Another reason to dump plastic bags

I used to think it was a cynical view, but now I’m inclined to think it’s just reality—people, in general, aren’t going to conserve much unless their wallet is involved. Once in a while, there are pockets of what seem to be altruistic effort, but not very darned often.

Take, for example, the whole idea of replacing plastic shopping bags with reusable ones. I have to admit that I was surprised when my grocery store began pushing them...hard. They had a bunch of attractive bags printed up with the store logo and nice little environmental graphics and quotes and sayings. The store bought boatloads of the bags and they have been offering them at the head of every checkout counter and in a special display smack in the middle of the wide aisle leading up to the checkout counters. Can’t miss ‘em. Now they even offer bags in designer colors without any graphics at all.

And this push for reusable bags has been very recent. What’s the deal?

I ran across a Reuters article on Yahoo yesterday that explained it all.

The cost of these plastic shopping bags is killing the merchants. They are getting really, really expensive. With the price of oil skyrocketing, plastic is much more expensive to produce and the bag producers not only have to pay the rising costs for the plastic, the energy costs of production are soaring, as are the costs of transporting the finished products. They pass the cost along.

Grocery stores use a lot of plastic bags in a day. The figure given in the above article suggests a price of about $28 per 1000 bags. That’s a much higher figure than even a year ago. With the costs of store overhead and shipping rising dramatically, the rising cost of plastic bags is just one more financial stressor for the merchants. And it’s probably the easiest one to address.

Out of curiosity, I googled a search question....how many plastic bags does a grocery store use in a day?

WikiAnswers offered this bit of back of the envelope figuring for a 5 checkout counter retail store (probably smaller than an average supermarket):

From 7am to 9pm we consider it all busy hours and on average 2 minutes a person on each cash counter, that means 840 minutes/2 mins per customer = 420 customers, per counter, during these hours and if they use 2 bags each that means 840 bags each cash counter and 5 counter means 4200 bags.

From 9pm to 7am in non busy hours and on average 10 minutes a person that means 600mins/10 mins per customer=60 customers each counter. 5 counters x 60 customers each = 300 customers carrying one bag each 4200 bags+300 bags=4500 bags a day!!!

But that is a very low estimate, in starting days of month people carry up to 5 bags per person easily. You can add another 3000 bags to it to be more accurate so 4500+3000=7500 bags a day.

So, based on the example given, I’d calculate that my grocery store probably uses somewhere between 7,500-10,000 bags per day. And that may even be a low estimate.

At $28 per 1000 bags, the cost of providing us with those free plastic bags conservatively comes out to around $210-$280 per day or $1470-$1960 per week per store. The weekly cost for a chain with many stores increases rather briskly.

So, yeah. I can see why my grocery store is pushing reusable bags for all they are worth. They can sell us “green” bags and tout their environmental concern and green status, but I think I’d win a wager betting on less altruistic concerns. But who can blame them? Regardless of their motives, reusable bags are a win-win solution.

I have noticed lately, that the stores I visit are happy to see my reusable bag(s). If I stop in at a store to make a small purchase, I’m usually asked if I want a plastic bag. They don’t offer to give me one anymore, without asking first. For a very small purchase, I simply walk out of the store carrying the small purchase in my hand or stick it in my backpack. And that’s a-okay with them. There was a time when that idea would have been completely discouraged. Times change and the wallet rules.