pay — what are we talking about here, a quarter or more extra to purchase a few paper bags?
And my favorite part is that the store has a sign that says by not using plastic bags, the company is doing its part to help the environment because 100 billion bags end up in landfills or littered across the landscape.
On that point, I agree; however, if this large corporation was truly sincere in its efforts to reduce litter, it would endorse efforts to ban or choose not to use plastic bags nationwide instead of in just two counties in Ohio.
According to a press release from Athens ReThink Plastics, adopting the single-use plastic carryout bag ban, Athens joins a growing number of communities (including Cuyahoga County and Bexley in Ohio) and states that have passed similar measures. New York, Delaware, Maine, Oregon, Connecticut, Vermont, New Jersey, and most recently, Rhode Island and Colorado, have passed statewide bans on single-use plastic carryout bags.
I am an ardent environmentalist. I support the plastic bag ban and I am doing my part by using reusable bags. In fact, I wish local coffee shops would purge themselves of single-serve coffee cups (straws, too), but instead of rely on ceramic mugs or bring-your-own mugs.
Per the plastic bag ban, a few short years ago, I lived very close to the barrier islands at the Outer Banks in North Carolina where, for a time, grocery stores banned plastic bags because, rightly so, because no one wants to mess up the ecosystem by the Atlantic Ocean and salt marshes.
I don’t remember paying for the bags, but according to the Fayetteville Observer, businesses had to give customers who brought a reusable bag to the store a credit equal to the value of the paper bag that the retailer did not have to give to the customer which requires a software change with the point of sale system and an additional 5 cents to 8 cents to the customer for every reusable bag.
Back then, probably the same is true now, the amount of plastic waste entering North Carolina’s waterways and soil is outpacing the capacity to remove it, but the bigger problem is/was litter itself, not just plastic bags. And these bags didn’t necessarily degrade that easily — meaning I never saw any old paper bags stuck in the sand when kayaking the beaches of the barrier islands.
Between 2009 and 2017, the law was in effect until it was repealed after the Republican-led General Assembly overrode the Democratic governor’s veto of the bill.
Before the ban was repealed, Andy Ellen, president and General Counsel of NC Retail Merchants Association, wrote a column that said the most significant environmental risk from banning plastic bags is the increase in energy use. Plastic bags are the most energy-efficient form of grocery bag.
Ellen cited a U.K. Environment Agency that compared energy use for plastic, paper and reusable bags. He said the global warming potential of plastic grocery bags is one-fourth that of paper bags and 1/173rd that of a reusable cotton bag.
“In other words, consumers would have to use a reusable cotton bag 173 times before they broke even from an energy standpoint. Thus, even if consumers switched to reusable bags, it is not clear there would be a reduced environmental impact,” Ellen wrote.
Ellen said it should be a matter of choice to use the bags.
“NCRMA strongly supports the repeal of the plastic bag ban, not because we support or oppose the use of the bags, but because we support allowing the choice to remain with the retailers and customers,” he wrote. “This isn’t a chain vs. independent or large vs. small store issue, this is a matter of allowing each store and each customer to determine what their own needs are.”
The ban was a contentious issue in Coastal Carolina, but I felt it was important to do our part to keep the beaches and salt marshes clean.
However, just because the ban was in effect at the Outer Banks didn’t mean it was in effect at stores on the mainland. That meant you could use plastic bags in a county bordering the Albemarle Sound, but as soon as you crossed the bridge to Nags Head, the bags were banned.
Think about that for a minute. Discarded bags, and other loose trash for that matter, could still flow into the waterways on one side of the Sound. Though the ban was a small act of environmentalism, it was not necessarily effective since the entire coastal region didn’t play by the same rules.
Same is true in Southeast Ohio — what about the stores using plastic bags in Hocking, Jackson and Pickaway counties to name a few counties.
All this said, I encourage people to use reusable bags, not only to reduce litter but also to save a few trees that are manufactured into paper bags.
The bags our family uses are better than plastic or paper bags; they carry more stuff and are much less likely to break or succumb to sogginess.
And you’ll be doing your part to help the environment in your own backyard.
Miles Layton is Region Editor for APG Ohio.
The single-use plastic bag ban that went into effect in the city of Athens on Jan. 1 remains in effect despite Ohio Attorney General David Yos…
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