Notes on a Paper Bag

Co-op management and Board supports increasing and strengthening our current efforts to reduce the use of disposable bags.  We have communicated with other co-ops striving for 100% bag reuse and have received concrete evidence that charging for new bags can successfully change shopping habits.  Hands down, the most effective method to engage customer participation has been to initiate a charge for every bag used. Ashland Co-op took on this challenge and was able to reduce paper bag usage by 75% within the very first month of initiating this program.

The Co-op is strongly considering charging ten cents for every large paper bag used by customers.    The 10-cent charge is less than the cost of the bag.  While it would defray most of the cost, that is not our intent.  Most of the fee income will be donated to an environmental organization.  The purpose of the fee is to encourage a behavior change in favor of conservation.

As a consequence this change would also mean we would no longer be giving the five cent per bag credit.  Paper bags would still be available, as they are now.  The difference would be that each time you brought in your own reusable bags you would be saving our environment from more damage and you would be saving yourself at least 10 cents!

Here are some bag facts and reasons why we feel it is important to act quickly:

• It takes more than 4 times as much energy to manufacture a paper bag as it does to manufacture a plastic bag.
• Every year 14 million trees are cut to produce the 10 million paper grocery bags used by Americans.
• Paper bag production delivers a global warming double whammy: the manufacturing of bags produces greenhouse gases and forests (cut down to make the bags) are the major absorbers of green house gases.
• For every seven trucks needed to deliver paper bags, only one truck is needed to deliver the same number of plastic bags.
• The production of plastic bags consumes less than 4 percent of the water used to make paper bags.
• In just one month Co-op shoppers consume 11,000 large paper grocery bags.  That does not include any of the other paper or grocery plastic bags we use! 

With that said:

• Only 1 to 3% of plastic bags end up getting recycled.
• It costs $4,000 to process and recycle 1 ton of plastic bags, which can then be sold on the commodities market for $32.
• Many bags collected for recycling never get recycled; a growing trend is to ship them to Third World countries, like India and China for dumping.
• Plastic bags are still made from non-renewable resources and toxic chemicals in their original production.

What to do?  Choose to reuse!  The only true earth-friendly answer is to reuse your paper and plastic bags or choose cloth, canvas, hemp and mesh bags. (For more info on this subject please visit reusablebags.com, earth911.com; or greensangha.org.)

At the Co-op’s April 2008 Annual Meeting, we introduced Part I of the Co-op’s Recycling Program informing customers about the consequences of pollution caused by plastic bags.  We’ve been reporting the stats on bag reuse with each issue of the newsletter and at the end of 2009 bag reuse was about 25%, up from 19% in April, 2008.  Now we’d like to shift the program into high gear and aim for 100%!

We would like to get your opinion on this important subject and have put together a brief survey that you can tear out below and drop off at Customer Service or take the survey at our website—www.ukiahcoop.com.  Please follow the link below to take the survey.

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/BagFeeSurvey