It’s not so easy. Here’s how paper and plastic stack up side by side:
To make all the bags we use each year, it takes 14 million trees for paper and 12 million barrels of oil for plastic. The production of paper bags creates 70 percent more air pollution than plastic, but plastic bags create four times the solid waste — enough to fill the Empire State Building two and a half times. And they can last up to a thousand years.
Plastic, because it’s cheaper to produce, is the overwhelming choice of grocery stores across the nation — the average family of four uses almost 1,500 of these a year. San Francisco is limiting consumers’ freedom of choice, allowing only biodegradable plastic bags, which break down over months rather than hundreds of years.
For both types of bags, the environmentalist mantra is the same — reuse and recycle. But the best choice, they say, is cloth or canvas, and BYOB — bring your own bags.
And don’t forget to wash your BYOB regularly – they are germ magnets and happy organic breeding grounds. Some environmentalists may think there are too many humans on earth, but that’s not the way you want to help them reach their goals. 😉
“Renting” a shopping cart with a quarter eliminated the need for cart boys (at some grocery stores) having to go collect the carts from the parking lot, because everyone wanted their quarter back so, they brought the cart back to its holding place. Providing “rentable” reusable store bags could be a solution to reduce the usage of the other type of bags.
Or rentable folding shopping crates that are easier to store, clean, reuse, and could be picked up and put in the car trunk or back seat to avaoide the groceries rolling all over the place.
Made out of some form of recycled plastic. There are plenty of plastic water bottles floating around which converted to something useful would be beneficial to the environment as long as the production does not result in toxic waste.
Next I will envision the optimal folding structure that will result in durability and storability.
The main renting and storing unit should be envisioned as well. The customers have to be able to rent them in a self serving manner before they start the shopping because they could be used to organize the groceries during shopping. Rented with a quarter which is returned on the returnal of the clean carts. Should the storing unit be designed to perform sanitization before the next check out?
To be considered: raw material, production, existing shopping cart sizes, existing store set up and policyies, adjustable product size and shape, product loss due to customer liking or neglect, sanitization, marketing, service area