Break Up With Your Plastic Bags

It’s a bird, it’s a plane, just kidding, it’s a plastic bag.

They’re everywhere. I see them on the highway, floating through the air. I see them snagged in trees, blowing in the wind. The most offensive of the plastic bags I find littering up the place are printed with “THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU” and “Have a Nice Day” with a bright yellow smiley face on the front, almost taunting me like, “I’m here, and I’m not going anywhere.” I know it’s meant to be a positive message, but to me, it’s a testament to everything that’s wrong with plastic pollution. How am I supposed to have a nice day while you, Mr. Plastic Bag, are polluting my home, poisoning my food and water, and choking out our animals because they can’t tell the difference between plastic and food?

Plastic bags are like a bad boyfriend who just won’t leave.

160,000 plastic bags are used every single second, amounting to 5 trillion bags used per year, and fewer than 3% of them are recycled.

In 2021, 40 million tons of plastic waste was generated in the U.S. alone. All the plastic being produced this second will be here for thousands of years, breaking down into tiny particles, and released into our water systems, soil, and easily ingested or inhaled.

Does that sound like a mutually beneficial relationship?

Because I know every single-use plastic bag will outlive me and my children, I’ve been using my own reusable bags for over a decade. As soon as I figured out that they hold more, don’t break, and are 1,000% the better alternative for the planet, I stocked up.

Here’s where it gets good.

I can fit over $300 worth of groceries in just 3 of my reusable bags! I don’t have to make multiple trips to the car for my groceries and I don’t have to have a handy little plastic IKEA holder for all my plastic bags once I bring them home, and I don’t have to remember to take them back to the store and shove them in the ever-overflowing recycling bin. That’s a lot of ands.

And that’s my kind of relationship.

In one of my bigger shopping trips, right before winter, I spent $653.09 at Wal-Mart. I had to stock up on humidifiers and other winter essentials. I fit $653.09 in 6 bags. It took me 3 trips to and from the car only because I had the humidifiers, and I did it all without using and wasting one single plastic bag.

Be still my cloth bag heart.

I am no plastic saint. I still buy Vitamin Water, Gatorade, and 2 gallons of milk a week for my teenagers. When we get takeout, I still accept, with a cringe, the styrofoam containers presented to me in a plastic bag and say thank you. I haven’t perfected the takeout container debacle yet, but it’s on my to-do. I make mental note of the eating establishments that offer compostable containers and promise to eat there more.

Hey, relationships take work, and I’m not perfect.

When I buy Vitamin Water and milk at the store, I at least understand a trade-off is happening. Inside that plastic, I am receiving something in return. A plastic bag is useless once I unload my trunk and put my groceries away. From the time that plastic bag leaves the checkout line to the minute I haul them all into my kitchen, most have broken or been soiled and are immediately discarded to some unknown dark corner in my kitchen closet, or worse yet, in the trash.

I can do better, and so can you.

The answer to this problem is simple, yet in 2024, we are still wasting time, money, and resources on producing trillions of single-use plastic bags. If all the big box stores committed to no longer providing plastic bags, they wouldn’t lose their shoppers. We all gotta eat. Instead, something would happen that’s needed to happen for decades, people would adapt and finally buy the reusable bags, and then use them.

It’s so much less work on us in the long run anyway.

Three big names, Aldi, Costco, and Sam’s, have all figured it out. Do we bitch and moan and boycott these stores because they don’t offer plastic bags? No. Because we’re saving money and we really need that cheap produce and year’s supply of toothpaste and toilet paper. So we stack our bounty in our carts, mosey happily on out the door, and pile all our shit into our trunks. There is no uprising. There is no complaining, because everyone understands plastic bags are just not an option at these stores.

So why can’t we break up with plastic bags?

Colorado is already doing it. As of January 1, 2024, under HB21-1162, the act prohibits stores and retail food establishments from providing single-use plastic bags to consumers. New Jersey, Vermont, Philadelphia, Portland, OR and Santa Barbara, CA all have plastic bag bans, which has cut single-use plastic bag consumption by about 6 billion bags, enough to circle the earth 42 times. Imagine how many bags wouldn’t be used if all the states implemented a plastic bag ban, and kudos to these states for taking the reins and standing up to plastic pollution.

Are you busy Friday night, Colorado?

There is nothing sexier than seeing a man walk into a store with a reusable bag. The only problem is, that reusable bag usually has a hand with a wedding ring attached to it, which means he’s married, and his very smart but very real wife probably made him do it.

Sigh.

I might be single, but I’m not a single-use one-time-stand kinda woman. Maybe I’m just looking in all the wrong places. Maybe I need to start shopping at Trader Joe’s or Natural Grocers; just post up in the supplements aisle until my super smart, super single, super earth-friendly Superman walks by. Until I find him though, it’s just me and my reusable bags, and we’re happier now without Mr. Plastic Bag.

Seriously though, call me Colorado.