Stuff we like: Totes, canvas and otherwise

Through the combined efforts of consumers and retailers, reusable tote bags are showing plastic bags the door. This is an update of a post I first wrote at WTF? Random Food for Thought.

Those awful plastic grocery bags are fading fast. On April 22 [Earth Day, get it?], the entire Whole Foods grocery chain went plastic bag-free. Grocery stores and general retailers alike are now selling reusable totes, usually for a buck or two, to encourage customers to just say no to plastic.

And China, not exactly a shining example of environmentalism, has banned plastic bags from the entire country. As of June 1, all stores, from the largest to the smallest, have gone bag-free. For the practical Chinese, it’s a matter of not wasting 37 million barrels of oil a year on bags. It was also a chance to polish their image for the Olympics. Whatever the reason, it’s good news for the planet.

The problems with plastic bags are many. First, they don’t biodegrade, as paper does. They photodegrade—which is to say that light causes them break up into tinier and tinier particles, but they never stop being plastic. According to a New York Times article [first brought to my attention by Kirsten over at Gezellig Girl], “Altogether, each year the country is estimated to use 86 billion bags, which end up blowing down city streets, or tangled in the stomachs of whales and sea turtles, or buried in landfills where, environmental organizations say, they persist for as long as 1,000 years.” And even if you recycle them, as more communities are now mandating, plastic degrades in quality with each recycling, so it’s not truly sustainable.

So what can you use instead of plastic? Interestingly, when Whole Foods eliminated plastic bags in San Francisco, paper bag usage only went up 10%. Instead, people switched to canvas bags. At one grocery store chain here in Chicago, they give you a nickel off your bill for every reusable bag you provide.

And now Trader Joe’s has come up with the coolest canvas tote yet. Innocently dubbed the Six-Bottle Beverage Tote, it is clearly designed and sized to snugly hold six bottles of wine. In fact, the cashier who sold us ours called it a wine bag and suggested it would come in handy in the summer. [It did—we’ve bought a second.]

It sells for just 99¢ and is sturdily constructed, with canvas dividers that keep bottles from clinking together. And if you end up partying as our cashier suggested, it’s perfect for toting your empties back home for recycling.

Converting the enemy

Almost as cool as the reusable wine tote is a new all-purpose reusable tote we just picked up at Trader Joe’s, again for 99¢. It’s got a nice square bottom, making it easy for baggers to fill. But what makes it cool is what it’s made of: recycled plastic bottles. So is a new bag at Whole Foods. They teamed up with pop music icon and environmental activist Sheryl Crow to create a special edition of their signature reusable A Better Bag™ shopping bag. According to their website, “These bags are made from 80 percent post-consumer recycled plastic bottles. In fact each bag represents approximately four 20-ounce plastic bottles.”

Another cool thing about reusable tote bags is how they’re being treated in stores these days. When we first started using them [or more accurately, remembering to bring them along so we could use them], cashiers and baggers treated them with disdain, often cramming food into them with little regard for its safety. And I understand. The non-standardized bags they encounter throughout the day make their job just a little more difficult, and they’re judged by their managers and their customers by how efficiently they move the line along. But as more people switch to reusable bags, baggers are packing them more carefully. The other day when I bought more than I thought the bag I’d brought could hold, the bagger smiled as she carefully worked the puzzle pieces, getting everything snugly and safely packed. And that’s pretty cool indeed.