A comment on the plastic vs. reusable bag debate

When the author at sustainabilityxbusiness.wordpress.com brought up the eternal debate of whether using the plastic or the reusable bag is more sustainable, it really made me consider this issue more carefully. I myself have many reusable bags at home and in my car, but I do find it hard using them at the store. They are always left in my car in a hidden compartment somewhere and I often forget to bring it into the supermarket with me before I shop. I also agree that the supply these reusable bags completely surpasses the demand for them. I know that in Hong Kong, reusable bags would sometimes come with the Sunday issue of the paper, or as freebies that different companies give out to promote themselves. At almost all the clothing stores in Hong Kong, their shopping bags are recyclable bags, and my friends who live in that city find themselves swamped in these cloth-like bags and even end up throwing them out in the trash! Perhaps that situation only exists in Asia since I still see reusable bags being sold in stores. I feel like the idea of reusable bags is a great idea – but producers should stop making them! They’re called reusable for a reason, so there’s really no reason for one person to own more than three! I also know that only some grocery stores make us pay for their plastic bags. Big stores such as price mart and superstore requires us to pay $0.05 per bag while save-on-foods and some other smaller grocery stores like Kin’s Farm do not. Perhaps the government should enact laws that require all grocery stores to charge their customers for bags, or perhaps they should adopt the bag system in Hong Kong — encourage retailer stores to give out reusable bags instead. 

To learn more about the life cycle of the plastic and the reusable bag, and to see this author’s bag of choice, visit: http://sustainabilityxbusiness.wordpress.com/