A townwide ban on plastic bags was first broached by the Environmental Club at Wood River High School, which brought a proposal to the Hailey City Council to prohibit stores from using the sacks. The students argued in a council meeting that the ban would reduce pollution, help protect wild animals, and decrease oil consumption. That’s when the council agreed to put the issue to the voters, placing it on this year's ballot.
But opponents of the prohibition say that stopping the use of plastic bags would lead to more expensive groceries and little to no environmental benefit. In addition, a plastic bag manufacturer, Hilex Poly Co., with a plant in nearby Jerome, Idaho — as well as its own plastic bag recycling plant in North Vernon, Indiana — understandably opposes such bans, contending that its facilities use up to 30 percent recycled content
Len Watson, general manager of Roxy's Market in neighboring Ketchum, Idaho, said the store does not use any plastic bags — aside from the smaller, thinner bags used for customer selections of vegetables and fruit. Not only would the store go through an enormous number of plastic bags, he said, but he believes that some bags are "toxic," depending on the manufacturer. "Basically, it was the smart thing to do," said Watson of the store's policy of using only paper bags. "There's a little more cost to us, but we feel better not polluting the environment."
However, studies have shown that the manufacture and disposal of paper bags actually use more resources and may produce more greenhouse gasses than plastic. A 2007 report commissioned for the Progressive Bag Affiliates of the American Chemistry Council (ACC)—a coalition of plastic bag manufacturers—found that the oil used in the production of an equal number of plastic and paper bags is the same, and the plastic bags don't hold as much.
"Both compostable plastic and paper bags require more material [than standard plastic bags] per bag," stated the report, conducted by Ardmore, Pennsylvania-based Boustead Consulting for the alliance. "This results in greater use of fuels in the extraction and transport of raw materials ... as well as greater energy in bag manufacturing."
According to the report, production of 1,000 paper bags produces more water and air pollution and more greenhouse gas emissions and uses more water and energy than the production of 1,500 plastic bags.
In addition, the researchers asserted that, “Current research shows that in modern landfills, paper does not degrade or break down at a substantially faster rate than plastic does. Due to the lack of water, light, oxygen, and other important elements necessary for the degradation process to occur, nothing completely degrades in modern landfills.”
Conversely, The Wall Street Journal contends that Americans use about 100 billion plastic bags per year, and a 2008 study from the Washington, D.C.-based Ocean Conservancy concluded that plastic bags are the second most common refuse found in the ocean.The residents of Hailey, Idaho, bring plenty of emotional baggage to the universal grocery store checkout choice, “Paper or plastic?”—so much, in fact, that the town will vote on its bag of preference on Election Day, November 8, according to the local paper, the Idaho Mountain Express.
Chip Atkinson, co-owner of Atkinsons' Markets, said he supports reducing the use of plastic bags. However, he said, he has been working with Hailey's “Just Bag It” campaign since 2009 to reduce the amount of plastic bags used in his stores. "We've been in an education campaign and really improved everything," he said. "We were moving in the right direction."
Atkinson said he believes a plastic bag ban will only cause people to shift to paper bags, which cost him four times as much to provide to customers. "The biggest frustration for us about a ban is that it is meant to reduce, but it's really a conversion," Atkinson said.
Customers who wish to avoid disposable bags altogether do have another option—reusable bags made of cloth, plastic, or hemp. The reusable bags Atkinsons' sells are "popular," Atkinson said, and are used by almost 7 percent of his customers. Of the customers who buy three or more items, Atkinson said, roughly 12 percent opt for reusable grocery sacks. That number has risen from a mere 2 percent in 2009, before the “Just Bag It” campaign to reduce plastic bag use began. "The education campaign the city of Hailey instituted really started to make some progress," Atkinson said. "Offering choice, offering education is the way to go."
But now, customers have begun shying away from reusable bags, due to findings of a study conducted by University of Arizona Microbiologist Charles Gerba. Ph.D. early in the summer of 2010, randomly testing 87 such bags obtained from grocery shoppers in California and Arizona. Dr. Gerba found that most consumers never wash their reusable bagsbetween uses, permitting bacteria to grow. The study found that coli form bacteria only were found in half of those tested, while eight percent of bags contained E. coli.
A letter to the The Seattle Times in 2008 from consultant Peter H. Nickerson of Nickerson & Associates
also claimed that there are several other drawbacks to reusable bags —among them:
- Manufacturing reusable bags uses more energy and materials than disposable bags;
- Many reusable bags are made in China; while plastic bags are often made by American companies, such as Helix-Poly; and
- A dearth of plastic grocery bags will lead to increased sales of plastic garbage bags and resealable sandwich bags.
