Thrift Week 2019, Day 7: Shopping bags

The one disposable item that seems to have the biggest target painted on its back these days is the plastic shopping bag. (Especially if it's a shopping bag from Target.) All across America, cities and towns are either putting a tax on plastic bags to discourage their use or banning them altogether. And it's easy to see why plastic bags make such a good villain: they're probably the most clear-cut example of stupid plastic there is. Think about it: you buy something, carry it home in a bag, and put the bag straight in the trash. It has served a purpose for perhaps five minutes, and it will sit in a landfill for centuries—if it doesn't instead get washed down a gutter and end up in the ocean, bleaching a coral reef or clogging up a fish's guts.

Unfortunately, most of the alternatives to plastic bags have problems of their own. Consider:

• Paper bags have some advantages over plastic. They decompose faster than plastic, making them less of a hazard in the oceans, and they're also easier to recycle. But, as this 2014 article from EcoMyths explains, they also have a higher carbon footprint and require both more water and more energy to produce. And because they're not as strong as plastic, they're less likely to be reused.
• Reusable bags seem like the obvious green choice, but actually, it depends on the type of bag. Cotton canvas bags require so much water, energy, and harmful chemicals to produce that, according to the UK EPA, they'd need to be reused a whopping 131 times to make their carbon footprint as small as a single-use plastic bag's. Reusable plastic bags, by contrast, only need to be reused 4 to 11 times to make them the greener choice.
• Even if you choose the very greenest type of reusable bag, it doesn't actually prevent waste unless you actually use it. Just last week, I was chatting with someone who is very eco-conscious (in fact, she's the one we got our rain barrel from), and she confessed that she hardly ever brings reusable bags to the store. She always means to, but she just never has them with her when she gets to the store. We said, why not just keep them in the car (a Prius, of course), and she said she does that, but then she takes them inside to unload them and they never make it back to the car.

Fortunately, I have a reusable bag that solves all these problems: my ChicoBag folding tote. It's made of recycled plastic, the material the UK EPA deemed most eco-friendly, and even more important, it folds up into its own built-in pocket, creating a tiny parcel small enough to fit in one hand. It lives in my purse, and if I ever decide on the spur of the moment to swing by the grocery store or the farmers' market while I'm out on my walk, I can just whip out my little bag and deploy it. Then as soon as I get home and take the groceries out, I immediately fold it back into its pocket and stuff it back in the purse, so I can never forget about it. (Forget American Express—this is the plastic not to leave home without.) I even keep my store loyalty cards clipped to it, so I don't need to fumble with a separate item.

Now, this bag isn't perfect. After ten years or so, it's showing signs of wear; I've already had to darn a small hole in the front of it, and I'm not sure how much longer it will hold up. And it's a bit on the flimsy side; it can hold a head of broccoli just fine, but I don't know if I'd trust it with a gallon of milk. However, the newer ChicoBag models seem to be made of tougher stuff; the Micro Skydiver purports to be "micro-ripstop fabric" that can hold up to 25 pounds. Plus it folds into an even smaller package than mine. The one downside is the $20 price tag, but if it gets as much use as mine has, it's probably a good investment. But if you want a cheaper alternative, IKEA has one for two bucks—not quite as compact or sturdy, but still portable.

Ah, you may be asking, but what if you go to the store and decide to buy some produce from the bins? You have to take a plastic bag for that, don't you? Well, not usually. When we make a grocery run in the car, we always have with us our large reusable shopping bag (also from IKEA) and a set of three mesh produce bags, received as a Christmas gift six years ago. So the only time we need to take a plastic bag for produce is if (1) we buy more than three separate produce items that require bags, or (2) we decide to stop into the store while we're on foot, so all we have is the ChicoBag. (If I know ahead of time that I'm planning to visit the farmers' market while out on my walk, I can stuff a couple of reused plastic bags in my purse.)

Although plastic bags are free at most grocery stores, our reusable bags still save us a bit of money. True, some of the stores I blogged about saving money at with bring-your-own-bag discounts back in 2011 have since discontinued them. But we still get 10 cents off per container at the Whole Earth Center, and we still avoid paying for bags at Aldi—and if Highland Park's proposed plastic bag ban goes into law, we could eventually be saving 10 cents a pop at our local Stop & Shop. So the estimate I made at the time that these bags save us $25 a year isn't too far off the mark. But even if these bags didn't save us a penny, they'd still spare us from having to bring a worthless piece of plastic into our house every time we shop—and you can't put a price on that.