As though the paper-or-plastic question weren't vexing enough, now some retailers are finding that the "biodegradable" plastic bags they'd hoped would please green shoppers might not be so Earth-friendly after all.
Lunds and Byerly's recently replaced its plastic bags with a biodegradable bag made of low-density polyethylene that purportedly breaks down when exposed to sunlight, oxygen, soil, moisture and microbes.
But biodegradable bags are still petroleum-based, and while they do break down into smaller particles, chemicals eventually show up in the food chain and our bodies, according to Susan Hubbard, CEO of Eureka Recycling in Minneapolis. And it's unclear whether biodegradable bags can be recycled.
What's a shopper to do?
"I don't like plastic bags, so [the grocery store] is in a sense forcing me to bring a reusable bag," said Gail Hanson of Minneapolis, who was shopping at the northeast Minneapolis Lunds that only offers plastic bags, not paper. She keeps reusable bags in the front seat of her car so she remembers to take them into the store.
Although a recent attempt to mandate plastic bag recycling in Minnesota did not survive a legislative committee, pressure to cut back or eliminate the use of plastic bags has been building in the United States and around the world.
In 2007, San Francisco became the first city in the country to ban plastic shopping bags, and similar measures have been adopted or enacted in cities as diverse as Phoenix, Portland, Ore., and Boston. Seattle is debating a fee on plastic bags in hopes of encouraging shoppers to carry reusable bags, and several large stores including Ikea have either banned or begun charging for plastic bags.
Other countries, including China, have banned the distribution of free bags.
1 percent of bags are recycled
Biodegradable bags from Lunds and Byerly's are currently being recycled, but if that changes, Lunds and Byerly's will consider, well, bagging them.
"Our goal is still to be a more eco-friendly retailer," said Aaron Sorenson, spokesman for Lund Food Holdings Inc. The manufacturer of the stores' bags says they break down in two years in a landfill, and are 100 percent recyclable.
Americans use more than 90 billion plastic bags per year, but only about 1 percent of polyethylene plastic bags are recycled, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. Minnesotans recycle about 5 percent, the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA) said. The rest wind up in landfills or on the landscape, where each may take hundreds of years to degrade, although estimates vary depending on the plastic.