Disposable Bag Options

Disposable Bag Options

The City of Evanston is looking into various programs and policy options related to single-use shopping bags as part of implementing the City's Climate Action Plan and being a regional leader in sustainable practices and behaviors.

Introduction

The Evanston Strategic Plan (Plan) highlights the City’s commitment to embracing the best ecological practices and policies in government, services and infrastructure. The City is also implementing the Evanston Climate Action Plan (ECAP) which outlines strategies to promote sustainability across the community and reduce the community’s greenhouse gas emissions.

The ECAP identified waste reduction and recycling as a one of nine focus areas and recommended three strategies to reduce waste from single-use products such as shopping bags and plastic bottles. Each strategy is listed below.

  • Encourage retailers to offer incentives to customers that bring their own shopping bags
  • Investigate a tax or ban on single-use plastic bottles and plastic bags in order to discourage use
  • Support voluntary efforts to reduce single-use plastic bottle and bag use

The City is currently conducting research and gathering information related to the environmental impacts of shopping bags and investigating a variety of options to help reduce environmental impacts related to their use.

The Office of Sustainability has developed a white paper to summarize initial research on the environmental impacts of single-use shopping bags and provide details surrounding the various options the City of Evanston is considering.

Plastic Bags

  • 80,250 tons of plastic shopping and merchandise bags were disposed of in Illinois according to a 2009 Solid Waste Characterization study, which represents approximately 0.5% of our municipal solid waste.
  • Based on national annual averages for shopping bag generation, Individual Evanston residents consume approximately 428 plastic bags each year and their production is equivalent to 1,308 metric tones of carbon dioxide emissions or the equivalent of removing 256 passenger vehicles from the road each year.

Paper Bags

  • 1,524,280 tons of Uncoated Old Corrugated Containers (OCC) and kraft paper were disposed Illinois according to a 2009 Solid Waste Characterization study, which represents approximately 10% of our municipal solid waste
  • Based on national annual averages, Evanston residents will consume about 43 paper shopping bags each year which require approximately 3,500 virgin trees to produce.

Recycling

  • Recycling is available for both paper and plastic bags. In Evanston, paper bags can be recycled through curb-side recycling and plastic bags can be recycled through participating retail stores, such as Jewel & Dominick's.
  • Recycling plants are located across the country, including North Vernon, Indiana and recycled plastic is used for a variety of products including composite building materials (outdoor decking, fences and door and window components), shopping bags and other plastic products.
  • In Illinois, an estimated 1.5% of plastic grocery and merchandise bags were recycled in 2009.
  • Approximately 37% of Uncoated Old Corrugated Containers (OCC) and kraft paper were recycled in 2009, which would include paper bags.
  • An estimated 17 BTU’s are required to recycle each plastic bag and 1444 BTU’s required to recycle each paper bag.

Paper versus Plastic

Many different variables can be assessed to determine which bag has less of an environmental impact. A study was conducted by Franklin Associates, Ltd. for the Institute for Lifecycle Environmental Assessment in 1990 to evaluate the life-cycle energy usage of plastic and paper bags. The study found that using energy and pollutants from all stages of a bag’s life, plastic bags have a lower life-cycle energy usage than paper bags.

Carbon Footprint

Until recently, the primary debate has been over paper versus plastic bags. With the increase in popularity over bags which are designed to be reusable, the next question is: “What is the relative carbon footprint of paper, plastic, and re-usable bags.” The UK government’s Environment Agency released a long-awaited report in February that says single-use polyethylene grocery bags have a lower carbon footprint than alternative paper or reusable bags unless the alternatives are reused multiple times.

“Lightweight single-use carrier bags have the lowest carbon footprint per bag based primarily on resource use and production,” the agency said. “Paper, heavyweight plastic and cotton bags all use more resources and energy in their production. A key issue, however, is how many times bags are reused.”

In order to equal an HDPE bag used just once, the report states that: a paper bag would need to be reused three times; a low density PE “bag-for-life” would need to be reused four times; a non-woven polypropylene bag would need to be reused 11 times; while a cotton bag would need to be reused 131 times.

