SunCorp

Paper, plastic - or designer label?

Those were the options at a handful of Whole Foods stores in the metropolitan area Wednesday, when the organic- and natural-foods chain offered shoppers the $15 Anya Hindmarch bags emblazoned with the phrase "I'm not a plastic bag." True to its reputation, the reusable cotton shopping bag - which was being sold as a one-time event - drew more than 200 people to the Whole Foods in Jericho at 6 a.m., and more than 600 lined up at the newest Manhattan location at Bowery and Houston.

Many may have been motivated by the low price of one of the London designer's bags, which can run upward of $1,400. The point of the campaign, however, is to make people think about reducing the use of plastic shopping bags.


Old issue is new again

This is not the first time retailers and environmental groups have touched on the topic, but in recent years the issue has gained new traction with many supermarket chains introducing programs to encourage their customers to stop using plastic bags.

"At this point, it's safe to say it's a growing trend," said Jennifer Powers, spokeswoman for the Natural Resources Defense Council. "Consumers and retailers alike are trying to find ways to have less of an impact on the environment and reduce, reuse and recycle as much as possible."

The perils most associated with the conventional plastic bag are that they are not biodegradable, sometimes taking as long as a thousand years to disintegrate, during which time they can kill wildlife that eat them, and pollute bodies of water.

But the production process should be a major concern as well, Powers emphasized. The bags are made from a petroleum product, so the 30 billion plastic bags that the NRDC estimates U.S. consumers use annually require 12 million barrels of oil to produce, she said.

A Worldwatch Institute statistic cited by IKEA, which has started a plastic-bag reduction program, says each year Americans throw away about 100 billion polyethylene plastic bags and only 0.6 percent of such bags are recycled.

And paper has its own problems, Powers said. U.S. consumers use 10 billion paper bags annually, requiring 14 million trees in the production process.

"We say that choosing between paper or plastic, you're offered a false choice," Powers said. "Neither is ideal. We recommend bringing your own reusable bag. That's the best option."

In March, IKEA began charging customers 5 cents for plastic bags and introduced its own large plastic tote - the Big Blue Bag - for 59 cents. Proceeds from the 5-cent plastic bag sales will be donated to American Forests, a nonprofit conservation group that plants trees to restore forests and offset CO2 emissions.

IKEA has goal for U.S.

In the United Kingdom, the program succeeded in reducing plastic bag consumption among its customers by 95 percent over the previous year, the company said. IKEA's goal in the United States is to reduce the plastic bags used by its shoppers by half, from 70 million to 35 million.

Retailers aren't the only ones taking up the cause. San Francisco is the first city to ban non-biodegradable plastic bags, requiring chain supermarkets and pharmacies to offer compostible and biodegradable bags later this year.

Assemb. William Colton (D-Brooklyn) has proposed two similar bills, one banning non-biodegradable plastic bags outright and the other requiring distribution of the bags to be cut by 50 percent in the first two years and banned after that.

A petroleum problem

"In today's world of energy crisis and global warming, to make something out of oil to be used one time and then thrown away only to end up in a landfill, there's something wrong about that," Colton said.

While some customers were uncomfortable with the initiative at first, the response has been favorable in this country, said Mona Astra Liss, IKEA spokeswoman. The company hasn't released numbers yet, but Liss said the program has exceeded its expectations.

King Kullen and its organic and natural food stores, Wild By Nature, have bins for recycling plastic bags, and both stores also are selling 99-cent reusable shopping bags.

A&P and all of its associated supermarket chains, including Waldbaum's and Food Emporium, debuted four reusable shopping bags for 99 cents in November. The company is donating a portion of the sales to the Elizabeth Haub Foundation - an organization named after the grandmother of the company's executive chairman and dedicated to international environmental protection and preservation.

"They're beautiful pieces," said Richard De Santa, A&P spokesman. "They're sturdy and you reuse them and they are a long way from the brown paper bag. The main thing is to reduce the amount of plastic and non-recyclables flowing into waste stream."

A rebate incentive

Whole Foods has always had a program of giving a rebate to customers who bring their own bags (the price recently increased from 5 cents to 10 cents) and has sold its own reusable mesh bags for $1.

"I think a lot of our shoppers have already been doing this," said Fred Shank, a Whole Foods spokesman. "But a program like this brings more people into the circle and has people beginning to think about the plastic bag issue more and more."

For well more than a decade, Pathmark has had a 2-cent rebate for people who reused their plastic bags. But this past winter, the company introduced a reusable 99-cent shopping bag, selling out the initial inventory of more than 100,000 bags within two months, said Rich Savner, Pathmark spokesman.

"The plastic bag and recycling bag focus has gained a lot of momentum," Savner said. "And we wanted to make sure we were in step with the public and what they were looking for as well as being environmentally conscious."