Reusable Bags: Are We Now Drowning in Something Worse than Single Use Bags?

Bags, bags, reusable bags everywhere . . .

Years ago, in Canada, various retailers and businesses started to give out or sell reusable bags to try to reduce how many plastic bags or "single use" bags were produced and ultimately thrown away. This was supposed to be good for the environment.

A bag of bags.

I can remember as a child having to take reusable bags to the grocery stores and various food retailers in Europe when we were there on vacation (this was decades ago). We’re slow to catch on here and the way we’ve done it has still perhaps not worked quite the way it did in Europe. Here, while some people are religious about using reusable bags, others supplement, and some refuse or always forget their reusable bags.

In Victoria, British Columbia, Canada where I live, certain stores have started to charge for bags (or offer “discounts" per reusable bag brought to the store with you) or have banned plastic bags completely. The municipality of Victoria is currently debating what should be done about plastic bags or single use bags from stores.

I use a reusable bag to save plastic "single use" bags so that I can reuse them.

This is complicated, while reusable bags can be very good if they are of good quality so that they don’t break soon after purchase of being gifted to the user. Unfortunately, there are a lot of reusable bags that I’ve had over the years that break, rip, tear, or become somehow unusable very quickly. The problem with this is that it takes much more resources to produce these reusable bags than it does to produce a thin plastic bag. Also, the materials that they’re often made out of are plastic, just like plastic bags, but they are thicker and even worse for the environment. If they have mixed materials, fabric plus plastic, then good luck finding somewhere to recycle them when they break. Whereas, plastic grocery bags can be returned to the grocery store for recycling.

But there's just so many reusable bags and this isn't even my entire "collection" . . .

I order online from Thrifty Foods from time to time and have my groceries delivered (with a baby in the house, grocery shopping is an extra challenge that I don’t need). Because I can’t use my reusable bags since they are delivering to my house, they use paper bags (since they banned plastic bags). While this might be somewhat good, it’s a lot of paper, since they can’t fill a lot of bags as full as a stronger plastic bag could be filled. I reuse these paper bags to put my compost in (before putting it in my compost bin, because the City of Victoria, unlike other municipalities requires compost to be in either a compostable or a paper bag before it goes in your own bin- a waste for sure since it’s all being chucked in the same big truck).

And I use a reusable bag to keep  some of my many, many paper bags so that I can reuse them.

My favourite reusable bag my husband and I bought in Amsterdam the summer before last. We were at a grocery store and realized we had no bag to put our purchases in. They don’t give out bags there so it was either try to carry everything in our arms or buy one. We looked at the beautiful canvas bags and wondered how much they could possibly cost. They were sturdy, a good size for carrying a small shop, and comfortable to wear over the shoulder or carry in the hand. We could not believe it when the cashier told us the price, about $4.00 Canadian. A bag like that here would probably costs at least four times that. No doubt their good quality reusable bags are priced to encourage people to use them (and reuse them) and for less waste to occur over time. Plus, canvas is biodegradable, unlike plastic which most of our reusable bags seem to be made from here. Also, the bag became dirty from travelling for about a month and when we arrived home I was able to pop it into the washing machine to clean it easily. Good luck doing this with one of those mixed plastic and fabric numbers.

My favourite reusable bag is from Amsterdam.

I always reused plastic bags that I was given at stores and I still do. They are handy for carrying other items, for garbage cans around the house, for cleaning out the kitty litter box, etc.. I am still not convinced that the mountain of reusable bags being produced is going to save the world. They are choking out thrift shops and eating up all of our closet and trunk space. I suggest that if we are going to move towards reusable bags in the long term that they be more like our beautiful, high quality, biodegradable, and cheap Dutch canvas bag.

Let's make more reusable bags like this sturdy and cheap canvas bag from The Netherlands.