The ‘complimentary’ bag is such an ingrained part of the shopping experience that most people don’t think about alternatives besides ‘Will it be paper or plastic today?'. Though more supermarket customers are confronted with the notion that they should be responsible for their own reusable shopping bags, lacking government regulations, the majority of people opt for single-use plastic bags to transport their purchases from shop to home. Jorden and Kimberly consider how we became mindlessly addicted to a product whose use time lasts approximately 12 minutes and how long this dependence will continue.
Key Topics
Why the close-ended option of ‘paper’ or ‘plastic’ sets us up for environmental failure
Why retailers stick with single-use bags
Why governments are our best bet for ridding the world of–specifically plastic—shopping bags, though the U.S. might be the last hold-out thanks to the power of lobbyists
Why banning plastic bags won’t solve the bag dilemma and paper bags are even worse
How to redeem ourselves for the piles of bags we’ve sent to the landfill
Check out Kimberly's newsletter next week for her follow-up post on this episode
Recommended Resources
History of the Plastic Shopping Bag
The Global Ban on Plastic Bags (with a map!)
The World Counts says they draw from reliable data sources, though the 1,000-year estimate seems a bit exaggerated