The report was delayed in its original release because the agency said the report was under peer review. The report has since been removed from the agency’s website and the following message is posted on their website in place of the report “We have received a legal query regarding the Report on the Life Cycle Assessment of Carrier Bags and have removed the Report and the associated webpage temporarily whilst we investigate this.”

Options

Below is a brief overview of the different approaches that can be taken to reduce the use of single-use bags. Additional details are provided in the white paper.

Bag Fees - Charging a fee for each disposable bag can help encourage shoppers to bring their own bags.

An example of this can be seen in Washington, DC where a $0.05 fee was applied to each disposable shopping bag distributed. This program resulted in $2 million being collected in one year which was then applied towards environmental cleaning projects such as the beautification of the Anacostia River. This program is also credited with reducing the distribution of disposable bag from 270 million to approximately 55 million.

While case studies have shown bag fees reduce the number of single-use bags distributed, there is also concern over the economic impact of communities enacting bag fees. The Beacon Hill Institute released an economic impact study stating that these taxes were responsible for eliminating 101 local jobs and resulted in a reduction of $18 in annual wages per worker. A recent 2011 survey canvassed Washington, DC business owners and revealed that only 12% of the those surveyed saw a negative effect while 58% saw no change to business and an additional 20% responded that these taxes actually had a positive effect on business.

Bag Ban - A bag ban completely eliminates the distribution of plastic bags and typically includes a requirement that specifies paper bags to have a certain percentage of post-consumer content during their development (ranging from 40% to 100%).

A bag ban provides an immediate elimination in the distribution of single-use bags but opponents have cited studies showing that reusable bags are prone to being infected with harmful bacteria.

A study conducted jointly by the Department of Soil, Water and Environmental Science at the University of Arizona, Tucson and the School of Public Health at Loma Linda University found that out of 84 bags randomly collected, 12% of them contained harmful bacteria, largely due to the fact that 97% of the consumers had simply not cleaned their bags after previous usage. In addition to contamination concerns, opponents have cited studies, such as the one released by TEI Analytical, which discovered the presence of harmful chemicals being used in the production of reusable bags. In response to these findings, reusable bag suppliers such as Whole Foods and ChicoBag have released studies and statements showing that their bags do not use harmful chemicals during the manufacturing process.

Recycling - Both paper and plastic bags can be recycled and one strategy to reducing the environmental impacts of paper and plastic bags is requiring recycling for both types of bags. Some communities and states require retailers and/or bag manufacturers to provide bag recycling. This is more applicable to plastic bags because paper bag recycling is already available through curb-side recycling programs. These recycling requirements can be stand-alone programs or can be coupled with a bag ban or fee to increase the effectiveness of these disposable bag reduction options.

Plastic bag recycling has increased in recent years and in 2006 alone, 812 million pounds of post-consumer film, including plastic bags, were recovered for recycling, which is a 24% increase over the previous year. Opponents to bag bans and fees such as the American Chemistry Council feel that these requirements are enough to solve the issue, stating that there are over 20,000 drop-off locations (Wal-Mart, Target and Lowe’s) for plastic bags in all 50 states.

Successful plastic film and page recycling programs have been implemented in the Twin Cities, MN, Santa Cruz County, CA, and Phoenix, AZ which provide a convenient way for local businesses and residents to recycle plastic film and bags.

In Illinois, the estimated 1.5% recycling rate for plastic grocery and merchandise bags and 37% of Uncoated Old Corrugated Containers (OCC) and kraft paper (including paper bags) indicates there is an opportunity to increase the effectiveness of the current system.

Education - Educational initiatives can be used to drive customer behavior by raising the level of awareness and understanding of the environmental and economic impacts of disposable bags. Educational programs can already be found in many stores in and around Evanston, and should continue to be pursued alongside of other disposable bag reduction options.

Other Information

The City will continue to update this page with additional information as it is available. E-mail the Office of Sustainability at sustainability@cityofevanston.org if you have relevant information you would like to submit for inclusion in this effort.