What’s Your Bag? Choosing between paper, plastic and cloth

Single-use plastic bags abound these days, blowing around in the breeze, catching in the trees, and accumulating in nooks and crannies all over town. And it’s easy to see why: they are handed out everywhere. In fact, the average family accumulates 60 plastic bags in only four trips to the grocery store!

The pervasiveness and negative impact of those thin plastic bags is so severe that governments from Ireland to Westport, Conn. to San Francisco have banned their distribution or placed a hefty tax on using them.

So does that make plastic bags the Darth Vader of bags? Well, the answer is probably “yes” when they are used once and then tossed. More than 100 billion are thrown away in the U.S. each year. But, like most decisions about what the “greenest” alternative is, the answer lies in a closer examination of the life cycle of a product and how you will use it.

Ironically, plastic bags introduced in the 1980s were touted as a way to save trees, and it’s easy to see why. Their manufacture doesn’t result in the destruction of trees, requires substantially less energy and costs about a quarter as much to produce as paper bags. Because plastic bags weigh so much less than paper, they consume far less fossil fuel to transport. However, the problem with plastic bags lies in some of those very traits: their low cost and light weight mean that merchants hand them out willy-nilly, and their composition means that they can take hundreds of years, if ever, to decompose. 

Knowing what we do about plastic, should we opt for paper or cloth bags? Well, paper bag manufacture can destroy trees and requires a substantial amount of energy. Similar issues are connected to cloth bags--they require more energy and water to produce than plastic. Both paper and cloth cost more to transport than plastic, but they will biodegrade faster. 

So which bag should you choose? 

Choosing to use a few cloth bags, and reusing them consistently, is probably the optimal choice. But if you look around your house and see that you have 50 cloth bags, most of which you never use, you’re not helping the environment. If you must use plastic or paper bags, make a point of reusing them multiple times; remember, if you are getting your produce and meat in plastic bags, then bagging those into larger plastic bags at the grocery store, then tossing all those bags as you unload at home, you’re contributing to the problem.

There are some great reusable bags out there. Laura Weber of  in Summit says, “We all know how important our bags are so we need them to last!” On the upscale end, she offersRedhanded handbags and totes (see photo), and Vera Bradley bags, in part because, “the companies give back in so many ways.”  in Summit offers inexpensive, durable, boldly-colored Baggu bags (see photo), which fold into small light-weight packets. Keep them in your purse or jacket pockets, so you’ll always have a bag on hand. Annette Medina of catchware® believes, “disposable bags are a thing of the past,” and encourages her clientele to make more sustainable choices. Another website with a broad range of choices is Envirosax. 

All bags have an impact. How you use a bag makes all the difference. In the end, the best choice may be, “Thanks, but I don’t need a bag.”  

By Beth Lovejoy, on behalf of the Summit Environmental Commission

Do you have a favorite reusuable bag? Let us know what it is.